What can I do?
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.
Thank you for giving me a soapbox to shout my arguments from, I think I'll do just that. I really, really, hope Kompressor and Badspot listen to me.
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, and that is obviously a severe restriction on our creative ability.
This is not really correct at all. If I gave you markers and pencils, and took away the pencils, you could be just as creative. This has no effect on creativity whatsoever, rather, there is now a more limited set of tools that you are allowed to express that creativity with. However; these changes will allow you to express your creativity with even more pretty effects, lights, and shadows. I would argue that while we are taking away a set of tools that an
extremely small number of users used to express their creativity (myself included), the new tools will allow everyone in general to be more creative and you'll get a net
increase in creativity, if creativity is really something you can even measure a relative change in.
My current plan was to work on my RPG and develop it into a great server using both terrain and interior. I have already coded a system that divides the overworld (terrain) into regions, and allows for underground dungeons (interior). However, this update will more or less kill the project. This is obviously a terrible disappointment, and I know for sure there are many in the same situation who feel the same. If you are in this category, you should let us know.
I'm sorry that some of that work that you put into developing an RPG will eventually no longer work with the game. I'd be somewhat upset too if I worked hard on something for a while and then it turned out nobody else would be able to enjoy it. We can't just keep holding things back so that nobody's stuff ever stops working. Sometimes things will break when updates are made, sometimes they'll be broken forever and you'll just need to find a new way to do things. This update might mean the death of your project, in terms of a terrain and interior based world. However; it has no effect whatsoever on your ability to make a fantastic RPG server. You will just need to find a way to express things with bricks that you would have previously expressed with terrain and static objects. You may have to rethink some things, but I promise it's for the good of the game as a whole.
Guys, you should read through. I was suggesting a backward compatibility option for those who want to use it. You would still be able to play in slate with shaders and shadows.
You're proposing that they maintain essentially separate versions of the game that use different renderers so that people who want to run old maps can keep doing so. It's not worth it. Plus, what's this going to look like to the end user? Some random guy is going to join one server and see pretty shadows and join another and they'll be gone. Will they realize it's because they're playing on a different type of map? No, they'll think think the game is broken and complain in the help forums.
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 absolutely understand why you might feel that way. Please realize that it will happen to you many, many times again. In fact, your entire life will be full of you working hard on things and then it doesn't work the way you wanted it too. Whether it's old maps not working anymore, or your favorite model of a product being depreciated with one that you think sucks, or companies you're trying to get a job at telling you that your old certifications just aren't enough anymore, you're going to have to just deal with it.
I think most people
can understand how you're feeling because many of us
have had this very same thing happen to us before, it's part of living and being a human. I don't think they're disagreeing with you because they can't understand how your feeling, and I think you're mistaken if you think that.
You are absolutely entitled to feel the way you do. The way you feel is not justfication for holding back an update to the game, and I think that's where people would disagree with you on this.
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'm not sure what you're getting at. I've made maps for Blockland probably since around 2006. When I didn't have a retail key, I screwed around with editing maps in the old version and then fixing them in notepad to work with the retail edition so that I could still make maps for people to play. In fact, I think I published Ocean Platforms without even being able to play it online with other people.
I had two other maps that I was proud of that I released for the retail version, Ice Pack and Under Construction. I haven't released any maps since althought I still regularly read about mapping in the Torque Game Engine, tinker with it on my own, and try and lend a hand in the mapping forums.
I didn't blow 2 years on Blockland. I spent 7 years on it. I based my entire career on it. I played lots of mods for Blockland and I thought it would be cool to make maps. So I started learning how to make maps, but I wasn't very good. I took a 2D drafting class in high school so I could eventually take their CAD class because I thought the design courses would make me a better map maker.
I ended up really enjoying drafting and engineering. Now I have associates degrees in architectural technology and construction management. I'm studying civil engineering at a large college in the southeast, and I'm looking forward to a co-op position at a major construction company over the summer.
So yeah, I can understand where your concern is coming from. But your work wasn't wasted, and your experience is what you make of it. If you really like software development and 3D art, then keep doing it. In any case, it's a good learning experience for you. I can gaurentee you that at some point in your career someone will throw away all your work on a project and you'll have to start from scratch.
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.
You could make it out of bricks. You're right, it wouldn't be the same. But you know what? It doesn't have to be
worse. You could build it back
even better than before, and I encourage you to do so. But if you just don't feel like making content for Blockland anymore, I would also understand.
If badspot didn't want terrain and interiors, he shouldn't have introduced them in the first place.
I think if you read this again to yourself a couple of times you'll realize that this doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, think of what the implications of your statement would mean. In a world where your argument made sense, people would be always wrong to change their minds, and we know that's clearly not true.
