Public Development/Feedback Server

[bold oracle]

after all, if you're going to want to get people interested in terraria servers, leveraging weird and silly things involving a lot of people that you can't do elsewhere seems like it'd hook atleast some people in if they heard about it

[pseudo kraken]

Finally (I will read this in a minute)

[pseudo kraken]

Ok so

I do not have time rn to respond, but will in like an hour

[pseudo kraken]

I'd keep bug reports here, right next to support. As for suggestions, since the former development server is going public, there will be no harm in moving them there. Btw, is it really necessary to have a bot for that? From my experience from way bigger discord servers forum posts as suggestions are way better and I think they can still be archived if accepted/rejected

When it comes to server building/mapedit, a lot of the motivation stems from other people working on stuff alongside you, and over time many people got burnt out since they felt alone. There was an influx of people from freebuild, with me included, where people learnt together how to build properly and thus were capable builders when applying for mapedit, but since freebuild is just worse than mapedit due to lacking commands, no one goes there anymore and because of that there are way less new builders.

I think merging mapedit and freebuild is a good idea, where you could gain the additional commands through the current mapedit application, just so they aren't abused

That way experienced builders can easily inspire and help newer ones

But ofc this would require work and it isn't guaranteed to succeed, so first I'd focus on getting more players

Tho I think some of the content and clips could be building related

Timelapses may be hard to do, or at least I doubt people here have a lot of experience making them, but just exploring builds on freebuild could be nice

I know chintzy's build was the biggest inspiration for me, and I think sharing these builds could help attract potential builders

[pseudo kraken]

I might check it out rn actually and see what has popped up

and maybe build something while im there

[tardy tartan]

That's a good idea actually

Imo server needs more attention from Terraria players. I honestly don't remember when did in-game server hit at least 100 players this year, so it's important to gain more popularity and fame if we want to get an active playerbase on this server.

I've checked other servers' stats and they're not that optimistic either. I think all of Terraria servers lack promotion at this point.

[pseudo kraken]

im reporting that there's a ton of empty regions blocking a ton of the map so if someone has the time a purge of at least those would be good I think

[winged herald]

The bot will be more than just with making suggestions. Some examples is how it'll tie to bug reports, #implemented & some stuff internally too. Plus it will help with formatting stuff with bug reports for people because currently a lot of bug reports don't quite follow the format we'd prefer so it makes it harder for us to look into.

Also we'll see if we're making the former development server public or just making a new one because there is quite a plenty of channels to archive & stuff to move around with that one if so

[winged herald]

Last time someone tried looking into the regions I believe they said the commands don't quite work but I don't know, I didn't keep up with it because I believe that was when I had no working setup

[carmine cedar]

I think the requirements to get mapedit from a building perspective should be drastically lowered

[winged herald]

Probably something we'll be moving towards

[carmine cedar]

And I think maybe

And this is a very personal opinion

[winged herald]

As for freebuild as an instance itself idk it came in at a very weird time because I was on hiatus & just came back to it so I don't know what the direction was or what to do with it now

[carmine cedar]

Some of the feedback for some of the mapedit applications

Feels like it's pushing everyone to one overall style of building

With the texturing and stuff

[winged herald]

There is plenty of ways to interpret the feedback I've given for mapedit apps but that isn't my goal. My goal is a lot of the general building fundamentals to build off from & develop your own style

As with learning some of the general fundamentals, you can go a long way from there with your own style developed

Also just for a headcount, around 150~ or so users have mapedit access currently

[carmine cedar]

Do we have an estimate how many have joined in the last year

[winged herald]

probably not but the issue with that metric would just be that our playercount has also dwindled a bit so that doesn't help

[pseudo kraken]

You could search that up easily

Actually lemme try that

[winged herald]

Also on a related note to what you said about the mapedit application feedback; I have a few ideas regarding getting people to more clearly say what kinds of maps they want to make for the server

As obviously, level of building varies for the different kinds of maps

Like spleef compared to parkour for example, level of building skill varies a lot there for what is required

Lowering the level of standard a bit in turn with more application specifications would likely be an improvement

[pseudo kraken]

Nvm at least on phone discord search feature sucks

[winged herald]

Are you referring to it capping out at how many results it tells you?

like numbers wise

or are you just talking about searching in general

[winged herald]

Because this is a setting under appearance with "Show exact search result counts"

[carmine cedar]

I just don't think there's any harm to having more people in mapedit

The standards should just be there to gatekeep people who can't be trusted

And obviously won't make completely useless trash

[winged herald]

What are your thoughts on this?

