Poll

Do you wish to see old maps from old versions of the Blockland?

YES!!!!
73 (53.7%)
Not really...I like playing only slate.
20 (14.7%)
Nope.avi
43 (31.6%)

Total Members Voted: 136

Author Topic: What if Kompresor and Badspot restore interiors and terrains?  (Read 8871 times)

Unless there is reason to believe 100k people are waiting for that update to buy the game, It seems like a huge waste if time.

As nice as interiors were do we really need them? Is it too hard to get some friends together and build your own city? I mean the games motto is 'the game where you build stuff' not 'let other people make a map for you so you can use it instead'
note something about all those maps? they were made for building in. Note how most of the gsf buildings were empty, so you can build furniture inside of it. The other maps like bedroom has lots of free room for making cities in, or other things. sometimes just having an environment to build in makes the whole experience better.
I'm so loving tired with this excuse about maps being taken away.
Want to know what my most popular freebuilds are? The ones with staticmaps or brick-built maps. This is only because they had a much better environment to build in, not just a flat plane with nothing around. It added to the fun. Also, the freebuild I'm hosting now which is a brick-built house, has the most complaints about lag yet. This is only because some of the modter bricks don't support culling, so it makes fps drop. Generally, making an entire map out of bricks just drops the fps a lot, compared to actual maps.
About fps, idk why people keep coming up with the reason 'get new computer'. Obviously if you have some really old computer, upgrading is necessary. However, lots of friends of mine have normal computers for doing general office work on, and they can't afford to upgrade. Even though it's obvious you can get away with making the game laggy, you make a lot of the community not want to play because of fps drops and they just can't upgrade their computer for one reason or another. You're just assuming everyone has so much money they can just buy a gaming computer.
Obviously some people still like starting from just a clean slate, and I understand those people, it's just atleast 50% of the community would prefer building in a map like the bedroom then on an empty slate. v21 did make some people happy, but a lot of the community was just disappointed if anything.
The terrain generator has the same problem. It's amazing, but because of the amount of bricks it's just going to increase FPS by a lot. Some people would be fine with this, but most people will not.

I'm not here to debate, but I am here to give my input because that is what everybody seems to be doing. If somebody feels like quoting this and brown townyzing it sentence by sentence be my guest because I will not debate with you.

I think the shader update was successful in the fact that it did make the game look good for people who saw pictures of it through Steam. This influenced them to buy the game, which in turn really helped Badspot out. After years of working on this old game, he was finally getting some good money for it.

I think that the shader update is good for filmmakers and other people who enjoy making things that look appealing in general. Of course filmmakers would use effects and other things to sort of make Blockland look better than it actually was, but this time they didn't have to rape it with effects because Blockland looked pretty decent itself.

Lastly, I think the shader update is especially good for people who were only builders, because most of the time they built on Slate, which is the same as no maps. Not only that, but their builds also look much better because they can set environment and other things of the sort.

Now personally for me, I used maps a lot. At the time just before maps were taken off, I was actually getting the hang of making terrain on maps with Space Guy's terrain editor. (or something like that) However, just because I used maps a lot and really had fun with maps (probably more fun than I ever had without maps) doesn't mean that the shader update was unsuccessful. It was successful.

Now, there are plenty of arguments against the shader update, I don't think Badspot can deny that, no matter how many people he bans, no matter how hard he tries, there will always be those arguments. These arguments have good points too, it's not as if they have no backbone to them. Some of which include:

The update initially was to make the game look better, which it did, however, terrain was specifically taken off because it would impede on future updates and overall looked ugly.
I think this is wrong entirely because first of all, shaders themselves are buggy and impede on gameplay, so people turn them off. Secondly, just because it looks ugly doesn't mean you should remove them.

Another argument is that terrain has an infinite amount of land, as bricks are limited. This is another good one with pretty decent backbone because I myself have tried covering as much ground as a regular-sized map did back in the day, and let me tell you it did not turn out pretty. It ends up coming out to a lot of bricks and just gives everybody lower frames the more they ghost.

There are probably other arguments I missed, but overall I just want to say that nobody in this situation is necessarily wrong because we each have our own arguments related to this subject, each with their own backbone in it. In the end, it is up to Badspot to make the calls around here. Over the course of playing this game, that's how it's always been. Sadly, I know this probably isn't very smart to say, seeing as people have been banned for going against Badspot in the past, or just pissing him off in general, but I don't really agree with Badspot's actions a lot, and I think he should be more involved with the community and trying to be more of a diplomatic person in the sense that he should try to make everybody enjoy the game. Topics like this show exactly how he is failing to do that. I know some of you will say that it isn't his job to babysit the community, or to please every one of us, and that's also another argument itself with backbone, but I will say this: When you make a game and a community is built within that game, you essentially should try and please that community because they are the ones who are playing your game, making additional content, and giving you suggestions. I think Badspot obviously can try harder than he is now, sorry if you disagree with me.

