No More TERRAFORMER & DIGGING?!

2

Comments

  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    So, like an exterior and / or interior growbed?
  • fallennight1986fallennight1986 texas Join Date: 2016-12-21 Member: 225320Members
    no i mean thatll make full size not mini versions like make your own full size biomee butt in another biome like say u build you base in the shallows for metals or quartz you can make it look like the deep reef by cloning full size replicas of the orbs or the membrain trees. oh and hopefully at some pointt all creatures will have eggs would be awsome.
  • YolDovahYolDovah Boreville Join Date: 2017-02-14 Member: 227924Members
    First of all let me apologise if what i say as already been asked.

    Now having only recently bought the main game after playing the trial in july last year i didnt use the terraformer but having the fact that you sometime get the terrain come through a foundation and often the base itself couldnt you implement some kind of terraformer for base building only.

    At least where it clips through terrain because right now ive a multipurpose room thats filled halfway by the terrain clipping through when i was expecting the terrain to be removed.

    I'll even take explosives that could destroy the land.

    Kinda like the bombs on trove where its big enough but doesnt make a giant hole.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    YolDovah wrote: »
    First of all let me apologise if what i say as already been asked.

    Now having only recently bought the main game after playing the trial in july last year i didnt use the terraformer but having the fact that you sometime get the terrain come through a foundation and often the base itself couldnt you implement some kind of terraformer for base building only.

    At least where it clips through terrain because right now ive a multipurpose room thats filled halfway by the terrain clipping through when i was expecting the terrain to be removed.

    I'll even take explosives that could destroy the land.

    Kinda like the bombs on trove where its big enough but doesnt make a giant hole.

    They have fixed that issue by making the bases rise further off the ground on legs.
  • YolDovahYolDovah Boreville Join Date: 2017-02-14 Member: 227924Members
    0x6A7232 wrote: »
    YolDovah wrote: »
    First of all let me apologise if what i say as already been asked.

    Now having only recently bought the main game after playing the trial in july last year i didnt use the terraformer but having the fact that you sometime get the terrain come through a foundation and often the base itself couldnt you implement some kind of terraformer for base building only.

    At least where it clips through terrain because right now ive a multipurpose room thats filled halfway by the terrain clipping through when i was expecting the terrain to be removed.

    I'll even take explosives that could destroy the land.

    Kinda like the bombs on trove where its big enough but doesnt make a giant hole.

    They have fixed that issue by making the bases rise further off the ground on legs.

    Problem there is that my base was built between two rocky outcrop formations between a geyser and the kelp forrest and has the base expanded the foundations ending up clipping through ther out crops.

    Most of the out cropping was removed but theres some parts that still stick up through the foundation.

    Not really a problem yet as im using that part for my moonpool.
  • gabriel007gabriel007 Montreal, Canada Join Date: 2017-10-06 Member: 233409Members
    As huge fan or self creation, I'd really like to have the Terraformer tool back in Creative mode. The name says everything, when you enter in Creative mode, you should be able to shape the world you are in. While other mode shouldn't allow it, especially if the game becomes multiplayer. Personnally, I never had any issues with it and neither with performances and to be honest, I do not own a computer of the year. So I guess it can be managed quite properly.

    On another part, like I said, removing it from other mode should be fine. What's the point of removing it anyway. I never caused any troubles at all. It is not like we are publicly cheating. I think you really should keep it because you would be one of the best creative game I'd ever play who has this amazing tool of ground shaping that many other games doesn't have or manage as you did.

    Please do consider our suggestion of keeping it only in creative mode. Cloning plants wouldn't be quite funnier than this and I'm sure It would take lot more damage to CPU and Video cards, more than terraforming.
  • SnailsAttackSnailsAttack Join Date: 2017-02-09 Member: 227749Members
    gabriel007 wrote: »
    As huge fan or self creation, I'd really like to have the Terraformer tool back in Creative mode. The name says everything, when you enter in Creative mode, you should be able to shape the world you are in. While other mode shouldn't allow it, especially if the game becomes multiplayer. Personnally, I never had any issues with it and neither with performances and to be honest, I do not own a computer of the year. So I guess it can be managed quite properly.

