“Too complicated” for the average player imo. It should come with a prebuilt world form the first installer. Then it could have a place to download different pre built universes if the pkayer want to experience something different.
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Another compromise that occurs to me would be to have a single small world premade and downloaded and then generate the other two+ worlds in the background while they play on the first world. Since it will take a normal player more than an hour to get to the point that they will be world hopping, I don’t think this delay would be a big deal.
This way, the starter world could be a more carefully curated onboarding experience - you could make sure the included world is set up well for new players to have a smooth experience - and then the “unique universe” idea can be on the other worlds that get generated.
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Coming back to this thread after a long absence (I stopped playing the game back in October I think). Two things:
- I can’t believe this isn’t released yet
- I still can’t believe this is what the devs are spending their time on instead of actual content for the game.
I desperately want to return to Boundless because I love so much about the game but with the hours I’ve put in, the game is boring af and there’s nothing to do anymore.
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You did release in testing a prebuilt world people could download on the Forum… maybe like mentioned above consider building a few and having a more official download location that is mentioned somehow so people could download and install it…
I wish we had the infrastructure for something like a world repository where people could upload/download share worlds especially as the world builder matures and we get the ability to really customize things… of course that would be costly due to bandwidth. oh well so much for that idea. lol.
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That is literally what steam workshop is for…
ARK is a good example of a game where the server can be downloaded using SteamCMD along with mods, which include things like new maps.
See here is the list of maps a person can download for that game. ARK: Survival Evolved they have to install that using steam which downloads the files, players curate the content on steam with ratings, they can report issues and comment on the files.
I understand people here “hate steam” because everything should just work on a playstation but the fact is you need a pc to host a server. steam will host the content and the bandwidth so why not use what is available?
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Thanks for the constructive comments here - they’re useful.
We will definitely try to find a mechanism that allows players to quick start. Suggesting integration with Steam Works is a good idea. (Although my initial query will be if there is a size limit as the worlds can be pretty big.)
But as @Gorillastomp points out it needs to be seamlessly easy.
I do wonder if hiding the world in the initial download is somehow less offensive then letting players start the game and then hitting them with an hour generation or an hour download. (Obviously machine and connection dependent.) Both would eat into their refund period.
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Would it need to be the entire universe that is downloaded or just the first planet?
Generally speaking, you could be playing quite a while before you need to venture to another planet, so whilst you play on the first would, the other 2 could be generating in the background as normal and then just appear when they’re ready.
At least that way, only the initial world would be the same for everyone (if they choose that option) and the others could still generate randomly.
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That’s a great point, since that would cut the download size down, my world which I’ve done a tiny bit of playing on is about 1GB,
I just wonder whether playing whilst a world is generating in the background might be really laggy for anyone with a less powerful PC - admittedly I haven’t checked how demanding the generator is 
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Both the game engine and world generation will try to use all available cores.
The engine will use many cores to mesh chunks (and other stuff).
The generator will use all the cores to generate chunks (and also other stuff).
When the game is running, we actually tell the generator to use N-2 cores - so that the game can continue to run.
If you launch the generator from the command line then it will use all available cores.
Ultimately I think the ideal path is presenting the player with 2 options:
- Quick start - where we do whatever is fastest to generate / download a universe.
- Customise - where the player can control the creation of the universe. Which is currently possible via the DUI.
(Technically building a universe from the command line or making HTTP request to the Discovery Server directly gives a few more options than exposed in the DUI.)
If we were to run the generator slowly in the background then we’d need to make sure that the process could be paused and resumed as it would be possible that it wouldn’t complete in an individual session.
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That’s what I’m thinking. If a new player gets even a small T1 exo to start the tutorial, they can get the generating process started early and have each type of planet by the time they get to objectives that require them.
I don’t suppose it would be possible to integrate world gen setup into the game a little more so we could basically be taught how via objectives?
The file size limit for steamworks is set by the developer, the largest download i could find for ark was 3.2GB.
What about making a “free” DLC that is a pre generated starter world for local universes. Then you could download the map with out starting the client.
Then the user also has the option to install them along with the client on first install.
Heck you could even add the 50 planets we have today as another pack.
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First of all I know I am late to the conversation. I LOVE the direction this is going. THIS is the boundless I’ve been waiting for.
James I would love to see a portal on the website once this all materializes where players can upload their planet creations for others to download. I’d build some sick planets in world builder.
Also, roughly how many large size planets could a beefy modern gaming rig reasonably host simultaneously? How heavy are the scripts?
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I am back with yet another question!
So with the new forging boons/defects for melee and shields, I’ve noticed there’s a boon/defect that increases/decreses the angle of protection for shields when blocking incoming attacks. I understand larger angle means you can block a wider area without turning, and vise versa.
