Please give us a Gustball Physics Pass while the League is sadly gone

@Berek @Sheamus McGuinness @Lazarus Long (I don't know who the other announcer is)

I haven't seen a Gustball game announcement since May, which is sad. And I know Devs are super busy, but this gives the Devs a great opportunity to do a physics and field pass as we prepare to start up again! And Gustball is a great way for players to spend time, so the use of Dev time to improve it could really pay off!

Video with feedback on the gustball field that there were asked about by a Dev, but it probably got buried and forgotten. (about minute 4 for the suggestions.)

From the veterans in the video: the referee tower is too tall, the goals need to be moved back so the posts line up with the line because they cause the ball to get hung up on the posts.

"Of course that bloody corner again. Do we have any Devs here listening? We need to get that Jira'd." (10 minutes into the video)



It also shows the physics pretty well. As you can see the physics were probably thrown together fairly quickly a long time ago and could use a touch up.

Maybe instead of the ball bouncing up and down as people gust it, apply force and get rolling around the field? I'm sure Devs don't have time to get passing laterally in, but at least having it roll based on physics would be great.

Sheamus what do you think about the physics? How could they be improved? Can you tag other players so they can give feedback?

(When you've got that happening in QA we all need to get in right at the start of the Dev release and test like crazy so it can be tweaked immediately instead of forgotten about and assumed good. We can do this!)

Pax Guilds are currently recruiting a team, @Bella Bones wants to get the league going again, so stand on notice for others to do so as well (or come back if you're still there!)

 

(BTW, look how fare we've come graphically. Great job Port! This is from 2015.)

 

Thank you for this feedback. Physics is not something we are going to change but we can certainly look at the layout of the field. Was this ever filed as a bug in the bug forums? It would be very helpful if it was.

 

I will follow up on whether there was a bug reported. I do remember the issues with the field being mentioned during a telethon, might have been earlier this year or last year. I'll get back to you on what I find. It would be great to be able to use this feature of the game as a way to bolster community relationships.

 

@DarkStarr
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...gged-on-the-gustball-field.71729/#post-707426
I found this report from 2016.

 

Ok that was prior to us updating them but it sounds like even after we made some changes there are still problems. Can you please provide a bulleted list of the issues? Even better would be some supporting screenshots with labels (but totally understand if that is asking too much).

 

We will definitely work on that and report them. If worse comes to worse we can use a person as the gustball and outfit them in a bloody wedding tuxedo
I kid, but really I'm not kidding...
Anyway, we will send in those reports as soon as we put the list together with screenshots. Thank you for your attention to this!

@Vladamir Begemot I'll be in Caelestis Canton later tonight testing it out if you'd like to join me.

 

Ok so here is an update on my end for you @Vladamir Begemot , @Sol Stormlin , @DarkStarr , @Bella Bones on Gustball issues, mechanics and the Gustball League.

1. Gustball issues
Premade courts have a few issues
- Yes the goal actually sits about 2 feet onto the court and this causes problems as the ball gets stuck in that corner. Can't use the pre-made courts because of this.
- The tower is pretty much useless and should be removed or reduced in height by 2/3 of it's height to be effective. It is also TOO close to the court and makes it hard to move back and forth next to the tower.
Player made courts
- using tiles like marble, wood, etc the ball sometimes gets "stuck" inbetween tiles.
General issues also include the Gust spell getting "stuck" at one location on the court. So anyone that casts gust, it goes there and not the targeted ball. This is tricky to reproduce, I can work on a video if someone likes.

2. Gustball mechanics
Well as DS said, they won't be changing the physics of the ball, so we just have to work with how it is now I suppose.

