terraformer problems?
reaperLeviathenfood
florida Join Date: 2015-05-19 Member: 204681Members
florida Join Date: 2015-05-19 Member: 204681Members
So i noticed a post saying that the terraformer may or may not be removed and that it is causing problems and crashes. I used it and have not noticed anything of the sort yet, what is the problem with it? Also if its a problem digging into things that should not be tamperable, would it save it to change how it works to only suck up / absorb terrain that already has the quality of being able to 'dig' in? that way you can absorb sand but not dig new holes inside cave walls. Just guessing, im not sure what the issue present with it is. I would prefer to keep it, i love the item and recently built a base 4-5 tiers high with only the top layer (scanner room) above the sand and that would blow to try to dig by hand xD. Also if it is kept (big if) it would be cool to have the mouse scroll adjust the intensity of the terraformer like high medium low, so if u want you can do a thin layer to cover the outside walls of your bases to help it bled or do huge chunks as is now. On a side not, could we also get something similar to glass walls for the base of the multipurpose room so we can see below it? might be cool, or have the option of using the enameled glass instead of normal glass and have it add a little support? it is what we use for Cyclops to go even deeper.
Comments
My understanding was that the biggest problem is that it leads to an ability to modify terrain. Having to save the terrain leads to large save game files which are incompatible with console releases. So, the terraformer would mean that the PC release would have to be a substantially different branch (and load times might not be optimised etc.)
I personally love the terraformer because it allows for excavating during base construction - this gives more control and allows doing things like building bases into cliff faces. I do hope they release the terrain editor someday so that we can do that in dev mode!
It'd be nice to have more warning if this is the case so that I can document them with screenshots first!
The impression I got is that all terrain would be frozen (i.e. no more digging).
I also believe that the terrain isn't randomly generated - the spawn points for some resources and creatures are randomised - but the basic terrain is hand-crafted.
This is my experience as well. Landforms are recognisable between saves. The exact location of quartz, sandstone, etc seems to vary, as does the starting location for your pod which can give the impression of a different map for a while. Wrecks are always in the same place and always have the same contents. Creature spawns seem to be random - my current game has a kelp forest with zero stalkers in it. Makes a nice green location to call home
(Which is a bit of a shame, because I would love to see procedural terrain. However I suspect the devs made the decision that they would rather see a commonality of experience between players, and not have one person get shafted by a challenging map on their first game, while someone else gets silver ore right under their pod.)
My experience has been that fish spawns are fixed - apart from changing with some updates. But they are not just evenly distributed throughout their respective biomes. There are a few spots with fewer or just no aggro fish at all. And those spots are the same in every game.
so then would a good resolution to that be if they changed it to where its an empowered 'dig' function? only absorbing what you can dig because most of those areas have some kind of rock around it preventing you from digging into it. Then you could still use it for base building just not getting vehicles somewhere you shouldn't. As for the save file problem...no idea xD but if its the same problem with base building then hopefully they think up a good resolution other than terraformer because you cant get rid of base building in a game like this lol. idk though i have no idea for coding or anything like that, but i don't mind if my file gets bigger
The real problem is UWE may not have the time to update the save logic to just save what has been changed, from what it currently does.