Testing 246: Creative Worlds!

Well, I think it would be a fairly big limitation if that stays as is.

I think lighting will be interesting. It is my understanding that the color of light is linked to the planet type. I would prefer to be able to select the color. But I think the more players are allowed to customize the better.

1 Like

I think people need to justify the use case and all these “customization features” they want so that the Devs can gauge if they should take the time. If people are really wanting them then we certainly need the discussion now and push for them so they can see… otherwise I could see that things are close to done in the feature set.

I’d expect that there is a possible chance that “biomes” can be selected based on the tier levels. I’d probably not expect these other customizations around water color and weather changes. In the future we might get tweaks on “weather” but since these worlds are part of the public Universe it isn’t really appropriate in my view that people be able to customize the weather since things need to basically stay within the Universe rules (except maybe for Creative worlds).

2 Likes

Only in that they’re named similarly. But within World Builder it is quite easy to separate them.

Who knows if the devs will be willing to do that though.

1 Like

I just hope to have a lighting environment that’s close to real. I hate the colored ones. I like the colors to stay the same and not be affected by the environment.

I also like my water the color of water lol

1 Like

Changing biomes, lighting, water vs. lava, etc. can be done in seconds. Literally. Especially if people know which biome they want.

But I agree that weather is meant to be annoying and should remain that way. It’s part of the artificial challenge of higher tier worlds.

Yeah, the atmospheres can change block color drastically. Anyone who hasn’t should check out the bottom of this post for reference.

1 Like

Except on a creative world, where it really serves no purpose whatsoever

3 Likes

Unless you want a “rainforest” or “snowpiercer” themed world or some such :man_shrugging:. Idk how easily or not easily it can be removed or turned off. But sure for creative do w/e is possible that people want, sure.

Are there any low tier worlds with weird light? If it really is only for the higher Tiers then only those getting that type of stuff should likely be concerned. I don’t know enough on the technical specifics of light / sky color generation beyond it is related to the planet. So not sure how easy it is to just add a color wheel to that as well like anything else. If it IS easy, I wouldn’t have issue on creative worlds.

While it might be seconds in on context it certainly isn’t in the release of the solution. Each of those have to be added into a UI for people as well as considerations around exploiting and how it would affect the game. Things like lava/water and biome selection can be abused by people so the Devs have to consider where they want to draw the line.

Also note that many biomes are designed to support the current water levels. Changing that would affect how the world looks and the biomes link. So the more features and changes start adding to other things that need to get done to make the game look right, etc.

2 Likes

I agree that you should be able to toggle off weather, as well as creatures and meteors on Creative planets - those things only annoy & hinder serious builders. Creative planets don’t follow the rules of the main universe, so it shouldn’t be a problem to turn those things off, if you don’t want them.

2 Likes

Personally, I do not think biomes should have to be locked to the tier. Since the biome does not generate the resource it is not like if you have a biome from a gem tier planet on a tier 1 that you will get gems on a tier one.
I looked at all the possible biomes that @Clexarews showed in his post and think that the more players are allowed to use these, the more interesting the universe becomes. If all we are going to do is get repeats of what we have now then we remove some of what could make the universe worth exploring again.

I do not think the rental planets need to follow the color, biome or lighting patterns of the public planets. I think if you are paying for a planet you should be able to make it look how you want. Does it matter if a tier one does not look “earthlike”? I would argue no it does not matter. As long as the person paying for the planet is happy then that is all that matters.

2 Likes

I’ve spent a couple hundred hours with the program, I know all this. I agree that changing things from an exploitation side doesn’t make too much sense.

But you were talking about the time it would take. It would hardly take any time is all i was saying :+1:.

Currently there is no link for a palette node within the lighting. It’s a “you get what we give you” sort of thing. The post I linked shows all of the current options and I believe these are tied to the type of world in the current universe (corrosive worlds get corrosive lighting, etc.)

Yea for my planet i really want to build on I’m stuck with blast, lush, metal(sorta) which is unfortunate. But the planet I’ll get for mining it doesn’t matter as most my time will be spent in the ground.

