Questions? Answers from Discord/devs

[xitooner]

Below are snippets of interesting things (answrs from devs to questions, etc) I pulled off discord. There is more info there... some info may have changed over time... and some of this has been paraphrased by me. So BUYER BEWARE; go ask on discord yourself if you want to be absolutely sure of something.

And... if it says "See roadmap".. its because its something I KNOW they have mentioned there and given a timeframe for. Speaking of roadmap, please review for features you are asking about:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2178070/view/6256157311436324906?snr=1_5_9_



Early access releases the 19th, and will go for like 18 months until full release
The team has 30 devs as of this moment (Oct 05 2024)

How is feedback from community going to be handled?
This is in progress/discussion. For now probably a "Feedback" section on discord, and with some polls there as well. (I pointed them to Enshroudeds awesome voting/feedback system as a better example to move towards)

Is the world procedural generated or does everyone have the same map layout?
Same map layout. also early access map is 25% of total map

Currently about 40h of content. Probably more, if you wanna play around

All DLC are free (the devs use the phrase 'DLC' in their promo videos, but are referring to generic free downloaded content/updates)

Game price will go up when EA completes

You can customize the hair, the mask and your armor. And no, you can't take off your mask. As yes, you are initially female (not very noticable but true)
(for more, see Roadmap)

There’s no traditional hunger, thirst meter like in regular survival games. There are instead there toxic areas called “Withered Regions”, which will hurt you unless you have appropriate protection and has several challenging withered creatures. We’re not looking to be a hardcore survival game. We hope to be more of a chill, relaxing game experience with moments of danger and challenge.

Will there be some form of village defense? Not really for now, will see for the future

And can you craft better weapons/gear with better gathered ressources? Theres going to be three different armor / weapon levels at EA launch

Ok will big créatures gonna be tameable at some points ? Planned (see roadmap)

Will you guys include other mounts over time? There will be one in early access, and there should be more later (see roadmap)

Currently, the giant demon you see in the videos can't be killed, but every other creature can be fought and killed. Some of them, especially the withered hands, are pretty challenging to fight on your own. They're almost like mini-bosses themselves. So facing them with friends is a pretty good way to deal with them and explore the withered lands.

Multiplayer or solo? Peer-to-Peer 4 player Coop. 4 max player, quest don't work in multi (they want it to be fully co-op if possible), crossplay not at early access release but come later (see roadmap)

As early access progresses they will be expanding what you can do in coop (see roadmap)

Will there be a way to host a dedicated server on a pc? I mean like how like SoTF has a dedicated server application or like minecraft
Not in that way, multiplayer is p2p with not a way to have a console in background, you need to have the owner of the save permanently on for that

Is there matchmaking for this game or is it invite only?
Code invite only for now

No support yet for making buildings; ie its "free placement of prefabs (ie put prefabs whereever you want)" (see roadmap)

There are no interiors for buildings planned since that opens a MAJOR can of worms that explodes the scope of the game. Having interiors will require us to do things like optimally loading and unloading the interiors right before you open/ close the door, special lighting, camera modes, etc. We'd need to make a whole new set of art to work with interiors, and it would fundamentally change our pipeline for creating buildings. And we know players (and tbh, even we), would want the ability to decorate interiors eventually, which is a major new system.

We're keeping interiors as a "nice to have" that we might consider if everything else works out and we have the bandwidth! (In response to a specific building example that seemed to have an interior) That's "sort of" an interior. There is no roof on those structures specifically to avoid dealing with unique lighting solutions for interiors



I do strongly encourage you guys to go to the discord for "actual" info. If you see more interesting things from there that I missed.... and feel its worth mentioning here... please do so.

[xitooner]

More...

Can you create multiple towns/types of towns on the one island or is it limited to one town? You'll have one fixed settlement, and 3 additional villages that you can build! (Fixed settlement is midhaven)

There are SOME important structures that can only be built within the village's range. BUT over 200+ decorative structures can be placed anywhere! And windmills are one of them. Additionally, we also provide foundation blocks, which are huge flat structures that you can use to create more level surfaces to place these structures and decorations so that it's easier to build over irregular, organic surfaces.

