These days people in Blockland talk of a new update that will radically change the way the game works. Kompressor has announced that a while from now, Blockland will no longer be supporting terrain or interior instances.
What does this mean?- Bedroom and Kitchen uses interior and will not be playable
- The Slopes uses terrain and will not be playable
- No custom maps other than slate edits will be playable
This means we will no longer be able to download or create our own custom maps to go with our servers. The content will be limited to what we can build with bricks.
I have been playing Blockland since v0002, and purchased Blockland retail the first day it became available. I have run several successful servers, most notably my Dogfight and my Medieval RPG. Here is my opinion on this:
We are going to remove interiors and terrain in an upcoming release. Every "map" will be like Slate, ie, with one big ground plane. If you want the bedroom, load The Bedroom build. If you want a city, build one out of bricks. If you want the kitchen, I bet there is a build of that knocking around, too.
I feel we are sacrificing too much for too little. Terrain and interior has always been an important part of Blockland, and taking that away means a serious degradation of the game. I don't mind improving the graphics, but this update would take away much of the game's creative potential. It would also put an end to large scale TDM's, Dogfights and similar servers.
User-made video linksInteriors and terrains. R.I.P Terrains and InteriorsJorgurs Server - DogfightingR.I.P. Blockland 
What can I do?Badspot and kompressor are open to opinions. If enough people from the community voice a negative opinion on the upcoming update, they might be willing to change their minds, or at least allow for alternatives. It is very unlikely they will enable shaders/shadows and terrain/interior to work at the same time, but we might be able to convince them to implement a backward compatibility option or arrange an alternate way of playing.
Give them your opinion in a reply, either here or in the
development topic. Remember to use real arguments and tell them how the update affects you. Link others to this topic, and tell them to do the same. If you know of, or can create some good images or YouTube clips, post them in a reply and I will insert them in this post.
One thing is certain:If they decide to proceed with the update as planned,
Blockland will never be the same.
You know, it's really hard for most of you guys to understand how me and Jorgur feel. I highly doubt that most of you have put years into developing great RPGs that rely on terrain and interiors. And now v21 will take our hard work an basically destroy it. You must understand, it takes years to develope these mods. We have spent days on end reforming our code and scripting these RPGs. The feeling that all of your hard work for the past few years will go down the drain is just horrific.
I'm not saying that everyone should be against it. I'm sure that many people do not use interiors and terrain in their daily lives and actually would much rather have shadows. And i'm also sure that many people that make mods using interiors and terrain are fine with v21 and would much rather have shadows.
I don't really care what side you are on. Just understand that 2 years of my life have been focused on making StoneQuest better and better. I guess I could make just make it out of bricks, but it just wouldn't be the same. Just like Jorgur says, if this actually happens, it will really hurt blockland's creative potential.
If badspot didn't want terrain and interiors, he shouldn't have introduced them in the first place.
I do not like this update and here are my reasons.
For one I am not for change, however, if it is beneficial then I am always up for it.
The only times I doubt change is when you have to sacrifice things for it, which in this case, that's one of those times.
I do not like the fact, and obviously nobody else does, that the update deletes maps.
Terrain and Interiors are what has made Blockland fun and creative (talking about maps here) for years.
You can't just expect to get rid of maps because of some shadows. To me it seems like risking too much.
Another thing is that it would ruin vehicles and skis.
Vehicle physics have always messed up in Blockland.
If you drive fast into a brick, your vehicle will go into it and its just a huge mess.
And skis, you can't ski over bricks because its not smooth and wont feel the same as it was in slopes.
If your telling me that all of these things are worth getting rid of for some sort of "new year 2012 change" bullstuff, then I don't understand Blockland anymore.
I fully agree with this. Blockland is fine the way it is. It doesn't need shadows to make the game look better. It's a game that consists of blocks. I've been playing Blockland for a while now and I've been fine without shadows, come to think of it, I never even thought of the idea of shadows coming into the game. I believe that people might not see it now, but in the future they'll soon regret wanting this update. I play Blockland a lot and this update will definitively reduce my playing time. I realize that I'm saying this just for myself, but I just don't like the idea of destroying one of Blockland's main strong points. If you kept the terrains and interiors with the shadow update that would be fine. But I don't think it's worth taking away this kind of content that the game holds in order to make it better.
It is virtually impossible to have a good Dogfight without terrain. Air plane combat usually requires very much space, unlimited if possible. This is something the terrain feature handles with ease, but building decent terrain with bricks is a hopeless task. Even if you somehow make a gigantic landscape out of bricks, the enormous brick count will cause most people to lag.
So yeah, enjoy dogfighting across an endless plate.
There's a difference between forcing creativity and promoting a redundant, insufficient use of bricks. Brick terrain isn't user friendly (depending on the size, it'll almost definitely create some sort of lag -- have you ever walked on brick terrain? Err, jumped from block to block in it?), looks absolutely hideous, and will almost definitely exceed a specific brickcount. This is, in no way, an effective way of changing the game. It's a step backward, not a step forward. I've yet to hear many solid arguments that actually state the benefit of losing terrain/interiors.. or, rather, ones that aren't easily contradicted by the above statements.
Here's a quote justifying my argument entirely:
I think it's funny that some individuals actually prefer shadows over game compatability in general.
I understand why Kompressor would want the feature, considering the amount of effort he put into making them work appropriately. But, the bias of one's creation aside, they do not benefit the game as much as terrain. This is a fact, not an opinion.. or some silly bias I'm here to display out of anger. The appearance of shadows will not allow for users to do more. It isn't some magical entity that'll now enlighten users of a better world -- they're literally shadows casted from bricks. You establish a primitive nature to something if the quality is effected by its appearance. A fool makes a house of gold; a genius makes one of steel.
Terrain is such an incredibly large portion of the game, regardless of how "ugly" it looks. The intent is to allow for environments that can be played in with no end, allowing for users to build differently to adapt to each individual location; why anybody would even consider ridding of this for brick shadows is beyond my level of comprehension.
I've been with the community since 2004, and have most likely logged more active playtime than the majority of the players here. This isn't a way of boasting, but stating that I've witnessed the ups and downs of this game. Sure, I haven't always provided too much input, but now I think it's the time to listen, and listen well. You will significantly hinder the game if you push this through, shooting the value of it down dramatically. You will rid of a fanbase that has followed you for years now. This is something that should be thrown in on the side, something, of which, shouldn't jeopardize the game in any way.
You've done a good job, Komp. Now do a better job by figuring out how to keep the game as it were.
This is the first time I posted that phrase, actually. Implying that the current version is insufficient isn't going to work, either. Because, regardless of the buggy aspect, it allows players to do more than any of the updates listed by Kompressor.
Have you ever played in any of the dogfight servers? Maybe Heed's slopes tdm? Nobot's deathrace? Or, hell, ANY of the medieval RPs? Those require a VAST amount of terrain. Keep in mind that these were easily some of the most popular servers in blockland. So, regardless of your statistic, people enjoy terrain. I host in slate just to bullstuff around. That doesn't change the fact that I enjoy terrain maps more. You're labelling an entire community by one look at the server stats. This doesn't immediately imply absolute intention.
It's going to be released, yes. But this isn't going to stop people from acting in opposition.