    On another part, like I said, removing it from other mode should be fine. What's the point of removing it anyway. I never caused any troubles at all. It is not like we are publicly cheating. I think you really should keep it because you would be one of the best creative game I'd ever play who has this amazing tool of ground shaping that many other games doesn't have or manage as you did.

    Please do consider our suggestion of keeping it only in creative mode. Cloning plants wouldn't be quite funnier than this and I'm sure It would take lot more damage to CPU and Video cards, more than terraforming.

    It's not like they just removed the terraformer from the game, they removed all the code that works in conjunction with it and the terrain as well. It's not like the game would run as good as it did now if you added the code back but just avoided using the terraformer.
  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited October 2017
    gabriel007 wrote: »
    As huge fan or self creation, I'd really like to have the Terraformer tool back in Creative mode. The name says everything, when you enter in Creative mode, you should be able to shape the world you are in. While other mode shouldn't allow it, especially if the game becomes multiplayer. Personnally, I never had any issues with it and neither with performances and to be honest, I do not own a computer of the year. So I guess it can be managed quite properly.

    On another part, like I said, removing it from other mode should be fine. What's the point of removing it anyway. I never caused any troubles at all. It is not like we are publicly cheating. I think you really should keep it because you would be one of the best creative game I'd ever play who has this amazing tool of ground shaping that many other games doesn't have or manage as you did.

    Please do consider our suggestion of keeping it only in creative mode. Cloning plants wouldn't be quite funnier than this and I'm sure It would take lot more damage to CPU and Video cards, more than terraforming.

    There are a few things with your assumptions there...

    First of it's 99.99% certain, multiplayer will not be part of the game officially. Even though there is a mod in development, which is still in pre-alpha/concept mode...

    Second of all, there is a huge performance issue the longer the game goes on, because the save file will grow exponentially. All of this "changed terrain" and dynamic voxel system has to be stored to be able to keep track of it all. That is the main reason it was removed (along with "diggin' around stuff to get access to locked stuff in caves?). You didn't see performance issue, you say? So you did a bit of diggin' and assumed that was a proper "benchmark". No good sir, each time you change the terrain it adds to the storage of data and will eventually murder ANY rig, yes even the end boss ones. Unity wasn't made for highly detailed dynamic voxel based terrain, TBH I've yet to see a non cube based engine able to handle it properly. Red Faction did try, but those maps were tiny and deformation was still limited... And those engines and games were built from the ground up to be "voxel" based. They can't just throw the code back in to have "voxels". I'm not even sure they used the voxel idea, let alone how they told the engine you're underwater in these newly dug out areas. It looked to be at a superficial ingame glance, more of a custom addon for Unity to store geometry data. Which would also explain the terribad performance to some extent as it's trying to do stuff for each terrain polygon (and has to keep track of the water?), which I can imagine would add up to jiggawats of data :trollface: But perhaps the water is merely a Z-index to tell you how deep you are, so it renders "underwater" with a neat water surface shader at 0m :D

    Cloning plants? Well that is actually just creating multiple instances (cloning) of the same entity. The only thing that has to be stored in this case are the coordinates and angles, similar to how the world models/entities are stored. Obviously if you add a dozens upon dozens in the same spot and within visible range of each other... You're bound to run into performance issues regardless, but that goes for any engine. There is only so much which can be rendered at the same time...

    The Mushroom Forest wants a word with dem devs o/
  • BMiBudsterBMiBudster Join Date: 2017-11-08 Member: 233891Members
    edited November 2017
    Flayra wrote: »
    Yes we removed it for performance and design reasons. Any terrain modifications you made had to be saved out when you swam away which is really difficult and slow on the XB1 especially. It's been really hard for Grip Games and us to get performance up on the XB1 and we thought this was a good trade-off.

