Terraria State of the Game - January 2020

[The Storm]

But then we have less building options for hoiking.

Also, they actually have gone out of their way for hoiking and one-way walls to be in the console/mobile ports. It was definitely intentional there.

I think it was more of the way sloped blocks work, they attempt to push you out if you get stuck in them or something, so porting over sloped blocks unchanged would also carry over the hoik.

Also those one way walls definitely seem like an exploit more than anything, though I guess saying they could easily cheese bosses would be the same as saying hoiking can too, but I wonder if the one way walls will be patched, probably not.

Also what about the duplication glitch with item frames? Is that a bug or another "feature"?

My main issue with hoiking is that it completely breaks the game, allowing you to travel faster than any other method, save teleporters, and is a real progression breaker. You wouldn't have an early game accessory that provides +500% movement speed would you?

It's sort of like if there was a glitch you could do with the wooden sword to make it deal 1,000 damage, it makes other weapons useless as you could just use that instead.

But this is a bit extreme and I know most people don't use hoiks for travelling the entire world, it's mostly used for contraptions. If no one used them for contraptions then it should be removed, but as of now I hope it doesn't get removed just for the sole purpose that it would break said contraptions which are honestly impressive.

 

[Here for now]

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Happy New Year, Terrarians!

Welcome to the the latest Terraria community update on development progress across all active platforms! We are feeling really good about how 2019 ended up... and even more excited about what could turn out to be the best year yet to be a Terrarian. So, without further ado, let's dive right in to the latest and greatest across the various development teams and within the community!

PlayStation 4, XBOX ONE, Nintendo Switch - PIPEWORKS
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Hello Terrarians!

A quick update for you on Terraria for consoles! You may have noticed that we combined Playstation 4, XBOX ONE, and Nintendo Switch together this month - that is by design, because we are on the road to version parity!


Content-wise, the Nintendo Switch team has caught up with PS4/X1 and they're now working on the same updates for different platforms. More specifically, the team has been working at 2 big updates: A full Korean Localization for Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch, and porting the PC 1.3.5 content.

We're just waiting on a few more localizations before the Korean localization is integrated and ready to review. The 1.3.5 Update is currently being tested by our quality assurance team on PS4/X1 and Switch before we submit to Re-Logic for a quality check, and then submission to first party for release. After those patches are released, we're looking forward to working on additional bugs reported by the community, and put in some very focused work on Split-screen and local wireless for the Nintendo Switch.


No timeline on the release for anything stated, but stay tuned for more info! To help ease the wait, we have included at least one perhaps long-awaited spoiler below!

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1.3.5's UI Scale Slider is Coming to Consoles

MOBILE - DR STUDIOS

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January has certainly flown by fast! As we mentioned last month, we have been very focused on a lot of the foundational/systematic work that is needed to make the in-progress Controller + Customization update everything that it needs to be. With a lot (but certainly not all!) of that behind us, we can finally start to show off some of what we have accomplished with Controller support on mobile...

As you can see from the video we’ve got control banners in and functioning in game and we’re about 90% of the way there, though certainly the last 10% is where all the perfecting and testing comes in. In the last couple months we’ve been busy building on the controller foundations to get a really solid feel for where mobile needs to be, and this has also informed the direction we’ll be taking with the customization side of the update (which we will tackle once we get controller locked down). Here are some fun things behind the scenes....

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The team has been building our own custom control schemes with our own preferred keybinds....


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... and with remappable gamepad controls, so can you!

Let's see what else have we been working on....

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An Apple TV Version! When we thought about getting controller support back on mobile devices, we knew it would be a natural fit to bring the game to Apple TV as well!​

That's all for this month - we will hopefully be able to share some more juicy tidbits between now and the conclusion of the C+C update, so stay tuned. No exact date on when this will be in your hands either... but we do not expect it will be too terribly far away. Until next time!

PC - RE-LOGIC

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Happy 2020 everyone!

The Re-Logic dev team has hit the ground running at a furious pace in the new year. Seriously, some of the stuff that is being worked on right now is beyond cool (maybe you will get to hear more about it in the future... or maybe it will be a surprise ) and we know will be appreciated by players everywhere. We already showed off the new Pogo Stick on the first Weekly Official Terraria Stream (for more information about this weekly streaming series, check out the community section below) - but in case you missed it, we have included it below for your viewing pleasure:

Also, we wanted to be sure that everyone knew that Terraria PC is available for 50% off during the Steam and GOG Chinese/Lunar New Year sales! In recognition of the Year of the Rat, we whipped up this really cool celebratory screen....