[carmine cedar]

That would be an improvement for sure

[winged herald]

cool cool

I'll be thinking about mapedit stuff as I have started to think more on lowering standard with that kind of idea in mind

Mostly because I have also now started getting mapedit access people involved with projects

While I may not be selecting everyone to get involved with lobby projects & still a bit selective quality wise with that, I'll be getting the mapmaking stuff open for new spleef templates in early august or so

Which i was going to do a post about so I'll do that now

[pseudo kraken]

No it just showed no results on "accepted"

[winged herald]

Oh so mobile discord is just being stupid

Because "accepted" is literally said in #mapedit-archive

lmao

[pseudo kraken]

Yeah

Imma check on my pc later

[winged herald]

Ok i tried searching "accepted" in #mapedit-archive on pc & it just isn't grabbing results from the "A mapedit application was accepted" line whatsoever??

[pseudo kraken]

Anyways with Mapedit I think people who only build shoeboxes could be accepted if they have good level design

[winged herald]

Thank you discord

[pseudo kraken]

So this is a good idea

[bold oracle]

oh this one's really funny because of the formatting, do accepted__ instead and it'll work

[winged herald]

WHAT

bro discord sucks holy shit

i had just manually counted roughly 16 within past year but that doesn't include any people who have got staff, server builder or parkour playtester in the past year as those users also get access to mapedit

[bold oracle]

it's Very Funny

[pseudo kraken]

Yeah I got 15

Out of 150 that's something

[winged herald]

But issue like I said is more dwindling playercount

[bold oracle]

not as bad as forum search which just doesn't?? find things sometimes and is a pain with any slightly old posts, forums search is just BLEUGH on discord

[winged herald]

Plus mapedit is also directly tied to discord too so that may be another barrier; but a bit of a necessary one

[winged herald]

I hate trying to search for messages in forums

This sucks internally because we have a forum for game design threads!! Makes searching for something in any of them with hundreds of messages suck!!

Like I don't want to scroll through hundreds of messages in lets say the ctg game design thread

[bold oracle]

oh yeah you can't search a forum post because they're considered. all as one channel for search 🫠

[winged herald]

yep

makes it really bad for if i'm searching something general like "maps"

e.g if i previously pinged asking what the status of maps in submission is

[pseudo kraken]

Yeah it sucks, because servers aren't really supported after some time there isn't much they can offer, on the other hand mods are way more entertaining

That being said friendslop is hard to come by

[winged herald]

Yeah servers aren't as big of a part of the Terraria ecosystem as mods

But, I've been working on Re-Logic networking plus familiarising myself with other parts of the ecosystem such as some of the newer faces in the content creation side so, I've got my eyes on some plans 🤞

[pseudo kraken]

I do think the server is a little too competitive (not in specific players competing with each other but the nature of most minigames)

[winged herald]

Plus, I have plenty of plans to get things swinging for 1.4.5 too, like with survival there'll almost immediately be plenty of new stuff to host once we have 1.4.5 support

Really looking forward to hosting with the new special seeds & the combinations with mixing & matching different ones

[pseudo kraken]

But if you asked me for any ideas I wouldn't have any specific ones unfortunately

Just thinking about it, turning PvE into a more social minigame letting you trade with players may be good, but then again some people might have issues with that, especially considering that the structure of it would have to change drastically

But honestly, trying simple (code wise) experimental features for a little bit that could be reverted could work for multiple minigames

[winged herald]

My concern with doing experimental codework like that is just due to our smaller dev team size

[pseudo kraken]

Yeah that is an issue

But if someone had a spark of motivation and an experimental idea just letting them try it out instead of iterating on it too hard sounds reasonable to me

If they get positive reception they also get more motivation

[bold oracle]

one thing i've said before i think for helping friends/groups of people play on the server is some kind of party system that helps everyone follow each other around different gamemodes and, where possible, letting them team up more often (stuff like CtG maybe excluded, of course)