    We also plan to remove it on PC as well, because the terraformer breaks the feel of the world (you can destroy it completely). It also works against the idea of gating, because you can just dig your way anywhere.

    We're still thinking about the exact changes we need to make, but this is one case where the XB1 is "ahead" of the PC version...

    so now that you have removed this tool everyone who made caves and used it properly now have land mass inside of their tubes and we cant remove it.... how stupid..... so what do we do now with this problem? i like my design and because of a stupid removal of a cool item almost everyone with this issue has to suffer?

    good job there....really smart thinking facepalm smh
  • Hulkie2345Hulkie2345 New York Join Date: 2017-08-23 Member: 232598Members
    edited November 2017
    That's the annoying nature of a early access game. Always assume your save file will be corrupted. Don't get attached to anything, till 1.0 is out. I've restarted the game 10 times for various reasons.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    Clear your terrain cache from your saved game file to revert to default. CompiledOctreeCache Terraformer can still be used for removing dirt to deconstruct, just don't go far enough away for the area to unload, or the terrain will come back.
  • Racer1Racer1 Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9615Members
    Earlier this year, UWE made a post about Modding Terrain. So the technology is still there. Given this, I expect it is still possible to do "terraformer like" actions in the game, to (at the very least) add new areas. Whether its possible to remove existing terrain is unclear, but is likely still possible. With these two in place, a 3rd party mod could conceivably add support for modifying terrain. (How they persist those changes is up for discussion, but is a mere detail).
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    Current state is that you can spawn item 514 and use the terraformer to modify terrain, but terrain is no longer saved in the saved game folder, meaning any changes are lost when an area is unloaded (as the game reloads the area from \Build18, which is the "clean slate" folder that is the source for new save data).
  • BMiBudsterBMiBudster Join Date: 2017-11-08 Member: 233891Members
    edited November 2017
    Please adjust your tone. The terraformer was removed for performance reasons.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    It caused too much lag when loading / unloading terrain, unfortunately. Maybe after v1.0 they can optimize it enough to put it back in, I don't know.
  • narfblatnarfblat Utah, USA Join Date: 2016-05-15 Member: 216799Members, Forum Moderators, Forum staff
    Terraforming also was known to cause save file corruption. Keeping it in would have crippled the game, making it unlikely they could ever reach v1.0.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    Meh, we could just lock @Belgarel in a room for a day or two and feed him pizza and his pick of energy drinks or coffee, and I'm sure it would be fixed in a jiffy. :lol:
  • daman1980daman1980 Join Date: 2017-12-30 Member: 234703Members
    edited December 2017
    1. why cant we just have a pc game why does everything need an xbox version,, i know the almighty $$$$, but my question is why can't the pc get priority like it was in the start why
    does the pc have to follow the crappy console, i mean if the console cant handle it then the pc suffers, also make an xbox version seperate updates, pc gamers always have to suffer
    cos of the console port and its limitations,, im not moaning about it i just wanted to put that out there,

    2. removing the teraformer after end game has lost all replayability thanks i guess.


    Let The Haters Begin (console wars)
  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited December 2017
    Um... Well then, you got some stuff wrong there...


    Subnautica is in fact a port towards the console, not towards PC. And any performance gains achieved on the Xbone seem to have an influence on better performance for the PC version as well. And the fact that the PC version can be iterated daily using the experimental version (using Steam), which is where the bulk of the development seems to be. So, what was your point again on consoles slowing down or retarding development in this case?

    The Xbone (and PS4) are basically low/mid range PC's now, so there isn't a huge difference in development on these consoles, especially compared to the previous consoles. As for removing the terraformer, it was both a performance issue (on PC and console) and a gameplay decision as well, as to why it was removed
  • daman1980daman1980 Join Date: 2017-12-30 Member: 234703Members
    edited December 2017
    Kouji_San wrote: »
    Um... Well then, you got some stuff wrong there...


