Bugboy

@Ranger1k I spend many moons scanning piles of mosquitoes in my younger days, a talent that is very similar to scanning lines of code. I guess they don't call them "bugs" for no good reason? And your bit about "Hello World" was one of the first things to learn in Second Life, making a block say that, then later using that kind of code to flag bugs. I did that in UO too, to track bugs, inserting squawk code so that when something glitched, you could identify where it was in the code. ETA: sorry for hijacking this thread

OMG I had a dream project for Second Life to start a school to teach mosquito identification using 3d renders of mosquitoes. I figured out how to do it, but I couldn't get anyone in the research community interested. I suspect it was because Second Life has a reputation as a kind of virtual phone sex...

I also did some stuff in Second Life, but it got to the point where objects were not created in-game, but by importing from a 3d renderer. I made a decent income crafting floating "Roger Dean" style islands that people would build their houses on, using an in-game 3d shape renderer that was pretty rudimentary. Pre-fab shapes and such, nothing custom. But, I wasn't talented enough to figure out how to use the freebie 3D apps, and couldn't afford the commercial products. That experienced gave me the "matrix" insight into how things like running water is created in games, so I can't look at a stream in any game without seeing the various pieces and parts of it that make it work. Oddly enough, I got started coding from being an early user in my RL job of something call ArcView, which is now called ArcMap. It's a mapping program used by just about everyone over the last 20-30 years. I use an app extension of it called "Collector" daily for nearly all aspects of our operation, but now I'm in management so I've got some talented people to do the coding for me.

It's still going. I keep a house on Atlantic server just for grins and giggles. They were trying to adapt it to 3d rendering, which I was pretty pleased with, but apparently it was too problematic and they reverted back to the 2D "pixie" type animation. They've done pretty well with it (as evidenced by it still being in business), but the graphics haven't aged well, especially when you scale it up to 4K.

Oh, so NOW we know who built Thing's box? ETA: Boats in UO were a friggin' nightmare to script. I nearly got it working but I think due to lag I'd lose a piece of the boat here and there.

I'd like to think that game developers care enough about their occupation to stay interested, but I've experienced too many game endings to really believe that. I used to run a private Ultima Online server, and it kind of made me burn out and not want to play, so I get where they are coming from. But it's a fact that unless you play, or are willing to hire people to play, you are going to lose touch with what the game is all about. One thing that stands out for me from my experience running a server is the incessant efforts by players to exploit the game. I actually recruited some of the worst players in an effort to improve the coding (private UO servers are script based, but the emulator was built well enough that you could modify just about everything), but in the end, producing a game rather than playing seriously damaged my enthusiasm. ETA: My tag "Bugboy" refers to my career as an entomologist. I do mosquito control work, and have done that work for over 30 years. It STILL fascinates me and challenges me, but most of all, I never seem to flag in my interest in it. I'm good at it, so that helps. Maybe these guys just aren't good at what they do?

I hopped on not 12 hours after the wipe (I don't know when it came back up, but that's 12 hours from *scheduled* wipe, it was probably more like 6-8 hours) and it was foundation spam and walls everywhere. Someone even had a warehouse up. So, even that little bit of time made me a late starting player. I am usually the last one to piss on some game that I've had a lot of fun with, but ATLAS is getting ridiculous. There's a "new team"? What GD skid row did they hire this team from?

This zombie idea needs to die a quick death. Farmhouses are by definition "automatic farming". If you don't know the difference between the terms "manually farming" and "automatic farming", you have bigger problems than griping about the griping. Speaking of griping: I don't even know what to say to this. No one gives a damned about YOUR idea of "well, playing", because as usual, it doesn't include the things you don't consider "well, playing". Many, many other players might have a different idea of what "well, playing" is, within the parameters of any given game. Take building. MANY MANY MANY MANY players who buy a game with building, consider building "well, playing", and prefer to do nothing but building. That doesn't mean they are wrong to consider building "well, playing".

Just like ARK, players want instant gratification but instead of dozens of tames to lay eggs for kibble, it's pigs for poop. I asked in chat why one company needs 17+ pigs all lined up in a poop factory, when my 3 pigs supply me with enough poop to make fertilizer for all eternity. Like "WTF do you need 17 pigs for?", and the answer was "For our 250 crop plots!", which leads to my next question: "WTF do you need 250 crop plots for?"

@Captain Silude You said "Also so what if people won't need tames much" which indicated to me you were knocking taming in general. Otherwise, yes, on BREEDING, I'd agree. But, the farmhouse makes it: "Also so what if people won't need tames AT ALL" , which I think is a mistake.

Atlas taming to me is a welcome change to the tedium of ARK taming. You don't have to spend hours and hours hunting, and then hours and hours taming something. So, it's not remotely comparable to ARK other than there are tames and you can use the tames to collect resourced more efficiently. Oh, and there are bears and wolves. No narcos, no tranq darts, no kibble, and to be honest, a more realistic challenge to tame something other than hours and hours to dedicate to watching a sleeping tame. And that's part of what gaming is, isn't it? The challenge? However, nobody should be arguing for decreasing content in a game that is struggling to stay afloat as it is. Also if you don't want to use Tames. Guess what, you don't have to use them. I like the farmhouses very much as well, but the OP is right, it's made taming largely meaningless. If you would think about that a minute or 2, you will agree that's probably not a good thing for the long term success of ATLAS.

Yeah I noticed that last night. Must be the same group of brainiacs that allowed anyone to turn generators off in ARK. You would THINK that would be a major milestone, making sure only the owner can operate the equipment, but there I go thinking! As far as my comments above, after seeing them in action, I'm gonna have to say they are way OP, besides the headache of having a neighbor put one right up against his fence so your entire base area is blocked from placing one. I fitted my entire galleon with large cannons in one evening, with the resources 2 farm houses collected...

It's a well beaten dead horse that GS doesn't consider PVE important, but in their effort to get players on the water, the farmhouse isn't a bad idea. They straight up say the rate it collects is still no match for collecting by hand, and likely even more so with tames. But it allows players to get out on the water and let their base do some work, which to some players isn't a bad thing. Additionally, a lot of players simply see taming as an obstacle to their game play. I even see ARK players that gripe about taming, if you can imagine that. Frankly, investing in the amount of time needed breeding for mutations seems to me to be an exercise in frustration, if server wipes are going to be a regular thing... ETA: "we can have 100 windmills." From the announcement, there's a limit on how close they can be. You're going to have to have a huge island all to yourself, to put 100 windmills on.

Thanks, I didn't know that was a thing in Atlas. I'm gonna have to paint an elephant pink, so I can say I *HAVE* seen a pink elephant! Or is it white elephant? I can't keep up anymore...

I've been seeing this quite a bit, hoped they fixed it with the new map but I'm still seeing them. Is this a bug that should be reported? And it seems like it's only thatch foundations and crafting stations bigger than the foundation.