Art: The Totem

Yes! The vine is an excellent detail - as soon as I saw it in @Minyi’s concept I was in love.

3 Likes

Very nice art, I like the concept of having tools, even when you don’t have tools, per say. As @KuroKuma said, the vine on the items looks very cool. I’ll add this stuff to the collection.

love the stick one i wanna use it as a hat lol hope we got glue in this game

This is my stick. There are many like but this one is mine.

I also love the art on it. Kinda makes me excited at the prospect of bopping goats on the head whilst running away.

1 Like

Love it!!!

Glow sticks at the ready! whoop whoop!

2 Likes

Awesome, definitely makes the game feel more welcome in the beginning and can lead to some early game exploring. I love what you’ve done to let new players get an easier foot hold on the game rather than throwing them in with nothing and completely fearing the night or caves.

Wow really nice! This is your version of the Gem/Crystal Torch I porposed right? But just the beggining of it (because evolution).

It will only be able to break basic, soft blocks, and will take a while to do so. It’s an item that you always have with you, and so will be the first tool you use. You’ll want to replace it with the correct tools as soon as you can though.

2 Likes

Glad to hear that. Does wood count as soft?^^

Yes, Wood, Soil and Leaves for sure, others TBD.

To be honest, I’d like it more if you couldn’t chop down trees with a stick. I mean sure it will take longer but still, it feels wrong.

1 Like

Agreed.

I think it is kinda like the gold, silver, platinum debate. I understand the playability aspect: there has to be some means to get a basic tool together for the start, or right after death or survival is dubious.

However, it just seems plain wrong to punch a tree for wood (or to expect that whacking one with a stick will eventually fell the tree rather than decimate your walking stick).

How about punching gleam (or whacking it) will cause shards, which you can craft to the stick for a rude hacking/digging tool?

The Art is great though, and the idea of a basic tool is not bad. Heck maybe the gleam shard could replace the oortcube… though I do like the art.

1 Like

That’s a good idea. Never thought about it but gleam could be fragile enough so you can break it.

Alternatively, the idea I posted in another thread.

I’d be ok with both solutions, as both are far more realistic then punching a tree with a fist/stick^^
Maybe a combination of both. Punching leaves for sticks and gleam for shards. Craft both together to get a crude tool with which you can chop down trees.

2 Likes

Yup. and all together, you have a walking stick which you can use to defend yourself or shake the tree for material for a handle, and to whack gleam for shards (I still would hate to have to punch stuff), and an heirloom artifact that sheds light… your sole possessions upon awakening to the world.

I like, but unfortunately earlier games have already corrupted folks and set a paradigm that most similar games simply follow to ease playability. I’d be pleasantly surprised if Boundless veered off, but I don’t expect they will. Just as I expect they will stick with iron, silver, gold, platinum, amethyst, emerald, diamond for tools…

1 Like

The devs don’t stress it as often as they used to but for Boundless the general rule is. The more people want something the more the devs are willing to think about it again or change it in the end.
You and me are double the amount of people compared to when I was alone and I know of some others who’d love to not have to punch trees for wood early in the game.

We just need to bring good arguments and convince people of this^^
(Of course if there are good arguments against it then they are also worth considering, after all we want the best possible game.)

1 Like

Punching trees will not be possible in Boundless. We decided this to save production costs which we preferred to spend elsewhere. If you can punch a tree then you need to be able to see a hand+arm doing the punching. We don’t want to model a 1st person view for hands+arms. As we would need to do this for the different races + male/female + wearables. It would be lots of effort for, IMO, very little gain. Instead we’re proposing that the default items are the Totem, a stick and cube pair with some interesting properties to discover.

7 Likes

Agreed. I think the Totem to use to collect branch & stone/gleam shards as a first tier works well. And it gets away from silly tree punching. And the more folks that concur the likelier the dev will listen…

still (and I find this very sad… pathetic even) the general newbie will when presented with the world, see a tree or rock and try to punch it. if it shows a crack they’ll think… “Ooo, all I gotta do is punch stuff to collect it…” and when it breaks and simply disappears they’ll think “Hmm, the game is still buggy, I lost my block”.

In frustration they may check the forums, or google how to play… but still they will instinctively feel that to collect one must punch…

Which reminds me… It’d be much friendlier to simply not fracture a block if the tool used isn’t sufficient, or better yet simply do the initial crack and “revert to whole on a timer” thing. That way you cannot destroy/grief/lose resources, and I think it gives a better idea of “not a sufficient tool”.

The same is true of the silly silver is a better tool than iron, and gold is even better. Then come the gems… oh, well. I hate it, but understand it. Still, why not stone, bronze, iron, steel, molybdenum alloy,…

I agree with this decision. But this just moves the problem from one unrealistic scenario to another one.

@Kalthazar It would be a really good idea to just not be able to destroy certain blocks unless you have the right tools for it. Or make it far too long so you can’t really build player traps. (Like in MC if you try to mine obsidian with your fist. Just with trees in Boundless.)

About the whole gold and silver controversy, just making them alloys as @Thorbjorn42gbf said would be enough. Doesn’t even have to be a fantasy metal^^ or not the whole thing has to be^^
And the gems could be attachements instead of a own material type. But I’d recon this will/would also mean more work for the devs.
So this might be an idea for a system overhaul after 1.0.

2 Likes

Thank you for introducing bockety into my vocabulary :smiley:

(the totem and cube are pretty nifty too)

1 Like