10th August - Manipulates anything that matters!

Discussion in 'Dev Blog' started by mollygos, Aug 10, 2015.

  1. Tamorr

    Tamorr Supernova

    Not much of a change, but I guess it is welcome. As long as the mouse scroll wheel remains the same; being hot bar cycling. Lot of pages to read through early in the morning. wonder if we are going to get the ability to add compatibility for a 5 button mouse, or is that already in. As in key bindings. This including the mouse wheel, if that gets changed to what I have seen suggested by others in this thread.

    I'll have to wait and see how this all pans out to really see how things progress. It is good for the iconic sense, although I don't want to have to resort to too many mods in order to make it comfortable for myself to play.

    Also like others have mentioned, would be nice to have a visual representation to what mode you are in; possibly both the beam color and MM look. Slight. Like nozzle being a bit different for each mode. Thinking of those that are color-blind, so that the beam would be the only indicator. Plus would add a few small touches to the feel of the tool and knowing off hand what each mode is on without having to focus to much on the below hot bar stuff. Enough is spent looking at the hot bar itself. So why not.:)
     
  2. Zael

    Zael Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Nice to hear you promoting other (un-related) indies. ^^
     
  3. kookok

    kookok Star Wrangler

    You still have to use 3 separate buttons, which is EXACTLY the same as before. Just used 1 unified skin for the the exact same things.
     
  4. GaryTShark

    GaryTShark Void-Bound Voyager

    not bad i really like that idea!
     
  5. Johnnyloo

    Johnnyloo Void-Bound Voyager

    Hmm, I'm all up about making the matter manipulator iconic. But to do so, I think aestetic or lore changes aren't enough. You'd need to build a whole system around it, make it require gameplay decisions from players.
    For example: Lets see the matter manipulator as a bare tool shell with, say, 6 slots. It comes right off with a digging beam module, that takes up 1 slot. Later you can find/craft a paint or a wire module. Maybe some modules could take more than 1 slot. Maybe there could be some way of increasing the MM tool capacity. The way I see, this kind of system would make the MM something important and unique to each player, like a custom high tech Swiss Army knife. That could even be integrated with the current tech system.
    Well, my two cents. Waiting anxiously for the next stable.
    Keep up the good work ^^
     
  6. duicklefish

    duicklefish Great Scott!

    I bet you by left arm that when they come out with the Xbone port there won't be 3 separate buttons to use the matter manipulator's various functions. They're still working on it, and they're working on streamlining development with the Xbone.
     
  7. Asch the Bloody

    Asch the Bloody Scruffy Nerf-Herder


    I wouldn't mind just one or two buttons to rotate between the options.
     
    SquarelyCircle likes this.
  8. joaorafaelrr

    joaorafaelrr Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Anyway. Does anyone know where the Spock are? :p
     
  9. SquarelyCircle

    SquarelyCircle Cosmic Narwhal

    I feel like the matter manipulator is so cool, and making it a multi-purposed tool is way cooler than unlocking dorky normal tools. It's all the same, function-wise... but the flavor is improved, this way.
     
  10. BaTTaLioN CHaoS

    BaTTaLioN CHaoS Void-Bound Voyager

    Looking at the icons I think they have more in stock for this seemingly 'pointless" update, because now you actually see a pickaxe in the hotbar which may meen that you can upgrade the mm trough switching mining tools and possibly even more different tools than currently available so one can choose the loadout so one doesn't necessarily have a painting or wiring function with them but something else (for example a creature capture function, as someone else suggested as a mm function)
     
  11. kookok

    kookok Star Wrangler

    I partly agree with the part where they're not going to have 3 separate buttons for the xbone, but I sincerely doubt that they're developing this with a mentality of focusing based on console-based controls. This was originally for PC, thus controller support will just be sort of an "expansion", but will never be the main focus.

    I think they're just cleaning up on things, like what should be and what should be not.

    Funny though because they're already cleaning up on aesthetics when the game is still unstable and the engine runs horrendously on specs that should be eating it up.
     
  12. Silver200x

    Silver200x Subatomic Cosmonaut

    cor blimey such mixed feedback its good end of , lol keep it up guys and girls.
     
  13. Necryel

    Necryel Pangalactic Porcupine

    I have not kept up on all the Nightly changes, so you'll have to excuse if I am unaware of how copper has made oil useless. Also, IF everything will be dependent utterly upon just mining as you say, then The collection of fluids is an absolute godsend it terms of improving the speed at which you can do things, these, and the safety which which you can do them. Also, then increases to power, and radius are of direct benefit and importance in such a situation as you describe. The other functions such as painting and wiring are solely for convenience, but handling of liquids and statistical increases will be of utmost importance.

