Bay 12 Games Forum

What does the balloon do?

From what I've picked up, it just shy of doubles your jump height. Makes zombie-proofing a building sans grappling hook much easier. You can make all the entrances higher than the zombies can reach.

Perhaps interesting, though. Shouldn't be terribly difficult to make air pockets on the fly, and the amount of deaths involved in inattention would make it properly dwarfy...

Anyway, finally noticed someone with a depth meter on a floating island. Seems they're ~350 feet up. Maybe between 300 and 400.

E:Continued observation shows you can easily convert the little temple thing into a house for someone. Awesome.

Especially since starting out you won't have the entire surface to build on, you have the surface only so far as the corruption is to the east and west.  Because players starting out can't cross the corruption easily(at all).  And even for mid gear folks, it's still a tough obstacle between their house and respawn every time they die.

East, west, up, down... the corruption can be dug under or built over with sufficient effort. Just need a lot of non-dirt blocks for the latter and patience for the former. I've been seeing screenshots of underground houses all over the place, now, and even a few snaps of the sky islands.

Can build = true is probably a greater weapon than everything short of teleportation and wall hax ala bosses and fire imp projectiles, and it's a weapon available right from the start. Even devourers and skeleton worms can only jump so high, heh.

As for the numbers thing... I'unno. It'd probably depend more on how much the players clumped together than anything else. Everything we've seen says these maps are freaking huge. Easily enough for 8-15 folks to have their spot for mining and building, especially if some of them's specifically grouping up to work an area over.

The spawn thing's an issue, though. Looking forward to support for moving the team spawns around. That'd at least help the problem a bit.

EDIT: Linked on SA, from PBat's latest. The maps are large, people. Space is going to have a hard time being an issue

Remember. They're wider than they are tall.

Psst.

Terraria, coming to you sooner than you expected. Baring no complications, Expect it available on Steam, Monday, May 16th 2011!!!!

Irc folks say it's gonna' be $9.99, according to Tiy. Good news is good.

Best reaction to leak? Possibly, possibly...

Man, see me wincing. This is almost painful... another leak. Considerably more recent. From the comments I've been seeing, it's apparently circa Pbat's version with the star-bugged large worlds. Folks are apparently playing it over hamachi. My heart (and money, eventually) go out to the poor guys

Hope this doesn't delay the official release...

My experience has been, if Steam pushes your rig over the edge it's time for a new computer, not for games to avoid Steam. I totally appreciate running a PC into the dirt, but you're already on the fringe of gaming. There's no reason they should factor that in when they choose who to go with. There is a reasonable cut off point after which devs shouldn't be expected to support lower end hardware. If that marker is Steam, well, progress can be a bitch.

Which is the general opinion I see on the topic, yeah, and it's a fair and accurate position to have. It'd be nice if 'time for a new computer' was really an option at the moment

It doesn't seem to me that an 'off-while-playing option' for Steam would be inhibiting progress, though. Or why something more than Steam rather than instead Steam would be, yanno', some terrible progress-inhibiting sacrifice (though I'm playing that up a bit, of course ). I have trouble seeing it as a binary 'either Steam or not Steam' thing. Both Steam and something else would be nice, is all. Th'devs prerogative, of course, and it's not going to stop me from getting (legitimately, even!) the game. It'd just be nice if the choice was there.

I haven't noticed any media with the new sprites, m'self, but I haven't really been paying terrible much attention since the release month was mentioned. Maybe in the more recent Pbat LPs, I'unno.

And yeah, Flare, Steam only for, at least, the initial release.

Or, yanno', legitimate software/hardware conflicts. Steam doesn't run flawlessly on all computers. It's why I'd really like it if there were some other options Though I guess it is accurate that it's a niche problem that most folks don't have. Still...

It can also tip the scales for older computers, from ' just barely able to run' a game to 'not able at all'. I honestly wouldn't mind steam if I could turn it off after starting the game up, or something along those lines, but having to keep it running can cause issues that would otherwise be avoidable.

It's not going to stop me from getting Terraria, but if there were another option, I'd definitely be planning on using that instead.

I'd definitely say give the demo a whirl. It's only ~100 meg download.

For all that it's still feels fairly clunky, what I've played of it (said demo) is actually pretty decent. I'd wager it'll at least match Starscape by the time it's actually done, and Starscape would be a definite on my "Games to play sooner or later" list. SS is a solid top-down space shooter type thing with exploration and resource gathering/upgrading components, and SPAZ here is roughly the same sort of game and looks like it's already pretty good, just not "there yet." I'd say something like Starscape plus, what was that called... Space Rangers? Yeah, that's it, especially the second one... is a good way to shoehorn SPAZ into a X-game plus X-game thing.

As for looks, for what it does, I'd rate it a solid A- on my scale of things (which is, uh, probably kinda' out of date. I still think stuff like Diablo and Seiken Densetsu 3 (Aka Secret of Mana 2) look pretty good.), and it looks a lot better moving than it does static, usually. The game itself feels (from the description and demo) a little campish, so to speak, but with a name such as it has, that's not exactly a surprise. Dialogue I've seen isn't exactly Pulitzer material, but it's not 'bad fanfic' level either (punctuation!).

If the game was 5$ now for beta access, with another 5-10$ when it's done for free access to any expansions or content updates (DLCs) (or at least the first wave or two), I would recommend it in a heartbeat. Maybe even a flat 10$/10$. 15$'s too much, imo, for current investment, but if it gets better than it is, it'll probably be about right, maybe even a bit underpriced. Anyway, I wouldn't discount it out of hand without at least dipping into the demo, yeah.