Badspot basically got us modders hooked on creating mods with maps, and now he thinks he can just completely destroy everything us modders have worked for.
Please speak only for yourself.
He should know that since he was the one that allowed us to create maps, he would have a problem like this when he tried to remove them. He should have known that all of the modders would raise hell. And just think, he's completely getting of all of the user-made maps, just for some shadows and shaders.
It's not just for shadows and shaders. It's a complete simplification of rendering and physics in general, that will open up the posibilities for things that have not beein in the game before. I'm not keen on giving examples since I do not know what Kompressor and Badspot plan and I would prefer to let them let us know what they plan themselves. However; some poibilities that I see are real night vision, working brick and vehicle physics, and perhaps a robust brick based mapping system that allows for things that weren't possible before, like caves that don't look like stuff. These might not come, and I have no idea if they are in the works, but I would think that they would be things that might be easier to do now.
Enjoy riding a jeep on a blank slate.
You're technically wrong since you neglected to mention that the slate map would be
full of bricks but I guess that wouldn't have been quite as dramatic.
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.
This is not really an argument against getting rid of maps but rather an argument in favor of getting better vehicle physics. If you objected to maps solely on the grounds that vehicle physics suck, then what you're actually saying is that you would be fine with this change if the vehicle physics were fine. This argument really does not support your position.
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.
They are not getting rid of this stuff for pretty graphics, and the people telling you so either don't know better or are just lying. See above.
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.
And now I can open up the second half of my post.
Maps are holding Blockland back. No, it's true. It's not just graphics.
Making maps is not funEverything about maps is archaic. Making them just sucks. You use a wide variety of tools that were never meant to work with each other. All of the BSP geometry editors feel like a trip back to 1999, and trying to do it a more modern way using Google Sketchup or something requires you to jump through even more programs and exporters. Making maps is entirely non-intuitive, and the learning curve is pretty steep. I know what it's like to try and pick up mapping when you're 15 with no background in 3D design because
I did it too. Making stuff for the game, in fact, any game, shouldn't be like this. I love making settings that people enjoy, but I'm personally frustrated by how stuffty the tools are.
The problem is these tools were written by programmers for other programmers. They weren't designed by GUI people, or usability people, or graphics artists, they were designed by software engineers. In my experience I've very rarely seen a sofware engineer design anything with a GUI, they pretty much make console applications for everything. Trying to get a GUI out of them is like trying to pull teeth out. That's a different issue that's not really related though.
Most people play on slate anywayIt's hard for me to justify all that effort of making a map when most people play and build on slate anyway. It makes sense though, I don't blame them. This is a sandbox game, you can do whatever you want, but it's clearly aimed at construction and slate is really the best option for construction. It's also open to every other gamemode too, if you want an RPG, or DM, or a racetrack, you just build it, and anybody can do it. Probably the only thing it doesn't do well is skiing, but we could fix that with better skis and some more slopey bricks. I love skiing too, it's the first thing I ever did when I got Blockland, but it's not like this update will kill skiing forever, you'll just have to do it differently.
We try and make interiors look like bricks anywayI've noticed that most mappers today try and make their maps looke like bricks. They try and line up with bricks so people can build in and with the structure. They use brick like textures. Really the only reason they're even using interiors is because they can squeeze out better performance for big things like cities.
Except they really can't. Think about GSF Ghost's (or whatever his name was) big city map. He could have easily done all the roads with bricks. The buildings are mostly block shaped, and could have easily been done with some skyscraper shaped blocks. Then people could blow up the buildings, or make them taller, or add more, or paint them different colors... Really, if it had used some cool building shaped blocks, the map would have been infinitely better than it ever was. This is really the nail in the coffin for me, bricks can do what interiors do, except better.
Getting rid of maps will make development MUCH easier, and maybe we'll finally get to see that brick editor that we've been asking for for years so we can make some sky scraper shaped blocks.
After the next major update we will receive shaders and shadows to make blockland look prettier to compete with games like Roblox and Minecraft. Doing so will cause us to lose interior and terrain maps, however it's not too late. I encourage others to find out how to make an older Blockland game playable again like Retail Beta or Blockland V8 (While still requiring a key from Badspot). If we can't find out how to make these playable then we might as well move over to RTB 1.045 or TBM. Why let your maps you worked hard on go to waste? Why let people like GSF Ghost be forgotten for their work?
I would be very interested in setting aside a thread on these forums where we can have a public discussion.
It's too bad because now your dogfight server is ruined. How can we dogfight on a flat map?
Easy, build some mountains. I've built many mountains before and I can tell you that it's easier than sculpting a mountain in the mission editor or making some interior based ones. They also look better.
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