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Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

https://www.thestompingland.com


What is this?

The Stomping Land is a in-development multiplayer survival game much like Rust or DayZ, minus the zombies, by indie game development studio SuperCrit. It was a Kickstarter project that started with the humble goal of $20,000 and got nearly $100k more than the initial goal. Recently it was approved for Steam through Greenlight and is set for Early Access.

Players take on the role of a primitive human who use resources from the environment to hunt down prey to fulfill hunger needs, as well as needing to find fresh water to drink. Due to the multiplayer aspect, tribes can be formed and carving out a small civilization is at least possible. Over time, and with enough success, players will be able to eventually tame dinosaurs and use them as mounts along with other advantages.

Note the similarity in zero fucks given while riding a dinosaur.




To achieve this players need to earn what the game calls "Expertise", which is earned simply by surviving. The longer a player is able to live in the world, the more Expertise earned. Each dinosaur has their own requirements in regards to the types of Expertise. However dying loses all of a player's expertise making risk/reward a big mechanic.

Wait, the Dinosaurs sound like they're going to be buggy as hell.

From what has been shown, while the game is obviously still in development, that doesn't seem to be too big of an issue. According to the developers the Dinosaurs will "naturally roam the island on their own" while looking for food and will even travel in packs. There are plenty of videos on YouTube and on Twitch.TV that show off the game if you're concerned with how the dinos behave that give a good sense of the state of their AI and other related development.

How do I get my own dinosaur sidekick?

Due to a player being a tribal hunter, there are three tools they are given in finding a dinosaur. First there are bright stars in the sky. Most of the dinosaurs have their own bright star projected which represents the location of that dinosaur. When you see stars converging, there's a potential dino-on-dino hate crime about to happen. These stars though, don't indicate what type of dinosaur they correlate to, making using the other tools just as useful.


A hunter is also able to find the different types of footprints, which helps pinpoint the location of their target. Though knowing what footprint applies to what dinosaur is needed. In addition to this, larger dinosaurs have distinct vocalization which can be heard from afar. Meaning you can hear that Carnotaurus coming right at you.

Playing with your friends while in loincloth

The developers have stated that players can form a tribe, in which the members benefit from the resources everyone gathers to survive. Part of what the tribes attempt to do is upgrade their totem, which is a mechanic used to enable the tribe to tame larger dinosaurs. Invariably, this in turn yields itself to a heavy PVP or Team-Vs-Team component as tribes will want to invade each others campsites to delay the advancement of a rival group. There have been several videos on this, which can lead to awkward situations like accidentally hitting your tribe mate with a bolas.

The game is also set up so private servers can be created much like Rust or DayZ, making a Goon server a possibility if someone wants to orchestrate that.

What kind of dinosaurs are going to be in the game?

SuperCrit have made a page showing off some of the dinosaurs they intend to include

http://www.thestompingland.com/dinosaurs/

Sounds great when is it out?

The Stomping Land is set for a May 30th release through Steam's Early Access Program. A final release date is TBA.

Media

Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU0aT_BatMk
Big rear end Puertasaurus size comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2YKWdUO56w
Example of raiding another tribe - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWSmyZ3mBLQ

In-game images








:siren:The "What The Hell Is Happening" Update:siren:

So after about three, maybe four months, of quite literally no updates or communication from the development team the game was ultimately pulled from Steam (at about month three mind you) making this one of the weirder and more embarassing failure of a Kickstarter title.

However, there is hope as the main developer, known as "jig", posted an update explaining that for the past three months the team attempted to move everything from Unreal Engine 3 to the recently released Unreal Engine 4 to solve issues such as optimizations, and so forth. Jig explained that "It was early enough into the project where this switch seemed feasible in just a few months of hard crunching." Yet after three months, they hadn't completed the goal and realized there was a lot more work to be done to "justify this kind of an upgrade."

Basically, the new toy came out in UE4 and Jig wanted to start moving over to it but then realized it'd take a lot longer to port and without all of the other aspects of the game completed he'd be leaving the supporters and backers in the dark. No mention of the 3-4 months of silence from him and his team though. With that out of the way, he promises to keep active with the updates and said a new update was immediately out and that the work on moving The Stomping Land to UE4 is still in the works.