[winged herald]

Currently for a headcount we have 2 full developers & 2 assistant developers. Plus Squid & myself do some codestuff too occasionally when we can. My knowledge is pretty limited though so I've been much smaller in scope, only reason I have "developer" role is to push changes to private lobbies for testing on the live server

[winged herald]

With the party system, I do have an old suggestion noted for a "party chat" idea, basically just a group /whisper

Would probably make communication convenient with a group of friends if you want to do it across multiple instances

e.g one is in parkour but the others are in ctg

[bold oracle]

that could be a good thing too, yeah

[winged herald]

as for following your friends into different gamemodes, you can currently do this with /j at least, but the teaming up stuff we'll see where it can apply as stuff like ctg may not be super balanced in that regard

[pseudo kraken]

That and a customizable color for the whole text so that it doesn't get flooded by regular chat

[winged herald]

Yeah I would want the party chat to be distinct from other chat colours on the server

[bold oracle]

i will second this, although I Don't Know what would be a manageable solution to there being too much PvP based stuff, because going "Oh yeah just make a good new co-op/PvE gamemode" is obviously not really a solution you can just Do

[winged herald]

I do think adding some more casual fun smaller modes to party can help

Although I did look over a few that have been noted on our internal suggestion boards for years & they were just ones that could be host lobby games, so we'd need to figure out some newer ideas

[pseudo kraken]

Also, having a small pp multiplier bonus if you're in a party could be interesting

[bold oracle]

party is also quite beginner friendly as is (except.. Animal Hunt.. but we don't talk about that)

[carmine cedar]

Also related to chat color

[winged herald]

animal hunt i want to rework eventually still

but it is larger scope

[carmine cedar]

Some lobbies where there is a lot of solars can make chat very difficult to read

[pseudo kraken]

The people who could abuse it have enough pp already I think, so that's not an issue

[bold oracle]

as a smaller suggestion, this might seem a bit icky but would it be possible to add additional weighting to high ranked players to be the initial hunter? i feel like low ranked players often get picked which sucks for everybody

[carmine cedar]

I still think it'd be cool if something were done to make this less of a problem

[carmine cedar]

Isn't this like the 7th rework by now

[winged herald]

probably

[carmine cedar]

I think the game is honestly fine enough as it is

[winged herald]

I had polled a long while ago to make hunters & hiders map specific to give the game like, more variability

[carmine cedar]

Seeing as none of the other ones really made any problems go away

[winged herald]

both from a mapmaker perspective & a player perspective

mapmakers can make their own hunter/hider kits to be used in maps & theme it with the map decor & such too

[pseudo kraken]

I'd focus on stuff that has a more certain future first

[bold oracle]

i honestly don't think the core gameplay is the issue, it's just that if the initial hunter is new they generally don't get any kills and it's just a minute of waiting

[winged herald]

yeah the issue with hunter selection can be a bit of a waiting game

[pseudo kraken]

That would be nice

[winged herald]

As for this; I do want to at least change solar's chat colour because right now it genuinely is an eyesore

But that wouldn't exactly fix the issue

[carmine cedar]

Yeah

[pseudo kraken]

You could also totally leave the "animal" concept behind with that

[carmine cedar]

I think the idea of giving vrank access when you reach max rank should be revisited

[winged herald]

Yea

[bold oracle]

people will come after me for this suggestion but set everyone's chat colour to white and make ranks colour their names only

[carmine cedar]

I notice people who stuck at lower fragment ranks make chat genuinely 100x more usable when they are in the lobby and the color variety is there

[winged herald]

this sounds terrible to read

[carmine cedar]

Yeah that sounds literally so much worse

[winged herald]

especially in some maps like white painted & such

plus, death messages are white already too in instances applicable

[pseudo kraken]

I think it would make server messages much better tho

[winged herald]

i disagree with the mass white text change

[winged herald]

but, i do want to revisit this, yes

[bold oracle]

i guess? but like this is true for any colour when you're in a map that colour

[carmine cedar]

Yeah

[bold oracle]

wait no text always has a black border

[carmine cedar]

Except it's for every message

The colors give a lot of personality to chat and I would literally just start putting the color brackets before every message of mine

[bold oracle]

fair, fair

[winged herald]

discord increased the pin limit per channel from 50 to 250 so i am going to use the hell out of it here

[bold oracle]

📌 🧷 📍 📌 📌
(ran out of unique pin emotes...)

