Where do you think Blockland would be right now if v21 was never released?

[stargatefan]

I mean, I'd have to say we would be better off without v21 (as it was released). The game lost more content than it gained and we've lost quite a few players over it. Maps were like templates. You load it, then do what you wish with it in a relatively short amount of time. A simple fun server wouldn't even take half the time to make with maps. And many servers that would have existed 10 years ago don't exist now due to the insane dedication it takes to build a map from scratch. Now shaders may look nice, but they don't add any content to the game, nor do they make the game more appealing to play. Can't speak for others, but I still to this day prefer shaders off.

Also sort of off topic, but the game would be best if a legacy mode was added allowing maps to load, but at the price of losing shaders on those specific servers.

[Ad Bot]

[stargatefan]

I also don't understand people's logic when they think that when a game was last update automatically dictates how many people would play on a game. I have never once ever heard people going "Oh, that game hasn't been updated in a year, so I'm not going to play it." And even if they did, they sure aren't going to care whether the last update was in 2011 or 2012 at this point.

[Gautier00]

bots werent really used well until 2016

I also really didn't do much until 2016 lmao, so good trade-off for me.

[beachbum111111]

This really depends on alot of factors, does it still release to steam?

[_OXBADCODE#]

Maps were like templates. You load it, then do what you wish with it in a relatively short amount of time. A simple fun server wouldn't even take half the time to make with maps.

preach

[Zotron]

epic

especially since shaders were and still are a buggy mess.................

[MunkeyCheez]

What if V21 took a different approach and had maps and shaders (as Flubbman put it) without the bullstuff we were told by Kompressor as it "complicated Blockland's code".

Sure maps looked pretty janky, I can't ignore that, but imagine the maps we had plus shaders? I'd imagine it would look similar to any generic GTA San Andreas or perhaps even a Minecraft one. Heck even a Battlefield 2 shaders mod.

We've seen how static maps look somewhat decent and play relatively well.. ish, albeit janky here and there in terms of collision boxes, although with a bit more polish and potentially official support, I see zero reason for them to be added officially into the game.

But in terms of if Blockland had taken that route, would the player base be different? Maps were certainly a great feature of the game, added loads of exploration and imaginative roleplaying ideas. For example, GSF maps were fantastic for almost any roleplay imaginable. Paradise gave a great fantasy of being in some fictional tropical south American island nation under control of a tyrannical dictator with an underground resistance movement present. This was evident with Gravity Cat's Government vs Rebels TDM/RP which took a realistic approach to open combat with realistic weapons and vehicles in Blockland which was very impressive.

Furthermore, maps such as that highway map was typically used for Fallout or Half-Life RPs.

I think in conclusion, maps were a great backdrop for imaginative settings for builds, and just being stuck with a skybox may had been a hinderance for imaginative thinking and as a result impacted the player base somewhat.

[cHeEsEpIzZa2]

shaders could have been useful if you could actually force players in a server to use it. rn since you can't enforce shaders all of the benefits to a gamemode it has are gone. if they were enforced, we coulda seen a lot more stealth gms, horror gms, etc etc

[K3k0m@n]

We've seen how static maps look somewhat decent and play relatively well.. ish, albeit janky here and there in terms of collision boxes, although with a bit more polish and potentially official support, I see zero reason for them to be added officially into the game.

its already been established that static maps look even worse then the old maps and take far too much effort to create and deal with, it's just better to go back to v20 and use the actual maps that worked best, with more then a hundred already made. of course then you lack brick shadows but many people can agree that gameplay takes priority

[cHeEsEpIzZa2]

of course then you lack brick shadows but many people can agree that gameplay takes priority

brick shadows could be used for gameplay but badspot is too much of a wimp to allow for hosts to force shaders

[MunkeyCheez]

its already been established that static maps look even worse then the old maps and take far too much effort to create and deal with, it's just better to go back to v20 and use the actual maps that worked best, with more then a hundred already made. of course then you lack brick shadows but many people can agree that gameplay takes priority

We've seen how static maps look somewhat decent and play relatively well.. ish, albeit janky here and there in terms of collision boxes, although with a bit more polish and potentially official support, I see zero reason for them to be added officially into the game.

highlighted some points that you've obviously glanced over.

