[FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

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Dr. Bob
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Dr. Bob »

x Lethian x wrote: The first picture shows an error message that normally pops up if the store space is blocked - eg. the parking spaces at the store are all full of vehicles/tools. This is currently a bug and we are looking into fixing this message to be displayed correctly, so that it says something like "you've reached the limit".
About the limit: This is an issue we are still discussing internally. We support all kinds of phones in order to attend to all kinds of different players - the current limit will ensure performance on weaker phones as well. We cannot distribute different software versions for our game, I'm afraid, so we still need to find the perfect limitation but the current one will have to suffice for now.
In earlier versions the message is "Your garage is full. Sell some items first." (screenshots).

I can understand the motivation of wanting to protect performance and stability. But I still see some possibilities here.

Is each purchased equipment item pre-rendered in memory? And each item individually or only once for each different item, as a 'sprite'? There are 14 different tractors. Would one of each take up more resources than 14 tractors of one and the same model or just as much? (ignoring the higher complexity of some items over others for the moment which I expect to be of influence too of course).

Some items are pretty small. Bale and log forks for instance are new to FS18 and you need these additional items increasing the need for a higher limit. Such small items use few resources I'd expect maybe alleviating resource issues at 75 items. Maybe some other items are more complex than in FS16. I cannot know, but you do.

Maybe provide a 'resource utilising factor' with each equipment item in the shop and a total counter (see below) so people could make conscious decisions about perhaps selecting less resource-heavy tractors if that would indeed make a significant difference. And maybe some things could be made optional to lighten the hardware load. Would switching off the 'getting dirty' of the equipment be of significant influence on resource use/performance for instance? Or turning off the whole 'particle engine' or whatever it's referred to (the 'dust').

Also you could incorporate a 'Performance Rating' value in combination with the total owned equipment counter I suggested that would depend on actual current available (for the game) RAM and CPU/GPU use of the game of the device it is played on which should be measurable by the game. It could give a notification informing people that they are approaching or exceeding the capabilities of their device to run the game smoothly and/or that they might experience stability issues/crashes if they go beyond that number. People would know what to expect and could take appropriate actions, maybe including running the game on more powerful hardware. You could make 'unlocking' a higher maximum equipment count a setting people would need to change deliberately and after having been given this information explicitly, maybe with an extra confirmation (plus disclaimer?) as in "Are you sure? Giants cannot accept any responsibility for loss of data or even damage to hardware as a result of this change. You're on your own here". And after activating perhaps: "OK. Entering unchartered territory now. You like to live dangerously, don't you? But we warned you. There be Dragons here!" :D

Because of the vast number of different Android devices it's only by trying it out on your own device that you'll learn which maximum value works best for you, but please DO give people the freedom to try it out.
Currently there are also no plans to implement a "larger" map for FS18 - we think that the current one suffices in size for mobile and handheld devices. No, there is no limit on animal herds and the bale capacity should be scaling accordingly with how much animals you currently have. The visual bales inside the storage should not be used as an indicator, since this does not scale with the animal count, however.
I suggested the 'extra large' map in context of larger fields. I meant a map with larger fields than the 1,2M field. Some of the smaller fields could be replaced by larger fields to provide extra goals to achieve. I was able to purchase the three largest fields pretty quick. With larger fields I could spend more time playing to reach those goals. I'd like to see that playing time extended. Alternatively it could be incorporated in the game itself. It would be nice if you could sell fields again too. And the possibility to 'have some work on the terrain done' to replace a cluster of smaller fields by one large one. At the cost of a higher price than the 1,2 million of the largest field of course. On both the east and west side there are meadows with arable fields south of them that could be joined together. Also the three fields near the Inn could be replaced by one large field, in an oblique direction to best fit the space. These fields wouldn't require any modifications to roads or buildings in the map and should be fairly simple to implement.

Such a feature should be combined with the possibility to change fields from arable to meadows and vice versa. It could be as simple as adding grass seed to the game plus the possibility to plough the meadows. This would also allow people to focus more on the animal side and produce large quantities of grass for huge herds. Even changing the (combined) fields to wooded areas where trees can be planted so people can switch focus more towards forestry if they want to. Such wooded areas could be in the form of alternate sections of the map (that you can have converted, at a price) and shouldn't necessarily stick to the rectangular sections of the fields but could fit inside the existing roads and rocks following their contours more. No considerable changes to the map necessary other than changing some of the 'workable' areas. The two with the meadows I mentioned already (not near the Inn) and perhaps the two fields around the pig shed too since that's already quite wooded. Perhaps the area north of the saw mill too. A fairly logical spot. Maybe even with a somewhat higher tree density there. The Buffalo's could be made very useful closer to the Saw mill and the Station if there would be trees there. Such extra features would broaden the scope of the possibilities of the game.