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Pick up your copy today at either storefront linked below!

Save 50% on Terraria on Steam

Dig, fight, explore, build! Nothing is impossible in this action-packed adventure game. Four Pack also available!

store.steampowered.com

Terraria

Dig, Fight, Explore, Build: The very world is at your fingertips as you fight for surviva

www.gog.com

What else might we share this month by way of updates on progress or juicy spoilers? Well, our very own @Cenx hopped on to Discord this past week and shared a handful of things, including more specifics behind Master Mode. Rather than try and run all that down for you here, we will let our good friend @ChippyGaming do so for everyone via a fantastic summary and commentary video that he put together just this week that covers all that we shared:

Again, we hope everyone has had an amazing start to 2020 - we cannot say enough about how much we are looking forward to what is to come in the world of Terraria for this year, and we look forward to sharing more of that journey with you... all the way to the End.

COMMUNITY

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Greetings Terrarians,

2020 is starting off with major Terraria excitement in the community! There is now an official Terraria weekly stream filled with great prizes, fun, and surprises.

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Amazing Terraria wall decals provided by My Wonderful Walls > My Wonderful Walls Terraria Collection

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Our goal with the Terraria weekly stream is to provide an awesome official platform to review community made content, discuss development announcements, play Terraria live with the community, and host the one of a kind Terraria Game Show where we will give away exclusive Terraria merchandise not available for sale.

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We have an incredible community panel joining us today for the stream including: Badger, Mousie, Natsuski Snow, and Khaios! We are also going to discuss the State of the Game announcement and other exciting things happening in the Terraria universe. You are not going to want to miss this stream!

Tune in live 1:00PM PST / 9:00PM UTC @

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I have spent so much of my time playing this game, not game experience. I never have had such fun playing that I have on multiple occasions I have felt like the player. To know that this game is going to end that I almost cried. I will always love this game.

 

[Dapling]

I think it was more of the way sloped blocks work, they attempt to push you out if you get stuck in them or something, so porting over sloped blocks unchanged would also carry over the hoik.

Also those one way walls definitely seem like an exploit more than anything, though I guess saying they could easily cheese bosses would be the same as saying hoiking can too, but I wonder if the one way walls will be patched, probably not.

Also what about the duplication glitch with item frames? Is that a bug or another "feature"?

My main issue with hoiking is that it completely breaks the game, allowing you to travel faster than any other method, save teleporters, and is a real progression breaker. You wouldn't have an early game accessory that provides +500% movement speed would you?

It's sort of like if there was a glitch you could do with the wooden sword to make it deal 1,000 damage, it makes other weapons useless as you could just use that instead.

But this is a bit extreme and I know most people don't use hoiks for travelling the entire world, it's mostly used for contraptions. If no one used them for contraptions then it should be removed, but as of now I hope it doesn't get removed just for the sole purpose that it would break said contraptions which are honestly impressive.

You're forgetting that it actually takes time and effort to hoik, which makes it balanced. Which takes more time, building a single row of asphalt blocks really far, or building a row of sloped blocks which HAVE to have the right conditions and only works one way? It's pretty obvious.

 

[The Storm]

You're forgetting that it actually takes time and effort to hoik, which makes it balanced. Which takes more time, building a single row of asphalt blocks really far, or building a row of sloped blocks which HAVE to have the right conditions and only works one way? It's pretty obvious.

Well hoiking can be done right from the start of the game, where as Asphalt blocks are post-Mechanical boss, and I wouldn't say hoiking is balanced, it's still very overpowered and costs next to nothing, and just because it takes longer to make doesn't necessary balance it out.

But like I said people mainly use them for mechanisms which is fine.

 

[Dapling]

Well hoiking can be done right from the start of the game, where as Asphalt blocks are post-Mechanical boss, and I wouldn't say hoiking is balanced, it's still very overpowered and costs next to nothing.

But like I said people manly use them for mechanisms which is fine.

I don't get how it's overpowered. It takes more time and effort than literally everything. Minecart rails are still really fast and aren't one way.

