Testing 238: Prototype Creative Mode and Modding!

Peyago · 2020-01-25T01:24:47.819Z

If I had to guess its because its not a release with anything really controversial to keep it up near the top of the page and doesn’t directly change balance in the live universe. If it doesn’t have a post for a day or two its pretty much gone on our forums.

Fiffer13 · 2020-01-25T01:28:13.131Z

Its just for such a vocally requested feature it seemed to die quickly, not even much in the forms of updates from people testing it and “showing off” what they can do with it.

Vurtadelic · 2020-01-25T01:38:23.902Z

The holidays were probably a factor j in n the lack of discussion and testing.

Peyago · 2020-01-25T01:41:09.531Z

The way I see it is this test is really just for the folks that want to play with scripting. Since only PC players can test it, we already know what its like to be able to just build in creative mode since we have had the test server. Its not going to draw in the individuals who only really test to get a head start on what the new mechanics or blocks are/need.

So its probably only a very small amount of our current players who are interested in testing it compared to spending time in the game playing.

Fiffer13 · 2020-01-25T01:42:35.998Z

Possibly yeah. I’m an outsider on most of this update (well until the chat updates, pretty excited about those). So its not really the update itself that interested me, but rather what others would do with it and if it lived up to their expectations.

james · 2020-01-25T06:37:14.412Z

AeneaGames:

One question tho, when this goes Live how will creative mode planets be handled? They will stay locally on the player’s pc? Or have there been changes as well that I’ve overlooked?

Can you invite others? And how will PS4 players create their own creative planets? Or will this all be moved to remote servers instead? Or perhaps a choice of either on pc, and only remote on PS4?

When this migrates to Live it will remain a prototype accessible via the Debugging UI (DUI). Interest in the prototype and scripting will determined how it progresses further.

Future steps would include: moving the control into the main UI, allowing easy connection to friend’s universes, local or remote hosting, etc.

Mayumichi · 2020-01-25T06:55:12.094Z

The feature set was somewhat incomplete tbh, so not much could be done with it.

Marrash · 2020-01-25T07:54:07.604Z

james:

Interest in the prototype and scripting will determined how it progresses further.

Obviously, development based on user interest is best for you guys. I’m sure you’ve already got plans to bear this in mind, but if not:

Please do keep in mind that the people who stick with Boundless and continue to play it are people who are (largely) happy with it the way it is. This update feels really focused on players who aren’t. I’d include myself in this, because the update itself does sound very promising. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I’m too busy to invest the time in a cool update that may or may not go anywhere for a game I know I don’t enjoy enough on it’s other merits.

Without a little more certainty, or an advertising push targeting modders to bring fresh new people with different attitudes into the game, you may find that your interest levels in this feature are driven by the same self-selecting group who push strongly for the game to be as it is now, with the (seemingly) low player retention that that entails. The people who actually want this feature may well even never hear about it.

anon34275467 · 2020-01-25T09:23:10.860Z

james:

Future steps would include: moving the control into the main UI, allowing easy connection to friend’s universes, local or remote hosting, etc.

I’m wondering how all of this ties-in with Rental Worlds.

We all know that people are interested and demanding Rental Worlds.
I know A LOT of people who will (depending on how it works) want to get their own (me included), and many who will come back to the game for that (my friends who quit included)

However, if the Rental Worlds are first dependant on how many people work with this prototype… that might be an issue. This prototype currently looks like it will satisfy only a handful of people.

Personally, I’m definitely not interested in playing some creative mode in local, even if there’s something bigger which comes from it later.
I’d be still playing Skyrim or Fallout 4 if that was what I was into (I know, not a 1:1 comparison - it’s just that all the real fun of these two games comes from what you do with mods, even though at the end of the day, it’s offline).

If this has nothing to do with Rental Worlds (as I hope and suspect), then I’m just going to ignore it and hope some people can have a kick out of it.

Kal-El · 2020-01-25T15:10:04.577Z

james:

When this migrates to Live it will remain a prototype accessible via the Debugging UI (DUI). Interest in the prototype and scripting will determined how it progresses further.

I think there may be a little of which comes first going on. While I do have some interest in a creative mode, I do not want to spend a great deal of time building something that is likely to go away due to the next iteration of the creative mode. If I start a project that might take me 4-6 months to finish, is it better to wait until the creative mode is more established before doing that? I also am waiting for the opportunity to work with other players in creative mode. I am not sure if that is possible yet or not.

