Uhoh. Without mining where are you getting the stone to build with…
Quarries, perhaps, like in RTS games?
Backing.
Looks pretty cool.
Mining != Building under ground. IE: An entire city under a mountain. Not just digging out ore.
More info on what they are shooting for from their development blog:
So, why are we making this game?
With Stonehearth, we want to capture the magical feeling we had as kids playing Dungeons and Dragons adventuring through store-bought game modules, but also writing our own modules and playing them out on graph paper. We want to empower players to be creative not only when playing the game, but when determining the nature and content of the game itself. We aim to deliver:
[ul][li]A living world that responds to your play-style
[/li][li]Deep gameplay systems that reward tinkering
[/li][li]A super mod-friendly game[/ul]
[/li]
A Living World that Responds to Your Play-style
We know that there are lots of different play-styles for this kind of game. Some players want to focus on building an incredibly awesome city with happy, well-fed citizens. Others focus on building a strong army and exploring/conquering the realm. Many just want to tinker with the simulations in the game world. We want you to play the game the way you want to, so as you play the world will respond to your choices.
Each initial game world is randomly generated, but an AI “dungeon master” observes your behavior and tweaks the content based on your actions. This is always done in a way that is natural and makes sense from a story perspective. For instance, a player who is more aggressive when dealing with local, small-time goblin raiders may find his actions have triggered a long-term war against the goblin nation. Violence begets violence.
So two players with different play-styles, beginning with the exact same starting world, will have very different experiences as the game progresses. We like this for a couple of reasons.
[ul][li]Actions have consequences! Are you sure you want to rob that friendly caravan that just visited your town? There may be repercussions down the road.
[/li][li]Play the game how you like! The game adapts to feed you the kind of content that you like. There are limits here, of course. Don’t expect to neglect basic defenses just because combat isn’t your favorite thing in the world, nor should blood-hungry players neglect a basic economy and shelter for their citizens.[/ul]
[/li]
Deep Gameplay that Rewards Tinkering
We’re engineers at heart, so we geek out at complex systems. We design our major gameplay systems like farming, building, and combat according to the “easy to learn, difficult to master” principle.
Take farming as an example. The yield of a particular farm is determined by factors including the quality of the soil, the amount of water nearby, the crop planted, and exposure to varmits looking to devour the crops. If you are really into this kind of stuff, congratulations! There is ample opportunity to greatly optimize the output of your farms through irrigation, fertilization, and varmit-countermeasures like traps and fences.
But If you’re not into this stuff, you can just drag out a farm and accept the base, minimal yield that all farms produce, regardless of how they are managed. Of course this will constrain your food supply and you will have to make up the difference somehow, either by producing food through another means (trapping, trading, or plundering), or just settling for a smaller number of citizens in your town.
Mod-Friendly. Sharing is Caring
We think mods are awesome, especially for sandbox-type games. So we’re building everything: UI, unit AI, scripted scenarios (everything!) with modding in mind. Here are just some of the things you should be able to do in a mod:
[ul][li]Reskin the UI or add new UI screens
[/li][li]Add new units, monsters, weapons, armor, and other objects
[/li][li]Add new scripted adventures, big and small
[/li][li]Tweak or totally rewrite the AI for monsters or units
[/li][li]Make the sun rise in the west and set in the east (seriously!)
[/li][/ul]
I am so glad I backed this. Usually I bawk at games like this but this one really seems to have hit a sweet spot.
They need better pledge tiers > $50 , I’d give more but nothing is tempting enough.
I still have some questions about how the city building portions of the game will work, I’m not sure I like the mention of things like a “farming minigame”, and I’m not a huge fan of the JRPG style character design, but overall I really like a lot of their ideas.
It also seems like they’re well on track to hit the Coop stretch goal which would rocket this game to near the top of my list of desired games. Just the idea of being able to sit down with a buddy in a Dwarf Fortress style game and work together makes me a bit tingly.
Being able to name a settler is pretty nice. I’ll laugh everytime you guys get Jerk.
I am encouraged about being mod friendly. Mods really extended the enjoyment of minecraft by a very long time. I especially enjoy the technical mods and mods that add more things to discover in the world.
And the mods that add mods. And the mods to manage your mods. And the mods to moderate your mods.
