Portfolio/Multi-Topic [MOBILE] Mobile Improvements Compilation!

What do you think of the proposed changes?


  • Total voters
    14

MadmanLava

Spazmatism
EDIT: Well folks. Its official. The reset is coming later this month, and its looking to stand up to the quality the game deserves. Thanks for contributing to this thread!

(NOTE: This thread may not receive much attention from me unless I think of another thing to place, so please don't think its dead)
So, as of this writing, with the Mobile Reset and 1.3 coming in September-ish(EDIT: LOL RIP THAT DATE), I would like to create this thread for the TCF mobile players to try and request necessary changes, most importantly BEFORE the reset occurs. I have also been alerted that Pipeworks is not really completely familiar with mobile nor its player's wishes, which is a dangerous gamble. I am placing this thread in the suggestions due to its nature, and the fact that the mobile forum has only a handful of categories. I am an almost entirely mobile player, and have wanted to make known to the developers my complaints, and help suggest solutions from this viewpoint for a long time. PLEASE remember that I AM aware that the mobile reset will almost certainly eliminate the large scale bugs I am showing, and such complaints will not be the focus, instead I would like to focus on issues of intentional decisions that I feel harm the mobile edition, and how to solve them(with the help of the community, of course!).

GRIEVANCES ON BUGS AND GLITCHES
This section is mainly just to blow off some steam about the poor coding and handling of issues. If you play mobile for even a short amount of time, you quickly notice graphical issues, which can be quite annoying, especially when taking screenshots. If you play it long enough for the game to be updated a couple times, you also notice that plenty don't get fixed, and ones that are either resurface later, or are replaced by equally annoying ones. This shows poor management of bug removal and prevention, to the point where the slate had to be wiped clean.

INTENTIONAL FEATURES AND DECISIONS IN NEED OF CHANGE

WALL OF TEXT HAS AWOKEN!

1. You know what I'm talking about. One of the most horrible types of things you can subject a player to. *drumroll*
CMID6297.jpg

Did you guess right? (If so free cookies for you true mobil-ers ;)) THE GARISH FLASHING YELLOW OUTLINES ON EVERY. SINGLE. INTERACTABLE! (This picture also shows distorted pixel widths if you look closely at the blocks and furniture) PC users may recognize this from the smart cursor mode, but for mobile users, this is present on any interactive furniture, from any distance, and CANNOT be toggled. Simply adding a toggle for this would already have made mobile quite a bit better looking, in visual quality mobile is far behind.

2. Increase the maximum area visible for smaller devices! This is something that I have wanted from the very beginning. When everyplay videos became available, the first thing I noticed was that even on my iPhone 5S, the massive visibility available on tablets was surprisingly close to a good range for smaller devices as well! The previous image is fully zoomed out, which is clearly far too small, which is particularly important for 1.3, as otherwise fighting the Moonlord will be even more difficult than it really should be. I think that if the maximum view distance was made to be between that of tablets and phones, at LEAST 1.5x bigger, it would be very beneficial.

3. Add the housing menu. Mobile has never experienced the joy that comes from the usefulness of the housing menu. Something that really should've been there from the beginning that was never implemented. Also: add a toggle on visibility of NPC banners, they are always on which, while useful due to missing menu, is kind of annoying sometimes.

4. Accessory vanity slots, dyes, and visibility toggle. One of the biggest reasons I was looking forward to the 1.2.1-4 updates was this. I was so excited to have a new layer of customization for my character(Capes! Which are added, but sacrifices a valuable slot). Then it didn't happen. With the GUI, it scrolls down, so spacing was never an issue.
TWSA2126.jpg

index.php

Credit to @GoldenTerrabyte for this mockup!
There is really no reason that this shouldn't have happened. It was a major part of its update, and neglecting it was a huge mistake.

5. DYNAMIC DYES! In a post, 505 stated that dynamic dyes are, "unsupported on mobile devices". :sigh: That statement is nonsense. The latest iPhones have more RAM than low-end computers, yet dynamic dyes are unsupported? -_-

6. Yet another appearance-related issue, lack of clothing choice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that by 1.2 different clothing styles were supposed to be available. Swept that one under the rug as well?