There are several aggressive creatures (besides spikejaw)! They're all pretty interesting and have unique attack patterns too!

You have the option to link an existing Epic account. If not, we will create one automatically for you! That's just how Epic Online Services (which is what we use for online play) works.

If purchased and playing from Steam, is Playstation Network required also to play? Answer was NO (not required)

[wildbill]

I played another game that used epic games in some way. I think this might be common for smaller game companies, as epic games I assume handles some of the basic infrastructure details needed to publish a game, maybe?

So I must have an account, but I didn't create it. So I assume it will just create another one for me? Oh well, I guess we will find out.

[xitooner]

Steam deck performance (from about 10 days ago):

When it comes to performance, we have it performing pretty well on Medium-High settings even on a Steam Deck! We've put a lot of effort into the optimization efforts so far, and will continue to keep improving performance in every way possible. At this stage, we've only experience momentary frame drops when your ecosystems are at their most populated.



About why its only a female protagonist for now..... (until Char customization update in Q2 2025)
"Re: Male or Female Main Player Character.

At this EA launch, it will be a Female character. During EA, and as mentioned in the roadmap, that won't be the only gender option with the introduction of Character Customization.

A lot of this stems from the fact that the thousands of animations we had to create and iterate on turned out to be a little too much for our small animation team, and we really wanted to give time to improve that before we added the male option that might skew a bit the proportions and the UI changes needed and we really felt that would come to an easier and more pleasant addition once we have a Character Customization feature.

Ideally, if we do that, you wouldn't have to restart your progression or anything, and perhaps you can just swap them whenever you start your playthrough.

Note: This is not a final decision, but it is just something we are thinking about."

[Bourrinopathe]

Thank you for compiling this information, Xitooner, and for your contributions to other threads.

I'm curious about the overall gameplay loops:

How complex is the ecosystem expected to be?

Since combat seems secondary and building appears to focus on enhancing the environment with plants and structures to attract creatures (that's my understanding and I might be wrong), does the ecosystem feature layered interactions? For example, smaller plants consumed by small creatures, which are then preyed upon by larger creatures, all within specific regions?
Or is it more of a straightforward system, with creatures spawning and plants gradually expanding into adjacent areas?

[xitooner]

Originally posted by Bourrinopathe:

Since combat seems secondary and building appears to focus on enhancing the environment with plants and structures to attract creatures (that's my understanding and I might be wrong), does the ecosystem feature layered interactions? For example, smaller plants consumed by small creatures, which are then preyed upon by larger creatures, all within specific regions?
Or is it more of a straightforward system, with creatures spawning and plants gradually expanding into adjacent areas?

I think you have the overall idea right; you plant a "colossal seed" and its continues to grow over time... you can improve it, help animals along, etc... and while it grows more and more animals/plants appear/grow. Its you who actively improves the ecosystem, largely via the seeds advancement. Building probably does play into improving the ecosystem in some way but I havent played yet, unfortunately. :) Also... they said that its possible to overfarm/overkill a region... which doesnt truly "hurt" anything, but can cause growth in that aspect to slow down for a while.

I know there are at least some create/creature interactions that happen, and on purpose... I saw a convo where they said they had some trouble initially with some of the animal AI getting overly aggressive at attacking other creatures. I am curious about this aspect as well.

[xitooner]

If you are a PS5 user: "Game supports PS5 Pro enhanced and set to work with PSSR, which is Playstation’s upscaling system. We also have the settings exposed for tweaking it to prioritize quality vs performance"

[Bourrinopathe]

Thanks for the details!
I caught part of a stream, which gave me a clearer picture of what to expect. The creature interactions seemed relatively basic for now, but I’m hopeful that future updates will introduce more complexity and intricate ecosystem dynamics, like the multilayered interactions we discussed earlier. It would be exciting to see a deeper connection between plants, small creatures, and larger predators as the ecosystem develops.