In their baby mammoth animation live stream on Monday Tom was answering questions and addressed this specifically. I wasn’t fully paying attention and was running the stream in the background (it was a very long 2:30 hour+ session). But he said that the comments on farming they did in the Kickstarter video weren’t very well written. Specifically he said that farming was not really a minigame. My impression is that the minigame shown was a prototype to experiment with their framing concepts and won’t be a minigame in the actual game. From above quote from Stonhearth blog post:
Take farming as an example. The yield of a particular farm is determined by factors including the quality of the soil, the amount of water nearby, the crop planted, and exposure to varmits looking to devour the crops. If you are really into this kind of stuff, congratulations! There is ample opportunity to greatly optimize the output of your farms through irrigation, fertilization, and varmit-countermeasures like traps and fences.
But If you’re not into this stuff, you can just drag out a farm and accept the base, minimal yield that all farms produce, regardless of how they are managed. Of course this will constrain your food supply and you will have to make up the difference somehow, either by producing food through another means (trapping, trading, or plundering), or just settling for a smaller number of citizens in your town.
For what it’s worth, Tom and Tony Cannon are both ridiculously smart guys and have long histories in software development.
This is looking great, and by watching the Mammoth animating video, i get the feeling they can deliver what they promise. ofc they will bump into a lot of problems in the way, they will have to reduce a lot of the simulation they plan for and take back on some feature promises, but i feel the overall end product will be deep and beautiful. not Dwarf Fortress deep, obviously, but deep enough. their modules ideas is great.
New Stretch Goals for $320,000 up to $380,000. $400,000 is still Co-op Multiplayer
New Class - Geomancer: Manipulate rock and stone to bolster your city’s builders, flattening or raising earth as the cause demands. Craft tireless golem workers so everyone else can take a much needed break.
[i]She put green lights in their empty eyesockets–a fanciful touch, but she felt it gave them character. Now, she checked each rune for dust, noted every crack for the touchups she’d handle tomorrow. Powered them off, one by one. Slowly, green lights dimmed to black. “Good job, guys! Finished the whole square in just two days!” She dusted her hands, patted each fondly on the head, and shut the warehouse door.
In the dark, one pair of lights swirled back to life.[/i]
Enemy Faction - Elementals: When conditions are just right, unstoppable giants of fire, rock, ice, and air rampage across the land, destroying everything in their path. Appease them or prepare your defenses…
Verne Earthwalk fought to control his voice. “My Lords,” he managed, “when I said that your incessant digging made the earth angry, I meant it. Literally.”
New Class - Engineer: Fiendishly complex traps. Steam pumps. Black powder. In his moments of genius, this Master Craftsman boosts your town’s productivity with miraculously advanced tools and weaponry. In his other moments…
“With steam, human ingenuity, and enough pipes, anything is possible!”[/i]
Seasons!: Horde food for the winter and farm up a storm in the summer as the four seasons cycle over your town. Building, farming and fighting all gain new depth as rising temperatures parch the land and falling snows drive your settlers indoors.
“SNOW DAY!!!”
Then out at $500,000:
Alternate Planes: Many dimensions lurk beneath the fabric of reality. Lured by the promise of untold riches and arcane secrets, your bravest townsfolk open portals to previously unknown realms. What could possibly go wrong?
[i]Through the door I saw… the sky. The sky at night, when the stars fill one end of the horizon to the other. Except… the stars were ordered in perfect rows, like corn in the field. And little round plates studded with rubies dashed around between them, jabbing lances of light at each other. One of the plates… flew apart as I watched. In a ball of fire!
…No more mushrooms for me.
– From the diary of Archmage Twellot[/i]
They’ve got some cute pictures up for some of the goals like this one:
A few more new goal sketches out at the Kickstarter.
This is the first kickstarter I’ve backed.
Dammit, Qt3 - I’m backing this.
This KS has really grown at a steady and healthy pace. I suspect they will easily get to the $400K goal before the end, and probabaly the $500K
That’s a lot more money that Toady has seen the entire time he’s been doing Dwarf Fortress. I think. I know he’s had some good months, but the money trails off rapidly after a major update.
$50 pledged. I am sure my son will love this too.