7. Compass, Depth Meter, etc. functionality. Now, the problem with this one I can understand. With the limited screen size, they didn't want such information cluttering the screen. My objection to this is simple: 1. such a thing exists as icons in place of words like "depth", and small text. 2. Look at number 2 again. Add that important change and issues with "obscuring view" are much milder. Also, if the player chooses to sacrifice some of their screen for info, thats their choice. Its not like players are going to have these equipped while fighting a boss.

8. Low spawn rates. I can also see this from their point of view, "we want a simpler, pick-up-and-play mobile experience." But honestly, I don't think that reducing spawn rates would really do this, nor should mobile be oriented in such a way. Also: this worsens the "DARN YOU RNG!" problem.

9. Save the Golden Turtle! If anyone reading this doesn't know what this was, it was a super cool pet that was unobtainable, for reasons unknown. And if that wasn't bad enough, after hackers started using it, it was removed from the game's files entirely! I don't know why the devs are so touchy about adding exclusive pets that aren't attached to a terrible holiday event(more on that later), but it really ought not to have been removed(Or been unobtainable, it was completely functional).

10. Redo Lepus! A long time ago I saw a suggestion that turned Lepus into a fleshed-out, well sprited, and enjoyable boss with useful loot. I can't find it anymore, but it reduced his insane health(20,000!? FOR SILVER TIER?!), rebalanced the event, fixed his drop pool, and had high quality sprites. Could someone please find it?

11. REMOVE TURKOR. NO EXCEPTIONS. Perhaps make the Merchant sell the Horn during the event, if all mechanical bosses are defeated. I don't really like the item, but I'm including it for the many who do. On a slightly different note, I had an idea that salvages the "multi-head" idea. An exclusive Hydra boss with armor(perhaps in a similar vein to spider or jungle), weapons and other details? This would require sprites and its own thread, so Ill leave that there.

12. Save the Chinese New Years event! It had an epic mini boss and vanity set! Add a few more items or details and it would be complete!

13. Remove/shorten St.Patrick's Day event. Its super annoying collecting useless rainbow pieces from late February to mid April. Remove it, or make it only last the week St. Patrick's day occurs in along with making them sell for a few silver. (No, do not make it into a recipe for the Rainbow Gun, its in a dungeon chest for a reason. An alternate Rainbow Rod recipe or even a brand new weapon(Prism Blade?), vanity(if it looked like the last prism palette :eek:) would be better.)

14. Spruce up the old mobile-exclusive pets. Their sprites are slightly discolored and old. Perhaps give them exclusive sprites and animations, to make them into a set of actually great pets!

15. Full Guide functionality. Smaller one in my view, but still a missing feature. The guide only offers those earlygame tips, and doesn't let you view crafting recipes.

16. Redone crafting menu! One problem that the mobile version suffers from is a cluttered crafting interface. It lets you see recipes that you don't have the materials for, which I support, but the problem is, with 1.2's huge increase in, well, everything, the crafting lists are very long, particularly in weapons and building. This leads to the menu taking awhile to load. I think that it should have new categories within the existing ones to break up recipes into easy to find groups. Examples would be furniture sets being grouped together by material, or ingots being separate from melee, ranged, and magic weaponry. Think like a sideways tree going left to right.

17. Correct spawning area! Mobile has a spawn zone about 2/3ish that of pc, and while spawn rates are another matter, the problem is replication of arenas for pc is inaccurate and leads to poor performance.

18. May be cheating the category a bit here, but based on the reaction to the original 1.3 release this is kinda important :p Altered Medusa range mechanics. Please make sure Medusa's range does NOT exceed the max viewing distance for the device so that we don't get sniped literally every time, thanks. :)

I will try and include any good additions from the comments in the list. Improved mockups and sprites welcome, if someone can make me a good banner for this I will be their friend. GET PIPEWORKS TO NOTICE THIS!
 
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Literally every point made in this thread is good. I hope this gets a lot of attention, and let me explain why.

Yesterday, I was watching one of the bi-weekly Pipeworks streams. Me and a couple of other people were asking about Mobile. What they said, as far as I remember, was that they weren't yet sure what needed to be taken care of on Mobile, and they'd focus a lot more on that once the Console reset is released. When that time comes, I want this thread to be easy for them to find and consult, as it brings up just about all the things I'm hoping for them to fix!