    In terms of accessibility, that can be improved with tool venders and spawners there of. Also drills last FAR longer than twenty seconds depending on the material being drilled, Temporary and breakable mining tools were never meant to be exhausted in short order upon the hardest substances, If that's what you are doing, then you lack some degree of understanding. Such tools are meant to allow you to efficiently chew through weaker materials to get to where the most valuable substances are, then you go for the much slower, but far more durable and sustainable MM. Once we could no longer make drills yourself, the dynamics of how they are best utilized drastically changed and we could no longer think of them as a primary means of dealing with endgame materials, but as a means to quickly dig down to where those materials exist in short order. The signifacnace of drills was not taken away, but rather altered due to these changes.
     
  14. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Personally, I do the opposite... I use drills to punch straight down through the hard-as-hell Magmarock and Obsidian and whatnot to get to the softer layers below quicker, where I switch back to the MM... or if I'm at core level at least to an open-ish area. I don't use them for general-purpose meandering underground.

    And I'm not exactly at a loss for Diamond Drills, and I've never crafted one in the Giraffe build.
     
  15. kookok

    kookok Star Wrangler

    That's a good way of looking at it. But I think the alteration of drills should be used was, at best, unintentional. I think they are still figuring out what to do with them, quite frankly.

    On a sidenote, I also think they should give these drills/pickaxes a huge boost in durability in exchange for a more expensive recipe. They were put in the game to make mining in general faster, for convenience, not make it faster to go to the specific depth where the precious ores are. e.g. Diamond Drill with 10,000 durability, still 3.5 in power, instead of around 3,000 (I think?), but now requires a Woodplank, and 5-10 Diamonds. I hate bringing 10 drills with me to make my mining generally faster. It involves too much and unnecessary.nventory management.
     
  16. drachasor

    drachasor Void-Bound Voyager

    I think we need more than 3 modes and multiple "upgrade/modification" slots for each mode -- and some for the whole device as well.

    If this leads to some neat choices and advanced building options via the matter manipulator, then I'm all for it. It would be especially nice to see a "Blueprint" system added. You can design (or scan a building) to get a blueprint. Then pop that into your MM, select a location, and it automatically mines/places everything in the blueprint -- like you were painting a building -- until you run out of materials anyhow. The blueprint design interface/machine should also let you copy and modify blueprints with options like replacing all of one block type/furniture type with another.
     
  17. SilverDarkBlade

    SilverDarkBlade Subatomic Cosmonaut

    I like the change. makes sense. but maybe have the sprite change slightly like different colored lights to reflect what tool is being used currently
     
  18. Necryel

    Necryel Pangalactic Porcupine

    I think that is one of the reasons why this change was made, graphically. Now, you will no longer need to make a new tool with new art, and new animations, and new statistics like range, You can just adapt the statistics from the MM and just have a single sprite to represent each mode. It's both easier and quicker to implement and less time intensive on design and programming. Again, I think this will also work well with a Mode Rotation Wheel type visual, like an internal dial with just the front free faces visible. One key to advance the dial to the next mode in the rotation, another to go back to the previous mode, and each new mode that comes along in the future will just get an icon plugged into the rotation once unlocked. It is an efficient design scheme with an emphasis towards ease of future expansion.

    I am against a blue print scanner but only on the grounds that for now it is much too complex an endeavor and far too many things can go wrong with it. Leave that for mod developers or at least until after 1.0 Though a "Mass Tile Swapping" mode via some means of highlighting which tiles get selected to be swapped out from one material to another can be a a grand thing. Allowing builders to use cheap and readily available materials to design their structures and later quickly swapping out placeholder tiles essential with more rare and intended tiles as they are found/crafted/acquired.
     
  19. intrepid-explorer

    intrepid-explorer Phantasmal Quasar

    I saw a mod the other day that lets you craft "arrow" signs, for example to help you find your way back out of a mine shaft or cave. And I realized, "why can't the paint tool be used on natural blocks such as stone and dirt?"
     
  20. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Holy shit in a shit basket, I would have ADORED this back in the EK build.

    I made a massive treehouse, but something about it always kinda bugged me visually, then I finally realized that I needed to swap the two types of wood. The outer tree "bark" had been made from smooth normal wood while the inside "carved" out of the tree interior was the darker, bark-like wood from Floran villages (which I had a lot less of at the time).

    I had to manually change every. Single. Tile. And this was not a small treehouse. This sucker was several screens tall, with a wide spread of nominally-inaccessible branches at the leaf level. Before, and after. (And as a bonus, a more recent Giraffe recreation.)

    Also when building experimental structures and working out spacing, I find using light materials like snow and sand to "sketch" out the build INCREDIBLY helpful, especially if the end result is meant to be tougher metal or stone. It'd be nice to be able to group-swap for the intended material.
     

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