[GSF]Ghosts terrain generator will be at least a 1000 times better than maps ever could have been.

The only problem is terrain can't last forever. You're going to have to figure out how to cut off the ends.

The only problem is terrain can't last forever. You're going to have to figure out how to cut off the ends.
There's an edge falloff feature actually to help with that
Edge falloff has been added! For those who don't know, edge falloff is a feature for finite terrain that forces the edges of the landscape to gradually snap to the ground. It was requested over a year ago - mainly to make island landscapes appear more realistic, but it works with all terrain types, including Skylands.



It also supports clouds and floating islands, which is useful in preventing large openings at the edges of the grid. Once the feature is enabled, all you have to do is set the falloff distance, which will alter the height of bricks that are within that distance from any of the four edges.


plus there's the infinite gen option even though ik that's not quite what you want

There's an edge falloff feature actually to help with thatplus there's the infinite gen option even though ik that's not quite what you want
Compare duplicating a map-sized area of bricks with the efficiency of terrain. Torque handled repeating terrain, unlike equally large expanses/duplicates of bricks. Ghost's floating islands do look amazing though :)

Even if the entire Blockland community wanted maps back, do you really think Badspot is going to do it?
No he will not.
We're more debating how well environments made of bricks work vs maps. The ideal solution would be for Blockland 2 to have detailed map support as well as nice brick shaders.

Badspot simply made a logical business decision.
Guys, maps have been gone for nearly 2 years.  At the time they were removed, over 80% of servers used some form of slate.  Got that?  80% of servers did not use maps at all.  Most of the remaining 20% just used bedroom because it was first on the list. 

The natural course of a game is for the userbase to grow to a peak and then decrease over time.  If you want to keep the active user count up, you have to attract new users.  And guess what?  New users aren't going to play a game that looks like it's from 2001.  They're not even going to try it.  They're going to look at the screenshots and leave.

2 years.  The maps were removed 2 years ago.  The userbase did not implode.  In fact, it didn't decrease at all.  Not even a blip.  It's pretty much held steady, fighting the natural life-cycle of a game. 

In my expert opinion, if maps had not been removed in favor of improved graphics, the game would already be dead. 

But this shouldn't hold back the community that loves this type of game. Blockland is severely limited by Torque and it's time we've moved past that.

Are we really still having this debate?

It's been nearly three years, for God's sake. Pre-shader Blockland looked like utter garbage, and if removing interiors and maps helped fixed a ten year old game in order to prolong its lifespan (let's face it, we probably would have started capping new users if it couldn't compete with even Roblox), if anything you should all be grateful.

What advantage did the bedroom have over not having the bedroom? What about building in it made it any better than not? If anything it hindered creativity as it put restraints on where you could and couldn't build. Most of the time I spent in the bedroom consisted of exploring outside of it and having more space to actually build in. Or I just played in slate or construct anyway.

The bedroom, the kitchen, they were novelties that were nice to play in but served no integral function or feature to the game outside of an aesthetic one. If you want the bedroom back so badly, go and get the static maps mod. It's been out for over a year and has already fixed your so-called problem.

These threads are just becoming a nuisance at this point.
We are still having this debate, because many feel that the debate isn't over yet.

"It's been nearly three years, for God's sake. Pre-shader Blockland looked like utter garbage, and if removing interiors and maps helped fixed a ten year old game in order to prolong its lifespan (let's face it, we probably would have started capping new users if it couldn't compete with even Roblox), if anything you should all be grateful."

Why didn't we just improve the graphics of the maps themselves? Or just add anti-aliasing? The shaders are a massive performance cost. Only under about 10% of steam users have GTX 970's that can run the shaders at an acceptable quality in 100K builds. If the intention was to make Blockland more appealing to the "masses", that mass is pretty small. Blockland will live as long as the community does, and the community is growing.

Before shaders, i used to be able to play Blockland with 16x anti-aliasing. It looked wonderful.

"What advantage did the bedroom have over not having the bedroom?"