 

[The Storm]

You can reach 120 tiles per second with it, a regular minecart only reaches ~48 tiles per second

And saying that it takes more time and effort is like having a weapon that deals 5,000 damage but requires 1,000 stacks of dirt, sure it takes time and effort to get but it is far from balanced.

 

[Dapling]

You can reach 120 tiles per second with it, a regualr minecart only reaches ~48 tiles per second

And saying that it takes more time and effort is like having a weapon that deals 5,000 damage but requires 1,000 stacks of dirt, sure it takes time and effort to get but it is far from balanced.

It isn't like that, because it is one way and it doesn't even let you have flexibility while you do it. Have you TRIED cheesing bosses with hoiking? Literally only Golem and king slime are countered by it, and those are the easiest bosses in the game.

 

[The Storm]

You can make 2 way hoiks you know, and with the right hoik setup I've seen people cheese all bosses.

Also what about the oneway wall? It's so easy to do and takes literally seconds, yet you can bypass the Jungle Temple easily, is that balanced?

 

[Dapling]

You can make 2 way hoiks you know, and with the right hoik setup I've seen people cheese all bosses.

for example

Also what about the oneway wall? It's so easy to do and takes literally seconds, yet you can bypass the Jungle Temple easily, is that balanced?

If you have that much knowledge of the boss's attack patterns, you are good enough to kill them the legitimate way. You can still do the same thing with minecart rails with the right design, and those are just as early.

Also, You can't just straight up bypass the jungle temple, because traps and strong enemies. You can't do ANYTHING there until you kill plantera anyways, so it's not unbalanced in the slightest (unless you're mad about someone getting the lizard pet in prehardmode.)

 

[The Storm]

If you have that much knowledge of the boss's attack patterns, you are good enough to kill them the legitimate way. You can still do the same thing with minecart rails with the right design, and those are just as early.

Also, You can't just straight up bypass the jungle temple, because traps and strong enemies. You can't do ANYTHING there until you kill plantera anyways, so it's not unbalanced in the slightest (unless you're mad about someone getting the lizard pet in prehardmode.)

Yes, I can't believe people would get get the pet item early, such a disgrace.
I forgot you need to kill the Plantera to spawn the Golem, but the point still stands that you can easily abuse the one way wall to cheese events ect...

But anyway why are we arguing about hoiking here? I never use it and it doesn't affect me, so go ahead and use it as much as you want, but it'll always be a bug to me regardless what Re-Logic says

 

[Loki]

We have always stood by the notion that there is more than one way to play the game - and yes, taking an inordinate amount of time to build some contraption to win a fight or fights is fair game in that.

It is a balancing act, right? One of time and creativity as a solution vs raw twitch gaming skill. That's why things like hoiks are actively protected (we actually test to be sure we DONT break them) and stuff like "standing on a spike" to exploit invincibility frames is actively attacked. One takes some time and skill and cleverness..... the other takes 5s to set up and then hold down a mouse button.

Take that automated expert play video - how long do you think that took to design and implement? To us, that is legit gameplay - he used a LOT of time experimenting and the like to find a way to beat the game... and then what had to be ages building it.

 

[The Storm]

Fair enough, like I said those contraptions are perfectly fine and a lot of effort does go into them. (I removed the video as I realised it was a bad example, obviosulky tons of effort has gone into it and it's not something you can just make in a few minutes)

What I'm really talking about though is using simple hoiks/sloped platforms to pass through walls and enter areas before you're supposed to, and the one way wall glitch which is just a cheap as the standing on a spike, as you can just create one wall and stand on one side while shooting all enemies while they can't hurt you, and that takes minimal effort to set up.

Also do you have plans to patch the duplication glitch via item frames? As you have to admit that just completely breaks the game, and again, requires very little effort to set up

 

[Dapling]

What I'm really talking about though is using simple hoiks/sloped platforms to pass through walls and enter areas before you're supposed to, and the one way wall glitch which is just a cheap as the standing on a spike, as you can just create one wall and stand on one side while shooting all enemies while they can't hurt you, and that takes minimal effort to set up.