Also, on the PC version of Terraria, the equip slots are green, the social(vanity) slots are teal, and the dye slots are blue. I made a quick edit of how this could look on Mobile's UI.
1490487784199.png

This could be similarly applied to Armor slots. In 1.3, there are faint background images behind empty slots that show what goes in it. I might re-edit this to have those (plus visibility toggles) later.
 
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Literally every point made in this thread is good. I hope this gets a lot of attention, and let me explain why.

Yesterday, I was watching one of the bi-weekly Pipeworks streams. Me and a couple of other people were asking about Mobile. What they said, as far as I remember, was that they weren't yet sure what needed to be taken care of on Mobile, and they'd focus a lot more on that once the Console reset is released. When that time comes, I want this thread to be easy for them to find and consult, as it brings up just about all the things I'm hoping for them to fix!

Also, on the PC version of Terraria, the equip slots are green, the social(vanity) slots are teal, and the dye slots are blue. I made a quick edit of how this could look on Mobile's UI.
View attachment 163917
This could be similarly applied to Armor slots. In 1.3, there are faint background images behind empty slots that show what goes in it. I might re-edit this to have those (plus visibility toggles) later.
Also just as a side note, they go on about animated dye being too complex for mobiles yet they somehow include rainbow which is yknow, animated.
 
Literally every point made in this thread is good. I hope this gets a lot of attention, and let me explain why.

Yesterday, I was watching one of the bi-weekly Pipeworks streams. Me and a couple of other people were asking about Mobile. What they said, as far as I remember, was that they weren't yet sure what needed to be taken care of on Mobile, and they'd focus a lot more on that once the Console reset is released. When that time comes, I want this thread to be easy for them to find and consult, as it brings up just about all the things I'm hoping for them to fix!

Also, on the PC version of Terraria, the equip slots are green, the social(vanity) slots are teal, and the dye slots are blue. I made a quick edit of how this could look on Mobile's UI.
View attachment 163917
This could be similarly applied to Armor slots. In 1.3, there are faint background images behind empty slots that show what goes in it. I might re-edit this to have those (plus visibility toggles) later.
Thanks for the better mockup. :D Yeah, help me try and spread the word! Pipework's NEEDS to see this before they finish reconstructing the game, this needs to be worked in for "Launch 2.0". Also, on the topic of animated recolors, RAINBOW BRICKS. They work!
 
I like the ideas on this thread. I honestly didn't have much time to read it, due to a freind bugging me about downloading discord (Thanks Dylan...) but I think it seems pretty nice. I used to have PC terraria, but due to issues that involved the hacking of my steam account, I never got to play the 1.3 update. Last time I played was the 1.1 update! But anyways, nice thread, and support!
 
I like the ideas on this thread. I honestly didn't have much time to read it, due to a freind bugging me about downloading discord (Thanks Dylan...) but I think it seems pretty nice. I used to have PC terraria, but due to issues that involved the hacking of my steam account, I never got to play the 1.3 update. Last time I played was the 1.1 update! But anyways, nice thread, and support!
Another suggestion is to make the enemy spawning area the same as that of the PC version.
For example, on the PC version, enemies spawn 62-84 tiles to the sides of the player, but on the mobile version, these numbers are 34-56.
In addition, on the PC version, enemies spawn 35-47 tiles above or below the player, but on the mobile version, these numbers are 24-31.
Making the enemy spawning area the same as that of the PC version would make it much easier for mobile players to recreate PC autofarms such as the Cannonball Pumpkin Moon Farm by @DicemanX without having to alter the dimensions to conform with the mobile spawn area.
 
Another suggestion is to make the enemy spawning area the same as that of the PC version.
For example, on the PC version, enemies spawn 62-84 tiles to the sides of the player, but on the mobile version, these numbers are 34-56.
In addition, on the PC version, enemies spawn 35-47 tiles above or below the player, but on the mobile version, these numbers are 24-31.
Making the enemy spawning area the same as that of the PC version would make it much easier for mobile players to recreate PC autofarms such as the Cannonball Pumpkin Moon Farm by @DicemanX without having to alter the dimensions to conform with the mobile spawn area.
Oh yeah! Last time I was on I was thinking about that, and actually testing the dimensions(they seem to be correct). Added!
 