Terrains and interiors are a good way of generating geometry very quickly. These days you have to spend hours building just the terrain before you even get to what in the past we would call "the build". People have their personal reasons for liking them. They were a good way to set up a freebuild quickly. Looking around for space was a lot more thrilling when you went around the map searching where people have built stuff. Now they're all on a flat slate and it's not as fun. If you claim that parts of the game which can be collided with and effect your gameplay are just "aesthetical features" or "novelties", you know nothing about game design. Even aesthetics can have a big effect on a game. When there was the size comparison with the bedroom, it was clear that your character was a small lego figure in a big world. Now we're humanoids that live on a flat desert.

"If anything it hindered creativity as it put restraints on where you could and couldn't build"

That is flat out incorrect. Limitation is the fertilizer of creativity. The reason why people love pixel art is because you can clearly see the limitation of the genre, and the creative ways people use these limitations makes for impressive work. If what you said was true, that genre of art wouldn't be as popular as it already is. If you felt that the terrains limited you, you could have always just played on slate or one of it's variations. Now the people who want terrains and interiors don't even have the choice.

I remember this fantastic build in Bedroom which was basically a big island that was chained to the bedroom ceiling beams. You can't really do that anymore because if you go through the trouble of building the Bedroom yourself it's just not as rewarding, because you had to put effort to limit yourself, which just makes it a nuisance.

"Most of the time I spent in the bedroom consisted of exploring outside of it and having more space to actually build in. Or I just played in slate or construct anyway."

This is your personal experience and it doesn't necessarily reflect the rest of the community.

"The bedroom, the kitchen, they were novelties that were nice to play in but served no integral function or feature to the game outside of an aesthetic one. If you want the bedroom back so badly, go and get the static maps mod. It's been out for over a year and has already fixed your so-called problem."

Thanks for linking this, I can't wait to skii on slopes agai- Oh.


The only reason why i ever supported the removal of interiors and terrains was that "We can have better support for bigger updates in the future" line. It felt like a good replacement for the loss of a big feature like the terrains, but it turned out to be marketing BS.

Badspot's argument that only 20% of servers were using terrains and interiors at some arbitrary point of time and that's why removing them wont hurt anyone was pretty silly as well. Left handed people make up 10% of the world. Non-straights are 3-5%. Screwing over your audience isn't right by removing features from a product they've bought, no matter how small the amount of complainers is. At this point the best thing that Badspot can do if he isn't willing to circumvent the terrain removal somehow is add steam workshop. It would increase sharing of content and make add-ons even easier to install. Where is it?

EDIT: I just wanted to add that i believe that Badspot & Kompressor are incredibly intelligent people and i respect them very much. I just don't agree with them on this one move. They put a lot of effort into this update and I know it must be infuriating to hear me and others say that It's just not enough. I apologize.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2016, 04:49:34 PM by Rednakin »

The only problem is terrain can't last forever. You're going to have to figure out how to cut off the ends.
There actually is an option for infinite terrain.

It also works the same way like Minecraft where it only loads the chunks around the players and deletes the other ones.
It keeps the brickcount down.
And when it loads a chunk where people have build on, then it loads the buildings too.

The thing with bricks is that you can only save what you see.

With infinite terrain you still have to physically go to every corners of the map just to make sure they all ghost properly just so you can save.

The thing with bricks is that you can only save what you see.

With infinite terrain you still have to physically go to every corners of the map just to make sure they all ghost properly just so you can save.
That's only with other people's servers.

Going to Port's v20 version brought up a lot of game glitches. And the GUI wasn't great either (or this is just my end). But, I'd like to see an implement of maps. And maybe, on slate, shader capability. Or, for maps, shaders that only effect bricks. Although that might not work because bricks are static objects like maps were. I'm not saying we should revert Blockland back, but maybe making it more compatible would be nice. I would also love to see soft body physics if we ever have maps implemented again. TGE is compatible with Soft Body Physics.

That's only with other people's servers.

No on my toy store server I still have to physically ghost every single brick that goes past the view distance otherwise they won't save when I save the map.

No on my toy store server I still have to physically ghost every single brick that goes past the view distance otherwise they won't save when I save the map.
Do you host it on a dedicated server?
I thought that issue happened if you visited another person server, or it was a dedicated server (essentially, if you're not the host).
But I may be wrong. I know I've encountered the issue before, but my friend and I used to alternate hosting/saving, so I'm not really sure who was saving on whose server.

No I'm hosting on a regular server. It happens to player, ded and regular.

Someone got mad at me because half their build only saved and it wasn't my fault they were building outside the draw distance.

TGE is compatible with Soft Body Physics.

Where are people getting this nonsense from