What was in the first update in around a quarter of a year?

quote:

- Added the Puertasaurus
- The Gallimimus and Stygimoloch can now be knocked out with 1 arrow
- Reduced the potency of small-meat consumption to a forth of its previous effect
- Expertise is now gained from hunting(amount is creature dependant)
- Removed passive expertise gain
- A stampede is now always occurring on some part of the island

So yeah.....this is still sort of a thing I guess.

Mekchu fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Sep 25, 2014

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Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Reserved for updates.

buglord
Jul 31, 2010

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Buglord
Well I super love dinosaurs so this seems like an odd but welcome combination.

e: They have my favorite dinosaur too :allears:

Smoremaster
Aug 5, 2009

Don't forget to source your quotes!
Sweet, I've been following this game for a while, but I was surprised when it was released today. Not sure if I'll pick it up just yet but it looks like it'll be really fun with goons.

Slayerjerman
Nov 27, 2005

by sebmojo
I just plopped down $25 for the early access today and it is utter poo poo, so much so that I'm worried this is going to turn into another WarZ / Towns / Earth 2066 clusterfuck.

A lot of the features shown work poorly or not at all. The developers expect you to enter console commands to do simple things like change the most basic visual settings. You can't rebind alot of the keys and the UI looks like it was made by kids from an "intro to programming" class. The multilayer functionality is "iffy" at best and it looks like the screenshots and videos were all heavily edited to make the game look more finished than it in fact is.

As a developer myself, I can get over the clunky aspects of controls, gameplay balance and even most visual issues. But the fact they are charging $25 for something that's barely functional is down right fraud in my professional opinion.

"Too bad! You should of known it was EA/alpha/beta/wip, stop bitching".

I get its not a complete game, but I paid for software that I was misled to believing was more functional than it truly is.
That is what bothers me the most is that I was duped and misled.

Seriously, do not buy this (yet). Its a heaping pile of crap right now. The premise is cool, but the execution is just pathetic.

Bovineicide
May 2, 2005

Eating your face since 1991.
Is Sarah Palin a playable race?

Three-Phase
Aug 5, 2006

by zen death robot

Slayerjerman posted:

"Too bad! You should of known it was EA/alpha/beta/wip, stop bitching".

Wow, that sucks. This is a bad trend in gaming.

cool new Metroid game
Oct 7, 2009

hail satan

no fur, feathers or hair on dinosaurs, gently caress this game. :argh:

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Three-Phase posted:

Wow, that sucks. This is a bad trend in gaming.

Yeah, I outright refuse to buy any game that's early access. It's kind of annoying when I see an really interesting game pop up in the new releases section on Steam, and then it turns out to be early access. Why have it on new releases when it's technically not a release? They should have their own section or something.

SALT CURES HAM
Jan 4, 2011
Is getting something to play with your preorder somehow worse than just the promise of a game?

Like, I get that if you buy a game you expect a finished game, but EA stuff is pretty explicitly a preorder that lets you gently caress around with whatever in-development version they have until it properly releases. Some EA games are gonna be pretty close to done, some are gonna be very very far from done.

buglord
Jul 31, 2010

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Buglord

Slayerjerman posted:

I just plopped down $25 for the early access today and it is utter poo poo, so much so that I'm worried this is going to turn into another WarZ / Towns / Earth 2066 clusterfuck.
Man, this is what I feared. I specifically thought of WarZ when I was debating whether to pick it up. Glad I decided to wait. Hopefully it's only just a rough landing. :ohdear:

Carnivorian
Aug 9, 2013

:yoshi:

SALT CURES HAM posted:

Is getting something to play with your preorder somehow worse than just the promise of a game?

Like, I get that if you buy a game you expect a finished game, but EA stuff is pretty explicitly a preorder that lets you gently caress around with whatever in-development version they have until it properly releases. Some EA games are gonna be pretty close to done, some are gonna be very very far from done.

And some are simply never going to be released. I think early access is well intentioned, but all it leads is to frustration. Developers tend to not have a solid release plan when they can get paid for their early broken releases.

