Release 115: Beacons and Trading Now Live

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53

I’m also not a major fan of the way beacons currently work either, basically due to how restrictive they make your builds.

For example, if you find a great place to start a build, but then find that the 8x8 grid bisects through the floor by 4 blocks, you then have use another beacon allocation to be able to get enough height on your building to make it worthwhile… whilst the 4 blocks below ground are essentially wasted (imo).

I had the same issue when I wanted to build flush to a mountainside - after seeing where the 8x8 grid fell (half way out of the desired build location), I decided against building there at all, as I would have had to use more of my plotter allocation to protect what I wanted to do.

It stifles potential creativity in my opinion, and only seems to work well when you have the ideal location, land height, wall position, other environmental factor etc.

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54

Merry Christmas!

There are a couple of issues we are wrangling with here. One of the biggest is usability. A system where you could put plots anywhere would be hard to control and very hard to see where the plots are. We’ve already seen complexities with the system we have, and are concerned for new players using it, the further complexity of free placement would make the system unusable for some new players.
Another issue is what happens when non-grid-aligned plots meet. There would be odd voxels of free land, and people might want to place plots in tiny slithers of space. In complex situations it would be impossible to see what you had included in your beacon and what your neighbour had included in theirs.

When I get back to the office I will have a look at some of what you guys have built and think about the issues you’re experiencing. If there are any particular demonstrations of problems could you let me know where they are.

Thanks,

Ollie.

55

Hello.

It’s interesting to hear how worried you are about individual voxels in your plot. If you were building without putting a beacon down would you want to go to exactly 16 or 24 voxels high? Or would you just choose an aesthetically pleasing height and build to that? If you do want to maximise your vowel count could you not add a basement, or a step down into your build?
Often restrictions and frameworks are great drivers of creativity. The voxel concept itself is a great example of that - you have all created amazing things in a world where you can only place things on a 1m grid. Would it not be more flexible if you could place blocks in a more granular way? It would be, but that wouldn’t necessarily make for more creativity or more fun.

Ollie.

1 Like
56

I think the grid in the x/z plane works just fine (and is, as you already said, somewhat necessary). It´s just the fixed y position that makes you feel like you are wasting a lot of your beacon.
IMO keeping the x/z grid but allowing free beacon placement along the y axis would be the best compromise between the inflexible current grid and totally free beacon placing. And given that everything above & under your initial beacon is reserved anyway I don´t see a problem with potential tiny slithers of space.

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57

Hey Ollie,

Whilst I can understand the reasoning for doing the beacons in this way, it’s just not what I was expecting from a game titled Boundless. I much preferred the manually implemented way of doing beacons, where you had the whole height of your claim - thus protecting both a shop on the surface and valuable resources you’d discovered underground… For me, this was one of the major selling points of the game. It was also very visible from all around that that particular section of land belongs to someone, as you have a projected hue that reaches up into the sky.

For me personally, I would probably try to conform to my own design limitations depending on what I had in mind for a build. Whether that be 8, 16, 24 blocks or somewhere in between (or beyond).

I don’t see how that isn’t stifling creativity? My main argument against the current system is that I shouldn’t have to conform to an imaginary grid (in addition to the landscape - which should be my only restriction) to build something. If beacons will be restricted to a certain allocation per player, people will ultimately want to maximise their use of the space within them. My example above describing the nice build location which has the 8x8 grid bisecting the floor by 4 blocks is a prime example of this. I shouldn’t have to waste my beacon allocation digging down to the bottom of the grid to maximise my use of the space. To get a roof on that build, I would have to use another one of my precious beacon allocations above it - and times by however long/wide I made the build.

I both agree and disagree to this statement. Whilst a framework can aide in some creativity, it is ultimately limited by the bounds of the framework itself. This is supposed to be “Boundless”. My personal opinion on this, being a developer myself for over 20 years (in one guise or another), is that restrictions and frameworks are great drivers for conformity, not creativity - creativity can only be taken so far when it is restrained. It’s not as bad when you have control of the code and the ability to grow beyond the bounds of the core system, but being in the closed eco-system of a game, where the players cannot go beyond those bounds, it is a major restriction.

I’m not saying that I want to be more granular (people are already well versed in creating amazing things out of 1x1m blocks, especially after years of practice on MC), I only have an issue with the current limitations of placing beacons in a conformed grid and being able to protect them in a way that makes efficient use of peoples beacon allocations (an allocation that also separates the pricing tiers of the game!).

I don’t think many of the amazing builds in game so far, before the release of this update, would be able to conform to this grid system either - Nyuudles amazing spire project would be a prime example of that - which started out as a 41x41m grid for each section (216 beacon allocations per section - that’s of course, if they fit nicely into the imaginary grid!)