The addition of game play features in FS18 compared to FS16 is frankly somewhat limited. The ones I'm suggesting would considerably add to that game play with fairly small alterations to the game. Such addictions would allow players to change their focus and pursue different forms of game play while progressing through the game thereby making the game more interesting for a longer time. I'd expect this to make people play the game longer and increase their appreciation and it could also attract more players.
Now to answer a couple more of your questions:
- About the lighting: This may be device-specific since different devices use different shaders and have different displays. We will, however, discuss this internally and are liking the feedback you are giving us. Maybe there is something we can work on here.
It's an issue I don't have with FS14 and FS16 on the same device. Therefore it looks you changed some texture and/or colour settings although I get the impression you changed something with a wider scope in the underlying graphics 'engine' because of the grainy shimmer I also experience which I mentioned earlier.
- Colors are actually pretty saturated on my own phone, so I can't confirm they "grey-ish" color pallets you are seeing. What phone are you playing on btw?
The colours that there are are OK. It's just that so much of the buildings is just grey, because they are not green or red or blue or whatever. It's something that I found very noticeably different from the previous versions (again, on the same device). A fairly simple editor allowing the users to change these colours would be a great asset. Editors can allow people to get more engaged/involved with a game and if such edited maps could be exchanged on-line could/would lead to a more active community leading to more exposure/sales for the game.

- Crops grow at the same speed, although potatoes and grass go through more intermediate stages and therefore take longer to reach the harvestable stage.
I seem to notice a shorter 'cycle' period as in crops growing faster and the time between sowing and harvesting being shorter than in FS16/FS14). Has that indeed been changed?
- Concerning the tree limit - the current limit of trees serves several purposes: a) not every field has trees around it, since this would be interfering with the helper AI too often and b) it serves a game design purpose as well: As a player you will have to think about how much trees to cut down and how much to grow back. This caters to the forestry aspect of our game and will players from blindly logging down every tree in the game.
If you don't want to cut the trees that interfere with working the fields there are maybe enough trees to allow for continuous forestry, if a player wants to focus on this aspect. But if you remove the interfering trees and don't let those regrow I don' think there will be enough remaining trees to do continuous forestry work, unless their regrowth speed has (also?) been increased. There are many more 'interfering' trees in FS18 that you'd want to cut permanently than there are in FS16. In FS16 many more trees remain after you have removed the interfering ones. There are two 'wooded' areas in FS16. Roughly in the north-east and south-west. I would guess at least double the number of trees there in FS16 compared to FS18. Maybe even three times or more. My suggestion above to allow for extending the wooded areas would 'fix' this.

I found the warnings given about those trees a bit unnecessary as I was perfectly capable of farming the 250k, 500k and 1,2M fields without felling a single tree. I 'scouted' the fields before I decided to go for them even without cutting the trees which would require a considerable investment that I wanted to preserve for expanding the fields that early in the game. Because there is so little space between fields to park all the equipment and you want to park tippers far away from each other because the likelihood of the 'wrong' tipper collecting when honked increases when they are nearer I parked the tipper for the 250k field on the north side where it frequently gets stuck on trees when returning from collecting from a harvester. That's why I now have cleared that area. Otherwise they are not very much in the way when you start working the field from the NE corner.

And the 500k and 1,2M fields you have to work east-west before you cut the trees, leading to the occasional collision with the traffic on the highway. But when you work them north-south after cutting the trees you still get collisions between workers working simultaneously on different fields, but this occurs less than with the AI traffic so there is some gain there. With collisions solved the gain would be greater.
- Only unloading some of the loaded bales froma trailer is actually a nice idea when it comes to storage management. Will talk to our devs about that.
Great. Looking forward to the next update.
- Yes, fertilizing grass will yield more.
Interesting. That has changed from FS16 then? It didn't have any effect there. I, and others, have tried it. Shouldn't you mention this change, and some more, somewhere on-line? Especially the people who have played FS16 would be interested to learn about these differences.
About your bugs:

Could you please report the first two - straw issue and bale percent issue in our Bugthread within the given structure? Then we will have a look at that ;)
I think I have already figured out what is causing this because of what you said: "No, there is no limit on animal herds and the bale capacity should be scaling accordingly with how much animals you currently have."