Tell me one game that has come out of early access into a full game. MWO? :pgi:

Carnivorian fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 31, 2014

jneer
Aug 31, 2006

Mush Mushi!
I have a lot of legitimate concerns with the game but the game feels cohesive in a way that DayZ SA still does not. I'm finding it very atmospheric in the dense jungle which makes up the majority of the landscape, but the coastal areas and fog effects look like crap - we're talking Nintendo 64 level crap.

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless
Looks cool, could there be a Turok mode where you have guns?

Dominic White
Nov 1, 2005

Carnivorian posted:

Tell me one game that has come out of early access into a full game.

Lots? Sir, You Are Being Hunted, State Of Decay, Mercenary Kings, Arma 3, Skulls Of The Shogun, Tower Of Guns, etc etc?

You do know that many games take years to make, and Steam's Early Access section has only been open for about one year, right?

Manatee Cannon
Aug 26, 2010



People have really weird misconceptions about how long games take to make.

Dominic White
Nov 1, 2005

Manatee Cannon posted:

People have really weird misconceptions about how long games take to make.

And how much they cost. I've seen people complaining that kickstarters asking for $50k or less for massive projects are asking too much. In reality, if you've got a team of more than two people, you're probably looking at $250k bare minimum.

A little reminder that Luftrausers - Vlambeer's tiny, minimalist shooter - was in development for two and a half years. Let's get some realistic expectations going on here.

Edit: Wow, The Stomping Land was only asking for $20k. They cleared $110k, but that's still crazy under-funded. Hopefully success on Steam will give them the money they need to actually finish the drat thing.

Dominic White fucked around with this message at 00:20 on May 31, 2014

Carnivorian
Aug 9, 2013

:yoshi:

Dominic White posted:

Lots? Sir, You Are Being Hunted, State Of Decay, Mercenary Kings, Arma 3, Skulls Of The Shogun, Tower Of Guns, etc etc?

You do know that many games take years to make, and Steam's Early Access section has only been open for about one year, right?

That's good and yes, I'm sure many games take years to make and that's ok

problem is many early access devs do a really poor job of making their deadlines apparent, not to mention meeting them.

Dominic White
Nov 1, 2005

Carnivorian posted:

problem is many early access devs do a really poor job of making their deadlines apparent, not to mention meeting them.

What deadlines? Unless they've got a publisher looming over them (which very few do, on account of being crowdfunded), threatening to pull the plug, then it's Done When It's Done. And that's when the developers say it's done, not the audience.

Manatee Cannon
Aug 26, 2010



Yeah, I can't think of any deadlines for the early access games I've looked at. You should go into any early access game knowing that it could be anywhere from barely a game to essentially finished (or do the smarter thing and don't buy early access games).

jneer
Aug 31, 2006

Mush Mushi!

Manatee Cannon posted:

People have really weird misconceptions about how long games take to make.

The problem is Early Access by its nature attracts the sort of manbabies who can't wait for the release of a game (please note I am one of these).

buglord
Jul 31, 2010

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Buglord
Is there any dev diary? So far it appears to just be forum posts. Those tend to relieve anxiety (or raise it) because you can more or less see how the devs go about designing things and why. If and how they respond to player/supporter criticism is useful too. Not to say we should be entitled to a webcam of the development room, but just knowing how the developer works and thinks through things can go a long way to seeing how the game may turn out.

Tracula
Mar 26, 2010

PLEASE LEAVE
Was this the game that someone did some hilarious 20 minute sperg rant about because it got delayed or something?

Edit: My bad, here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsewNLjrh2I It's 'only' 14 and a half minutes long.

Tracula fucked around with this message at 01:06 on May 31, 2014

Tekopo
Oct 24, 2008

When you see it, you'll shit yourself.


Tracula posted:

Was this the game that someone did some hilarious 20 minute sperg rant about because it got delayed or something?

Edit: My bad, here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsewNLjrh2I It's 'only' 14 and a half minutes long.
I couldn't last long, this guy is loving unbearable and doesn't know how to speak.

big nipples big life
May 12, 2014

Tracula posted:

Was this the game that someone did some hilarious 20 minute sperg rant about because it got delayed or something?

Edit: My bad, here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsewNLjrh2I It's 'only' 14 and a half minutes long.