3. Gustball League
- We did this for the first half of this year, and while it was fun, the issue was teams being able to commit the time.
- We had 4 teams to start with and even though you only need 3 players, most teams had trouble consistently fielding enough people to play every other week (we could do 1 time a month, but that would stretch a league to a year long)
- A good referee is hard to find! I would ref the games that I did not play in and some of the games I DID have to play in (this was super hard).
- the official Gustball website - sotagustball.com actually worked quite well for the league
- we ultimately cancelled the league before the first season was even through with because of lack of players and interest.
- My plan was to bring the league back close to the time the game does a marketed release, until then just do 1 off tournaments for fun (holding one of these in November, just have not announced it yet!).

Phew! That was a lot! I love the game of Gustball and have put in a lot of work to keep it going, but without solid support behind me it does make it hard. Let me know how we can all collaborate to make Gustball an amazing in-game game.

 

Just curious, for episode 2 or beyond, do you think a future physics pass, maybe making the ball roll, would help with the popularity?

 

The game is popular and well liked, its just hard as hell to get people to commit to anything. I think it could benefit with another pass on the physics of how the ball moves, but that is the least pressing issue I feel.

 

Great, thanks for the input!

 

Was speaking about this in nobles chat today....

The ball used to roll like a ball prior to R44 or so if I recall, after that update the ball became like a croquet ball and when it hit anything it stopped instead of rolling. It used to roll over rugs etc which allowed for creation of golf courses like I had done for years with targets as 'closest to hole', now it touches any object it just stops. While I have adjusted from the prior behavior to the new one, the old seems to be what players are asking for and that is a ball to roll and not stop when hitting an object hit box if the hitbox height is under xxxxxx units tall. I am not sure why this change was made and bugged it many time in the past because for several releases summoning the gust ball was extremely buggy (that was fixed) but it does no longer roll like a ball. Rolling a ball is one of the first demo items in learning unity. Why does our ball behave so poorly when it used to work fine and allowed folks to create gustball courses of their own design rather than having to buy one from store or craft one.

We lost our creative freedom over gustball tourney creation, the gust ball lost its hp for training, I do not understand why a gustball does not roll like a ball over 'flat' objects like paver stones or rugs like it used to.

@DarkStarr

 

One of our better player created items in my eye. I liked it from the beginning when the players thought it up.
I have only played a couple games myself, but really wanted to get a league going at one point when I had 4 Metro's, I still would if enough POT's wanted to try and start a league.

One of the things I like about it was it began to bring towns together and instill community pride.
Most all your player towns could use another reason for people to come into them and socialize and compete in a friendly non violent way.

I think a second or third rework of the field and game mechanics would offer a lot more benefits than the dev's are thinking.

The gustball game is on life support and should be moved to the top of the list to be fixed, vs being shoved away for what ever reasons.

I know times are tight and the holidays are here. Maybe 1st qtr. next year take a swing and fix it definitely before the next marketing plan. I thought we were in the fixing the game and making it much more fun to play, mode around here since the launch disaster.

As far as the field bugs go, I'm not sure of a solution, but here is an off the wall thought. Sometimes simple is best.

Just saying NO to the players trying to keep it alive. Seems sad and a far cry from where the developers were just a couple years ago.


Sea Bear

 

*sigh*... never used.

 

Gustball is dead for the time being, and that's ok. Fishing is going great and getting a lot of people engaged.

I don't really think Gustball will catch on until the ball starts behaving like a ball. Physics make all the difference.

Have a look at Lucio Ball in Overwatch. I can play this for ages. Ball acts like a ball.



It would be nice, if Devs ever add physics to the ball, for them to consider making the ball go farther, and thus having some bigger fields, maybe a Town size one.

 

Barugon,

Now that a gustball field!

 

Precisely.

 

During a livestream players (including myself) played developers. This was the Port Phoenix Firehawks vs Poralarium's Lord British, DarkStarr, and Atos.

Here are two videos covering that game.





The field was designed by a player (I forget who all worked on it).

This may have been a performance issue.

Perhaps we could test gustball in a not decorated basement sometime to file some up to date bug reports.

 

I bet there will be a mini golf game one day.

Somehow.