…and my apologies for the long-winded post!

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58

@Vastar s idea of having at least the y-coordinate fixed to the beacon and not the world (or even being able to choose the y freely as long as the beacon is inside the area) would also be a step in the right direction for me.

What about a system that let’s you have a fixed amount of blocks and you can create the volume as you wish?
You wouldn’t have single blocks left unprotected because of poor beacon planning and it would allow for a better use of beacons.

You could even implement it with the beacon plotters already in game. Just place them at the corners of your plot. It might need some additional logic for the edge cases but it’s not undoable.
If you say that it’s to unpractical to do that because the you’d have to pillar up for the corners further up (since it’s 3D and not just a plane). You could even make a fixed y-height which you can just move up and down.

So you make the shape on the x,z plane, y is fixed and then you decide where that shape goes around your beacon. That would be a pretty flexible system while still being easy.

Also I think you underestimate the intelligence of the players. Why would a more flexible beacon system be so much more complex? The only thing it demands from the player additionally is being aware of their surroundings. (And if you’re not aware of your surroundings you won’t enjoy Boundless anyway, but that’s just my opinion.)
For the rare case someone really doesn’t get how the system works, we have many players who’ll help. That won’t change.
Although I can see why the very flexible system I proposed first could be somewhat confusing at first, my point still stands. Just being able to choose where your cuboid has to be instead of being at the mercy of the grid system isn’t confusing at all. Even if you can determine the x,z shape it’s not really confusing.

All in all I’m not very happy with the current beacon system and to be honest it might be the reason for me to not build very much since it’s far too restrictive.
BUT if you can tell me good reasons against every other idea I just proposed I’d be more than willing to say: “Welp, there’s just no better solution to this problem.” (Not that you’re in a position to defend yourself^^ But that would be the way to convince me^^)

P.S. I hope this post didn’t come across rude or anything. If so it was not intended. And I hope it wasn’t confusing^^ (not a side blow)

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59

I agree the beacon placement feels a bit restrictive. I could probably learn to live with the grid-like placement in time once we have more plots though.

The one thing I can’t get over is the height - they feel way too short to me. That might get better with more plots, but I still think it would bug me to need 2 plotters for every 8x8 covered just to reach a decent height.

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60

Happy New Year guys.

Thanks for all the thoughts. KuroKuma: your post doesn’t come across as rude – I appreciate the feedback.

We are treading a fine line here to try and deliver a usable and understandable system for all players (present and future), whilst giving the power and flexibility to create what you want to create.

The fixed x/z, with a variable y suggestion is very clever, and something we will put some real thought into. There might be other options too. We’ll get our thinking caps on.

Cheers,

Ollie.

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61

TLDR : the image + Stronged text. text is here to present why / a bit more explanation

When building is concerned, flexibility is far more valued than simplicity. What shows, and appeal, to the exterior, is all those huge, complex and terrific constructions (just watch some minecraft albums). But indeed, easy comprehension is a plus.

I don’t like the idea of fixed x, y. Nor the “put beacons at each corner”. Dont get me wrong, i clearly prefer if we can do custom shapes, but fixed volume is not what i think would be best. And beacons at each corner may be a hindrance for the construction (having a cube at each corner overstepping flat land…).

So instead here is what i thought : let’s say you can protect up to 8192 cubes (that’s 16 beacons of 888). You can drop a nocapped number of beacons. And if you right click one of your beacon, here’s what appears :

(don’t mind design :sweat:)

Even with this horrible design, i think you understood where i want to go. With this, you can customize every axis as you see fit. Each direction start from the beacon, excluded.

Why this beacon use 1344 blocks ? because (2 + 9 + 1) * (8 + 7 + 1) * (3 + 3 + 1). Why + 1? Because a placed beacon already means a 111.
So this beacon protect 1344 blocks in a 12 * 16 * 7 shape.
Why total used blocks (beacons) == 4713 (3) ? Because you (the player) placed 3 beacons in total, and those beacons covers a total volume of 4713 blocks.

We could only add 3 inputs : one for each dimension : x y z, but that’d force the beacon to be at the middle (= may be a hindrance) & the shape to be uneven (= less flexibility).

So, is this system simple ? It’s simple, easy to use and extremely flexible.
Is it easy to understand ? Let’s be honest, it’s not that simple you can skip a “help” button on the GUI, but it’s really not that hard to understand. And with a superior, readable design, even a help button might be unneeded.
(A = Above, B = Below)
Default a newly-placed beacon to values N:3 S:4 W:3 E:4 A:3 B:4 and the player can use a 888 zone out of the box, he can build right now and read help later, when he’s ready for larger structure.