If I have large herd and this is accompanied by a larger bale capacity of the shed, and I then fill that space to it's max. capacity... and THEN sell a big chunk of that herd... then suddenly the max. capacity of the shed is reduced again... but the number of bales already in the shed then is larger than this reduced maximum. That would explain the bales counter going down but the percentage remaining at 100%... until either the number of bales drops below the current maximum and/or the herd size increases again also increasing that max. bales capacity.

I've tried to replicate this theory today and it seems to work that way. The max. bale storage capacity changing that way is a bit... unrealistic of course and it is especially awkward to work with because you have no idea what your current max. capacity is and with how many bales you can top up additionally. You'd need to calculate this from the percentage and the current number of bales. Bales being listed as 24/32 or 24 (32 max.) for instance or whatever similar would prevent you from dumping a fixed number of bales from an Arcusin or trailer and 'losing' some of them. Sure they are being 'sold' but the effort to produce bales is too big to 'waste' that effort on that small amount of money. I'll make that with working the fields and selling what I want when I want where I want, and not by some semi-random event.

This variable shed capacity seems less than ideal. Couldn't we just buy 'storage extensions' and always have a known, fixed storage?

By the way. Does the herd grow at a fixed rate or is the growth linked to the current herd size and does it grow as a percentage of that? Maybe with a maximum limit to prevent it to get out of control? I haven't been paying that much attention to it.
The worker pathfinding is something we are still looking into with some of the combinations.
The wall at the parking lot is something I have literally run into a couple of times while testing myself. It is already a known issue and duly noted.
Please add internally discovered issues to the known issues/bug list as well. Not just the ones reported by players.
Will talk to the devs about the remaining silo time being shown somewhere in the HUD and the equipment counter you mentioned for the statistics page.
I forgot to mention the silo's percentage filled. That could go there too. Useful info to know too.
A complete overhaul of UI design for tablets is not planned atm.
Customisable controls lay-out is not something only seen on games for tablets, so not really a purely tablet related request. More info on fewer pages sort of is but if people want to put up with smaller print on smaller screens that should be up to them. And phone screens have been getting bigger over the years so more info per screen would consequently seem a logical evolution anyway. At least as an option.

I'm keeping you busy aren't I? ;)
kansas_dude
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by kansas_dude »

Does anyone know if bales (hay/straw/grass) can be sold and where?
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by JohnDeere318 »

Dr. Bob, please don't tell me you typed all that with your phone... :shock: just kidding around, no offense it. :lol:
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Dr. Bob
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Dr. Bob »

kansas_dude wrote:Does anyone know if bales (hay/straw/grass) can be sold and where?
Excess bales (over its maximum capacity) you dump at the Cow, Sheep or Pig sheds automatically get sold. Grass clippings you dump at the sheds from a loader wagon stop unloading when you've reached the shed's max. capacity and don't get sold.
rocknard
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by rocknard »

I owns a 3ds game, FS18.

The game "lacks" of Macro-management on later stage. With only 4 fields i'm swamped (overwork). there is not automation beyond of the "bug-helper" (fertilizer and others). You will destined to buy 1 tractor / 1 machine to overcome the field's management requeriments. The game needs macromanagement's options to attach tractors to specific fields and the hability to "link" components to tractors by "helpers" with one section for macromanagements of your workers.

The game, in general, is great, but tedious when you need to "whatch" all fields, tractors (severals), components of tractors, bug refiller/plow... The game needs to overcome the "procedimental" management with configurable automation to manage as far as possible (user criteria) and enjoy only with the amount of work you want/like.

Futhermore, it needs recheck the "math" calculations (trigonometry/geometry), because the "helper" is not perfect when you harvester with a component <-> 3 and only harvest 1 field even when i align the tractor to harvest 2 field's sector. Seems to when the tractor turn right/left to continue with harvesting, this "loses" the alignment (with harvesting grass it will see clear). The turn of all tractors seems to be the same, but i think each tractor have a limited turn capacity considering the size and HP (power)? The Windrower is the example: it can reduce the amount of "Lines" to harvest, BUT the Forage Wagon harvest all field, not the lines created by the Windrower (a littel AI to check how many lines there is to harvest after asking to the Windrower?); it's very annoying seeing how the Forage Wagon harvest "NOTHING" (very slow is the Forage Wagon and narrow).