Glitch: Disappearing items from chest and inventory
A few questions:
  1. When exactly does this happen? Does it happen after leaving the world and coming back, or just after closing the chest and opening it again, etc.?
  2. Do you make sure that the spinning eyeball at the bottom right of the screen has stopped moving before you leave the world, because leaving a world without saving may sometimes cause things you did to disappear?
 
8. Low spawn rates. I can also see this from their point of view, "we want a simpler, pick-up-and-play mobile experience." But honestly, I don't think that reducing spawn rates would really do this, nor should mobile be oriented in such a way. Also: this worsens the "DARN YOU RNG!" problem.
I especially agree with this one. On the mobile version, getting the Rod of Discord is so hard because Chaos Elementals have an extremely low spawn rate for some reason.
 
Glitch: Disappearing items from chest and inventory
Sorry, but that's not relevant to this thread. This is for INTENTIONAL features and decisions that are harmful. 505/Codeglue did NOT intend for glitches, they just sucked at addressing, testing and preventing them.
I especially agree with this one. On the mobile version, getting the Rod of Discord is so hard because Chaos Elementals have an extremely low spawn rate for some reason.
I have only seen a couple in the past, and now they don't appear at all, that means that this fits under the "unintentional" section of issues as broken specific spawn rates are from bugs, not intent.
 
This is a must for Pipeworks to see before working on mobile and releasing 1.3, they just have too. Especially if they do t know where exactly to start and don't know what the community wants. Of course glitches and bugs are terrible things but work out the pet peeves first, smoothen the play experience and then work on squishing those bugs. (Although when 1.2 mobile was released it was the opposite. It was practically a game full of bugs) but otherwise they NEED TO SEE THIS!!!
 
This would be really great for mobile! I have only played on mobile, but when I watch videos of the desktop platform, I have noticed a lot of things that could improve mobile, and you stated most of them. But keep Turkor. Otherwise, I agree with everything! Support!
 
You expect them to change all these things but you're saying they suck? lol you're going nowhere.
Edit: I do agree with most of these changes, especially the view range, but positivity might work a little bit more in your favor.
 
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You expect them to change all these things but you're saying they suck? lol you're going nowhere.
Edit: I do agree with most of these changes, especially the view range, but positivity might work a little bit more in your favor.
Im talking about bugs. I fully expect the ludicrous amount of bugs to die. What I mean is gameplay. Things that aren't as likely to change but honestly need to. I never said pipeworks sucks, if you have followed the situation you should know the previous developer is to blame and the target of the ranty part.
 
One crippling thing on Mobile is if you take a piece of armor from your inventory and drag it to an occupied armor slot for your character
(with let's say...a Spectre or Spectral/Dragon/Titan Helmet, Spectre is Spectre Bars which require Chlorophyte I believe. And the other 3 require Souls of Blight from the Ocram boss.)
The Armor you dragged changes places with the armor you had on, however, the armor you had on, may just DISSAPPEAR.
If it's a piece of Chlorophyte/Spectre/Turtle/Shroomite/Spectral/Dragon/Titan Armor, you'll have one hell of a time fixing it, since the first 4 require Chlorophyte, and the other 3 require several Souls of Blight PER PIECE, of which each set has at least 4, which require killing Ocram alot, which requires like 10 Adamantite Bars (and Adamantite Bars ONLY, not Titanium) for every single summon. And the problem with the Chlorophyte ones, is Chlorophyte "spawns" much much slower than PC version, so it takes a ton of useless mucking around to get Chlorophyte to "spawn" and for all that time you're without a piece of armor you require.

I currently only have 2/3rds of the Tiki Armour because of that glitch, and also rigging up a Teleporter for any NPC to any particular Biome, especially my Witch Doctor to the Jungle is really time consuming, hard to do, and messy.

Another thing that sometimes happens is pressure plates, switches, and even timers can be little pink squares (less than 1 full tile tall) as if their sprite is a bit corrupted, I remember after one of the more recent updates, all chairs and tables in my NPC houses had 1 tile that was a pink square, until I removed them and put them back.

This is a couple of many bugs I've seen, but I can't think of them all off the top of my head and this post is already quite long.
 
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