[winged herald]

lol

[carmine cedar]

WHAT

[pseudo kraken]

Btw any thoughts on this? I think it could support parties a lot and the abuse doesn't seem as likely to me if the parties play together

[carmine cedar]

They would NEVER

[winged herald]

yea it only took them a few years

but oh don't worry first they increased the server cap to 2.5m for some god unknown reason

even though the servers to even get remotely CLOSE to that size already had discord's special exceptions

[winged herald]

Point multipliers we have certainly experimented with in the past with voting stuff for the holiday season; so i'll think about it

[bold oracle]

going back to this idea quickly - some kind of experimental or atleast non-progression focussed survivals could be an idea, on a basic level this could be like "No access to hell, do whatever you want in this world for the next week", esp if you want to get content creators involved they might find something like this an interesting idea

[winged herald]

yeah I do want to experiment more with survival stuff

new gimmicks & experimenting with how they flow as a host

plus ye content creators we do want to try & reach out to for some stuff too

[pseudo kraken]

different goals other than defeating the ml would also be nice, like mining the whole world or gathering set amounts of resources

[carmine cedar]

trueeee

[unique yarrow]

change boss hp scaling first

just fit arctan or smth

or a log function

[winged herald]

hp scaling in most survivals now just uses vanilla terraria scaling rather than the old server custom scaling when a new person hits the boss

[unique yarrow]

o

theres just a lack of content creation around the server so its not getting any fresh exposure

content creation for ctg which has always been the biggest on media is also dead

i feel that certain gamemodes are favored development wise over others just based on what the developers and staff are interested in

which isn’t necessarily bad but will hinder the playerbase from expanding

[winged herald]

i feel that certain gamemodes are favored development wise over others just based on what the developers and staff are interested in
Mentioned in the document

theres just a lack of content creation around the server so its not getting any fresh exposure
Is this in regards to updates? I've asked in the ctg thread internally if there is anything going on with the game but I've gotten a lacking response

[unique yarrow]

by content creation i meant media uploaded surrounding the server on platforms like youtube

[winged herald]

ah

[unique yarrow]

the lack of updates definitely contributes to the lack of content creation though

[winged herald]

yeah

[unique yarrow]

ctg hasnt gotten a major update since right after ctgl2 ended

most development has just been done within the scrim server

[winged herald]

This is in part kind of the issue with smaller splinter communities working on custom configs for their play sessions, as the main game itself may have focus diverted away from it by staff who are involved in said community

I'm not against the scrim community having their own ctg config or anything as there is plenty of dope stuff you guys can do for a more "competitive" environment, but it does have drawbacks

[unique yarrow]

at this point its not a config its ctg2 💀

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WaCpbeghMDAK_m1XrtjMfcUX_LzjIsBL/view?usp=sharing

[grave pendant]

after a bit of backreading i got some stuff to mention
first, fb should probably be simplified a lot more since just the making a region thing limits building a lot because of staff not being active to accept regions. also i think adding /creative to fb would be a lot better for building, specially since most new players dont know how to use /i and the chests there are take too long to take items from

[winged herald]

Staff accepting regions isn't the issue, it is just the matter of how long some have been there cluttering the world inactive

[grave pendant]

also, for stuff like pve challenges and survival gimmicks, (mostly pve) there should be some more thought over the challenges as for now you can basically create a year's long pve challenges in one day

[winged herald]

plus in general trying to set up in freebuild is like, a chore

& not new user friendly

[winged herald]

direct pve suggestions to @sweet cradle or @frigid elm

i don't touch that stuff besides look over blog posts to check if they are good to go for posting + when it comes to any relevant patron perk awards

more than welcome to use #suggestions to suggest future pve challenge ideas though

or just dm relevant people

as for survival gimmicks yeah i really want to do some new stuff

1.4.5 launch will bring a lot

[unique yarrow]

tbh idt public ctg can be saved at this point just because theres only so many viable weapons in vanilla terraria

even with new content without proper exposure itll just fizzle out again

[grave pendant]

also, i wonder if it would be possible to add a secondary terraria world used for freebuild? if so it could be accessed by typing /fb [number], and making the newer world first in the list