Wow, how does one go from normal everyday person that goes to school, work, whatever to posting a 14 minute rant on youtube about a video game release date?

I couldn't make it the full 14 minutes, I reached critical cringe about 2 minutes in and couldn't go on much longer.

Smoremaster
Aug 5, 2009

Don't forget to source your quotes!
The guy in that video reminds me of Christian Weston Chandler.

edit: I sat through that whole video, somehow. I don't know if I've ever cringed so hard.

Smoremaster fucked around with this message at 02:09 on May 31, 2014

buglord
Jul 31, 2010

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Buglord

Wafflz posted:

Wow, how does one go from normal everyday person that goes to school, work, whatever to posting a 14 minute rant on youtube about a video game release date?
You're probably overestimating the number of outside activities he's involved in.

That said, I really hope this turns out decent. They already have examples of good and bad games in the genre. Just a matter of paying attention, I guess.

i like tacos
Mar 26, 2010

Ask me about being a liar who doesn't actually like tacos and is a disagreeable asshole

Megadyptes posted:

no fur, feathers or hair on dinosaurs, gently caress this game. :argh:

To be fair none of the dinosaurs in right now besides the Carnotaurus would have had feathers or hair. That said the Austroraptor and the T-Rex will have feathers


All the complaints are pretty valid for this game. I've actually told my friends not to buy it just yet but since I paid 15 for the kickstarter I'm in. However the game has been out technically for a week and there's already been two patches. He's also given a road map for the game

quote:

Grab your spears, hunters!

The project may have a year under its belt, but today marks day one of the most important time for development. The days of 5 man testing is now history and broad-scale feedback will provide plenty of information, both technical and creative, on how to move forward with the game.

So what's on the roadmap?

- Dinosaur AI. Aside from fixing the unknown that will require attention upon the first week of testing, there is plenty in the works that will define The Stomping Land in the long-run. The boldest of all of these goals is dinosaur AI. One of my primary motivations behind starting this project was to be able to create realistic and engaging interactions between both the players and dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs with each other. There was plenty on the back-end that had to be fulfilled first, such as creating a persistent online world that can support dynamic AI, and now that these technical elements are in place, we can start to experience the crafting of these dinosaurs' intelligence as they get made. In time, it is my ambition that the dinosaur interactions alone will define The Stomping Land as a truly unique experience. So as you jump in game today, keep in mind that the AI elements that currently exist are there only as a technical foundation for this craft.

- Custom maps. The Stomping Land launches with a single map, Capa Island, which provides solid grounds for the various elements of the game. But history in multiplayer gaming shows that mods are a huge factor in the value of these experiences. So streamlining the process of allowing modders to create their own islands with dinosaurs is a certain on the to-do list.

- Simply, things to do. Survival games are all about choices, so adding both objective and casual choices will collectively create unique experiences every life. Eg Expanding crafting, new buildings, survival needs, tribal dances etc.

- A centralized server. Currently The Stomping Land holds character information by each server as players join them. By hooking up a centralized server, it will be both easier to makes updates and keep character data safer from hacks or exploits.

- A female character model is a big request, and is planned to be included.

- 3 planned gamemodes: Survival(Default), Roleplay(Casual), Extinction(Lobby PVP)

Additionally, everything that is discussed on the forums gets seen, so feel free to drop in with any feedback.

While today's release is for backer tiers 55 and up, the remaining tiers will have your keys early/mid next week(which unlock on the 30th). Huge thanks to all of our backers for enabling this project to be developed up to this point and further. I hope you enjoy the elements of The Stomping Land and see the potential for what's ahead.

Anyone interested in hosting their own servers, be sure to visit our official server provider, BlackBoxServers.

Thanks everyone, see you in-game!
jig

Even though I told my friends not to get the game, do any of you have a server up? I've been going around taking down teepees and killing people and I feel that'd be funner with a group of people

Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Put a couple of hours.

As stated, there's a lot of features that are promised that ended up not being included in this build. The devs stated that they took some of the stuff out to refine and so forth. I'm digging a lot of it, but it's also a bit lame that the "terrifying dinosaurs" aren't that terrifying and only a few have been spotted to do damage. Still though, for a game that's still a work in progress it's got a lot of potential.