Not really, while the spike glitch gave complete invulnerability, most invasions have at least one enemy that can phase through walls (which is why you don't see a million clickbait "OP DEATH SICKLE CHEESES PUMPKIN MOON" videos.) The Goblin invasion has Casters, the Old One's Army has... literally everything, Eclipses have reapers and mothron, the Pumpkin Moon has all of the major bosses, the frost moon... also has all of the major bosses, and Martian Madness has those kamikaze drones and soon the Martian Saucer. All of the high threat enemies are basically immune to it and you actually trap yourself in a tiny space to do that, so It really isn't as bad as you think.

 

[Nicol Bolas]

But then we have less building options for hoiking.

Also, they actually have gone out of their way for hoiking and one-way walls to be in the console/mobile ports. It was definitely intentional there.

I think it's important to recognize a distinction in intensionality here. I essentially see 4 different ways of expressing intensionality with regards to a game mechanic. The mechanic:

1. Was not placed in the game deliberately, and the developer intends to remove it. AKA: bugs.

2. Was placed in the game by the designer with the intent that it be used. AKA: designed features.

3. Was not placed in the game deliberately, and it would be removed if not for the fact that doing so would be prohibitively difficult and/or bothersome.

4. Was not placed in the game deliberately, but the developers like what having that feature does to the game, so it is being kept around.

It's very clear that hoiking wasn't #2. It's not an obvious rule of the system, nor is it an outgrowth of the interaction of obvious rules in the system. One would not normally expect a diagonal surface to have this effect. Basically, hoiking exists because collision with diagonal blocks was implemented in a very specific way; it's not hard to imagine a way to implement such collisions that don't cause hoiking.

Since the Powers that Be have clearly stated that they don't intend to remove them, it isn't #1. So the only question is whether hoiking is category 3 or 4?

I don't see the presence of hoiking in ports to be proof that it's category 4. The whole point of the One Terraria project after all was to share as much code as possible between the ports, so that any differences between them were essential for the destination platform (and speed up development of ports). Hoiking, as a "bug" in the collision system, simply comes along for the ride.

Plus, with hoiking so clearly tied into collision detection, it is entirely possible that fixing it would either break angle block collision in some other way, or that fixing it would be really hard. Collision detection in tight spaces is a difficult problem, and if the code isn't designed for it, I can easily imagine such a thing being difficult. This could be due to legacy code from the original 1.0 release which didn't interact well with 1.2's angled surfaces. That means the ultimate fix might require rethinking the entire collision detection and resolution system.

Or not; I don't have the code in front of me. But as a programmer, I've written myself into enough corners to not discount the possibility.

Personally, I'd guess that it's both 3 and 4. That is, the developers probably think fixing it is hard, and they like hoik contraptions too much to want to undo them. However, I imagine that if some hypothetical Terraria 2 were to happen using a new codebase/engine, I'd guess that little effort would be expended to ensure that hoiking was still a thing.

What I'm really talking about though is using simple hoiks/sloped platforms to pass through walls and enter areas before you're supposed to, and the one way wall glitch which is just a cheap as the standing on a spike, as you can just create one wall and stand on one side while shooting all enemies while they can't hurt you, and that takes minimal effort to set up.

Let's assume all of that is true.

So what?

First, Terraria is not a competitive game, so the ability for other players to exploit the game, by and large, does not affect anyone else's play.

Second, hoiking your way through a wall and building one-way walls is not something most people just discover on their first playthrough. Or second. Or third. Figuring out how hoiks/etc work from first principles requires a substantial amount of effort and playtime. I imagine most people who know these techniques learned about them from someone else. As such, new players don't stumble on to hoiks and thus accidentally "ruin" the game.

Hoiking, as an exploit, is thus primarily an expert-level tool, not a novice level tool. And therefore, to the extent that this mechanic/exploit hampers play, it only does so to those players who choose to learn about and use it.

Third, Terraria doesn't really have many places you aren't "supposed to" go yet. Shadow Orbs/Crimson Hearts are usually protected from early-game use by corrupt/crimson stone. But nobody hoiks their way past them because... you can just use bombs. You can hoik your way into the dungeon, sure... and be killed by the Dungeon Guardian unless you killed Skeletron already. And if you did, why bother hoiking your way through the wall? The only real place where this matters is the Jungle Temple, but you can't even do the one useful thing in the Temple (fight the Golem) until you've beaten Plantera... who gives you the key to the Temple.

Terraria typically blocks off places you aren't "supposed to" enter with difficult enemies, not physical barriers. So hoiking past physical barriers just doesn't really harm the game.