[winged herald]

I think freebuild has issues to iron out first before anything like that

Namely with not being user friendly

[unique yarrow]

something that i think would be cool would be allowing parkour “challenges” with leaderboards submitted directly from mapedit to be played after approval from any staff member

wouldnt be part of the official maps and could be accessed from a separate prefix maybe

would allow for more gameplay to be accessible to the public without affecting the integrity of the “official” maps’ quality in future waves

so for example i could submit a random antigrav hook map without deco and have a leaderboard for it and have others play it without it being an official map

would be kinda like geometry dash where the best maps are rated/featured/given epic except they’re just added to lobby

[carmine cedar]

Really aside from new content there is nothing to do

"Balancing" the game won't do anything

[winged herald]

Yeah, I remember right before Luma stepped down there was a new class concept being put together but, after Luma stepped down I stopped hearing about that

[unique yarrow]

theres 3 new classes in scrim config

revised jman, leech, and paladin

[winged herald]

jman10

[unique yarrow]

it’s actually balanced this time

[winged herald]

lol

more importantly, with an identity of its own?

[unique yarrow]

yeah

pretty unique weapons (cursed flame thing that slides across ground and lasting spore cloud) and an ability where you explode particles everywhere

[winged herald]

interesting

[tribal panther]

imo for fb, it’d be for the best to use a “guest mode” of sorts in map edit

where you obviously cant do anything to crash the server

[unique yarrow]

leech has synergistic vampire knife and chain knife projectiles that allow for high burst damage

[winged herald]

i think leech was the one luma was talking about before stepping down

paladin one i am unfamiliar with

[unique yarrow]

used to have an ability that adds ability cooldown to others but got a new one thats kinda dogshit

paladin has mana limited ghastly glaive and an sitemed sergeant united shield that allows you to shield hits (+20 defense)

parry mechanic that gives +4 damage for a few frames after blocking an attack with shield

ability heals yourself and others with a burst of regen

[winged herald]

i see

[bold oracle]

this might be a bit of an Optimitic outlook but i was thinking on this and if the server picks up then like, there's a good chance some new people may appear
on that note it's also worth saying there should probably be some additional signposting in the development server about staff and developer and event coordinator roles (and any other roles like them) even if they aren't open for applications just to make people as aware of them as possible

[winged herald]

well we do have dev app open

kire applied right before said app was pushed out, exer came back after applying through that

then one of the responses was a response with basically nothing to go off of with like 1 word per answer lol

[bold oracle]

ye, all i'm saying is at a glance most people probably don't know that, dev server seems like the best place to have a "hey !! these are all our staff roles and whether they're currently open"

[winged herald]

yea

we have applications also linked in #welcome

[bold oracle]

Oh right yeah i forgot about the ones on the site

[bold oracle]

lmao??

[winged herald]

unrelated tangent, i hate this

why does this need to take up so much space

[winged herald]

anyways yeah it was literally like do you have any past experience coding? "no"

[bold oracle]

oh they've made it so much taller

[winged herald]

yes

i hate it

it's just so much wasted negative space

[bold oracle]

i think it's to match with the tag UI but still

[winged herald]

probably

[bold oracle]

What

[winged herald]

yes

[bold oracle]

why would you apply to be a dev with 0 coding experience 😭
isn't one of the things in dev app literally an interview. where you have to Code

[winged herald]

don't get me wrong very funny

[winged herald]

dev app is to filter out people who clearly have no experience so in this case it certainly did what it was meant to do

[bold oracle]

ohh i guess that makes sense

[winged herald]

yea

[bold oracle]

this reminds me that i need to stop hoarding code locally and actually put things on my GitHub...