1 Like

From what Ross said here I agree that higher tier biomes on lower tier planets should not be an issue.

But Xaldafax is right that you also don’t want low tier biomes on high tier worlds or to be able to have too much control over which biomes you use for more lucrative worlds or it makes resources easier to get. Ross said biomes don’t have full control over spawning of resources but there is some control so total biome selection could be used to exploit things.

Fair enough, so could you set it up so you can pick biomes from your tier or higher? Then you cannot get a tier one biome on a tier 6 planet.

1 Like

Well I’m not sure if they are “locked” but each planet tier does have a count of select biome types that are applied. Best words I can find right now to explain it so it might not be perfectly explained. :slight_smile:

I do agree selection is important and I talked about that a lot on my call yesterday about that and how it could be accomplished. I personally would want the ability to have more floaty island or high tier looks on lower as well. I’ll have to see if they were influenced some, but there are a lot of dependencies and other things so who knows where they finally land for this release… Like anything it is always the same thing - time, concerns on abuse, technical limitations, etc… lol.

Yes you might have a ton of experience in World Builder and I am not disputing that. But, World Builder is a manual tool and not “integrated” into user selection of Private planets nor any planet generation currently in an automated fashion (basically speaking). And likely it will not be until they are able to rewrite World Builder so it can work within the game. I’ve talked to James specifically about this stuff so what I was trying to share is that while it might be a flip in WB it does not mean that it is an “easy flip” for the players to use it inside the game.

Case in point I focused a lot yesterday about the ability to regen the World if you didn’t like what you got. That is easy to do but not easy with how they have designed the infrastructure and having the servers set up. Plus when you take how long a planet takes to build on a 16 core/32gb ram machine versus the likely 1 core/1gb server we will run, it is a challenge. So we don’t always end up getting what we want because it isn’t ideal when you dive into the weeds to achieve it. So I highly doubt a “redo” will be automated but do hope they really consider it.

1 Like

I think it’s pretty well explained via the categories here but please let me know if that’s not the case…

Does this mean they are working on a different tool outside of World Builder before Release 247? Or are they reworking World Builder before release 247? Because I know it’s a manual tool but I also know @lucadeltodecso said all of the worlds are generated using it.

WB worlds can’t actually be launched outside of the visualization tools afaik. So it’s not so much that it’s not an easy flip for players as much as it is an impossible flip for players (again, afaik).

Yep, Ross shared some of that challenge here.

Yeah I was happy to see that it was done. I suggested to them that we have a series of worlds that show cased each and every biome so that people could take screenshots of them from a more game perspective. Then those screenshots could be used on the system that would allow people to select the biomes for their sovereign planet (assuming that system is actually created).

I don’t know if they would ever create a new tool. During a chat about more detailed customization and look of a Sovereign it came up that it would have been nice if the World Builder would have been brought directly into the game to allow a better ability to customize the worlds. This is an option but would require a big change to WB. Honestly, I don’t know when/if they would ever do that considering the amount of time it would take.

Yes everything is still built with it but as mentioned I’ve been very focused on trying to influence the best possibility for those buying Sovereign worlds to have the best options for customization of the world as well as the ability to rebuild the landscape if the first generation didn’t meet their needs. While people could certainly tell the Devs they didn’t like the world and have it manually rebuilt - I was doing my best to push for an automated solution because it puts the power into each players hands versus taking time away from the developers. Based on these test worlds we’ve seen, I’ve talked to a few people that wouldn’t have been happy with the world they got as the perm one they would be paying for. So more options especially with something where money is involved is important in my view.

Without the server components yeah I would agree. I’d still love the option to build it with WB and upload it to them for use… but that isn’t likely any time soon (if ever). Overall, though, I still just mean the ability to customize settings being available and how it relates to WB for generation is something that will take time to code for this release.

And yeah the build time can suck… but I would wait 6 hours if I had to so that I could generate a world I am completely happy with if I’m going to pay for it.

3 Likes