As for cheesing encounters... again, so what? The most likely use for this would be some form of invasion event, and most of those become difficult due to monsters that can fly over your walls and/or attack through walls. Also, the entire Summoner build class is designed around your primary mode of attack being able to ignore walls to get to the enemy. So it's not like "turtle up and spam attacks from relative safety" is some unknown playstyle in Terraria.

 

[darthmorf]

This discussion over the definition of a hoik is pretty pedantic and doesn't seem to be going anywhere - I'd suggest you all agree to disagree and move on.

 

[Gotcha!]

That pogo stick is nice and all, but it can't go without Commander Keen's helmet:

Hoping to find a yellow/green football helmet in 1.4!

In preparation:

 

[The Storm]

Since you can flip while on the Pogo stick, what if you die if you land on your head without that helmet

 

[Bry]

Also, You can't just straight up bypass the jungle temple, because traps and strong enemies. You can't do ANYTHING there until you kill plantera anyways, so it's not unbalanced in the slightest (unless you're mad about someone getting the lizard pet in prehardmode.)

*nervous laughter*

 

[Leinfors]

"Hoiking is a feature not a bug"

For some reason that phrase bothers me, technically hoik is a bug, it just that they never patched it due to the amount of contraptions people made it with.

Calling it a feature implies that they planned it from the start, which is not the case. And people taking credit for bugs like they planned it all along sounds like a joke. Because that's taking credit for something you didn't make, so really it's more of a bug-eature. (Terrible name)

If the Devs call it a feature, they will get less flak for leaving it in. Also, features don’t have to be planned from the start to be called that.

Hey guys, I just wanted to share some of our insight on hoiking, from the Relogic side of things. I don't want to necessarily restart the debate, but I thought it might be appreciated to understand why we treat it the way we do.

Hoiking is definitely a bug. It was not "intended" when it started happening. From that perspective, it is completely accurate to say that hoiking IS a bug.

But we do genuinely consider it a feature now. Its not as simple as us just "not fixing it". We actively invest dev time in making SURE that it still works correctly; we fix bugs that "break" hoiking, and we test Console/Mobile builds to ensure that hoiking DOES work. Sometimes, hoiking results in second generation bugs that have negative side effects, and we deliberately make an effort to fix them in such a way that does not break hoiking.

If we wanted to remove hoiking, we could probably do it in a day of dev work. We've fixed literally hundreds of bugs in this update, some far more technically complex than hoiking. But while it is undoubtedly a bug, we respect hoiking as a protected feature of our game, just like other gameplay mechanics that were originally intended. And yeah, it does have some pretty serious consequences. Normally, other gameplay impacting exploits are removed with pretty high priority. But we've made a specific exception for this one, because of the significant creative uses the community has created with hoiking. Overall, we feel as if removing hoiking would have a negative impact on the community, despite the "positive" trade-off of fixing a gameplay impacting bug. There are very few other bugs that receive this same treatment; item-frame item duplication was mentioned, and that is most certainly not a bug we consider to have a positive impact on the community.

Are we "taking credit" for hoiking? No. But we now formally support hoiking as a currently intended functionality of the game. If a Console build came out that accidentally fixed hoiking, we would deliberately make a bug report to "make hoiking work again". This, in my mind, is the definition of treating it as a feature, versus just being a bug that "we leave in the game". It would actually be pretty convenient for us to fix hoiking, as it has dozens of second generation bugs that are difficult to tiptoe around. We've had to NOT fix other "hoik-related bugs" because they are side effects of regular hoiking, and to fix them would mean fixing hoiking.

I literally have a task in our Bug/Task database labeled "Don't break hoiking". Its description entails reviewing hoiking at the end of each dev update to make sure that hoiking is still working properly.

Whether or not you think that warrants calling a bug a feature is up to you guys, but in my mind, the moment we start actively investing development time to protecting it from being "fixed", that's when it becomes more accurate to call it a feature.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. Hopefully not going to restart a debate about it.

 

[The Storm]

Thank you for clearing that up, I honesty regret bringing it up in the first place, I in no way think it should be patched due to the many uses it has in contraptions ect...

I hope I didn't come across too mean, I can be a bit... harsh... at times and I just want to let you know I am very grateful for all the things you have done for Terraria and I am very much looking forward to 1.4 when it comes out