This post attempts to answer a collection of the community submitted questions - here. Future posts will answer more of the outstanding questions.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who proposed this process, submitted questions and also helped wrangle them into the wiki post.
Secondly, I’ve selected some questions that I think will have more relevance to what we’ll be releasing next. Many of the other questions are interested in explorative answers on the details of the systems we’re including in Boundless. These are really interesting and we’ll definitely share more details once we think the systems are locked in place.
Q. Do you plan to update the AI ? (At the moment it is pretty stupid … you can walk around a splitter and nuke him down with a hammer)
Yes. The current AI represents the initial steps to get the game navigating entities around a voxel environment. But it’s not too clever at the moment. I’m sure everyone has seen entities drowning in water and jumping off floating islands. Our aim is to make every creature in Boundless interesting to interact with. Expect some significant updates to the AI before 1.0.
Q. Do you plan regular updates or releases if we come closer to 1.0?
Yes, once we release the C++ version of Boundless to the Steam beta channel expect fairly regular updates. We plan to continue regular updates throughout development. The C++ version of Boundless will be on the Steam beta channel until we feel it has sufficient stability to displace the main version of the game.
Q. If so, how frequent do you think updates will be and will they be released to fixed times (within reason)?
We’ve never really worked to a single releasing timeline and strategy. This is because the stages of development often merit different strategies. For example, during this C++ migration work it’s hard to release something that is in pieces and unplayable.
In general I personally prefer us to release regularly, pushing updates weekly if possible. But this puts an extra pressure on the team, who often want to focus on bigger steps in development. With this in mind I would imagine that post the C++ release you should expect updates every 2 to 4 weeks. I’ll push for more. But can’t promise.
Q. about how long do you think will it take to implement the new worlds and kill the infinite mode?
We have a timeline after the C++ release that will deploy the world regeneration and resource generation. These features require a new set of worlds and their release will likely trigger the removal of infinite mode. More about this in other questions.
Q. How soon do you envisage it will be that the new blocks will ‘out-grow’ the current server builds. Basically how long until we need new worlds to play on?
As above. After the C++ release we’ll be working on a set of core economy features including: storage, locks, trading, recipes, initial guilds, currency, shops and initial player progression. These work alongside the wrapping worlds, world regeneration and resource regeneration to create a viable player economy and ecosystem. This update will also contain our best effort at 1.0 blocks, minerals and resources. All this together will require us to deliver a new set of worlds for you to play and experiment within.
Q. when will the first server wipe be ? (some time ago i read the migration will be over time, not all servers at the same time)
Once the economy features are solid we will take the current worlds offline. We will give plenty of warning about this. To confirm, the worlds are being taken offline - not deleted. The new features would not make sense on the current worlds as they lack all the resources and blocks required for the crafting and recipe system.
Q. when can we expect the first new worlds ?
The C++ version of Boundless will be released initially on the Steam beta channel and will give players access to an alternative universe of worlds. This is because the C++ version is already starting to include some of the new economy features and assets, specifically in the area of worlds generation.
Q. What is the future plans for the worldbuilder?
We’re currently working on a significant update to the world builder. In keeping with the answers here - we want to try and make sure the coming economy update works against 1.0 quality worlds. To achieve this we need to make some big changes to the World Builder. Off the top of my head the changes to the World Builder include:
- Adding support for Hierarchical Biomes.
- Changing the way Biome Parts are put together by introducing a Biome Part Selector. This will give much more control to creators of the layout of complex biomes. More details about this once we have something to share. But it’s really cool.
- Adding support for Custom Nodes.
- Custom Nodes allow us to reduce the complexity of exposing all nodes to the user. Any collection of nodes can be collapsed into a Custom Node and inserted into a standard library of nodes. This will allow us to start building a library of biomes, cool noise functions and reusable setup for everything else.
- A custom node can control which subset of it’s nodes options are exposed to the user when it’s added to their world. This allows for customisation of these custom nodes when used.
- Adding support for Prefabs.
- Prefabs will allow us to create assets in voxels and instantiate them throughout worlds.
- A few new noise nodes to create more regular noise.
- Many other useful user interface tweaks and improvements.
Q. How is the idea with making biomes consist of sub biomes coming along?
I think we have an excellent solution in the pipeline. See the answer above.
Q. How many guys are you in total at the dev’s team (currently/soon)?
We currently have 18 people in our dev team: 1 director, 1 producer, 2 designers, 5 artists + animators, 8 engineers, and 1 QA.