I have no experience with LUA scripting so I am probably not a good player to test that functionality.

FF7animefreak · 2020-01-25T15:27:19.849Z

I play on the PS4 myself and usually it isn’t PlayStation that has the problems with mods on a game. It’s usually the game company for games that have the issues with the mods they create. I play Skyrim and fallout 4 on the PS4 and the mods are glitchy sometimes but that is because the gaming companies didn’t take consideration of what the PS4 limits we’re. So far the mods I use on Skyrim and fallout 4 work just fine but I also don’t do what most people do with mods like trying to run 20+ mods on a game. Games weren’t really made to run mods when they were first created so it causes problems when you try to run a bunch at one time due to slightly modifing the coding in the section of a game of what it modifies. The more mods running at the same time means more coding it’s trying to alter at one time to run more mods.

Odeon · 2020-01-25T16:39:43.168Z

Same goes for me.
I don’t want to invest time in a massive Creative Project,
when I can no longer use it in a few months.
I think/guess we have to wait a little before we start using the CreativeMode intensively

Mayumichi · 2020-01-25T17:25:12.831Z

There has been no word if new versions could break saves. But as the live universe has to continue working, and it seems that creative mode is essentially a local version of that, I don’t see why the worlds wouldn’t continue working. That’s just my take, would like to hear an official answer.

AeneaGames · 2020-01-25T19:13:02.273Z

I would love to hear more official info regarding this anyway.

I wanna know the plans, and what they consider enough interest. Am sure plenty of people might be interested if they could invite other people already. Plus am sure some PS4 players might too but they need to wait until the PC players have shown enough interest…

I want to do loads of scripting, but only if people will be able to actually use those somehow, right now I’m not exactly in a rush to get on it and do things since I have no clue where all this is going.

Is there going to be a subset of this, with enough interest, on Live, and if so, what is the stuff that will work or are we just to assume everything will work, including the block/item access except with limitations of what we can change and what we can access (ie. only in beacons with perms, only placing blocks in the world we actually have in inventory, etc., etc.).

So many questions. I wish I still had the energy of me of 30 years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with thinking of stuff, would just have gone in and mess about…

(also wish I was in a better mood right now anyway, sigh).

Anyway, is this going to be a part of rental planets, how far off are those? What is next? Am assuming beacons stuff, hopefully more perms, beacons above/below each other on the same character, a way to give a player full access to your beacon as if they own it until you decide to revoke that special perm (ie. rental beacons!), plus of course the plot protection thing I assume.

And something tells me this would then be the next step towards rental planets since those need special perms added as well… (and perhaps different plotting rules or somesuch)

Mayumichi · 2020-01-25T19:17:09.826Z

I don’t see user scripts coming to live really, official servers are usually vanilla. Or what do you mean by live? On custom servers they could be kept on, but it’s way too powerful to give players access to server side scripting in the official universe. I’d be happy to be proven wrong ^^

AeneaGames · 2020-01-25T19:34:58.423Z

Nope, I mean a subset of the scripting API on Live public servers…

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could create our own content on the public planets we have now with scripts vetted or running using a harmless subset of the scripting API?

We could then create interactive dungeons and such. To keep such things limited to creative mode planets only would be a crying shame in my book.

Mayumichi · 2020-01-25T19:38:23.354Z

It’d be nice, yeah

superman101 · 2020-01-25T19:48:04.383Z

Lol Minecraft has creative mode…but Minecraft isn’t a online game to start with… 8 people is all that can play online. I agree with you though creative mode won’t destroy the game.actually it’s 30 my mistake

Peyago · 2020-01-25T19:51:29.234Z

Minecraft has servers that hold more players than we can hold on our planets in boundless and some even have them connected via hub worlds that work similar to how our portals work. Youtube has plenty of videos of them.

Edit: It all depends on how you chose to host them and how much you are willing to spend.

Further Edit: Just checked the service I use for my ark server and I can get a 250+ person vanilla minecraft server for $80 a month.

superman101 · 2020-01-25T19:56:34.549Z

30 players

A single multiplayer game can host a maximum of 30 players , and can connect players across all supported Minecraft : Education Edition platforms. All players will need to be running the same version of Minecraft : Education Edition to be able to host and join worlds together .and online server is 10…I just went to their site and that’s what I read…playing Minecraft isn’t like boundless at all