    Subnautica is in fact a port towards the console, not towards PC. And any performance gains achieved on the Xbone seem to have an influence on better performance for the PC version as well. And the fact that the PC version can be iterated daily using the experimental version (using Steam), which is where the bulk of the development seems to be. So, what was your point again on consoles slowing down or retarding development in this case?

    The Xbone (and PS4) are basically low/mid range PC's now, so there isn't a huge difference in development on these consoles, especially compared to the previous consoles. As for removing the terraformer, it was both a performance issue (on PC and console) and a gameplay decision as well, as to why it was removed



    my point is everytime the pc gets a great game i mean great subnautica is a great game,, there always has to be a console version now 2 and i mean we suffer cos the devs say they can't have this option cos it's unfair to the console gamer's,



  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited December 2017
    Did you read what I posted...

    Cause, ya know, just throwing it out there 39.gif


    YOU DID NO SUCH THING! Why you gotta be like this daman!
  • SnailsAttackSnailsAttack Join Date: 2017-02-09 Member: 227749Members
    edited December 2017
    daman1980 wrote: »
    Kouji_San wrote: »
    Um... Well then, you got some stuff wrong there...


    Subnautica is in fact a port towards the console, not towards PC. And any performance gains achieved on the Xbone seem to have an influence on better performance for the PC version as well. And the fact that the PC version can be iterated daily using the experimental version (using Steam), which is where the bulk of the development seems to be. So, what was your point again on consoles slowing down or retarding development in this case?

    The Xbone (and PS4) are basically low/mid range PC's now, so there isn't a huge difference in development on these consoles, especially compared to the previous consoles. As for removing the terraformer, it was both a performance issue (on PC and console) and a gameplay decision as well, as to why it was removed



    my point is everytime the pc gets a great game i mean great subnautica is a great game,, there always has to be a console version now 2 and i mean we suffer cos the devs say they can't have this option cos it's unfair to the console gamer's,

    this should have been a pc exclusive,
    ...right..

    The xbox version of subnautica may be a bit of a burden on the devs, but not as much as you might think. The sales from the xbox one version actually make the devs a lot of the money they need to work on both versions of the game.

    Also... I kinda fucking hate the idea of a tool that allows you to modify terrain. It just doesn't fit in subnautica at all. I'm fine with the game's environment being non-destructible; there's already plenty of things to interact with in the environment.

    alsoalso, i bought the xbox one version because i can't afford an 800-1200$ pc to run subnautica; I can, however, afford a 250$~ xbox.
  • daman1980daman1980 Join Date: 2017-12-30 Member: 234703Members
    edited December 2017
    you can just save $$ sorted get a pc

    this is a pointless topic console will always argue..
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    Terraformer would have been cool in Creative mode.

    As for Console vs PC, right now, why the consoles suck is they have 5400 RPM hard drives in them. Everything else is on par with a low-mid range PC (PS4 Pro = RX480 Graphics, XBox One X = RX580 Graphics, and both use modified 8-core AMD Jaguar CPUs at 2.1 GHz for the PS4 Pro and 2.3 GHz for the XB1X. The PS4 Pro has 8GB of GDDR5 graphics memory and 1GB of DDR3 normal memory. The XB1X just puts it all on 12GB of GDDR5.

    There's a chart here if you want to have a look. Like @Kouji_San and I said, low-mid range gaming PC equivalent. And the only reason it's not solidly in the mid-upper range tier is that they skimped a bit on the CPU and a lot on the Hard Disk (5400 RPM is slow). You can fix the Hard Disk problem by hooking up a USB 3.0 external SSD or 7200RPM hard disk (SSD will be much, much better, but even a 7200 RPM spinny disk is better than a 5400 RPM).
  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    daman1980 wrote: »
    you can just save $$ sorted get a pc

    this is a pointless topic console will always argue..