[winged herald]

lol

[gilded warren]

Yeah I agree with the mapedit guest mode concept. There have been so many times where I've made a map and wanted to show it to friends for feedback (or just to torture them with horrible parkour) but they can't see it. If there was a command to allow someone access, even if it's just an "adventure mode" type deal like in Minecraft, that would be great.

adventure mode as in can't break or place blocks. Preferably though there would also be a mode where they can do that because that's important for stuff

[winged herald]

Mmmmmm "Gallery", or "Workshop"

[blissful pebble]

true, also usually creator cant notice all mistakes

[bold oracle]

i wonder if something like this could also be expanded on for build events - while it would depend on the thing, it could be quite useful to be like "hey! you can join mapedit (with limited permissions) to do an event submission!"
especially for collabs, it'd be easier if people were allowed to use the server than have to do some hosting solution by themselves

[winged herald]

I think the case of that would more apply to bringing back gamemode map events rather than our very general themed building events we have done for years

but it isn't a terrible idea

[rich cosmos]

The MVP for Inputguin I want to get ready by October, the aim is to get suggestion capabilities, bug report capabilites, and administrative features before launch.

We have already thought about extending it to connecting with the server DB for an added layer of user authentication, Taiga API etc. etc. but right now it's just getting it out there

and once it is out this will probably disappear from the main server lol

[bold oracle]

Inputguin is going to be the Suggester replacement bot i assume?

well and more by the sound of it

[rich cosmos]

yeah

toasty been nagging me about a custom solution for months now lol

[winged herald]

lol

it has been my idea to get a custom bot together for a good like year or so for suggestions in the case of something like suggester death happening

(it happened)

[bold oracle]

is the bot like actually dead dead?

[winged herald]

yup

from their support server

[bold oracle]

oof

[sweet cradle]

after lots and lots of challenges over the years its been hard to think of original and fun ones, but if you have any ideas feel free to let us know, you can dm with ideas bc i probably wont see it otherwise

[rotund lintel]

☝️

there was discussion on this like 2-3 years ago iirc

[winged herald]

yeah it was something i wanted to do a long while ago but never got around to & got caught up with other priorities & also my setup dying

[rotund lintel]

peak?

i kinda wanna contribute

would i need developer for that 😭

[winged herald]

well naturally yea

[bold oracle]

okay. it might not be entirely relevant to this channel but i feel like i need to share this here because it'll be appreciated
was sifting through my old code and stuff and found This in one of my plugins - maybe i was right about hoarding my code to myself

far from the most egregious thing about this plugin though

[winged herald]

lmao that is some funny help text

[bold oracle]

actually that does beg the question, is the server's codebase relatively clean considering it's like, ten years of work from many different hands at this point

[winged herald]

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

maybe @rough oracle can comment on that best

i feel from my looks through have actually been plenty clean & easy to understand

like ctg's code is an example, surprisingly easy to understand all sorts of it like the event area collectively is super beginner friendly if you have a basic understanding of what is going on

[bold oracle]

i'm surprised it all holds up so well but also impressed actually

[winged herald]

I think porting stuff off the editor into c# probably helped

[bold oracle]

i imagine that some stuff has probably been rewritten over time though- yeah editor death probably motivated a lot of Good Code™

[winged herald]

yea

although some of the main modes already were on c# like ctg, spleef, a few others

[bold oracle]

CtG did get a ton of changes for 1.4 though, didn't it?

[winged herald]

just some of the more misc stuff like most of the party modes, tank wars, cw & probably more were editor games

it definitely did yea

[bold oracle]

also mapedit has probably caused a lot of things to be unified

[winged herald]

mapedit my beloved

[bold oracle]

i like how in pp you can rarely catch a glimpse of old systems like lava run segments being arranged below the goal

[winged herald]

prolly more leftovers in some worldfiles too

[rough oracle]

there are some dark corners with a lot of tech debt but I find the experience of contributing features relatively pleasant most of the time for the actively worked on paths. although I've written most of the code and have 10 years of familiarity with it, so I'm biased. maybe some of the newer devs could say more

[rich cosmos]

With the anniversary week done @winged herald and I are getting back to this.

[bold sorrel]

Alright just let me know if you need any help.

[winged herald]

(i will be moreso once settled into college a bit but yea)

[tardy tartan]

I'll try to help as much as I can with this.

[winged herald]

Uh I don't really think there is anything you could exactly help with as a discord staff lol

This is moreso just management stuff for me & Squid to work on