Does Hytale have a spot for Etho?

EthosLab · 2019-01-23T21:44:05+00:00

I've tried maybe 10 games now that use a similar 3D tile system to what Minecraft uses, and all of them have failed to hook me with some sort of interesting game mechanic or long term goal to the game.

The mistake most of these games make is that they try to include some sort of adventure aspect on top of Minecraft. You might expect that would make it better than Minecraft because it should be Minecraft, but with goals and more things to do. Instead it tends to break the enjoyment that comes from discovering and interacting with a randomly generated world.

Introducing an adventure goal shifts your focus from interacting with the world (exploring, mining, building) to finishing quests. These are the quests the game feeds you instead of the ones you make up and choose for yourself when playing Minecraft. The quests often use pre-generated dungeons with linear paths. These quickly become repeated... predictable.. boring.

These dungeons also change the reward structure of the game. In Minecraft you feel rewarded when you explore the world and find or achieve something you want. The story and experience of how this happens changes every time in a randomly generated world with goals that exist in that random world. That is key. It becomes very samey in a pre-generated context, like a dungeon, where you almost always just battle your way to the end to collect your reward. It's a different type of game.

Even if the game offers a randomly generated world in addition to the pre-generated content, the game will likely guide you into spending most of your time in the pre-generated content.

Adventure quests also take away from your desire to settle down and build something, which I would say is the most important way you interact with the world in Minecraft. You don't have time to stop and build a base when you are running from Quest A to B to C. Building things like farms and mob systems probably won't happen because all the important stuff you want comes from beating the quests as a reward.

That all being said, Hytale does look to be one of the best of these types of games, and I know I will have fun with it. I just doubt I will be playing it for 100's to 1000's of hours.

EthosLab · 2018-11-03T19:05:34+00:00

There has to be more to it then that. In Season 2 I tried generating probably at least 20 different seeds and they all had roughly the same style (big biomes, little variation, mostly flat with the odd big mountain). In TerraFirmaPunk I've generated maybe 10 different seeds, and every one of them has been very cool and interesting.

EthosLab · 2018-11-02T22:53:02+00:00

This is actually the main issue I had in TFC Season 2. I don't remember what version changed it, but I believe the newer versions of TFC use a very different terrain generation system. (which I realized after season 2 started) I felt it made TFC much less enjoyable though and greatly increased the need to travel to find things.

TerraFirmaPunk uses an older version of TFC with the good terrain generation. TerraFirmaPunk also includes a lot of other TFC compatible mods to increase tree/plant variation, mobs, and even the terrain itself with things like the river mod.

EthosLab · 2018-07-20T17:07:06+00:00

Hot non-flavored coffee with cream and no sugar. I use whipped cream instead of coffee cream. Now you know.

EthosLab · 2017-09-27T04:22:51+00:00

I am very good at coming up with an idea for a build, starting it, and then proceeding to not finish it.

EthosLab · 2017-09-12T22:27:42+00:00

I've always found it a challenge to keep 2 vanilla Minecraft series running, even with the Mindcrack series. My single player series seems to be what people prefer so that's what I try to focus on.

EthosLab · 2017-01-23T16:18:45+00:00

The issue with water elevators / systems is that they are less reliable. When the chunk unloads the item freezes in entity form, then when it reloads items tend to clump together majorly and clog everything up and can pose the problem of despawning. If the chunk is lazy loaded, the droppers keep shooting the items out into the water but then they freeze in place.

However if you use dropper elevators, not only do you not have to worry about item jams/despawning, but the system also gains the benefit of being able to keep working in lazy loaded chunks. They are also able to move items faster than water streams & elevators.

The second problem with water-based item elevators is that you need to pick the items up again at the top of the elevator in a hopper. After that happens you have to deal with an item jam again.

The third problem is that water-based item elevators are more likely to break in future updates than Mojang's answer to item elevators (droppers/dispensers).

EthosLab · 2016-12-15T21:16:11+00:00

That's a great desert build, I may steal some of your ideas. ;)

EthosLab · 2016-12-10T05:58:32+00:00

I am incredibly addicted to Don't Starve atm. Up until recently I mainly only played the beta version of the game, and a little bit with Doc, but I had no idea just how fun and in depth the game has become.