And finally: i supposse the "macro managing" will affect the purpose of the game (seeing the tractor doing all works), but with a little or medium managing of resources will be factible manage 15 fields and tractors. There is no meaning on buy 15 fields and only can managing 7 barely (with 4 fields i'm done). And switching between 75 tractors (right/left on 3DS) is...

Sumarize: Macro-managing (moderate) + panel info about status of fields (harverting, etc) + AI

Good Bye.

P.S.: sorry if i mistake something, not native speaker.


Dr. Bob wrote:
kansas_dude wrote:Does anyone know if bales (hay/straw/grass) can be sold and where?
Excess bales (over its maximum capacity) you dump at the Cow, Sheep or Pig sheds automatically get sold. Grass clippings you dump at the sheds from a loader wagon stop unloading when you've reached the shed's max. capacity and don't get sold.
This is another "thing" i would will change: why i must "sell" the bales without option to store for later use (cow, sheep or pigs)? It's very tedious to create bales for then sell without permission.
mpuone
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by mpuone »

Hi, simply wondering if there are any plans for updates to the PS Vita version of FS18? I've played a fair amount of hours of FS16 on Vita, and definitely loving the improvements to FS18. I read earlier about possibly adding new equipment through updates, I wouldn't want to miss out.

Also, in the launch trailer, there's a train rolling above the over head tracks, however I haven't noticed it yet. I'm assuming its just not in the Vita version, but I'd like confirmation...
Erayy
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Erayy »

If you translate your text into Turkish is easy for you

Farming simulator 2018 i oynayabilmek için android sürümün 4.4 ve fazlası olması lazımmış sozden istediğim bunu en yakın zamanda mümkünse sonraki güncellemede minimum android sürümünü 4.0 olarak ayarlamaniz hemde daha fazla oyuncu indirir
Android 4.1.2 de oynama şansımız varmıdır? ?
Mrprez1952
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Mrprez1952 »

Can't upload images. Invalid file type. Can you make this easier? Accept png, jpg and jpeg file types? iPad screenshot saves as png.
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böserlöwe
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by böserlöwe »

Here we have a own PicServer https://image.giants-software.com/
Mrprez1952
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Mrprez1952 »

böserlöwe wrote:Here we have a own PicServer https://image.giants-software.com/
Thanks. Still adds extra steps but works.
Erayy
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Erayy »

Lütfen Yardım edin indiremiyorum
My telephone android isi 4.1.2 why i cant download
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Dr. Bob
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by Dr. Bob »

Erayy wrote:Lütfen Yardım edin indiremiyorum
My telephone android isi 4.1.2 why i cant download
Indeed. FS18 is stated to require Android 4.4 or higher. If your manufacturer doesn't offer an upgrade you might try a custom ROM of Android 4.4, 5, 6 or perhaps even 7 if your device is sold a lot and people have made such ROMs. It will require a bit of effort or the help of someone with sufficient knowledge.

Check here for instance: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Or search on https://www.xda-developers.com/ for your device (top right).
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x Lethian x
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by x Lethian x »

mpuone wrote:Hi, simply wondering if there are any plans for updates to the PS Vita version of FS18? I've played a fair amount of hours of FS16 on Vita, and definitely loving the improvements to FS18. I read earlier about possibly adding new equipment through updates, I wouldn't want to miss out.

Also, in the launch trailer, there's a train rolling above the over head tracks, however I haven't noticed it yet. I'm assuming its just not in the Vita version, but I'd like confirmation...
Hi mpuone!

The train you saw in the trailer is in fact in the game - there are actually two: One is for decorational purposes only and the other one will drive away once you sell stuff at the train station ;) Glad you like the game!
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SterlingSilver
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by SterlingSilver »

I was just wondering if there are mods/ will there ever be mods for fs 18?
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x Lethian x
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Re: [FS18] Feedback/Discussions...

Post by x Lethian x »

SterlingSilver wrote:I was just wondering if there are mods/ will there ever be mods for fs 18?
We are currently not planning on mod Support for FS18 since this is not that easy on mobile/handheld platforms.
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