Regarding wall climbing.

[SquidNeko]

I do not think villagers or anyone should be able to climb more than 1 block high walls no matter what kind without a ladder.

I have a mineshaft and i see them climbing up and down the sides more than 10 blocks which is stupid.
I even have a stairway up.

What im mostly worried about besides it looking stupid, is the fact that enemies most likely can also scale walls like that, which means the walls i created around my settlement is useless.

Please do so no one can climb over 2 block or higher walls. Whatever its constructed or terrain.

[DAKKA]

I said the same thing on the discord, you should hop in there and add your voice in. Stairs are aesthetic!

[Sleipnir]

The real problem with limiting the height to which an entity can climb is that it makes building tall structures very, very annoying and difficult. Imagine trying to build ladders just to make something simple that's more than one block high. That being said, we have a feature planned which lets you smooth blocks. The idea here is that you'd smooth your walls making them unclimbable. We'll see how well that works in practice. Could be it's super unclear/confusing and also annoying. Thoughts?

[SquidNeko]

Originally posted by Sleipnir:

The real problem with limiting the height to which an entity can climb is that it makes building tall structures very, very annoying and difficult. Imagine trying to build ladders just to make something simple that's more than one block high. That being said, we have a feature planned which lets you smooth blocks. The idea here is that you'd smooth your walls making them unclimbable. We'll see how well that works in practice. Could be it's super unclear/confusing and also annoying. Thoughts?

If you think realisticly. Thats where you should put ladders or build like a pyramid so they have access to get to that level.

I know this isnt real life. Im just using it in this case. We do use scaffolding in real life. Maybe make them add that temporarily to get up and put it away when going back down.
But ONLY have this for building stuff, so scaling walls isnt like that.

I also just hit a dungeon today and the enemy just kept hitting my villager that was crawling up the wall as i was trying to get them away, since they choose the wall instead of the chairs i built for them.

[Sleipnir]

Sometimes we have to avoid realism if it makes the game annoying to play. Placing scaffolding and ladders is a real pain as you build and, for me at least, doesn't add much to the experience by being more realistic.
A good analogy would be how much people hate manually planting and harvesting crops. I added the farm room to automate this and will be adding the arboretum to automate tree planting/logging. If people hated the process of planting/harvesting, I truly don't see them enjoying the experience of placing scaffolds.
Auto-placing scaffolds doesn't seem like a great option either. It would slow down building a lot as every level they'd have to go they would need to build the scaffolds first. And then what, they have to remove them after? Does the player? How would the AI even know when to remove it? Then it introduces the 'realism' question of, oh, my settlers can place scaffolds to move around when building, why don't they just do that all the time? Why do I need to even put ladders/stairs down?

[SquidNeko]

What about scaling walls only bieng a thing when they built?
In any other case they wont be able to scale more than 1 layer max?

[Geomancer]

Or, is there way to identify walls built by a friendly faction, and only allow them to climb friendly walls. This doesn't solve the pathing issues. I have the same problem with villagers constantly climbing blocks right next to stairs or ladders. There needs to be a stronger priority for them to use constructed paths instead

[SquidNeko]

Originally posted by Idahoan:

Or, is there way to identify walls built by a friendly faction, and only allow them to climb friendly walls. This doesn't solve the pathing issues. I have the same problem with villagers constantly climbing blocks right next to stairs or ladders. There needs to be a stronger priority for them to use constructed paths instead

Agree.

[DW420]

Originally posted by Sleipnir:

Sometimes we have to avoid realism if it makes the game annoying to play. Placing scaffolding and ladders is a real pain as you build and, for me at least, doesn't add much to the experience by being more realistic.
A good analogy would be how much people hate manually planting and harvesting crops. I added the farm room to automate this and will be adding the arboretum to automate tree planting/logging. If people hated the process of planting/harvesting, I truly don't see them enjoying the experience of placing scaffolds.
Auto-placing scaffolds doesn't seem like a great option either. It would slow down building a lot as every level they'd have to go they would need to build the scaffolds first. And then what, they have to remove them after? Does the player? How would the AI even know when to remove it? Then it introduces the 'realism' question of, oh, my settlers can place scaffolds to move around when building, why don't they just do that all the time? Why do I need to even put ladders/stairs down?

There was an old game called "towns" (if my memory serves me right), same genre as OddRealm and DF...which had the builders place temporary scaffolding when building very high structures and take them down when done.

It worked pretty well imo. The builder would place the scaffolding all the way to the top ...build the structure...then remove the scaffolding from top to bottom.

It was purely aesthetic since the scaffolding cost 0 resources to make and was deployed and retracted in relatively short time.

Toons in said game lacked the ability to "climb" but instead could "jump" 1 block high (same thing, different visuals)

I'm sure that with a few tweaks (since toons can climb)...it would be a nice QoL feature for OddRealm as well. :)

Edit: Apparently "Towns" was the correct name...the game is still (?!) on steam...even if it hasn't seen an update that brings it closer to v1.0 since 2014.