[K3k0m@n]

highlighted some points that you've obviously glanced over.

i didnt glance over them?? i just suggest that it would just be better to use the interiors and terrains systems that torque already supported well then to put in all the effort to improve static maps to that same level. plus dont forget all the effort required to manually port over all of the preexisting working v20 maps over to v21 - this stuff takes a lot of effort for little benefit which is why so little static maps have been made for v21. you're just better off using a v20 client instead of going through all that mess. if you're talking more about official game changes by badspot... its pretty damn safe to say he's not going to add an update for official static map support after already banishing maps and still stating to this year he doesn't find any value in maps himself.

brick shadows could be used for gameplay but badspot is too much of a wimp to allow for hosts to force shaders

this is true and the new shaders really did help with dark maps (dark maps on v20/off shaders looks really stuff lol) but unless someone wants to (somehow) take upon the task of trying to add shadows and shaders to v20, its a choice between worse graphics and lack of maps atm. a real damn shame v21 was executed so poorly

[Dr.Block]

I'm going to assume op is talking specifically about the shadows and shaders and that in this hypothetical scenario, the bot update and putting the game on steam still happened.

After taking several years to reflect on it, I think removing maps was a bad move. The new shadows make the game look wonderful.... outside. Meanwhile building interiors look colorless and bland unless you build a forgetton of windows and make sure they're facing the right way. I always turn them off on any server where the majority of the action happens indoors cause it just looks so dark and bad. I was ok with this at the time because I was under the impression that wrench lights were going to be updated as well to make up for it, but that never happened.

Maybe maps weren't so great as people make them out to be, but they were an extremely popular feature. Most people were cool with them being removed after the update was announced, but I can tell you absolutely no one was calling for their removal prior to the announcement. Now that I know for certain that removing maps totally didn't pave the way for all the cool updates we were promised, I'm comfortable saying it wasn't worth it. Shadows and shaders were basically an attempt by badspot and kornman to make the game sell more copies on steam. I think it was successful in that regard, but it seems like most of the remaining active users these days have been playing since before v21, and most of the people who bought the game immediately after the update only played for a day or two then moved on.

With all that said, do I think that if maps had never been removed, the game would magically be way more active and prosperous than it is today? No. I really doubt all those steam boomers who clearly didn't fall in love with blockland would have stuck around this long just to explore the maps.

All in all, I think if v21 had never happened, the community in 2020 would basically be exactly the same. Only with more horrible post-modern meme maps. And frankly I'm sad we'll never get to see those.

You could argue that maybe if maps were never removed, there would be less of generally hateful attitude towards badspot in the hearts of certain fun characters who have pulled off certain fun and cool pranks in blocklands history and in the last couple months especially. But I doubt it would be significantly different since some of the literally pyschopaths in this game have hated badspot since long before v21.

[beachbum111111]

From a business perspective Terrains and Interiors looked like stuff in screenshots and wouldn't be appealing to people voting on Greenlight nor people who actually want to buy the game. Whereas Shadows and Shaders look nice in depth of field screenshots and more enticing.

Shadows and Shaders were purely to get the game on Steam. I think what would've saved Blockland would've been Steam Workshop support myself but Badspot didn't want to have to deal with the headache of spergs uploading viruses to the workshop and Ephialtes leaving so abruptly when he did forgeted up a lot of things.

[otto-san]

tbh the thing that would have actually helped blockland would have been a more consistent update schedule with new tools and upgrades for the modding scene. new features and new toys get people experimenting and generating mods and gamemodes, and that increases engagement with the game. also, making mods more accessible to new users in retrospect was pretty mandatory to coincide with the steam release. that was something invaluable that we lost with RTB. i don't think most new players would bother figuring out that you can even mod the game in the first place.

obviously i don't blame badspot or anyone for not providing this, you can't expect such a small dev team to keep up their motivation to work on a game for such a long period of time. i also remember the whispers of that fabled hat update that never came to be, probably for undisclosed problems or obstacles or some other reason, as well as hearing about their attempts to fix up vehicle physics, etc. and get the idea that this game is probably just kind of a nightmare to work on, and from that perspective, kompressor's claims that removing maps would help them make more updates makes a lot more sense. i don't know what the game's source code looks like, but if maps were causing problems, there's no way that there aren't innumerable other roadblocks to development hiding about, and i can get the eagerness to remove even one of the larger ones.

i think my ideal future for this game is one where some open-source version is released, but considering it's built on top of garagegames' old proprietary code, i really doubt that'd happen. i assume that would violate some kind of license