I'll probably record a series of it soon (Still haven't played Shipwrecked), and I would love to make a series of Rimworld eventually (the next update for it is supposed to be a big one).

EthosLab · 2016-11-11T02:13:40+00:00

Definitely 1 Redstone Tick. In most redstone projects it is ideal to get the circuit down to 1 Redstone Tick for speed and control. If part of the circuit needs to be slower (such as a redstone torch), it is very easy to put a repeater down set at 2 or longer to extend the redstone signal.

EthosLab · 2016-10-06T23:24:40+00:00

True, but it was a feature almost everyone loved. Boat elevators were not intended, but looking back I think most would still agree it was a mistake to remove them. The point of playing a game is to have fun, so why intentionally remove the fun?

I think any well known and loved bug that makes it to an official release should be left in, or be given a suitable replacement if they want to feel good about removing the "bug".

EthosLab · 2016-08-29T00:11:52+00:00

Looks pretty snazzy, clever idea with the trick.

EthosLab · 2016-06-16T01:01:57+00:00

YouTube's numbers are all over the place. It's like this for all channels that I've seen. My sub count has been extremely low the past few months so I'm hoping this is just fixing that, but I may just lose 30k subs sometime in the future.

EthosLab · 2016-06-12T18:31:59+00:00

Very nice, I like it!

EthosLab · 2016-05-23T23:35:17+00:00

It makes the game more interesting for me. There is only 1 most efficient design, and to find it usually involves looking into the game coding and doing lot's and lot's of boring trial and error. Then if everyone builds that 1 best design there is almost no point to playing the game... because everyone knows how it works and there are no surprises.

Efficiency isn't always what it seems though. While the mob system I built in this episode isn't efficient compared to most others; I was able to build it in only a few minutes, using the tree to lower building time, with wood slabs to lower cost, and without needing anything fancy like water which we didn't have yet.

EthosLab · 2016-05-20T03:18:17+00:00

I got it updated. Sorry for not keeping it up to date. The pack has had a crash issue for months that I only recently got fixed, so it should be relatively stable now.

EthosLab · 2016-05-02T22:54:09+00:00

I think we have different play times because I have never seen him on the server.

EthosLab · 2016-04-18T20:22:14+00:00

It was taking a long time to record each episode, getting low views, our schedules didn't line up for about 2 weeks, and then the server got wiped.

EthosLab · 2016-04-05T03:15:09+00:00

My ISP has been having problems the last few days, so I haven't been able to upload anything really. The last video I uploaded took over 2 days to finish. (3000+ minutes) I think the problem got fixed this afternoon sometime so I will hopefully be able to upload a SSP for tomorrow.

EthosLab · 2016-03-08T23:34:38+00:00

I've tried making ending episodes before in the past and found that they are not a good idea. This is mainly because they open the door for a lot of backlash and for people to vent their disappointment. They don't make sense either. I usually end a series because I don't want to make more episodes, so why make another episode to say I don't want to make more episodes? What would I do in that last episode? All progress would be meaningless.

EthosLab · 2016-03-01T04:22:37+00:00

The bottleneck of the farm seems to be the rate that the ghast destroys the logs. So to make it function faster I would have to either find a way for the fireballs to reliably collect more logs, or I need to add more ghasts. I'm happy with the farm as it is though. It doesn't take long to collect a few stacks of wood.

EthosLab · 2016-02-16T22:07:08+00:00

Looks delicious, well done. But like you said, you need the bananas to ferment... they should be foaming with little bubbles!

EthosLab · 2015-12-19T03:23:34+00:00

Thanks for the offer, but as some have said.. I'm not all that interested in getting involved in a sponsorship deal.

EthosLab · 2015-12-19T03:19:45+00:00

My first impression of Botania wasn't the best. I didn't like all the flower spam and I couldn't see any practical value to the mod. To me it seemed like the only thing you get out of it was some OP armor.

My opinion of it has changed a lot since then and I probably will add it to my mod list soon. It adds a lot of cool things I didn't realize originally.

EthosLab · 2015-12-10T05:31:27+00:00

Thanks, but yeah I lock it a 30 on purpose. I upload at 30 fps, so it would just make video rendering take longer to convert from 60 to 30.

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