    Well, the only one trying to start this "console war" is you though, even after explanation. We're just not taking the bait :tongue:
  • narfblatnarfblat Utah, USA Join Date: 2016-05-15 Member: 216799Members, Forum Moderators, Forum staff
    daman1980 wrote: »
    you can just save $$ sorted get a pc

    this is a pointless topic console will always argue..

    There is a difference between arguing and discussing rationally. They tried to be respectful when they disagreed, and they gave points to support their views. Any "arguing" was started by you ignoring and dismissing their points, without appearing to have read them.

    I'm a PC gamer, but I don't see it your way at all. At one point we were 3 updates ahead; how is Xbox slowing us down? (If you are meaning Terraformer, that was an issue on PC too, so that can't be blamed on Xbox.)

    Fact is, making this game is expensive, which is especially hard on an independent developer. Unknown Worlds even had to shell out money to get access to Unity source code to fix some bugs. These expenses in developing make it necessary to widen the playerbase to consoles, which generates more resources.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    narfblat wrote: »
    daman1980 wrote: »
    you can just save $$ sorted get a pc

    this is a pointless topic console will always argue..

    There is a difference between arguing and discussing rationally. They tried to be respectful when they disagreed, and they gave points to support their views. Any "arguing" was started by you ignoring and dismissing their points, without appearing to have read them.

    I'm a PC gamer, but I don't see it your way at all. At one point we were 3 updates ahead; how is Xbox slowing us down? (If you are meaning Terraformer, that was an issue on PC too, so that can't be blamed on Xbox.)

    Fact is, making this game is expensive, which is especially hard on an independent developer. Unknown Worlds even had to shell out money to get access to Unity source code to fix some bugs. These expenses in developing make it necessary to widen the playerbase to consoles, which generates more resources.

    $55,000, if I remember right. Might have been more.
  • ChrisWizzChrisWizz Join Date: 2018-01-31 Member: 236373Members
    Boys we're travelling a tad off topic.

    I do absolutely agree with the critics on removing the tool completely. It might have been an interesting tool in the creative mode on PCs, which are growing in performance while the game is beeing developed over time. Don't limit your beautiful game to console´s limited abilities.
    Most games imo that are ported the one way or the other are mediocre concerning playability, the use of user modifications or hardware requirements. Only new console games shine bright. After a couple of years they are forgotten. Compare them with Half Life and it's many community based offsprings or my favourite example, the MS Flight Sim - old tech but with countless community integrated addons make them live forever.

    But here's my personal point:
    I bought the game five days ago on steam, where it is still advertised with this feature!
    Dear devs - remove this misleading ad before it gets a legal issue for your business. You can't advertise core features - that´s what modifying your game environment is - that have been removed months ago.
  • Excited_CamelExcited_Camel Austria Join Date: 2018-03-31 Member: 239661Members
    Hi! I am pretty new to the game and I love it!! (Despite a few performance issues) I'm kinda sad that the terraformer is not going to be in the game anymore but i get it. I'm pretty sure that there are people who already suggested this but what about a shovel instead of a terrafprmer. I think it would make totally sense because we already have a normal knife, you know... Just make it so it doesnt take as much dirt away as the terraformer :P anyways! Like I said good job on the game and yeah.... Have a nice day :)
  • narfblatnarfblat Utah, USA Join Date: 2016-05-15 Member: 216799Members, Forum Moderators, Forum staff
    edited March 2018
    Hi, welcome to the forum Excited_Camel! The problems with terraforming were that saving terrain made save files huge, and sometimes broke saves. Even small changes here and there would make huge areas need saving, due to the "voxel" nature of the terrain they use.

    While the game won't save terrain changes, you can have a bit of terraforming fun with the cheat code
    item 514
    
    (press left button, A, and right button to bring up cheat window)
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