Edit - It's pretty drat comical that my group of three friends were able to capture and contain a few of the other players to the point they got mad and raged quit the server. That's gotta be worth something.

Orv
May 4, 2011

Unfunny Poster posted:

Edit - It's pretty drat comical that my group of three friends were able to capture and contain a few of the other players to the point they got mad and raged quit the server. That's gotta be worth something.

This game is super early, but it's also ripe for griefing. When you Use (E) another player you'll get the option to tie them up if you have bolas, which is instantaneous and immediately makes them prone and unable to do anything but be dragged around by you. As of a patch ago when you drag a tied player underwater they drown.

Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
You can still drag them into water and drown them if they don't get their head from out of the water quick enough.

Hihohe
Oct 4, 2008

Fuck you and the sun you live under


At night i layed perfectly still in the dark then jumped out like Arnold in Predator and slaughtered some pubbs. Shits Fun.

Elth
Jul 28, 2011

I'm not gonna buy this game just yet but it looks interesting enough to follow. More gameplay footage/screenshots/stories would definitely be appreciated.

SALT CURES HAM
Jan 4, 2011

Manatee Cannon posted:

Yeah, I can't think of any deadlines for the early access games I've looked at. You should go into any early access game knowing that it could be anywhere from barely a game to essentially finished (or do the smarter thing and don't buy early access games).

or buy them with your expectations managed because it's literally a preorder

Yardbomb
Jul 11, 2011

What's with the eh... bretonnian dance, sir?

Oh hey this sounds awesome, neat concept that hasn't really been explored enou- oh, it's Day Z 2.0 except instead of being deathmatch with ambient zombies, now it's deatchmatch with ambient dinosaurs after a grand total of 1 day.

In all seriousness, I really, really want to like this game but goddamn, players at large just don't have a single creative or interesting bone left in their body when it comes to survival games do they? :smith:

Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
So apparently some of the dinosaurs that are supposed to do damage to you and such are bugged, or at least they were on the server I was on. I "somehow" managed to bring back 4 Carnotaurus' to the camp myself and some friends made where we just sat there for about 20 to 30 minutes watching them run around in circles trying to eat us but failing.

Zsinjeh
Jun 11, 2007

:shoboobs:
This game has a lot of potential and I've had a bunch of fun, but it still really feels alpha as gently caress. Sadly it runs like poo poo for me on a laptop (that still runs most everything else a-ok though) so I'll take a break until some optimization or at the very least graphical options besides just resolution :v:

Though I did manage to change them a bit by editing the DefaultSystemPreferences in the config folder of the game.

One lingering question I had while playing though, was leaf-camo customization in the game? I tried looking all over for loose leaves on the ground but I don't think I saw anything. Are they very rare or not enabled yet?

e: Ah, bummer

Zsinjeh fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jun 2, 2014

Orv
May 4, 2011

Zsinjeh posted:

This game has a lot of potential and I've had a bunch of fun, but it still really feels alpha as gently caress. Sadly it runs like poo poo for me on a laptop (that still runs most everything else a-ok though) so I'll take a break until some optimization or at the very least graphical options besides just resolution :v:

Though I did manage to change them a bit by editing the DefaultSystemPreferences in the config folder of the game.

One lingering question I had while playing though, was leaf-camo customization in the game? I tried looking all over for loose leaves on the ground but I don't think I saw anything. Are they very rare or not enabled yet?

They're not in yet sadly.

Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Zsinjeh posted:

but it still really feels alpha as gently caress

They do say it's an alpha build on the main menu, and they openly stated that on the Steam page it's still buggy and alpha as hell and really the only reason you should want to buy it at present is to support the game development etc.

As for the camouflage, they took that and some other stuff out for this build while they work on it more and such.

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Zsinjeh
Jun 11, 2007

:shoboobs:
It wasn't as a slight against the game, I really like the place it can go which is why I backed them. I just mentioned it as an extra headsup for people, there's so many alphas and early access games out there that are pretty much fully completed games that you can almost be used to not having a real alpha experience.

e: Ran into a huge dead dinosaur last night as well, spooked me a bit how hard it was to see it in the dense vegetation. The pvp in this game can be pretty fantastic once fleshed out.

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