[FUS]

What's the point of walls and fences if everyone everywhere has the skills what of a Japanese ninja?

[MontSchmibbles]

Honestly I am glad that settlers can climb up walls so that I don't have to make complicated stair-filled mine shafts on a pixel-based map. I can just make a 1-block wide tunnel down into the depths to start mining, and then add ladders later on to speed things up. (Same with building tall structures really.)

The pathfinding for using stairs/ladders over natural terrain does need a bit of fixing, since right now my playstyle is either "don't build stairs at all since they'll never use them" or "cover the map with so many stairs my settlers can't possibly miss them."

Thus far only entirely roof-covered rooms serve as a deterrent for enemies. Building a wall around camp can help slow enemies down though, especially if the wall is very high. Enemies seem to climb at the same speed as your settlers. With how combat is in this game, I think that's enough. I do think emphasis on properly using/locking doors is fairly important though.

The first time I accidentally aggro'd a dungeon and realized the enemies could climb right out my mineshaft...well it was pretty much a settlement-wipe. Ever since I've boxed in my tunnel entrances with walls, roofs, and lockable doors, so once my settlers climb out I can lock up and have some time to prepare for a fight.

[DW420]

Originally posted by maliciouschmibbles:

Honestly I am glad that settlers can climb up walls so that I don't have to make complicated stair-filled mine shafts on a pixel-based map. I can just make a 1-block wide tunnel down into the depths to start mining, and then add ladders later on to speed things up. (Same with building tall structures really.)

Noone wants their toons to be able to do less.

But when the climbing ability is paired up with laser-sighted pathfinding AI (for some bandits) things like fortifications etc become obstacles for your toons to stumble upon (toon pathfinding is questionable at times)...since the AI will make their way to your weakest point of defence without second thought.

Its a behaviour that can be exploited by leaving obvious gaps for the bandits to go through...or even blocked if you take a different approach to Pythia's advice to the Athenians. ;)

Climbing needs to be "nerfed"..because it is forcing other parts of the game completely out of the equation.

(the dev(s) are considering adding the ability to smooth wall blocks, making them unclimbable..which makes sense for soil etc..but you would expect certain wall types to be smooth by default..)

[SquidNeko]

Self build walls should be smoothed by default then i think.
But even that wont completely solve problems regarding enemies completely with mines i think.

[AD Fly]

What if "crumbled dirt" or crumbled rock was added in instead of smoothed walls. This way walls, dirt, and rock are automatically unclimbable but there is naturally spawning paths other than player created ones such as stairs or ladders, perhaps the player could also order a pawn to crumble dirt and rock or have it be able to be built with some dirt clod?

[DW420]

Originally posted by ADrunkFly:

What if "crumbled dirt" or crumbled rock was added in instead of smoothed walls. This way walls, dirt, and rock are automatically unclimbable but there is naturally spawning paths other than player created ones such as stairs or ladders, perhaps the player could also order a pawn to crumble dirt and rock or have it be able to be built with some dirt clod?

Not that many of the in-game walls would be completely unclimbable IRL.

Dirt you can punch a hole through/ Bricks & boards can be misaligned /Engravings can be used as footholds.

It would make more sense if different materials had different "climbing penalties"..ranging from those that can be scaled without further penalties(dirt) to those that cannot be scaled at all (smooth stone).

[AD Fly]

Originally posted by DW420:

Originally posted by ADrunkFly:

What if "crumbled dirt" or crumbled rock was added in instead of smoothed walls. This way walls, dirt, and rock are automatically unclimbable but there is naturally spawning paths other than player created ones such as stairs or ladders, perhaps the player could also order a pawn to crumble dirt and rock or have it be able to be built with some dirt clod?

Not that many of the in-game walls would be completely unclimbable IRL.

Dirt you can punch a hole through/ Bricks & boards can be misaligned /Engravings can be used as footholds.

It would make more sense if different materials had different "climbing penalties"..ranging from those that can be scaled without further penalties(dirt) to those that cannot be scaled at all (smooth stone).

Yeah idk bout that chief. When people made walls in medieval times they weren't mindless. I'm not sure tbh how boards would be so misaligned that you could climb up a wooden wall. I'm also not sure if you could climb up a cobblestone wall either. I get it if there's engravings on the wall or destroying something made out of dirt, but I would rather have raiders bring their own ladders or destroy a wall (obviously not dirt) with siege weapons, however big or small or different from each race they may be. Not only will this add more content to the game, but it makes sense, since if you're building a wall and you misalign boards or bricks so bad someone can climb up it, the wall would just fall apart. Even if we did have something like smooth stone why would you build with anything other than smooth stone walls? Not only is this unrealistic it's also limiting and boring in my eyes.