Now, then I had a thought, what happens if you get a high enough defect that the block angle hits 0? Will the shield no longer be able to block ANY attack? CAN it hit 0 in the first place with the shield stats? Or even better, will it bug out and block all 360 degrees or something, like what happened with the ‘too high innoculous brew makes wildstocks agressive’ bug or the infamous nuclear peace lover Ghandi in Civ?
yes, I like breaking game mechanics if you haven’t noticed yet
https://boundlessinfo.com/forging/forge-traits has the forge trait stats there. It looks like lvl 10 fortress defect is -60 degrees. I think I remember wood or stone being 60 degrees, so that might make it zero, yeah. Definitely worth looking at the extremes on that though.
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Yep, that’s where I was looking at before I got this idea. I get curious on what I can do to break the game 
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I might be done with single player for the moment, since my time is limited and I have a big build on the MMO side I want to focus on (and the PoE league), so I’ll give my feedback so far.
I’m playing this while watching a streamer play Valheim, and I definitely think that, art least at low levels, these games are in the same genre. Boundless is quite a bit more forgiving most of the time, but I’m definitely getting more survival game vibes from this mixed world than I ever did from the MMO.
I have a makeshift ‘base’ in a nice little T1 forest, and I only see little guys, if anything. I know there are areas near me that spawn cuttles and hoppers, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint what causes it. The debug biome tool only shows me T1 and T2 areas, so maybe it’s the T2 areas?
I had one time I was looking for some resources and stumbled on a pack of cuttletrunks I couldn’t damage, so I tried sprinting away and died. I’m very glad I didn’t have to run back to my body like you would if you stumbled into the forest in Valheim and died. I just knew not to go back there without a ranged weapon.
Though it occurs to me I don’t know if a low level player would know ranged weapons will be available later, but I guess that’s part of the genre for sure.
Fighting wildstock at low level is much more accessible with the immediate access to sword and shield. Much better than trying to use an axe to get them all the way up until you get to iron.
There are meteors around me sometimes, and I’ve been able to trigger them. With stone sword and shield only, it’s immediately obvious that I need to just not try, and come back later. I definitely died trying to run from an invincible cuttletrunk there too.
Once I was geared up to copper(including slingbow), I tried meteors again, but made a mistake and died and then ran out of food trying to escape and had to give up.
I think I can take down a meteor with sword, shield, and slingbow, and I think it would be one of my next goals other than getting more metal tools.
I can definitely see the progression through the metals on this world and then, at high enough level (and maybe some forging) that meteors are easy, hopping over to the mid level planet, which I assume has some gems available to keep tiering up until I can hit high level and eventually spawn some T7s.
I didn’t hit any major barriers in playing, and didn’t see any new issues I didn’t see when I first started playing other than the extra dangers of being on a mixed world, which I think adds to the fun and places the game more firmly in the “survival” genre.
I can see the randomness and intimidation of forging to be an issue for new solo players. The only indication that you should probably forge stuff is the quest thing. Most importantly, there isn’t anything in the game saying “Hey, if you get power and AoE boons on your hammer, your fun will triple”. Not sure how to address that, but it’s the kind of knowledge you currently get by seeing it in a shop.
Forging is also… it takes a lot of different stuff, just to start out, so it’s an intimidating step to take. I’m really curious how solo-only players will approach this, though I’ll likely never really know myself.
One thing I can say is that if I didn’t read a player tutorial about AoE hammers and then make a ton of cash selling oort from a hunt, I would have quit the MMO while trying to get up to gem tier tools. I worry that this roadblock will cause issues for lots of players, but maybe community tutorials geared toward solo progression will pick up the slack?
A little rambly, but I think that’s a distillate of my experiences and opinions of the solo experience.
For levelling, I’m very excited that my level 150 character on live will be level 100 with 200 skill points per page. It’s very liberating and exciting to be able to actually do the things I want to more easily.
On my solo character, I was able to add a sheet at level 13 I think? That meant I could have a full “exploration” sheet and a full “crafting” sheet - many more skill points than I need for crafting, but much easier than moving points around. Should be very good above level 20 when the skill points lock in.
Sword and shield, especially at low levels, is super awesome and fun to use. Slingbow and shield are awesome for solo-fighting cuttletrunks. I’m not sure where melee will land in the group hunt scene, and I do think that some hunts are likely to have no-melee rules. Doing stuff solo with sword, slingbow, and shield, though, is excellent, since you can take the time to stop and block. It makes all of combat more flexible and dynamic. “Do I have time to block? Can I dodge this instead?” It adds more momentary decisions than the old “Run in circles and/or weave while trying not to miss”.
Maybe with more time, it would get more habitual and less dynamic, but I don’t know. Probably would depend on the skill selection too.
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lol i see the centraforge upsetting a lot of first time players especially if they are solo with no one to tell them how to play the slot machine.
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My understanding is that the more cores you have, the more evenly the processes spread across the cores and the more smoothly it runs. I was told that Wonderstruck runs Boundless on 30 core machines.
If this became a thing, could we make requests of existing worlds as our starter world? Because I would like to have a local universe version of Raxxa.
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Just throw out a warning to players about the download time in the menu. I bet they’ll be pretty forgiving if it isn’t a surprise.
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