Don’t forget a way to indicate where the north is

Some checks will be needed, but nothing complex :
default each direction to 0 if the initial default + total used block is over the total allowed block
dont place the beacon if total used block == total allowed block

3 Likes
62

I love this idea! It´s simple, efficient and easy to understand.
Definetly something @olliepurkiss and the rest of the responsible dev team should put some thought into.
:+1:

63

This seems like a good middle way between full customization and the system we have now.

One thing to add, My idea was not to put beacons in the corners. But rather use the beacon plotters to specify where the corners should be. There wouldn’t be anything physical in the world itself.

64

wild = not protected by a beacon

I just thought of something. The problem is less reproducible/exploitable with fixed beacons, but still present :
What if you decide to “trap” an empty, wild space inside a 6 beacons of 11X size forming a cuboid?
imagine 6 beacons, each of size 1110, trapping an empty space : with only 60 “used” blocks, you could reserve a volume of 1000 blocks.
Now add barriers, put blocks & door so no one except you can go through those beacons, and voila : exploitable mechanism.

You can reproduce that with fixed beacons, but it’s clearly less advantageous.

We can’t fix that by adding a mandatory wild space between 2 of (our) beacons, as some may want to reproduce a custom shape with 2 or more sided beacons, like that:
111222222222333
111222222222333
111_________333
111_________333

Can’t fix that by adding a “minimum” for each direction, as those new flexibles beacons may even be used for roads, bridges and other thin, long structures.

Detecting trapped empty space might be annoying dev-side, but i don’t find any others idea.
What would be the best way to avoid this exploit?

@KuroKuma : my bad, i misunderstood ^^

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65

@Epherr This is absolutly gorgeous :slight_smile:

I hope we get this!

@KuroKuma i agree with you. the current system is far from perfect nor efficent. @olliepurkiss it might be effective but that’s all.

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66

You made a small mistake: 1x1x10 beacons would only form a frame so one could easily dig or jump into your “private space”.
To really enclose and reserve a “wild” volume you would have to use 6 1x10x10 beacons totaling in 600 blocks of beacon volume to reserve only 640 blocks of volume, which may sound much but really only is this:

2016-01-04_00001.jpg1280×909 176 KB

Even if one would use all the 8192 blocks from your example he would “only” be able to enclose a volume of approximately 45200 blocks, which again, sounds like quite a lot but looks like this:
2016-01-04_00002.jpg1280×909 114 KB

And assuming that there will be plenty of worlds with ores to mine and that world regeneration will be a quite slow process I´d say that there is no real benefit in enclosing a small chunk of the world for yourself.
Additionally he would use all of his available beacon plots for it, so he wouldn´t be able to protect any of his builds in exchanges for his small private mining field.
So I really don´t see any exploit or abuse if someone is willing to spend all/most of his beacon plots for a small enclosed space.

Still a big fan of your idea.

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67

Ops yeah, thanks for the fix ^^

Even so, by using a lot of our allowed blocks, or by grouping with others players, one might trap a large area. This area might even contain a public portal, another player’s beacon (and that’s what i fear will happen), the world’s spawn point of titan, or another point of interest.
The current system is also weak to this exploit, so keeping it only for this reason wont help.

I’m searching for an easy way to prevent this, but i can’t find any.
Devs could implement a sorta pathfinding where, when a beacon is created/modified, will cause all the immediate “wild” blocks next to the beacon to “search their path toward 2 fixed, distant points”, without going through any beaconed zone. And cancels the beacon if such a path isn’t found.
But (i suppose) that’d be annoying to dev, kinda costly in calculation, and still possible if a damn large organization is determined enough to trap half of a world (ok, this one is unlikely enough to be managed by report function).

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68

I feel that the standing beacon system is the closest we can get to a perfekt system, allowing it to reach from top to bottom, would make most players build tower like buildings. And allowing players to mark down the size of their own beaons is massivly expoitable as seen in http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/grief-prevention/ (Even though it is a very nice plugin)

It would only mean the ability to inclose smal amounts of space but it would still give a lot more than not doing it which would result in the exact same problem of effecient use that started this discussion.

1 Like
69

I’ve tested the traiding the last day … here are my thoughts about it.

while it works fine in general i don’t like that you can force somebody to trade. if i walk to someone and press “e” he is forced to cancel the trading window. i could imagine this can become really griefy if someone wants to build and someone else forces him to trade all the time. IMO it would be better if he has to accept the trade request before the trade itself starts (e.g. a smal request window that does not block other actions and can be ignored).

70

Apparently they already have a plan that addresses your concerns.

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71

oh yes correct^^ during the tests, he annoyed me when i wanted to divide a big stack in 2 smaller stacks that i can trade one to him.