Terraria State of the Game - January 2023

[Razor_Typhoon]

why has this devolved into a discussion about mod difficulties?

 

[StrawberryStealer]

why has this devolved into a discussion about mod difficulties?

because someone mentioned malice mode being added to 1.4.5 as a joke

 

[ehtaedemit]

i dont think they would do that

 

[StrawberryStealer]

i dont think they would do that

as
a
joke

 

[ehtaedemit]

that reminds me of the cursed 2018 april fools update where they turned everything into worms

 

[Zallaraxium]

Sorry that was me, but I was merely teasing and jesting.

But I will get back on topic, and say I am excited for 1.4.5 to drop and eventually reach console and mobile, I'm also looking forward to TModLoader reaching 1.4.4, as well as the idea of cross play being implemented.

 

[ehtaedemit]

hope crossplay will be stable there are of cosrce going to be bugs

 

[Zallaraxium]

hope crossplay will be stable there are of cosrce going to be bugs

So true, bugs and glitches will be a thing unfortunately, but thats why theres beta testing as as well as bug/glitch reports and hotfixes to iron out the problems, hopefully.

 

[ZeroJinKui]

You'll be saying this for years

i doubt it, cause the engine IS reaching its limit.

they've already hit a limit on trees, liquids, and paints, haven't they?

probably won't be much longer before other things start becoming impossible to add onto.

 

[ehtaedemit]

i doubt it, cause the engine IS reaching its limit.

they've already hit a limit on trees, liquids, and paints, haven't they?

probably won't be much longer before other things start becoming impossible to add onto.

just update to a newer engine it would be hard yes but it is possible

 

[Russ_Guss_Doodles]

i doubt it, cause the engine IS reaching its limit.

they've already hit a limit on trees, liquids, and paints, haven't they?

probably won't be much longer before other things start becoming impossible to add onto.

Yeah, the engine is at its limit. It’s over 10 years old at this point and it can’t handle much more without sacrificing efficiency.

just update to a newer engine it would be hard yes but it is possible

It wouldn’t be updating to a new engine, it would be completely remaking the game in a new engine. They could do it but what would be the point? The game is packed to the brim with content and there is very little space to fit in new bosses in progression. A new game is definitely the better option because Re-Logic will be able to space things out more, have even more content between the beginning and final boss, and they will get to flex their creative muscles without having to worry about an old engine.

 

[Zallaraxium]

Keep adding stuff, it'll be amusing to see the game engine breaking down and barely hold it's self together, also they are never allowed to finish the development of Terraria. Thats a joke btw.

 

[ehtaedemit]

Yeah the engine is at it’s limit. It’s over 10 years old at this point and it can’t handle much more without sacrificing efficiency.


It wouldn’t be updating to a new engine, it would be completely remaking the game in a new engine. They could do it but what would be the point? The game is packed to the brim with content and their is very little space to fit in new bosses in progression. A new game is definitely the better option because Re-Logic will be able to space things out more, have even more content between the beginning and final boss, and they will get to flex their creative muscles without having to worry about an old engine.

then how does mods add in 20 bosses and 2-3 new liquids hey

 

[StrawberryStealer]

then how does mods add in 20 bosses and 2-3 new liquids hey

tmodloader probably has a better engine

 

[Russ_Guss_Doodles]

then how does mods add in 20 bosses and 2-3 new liquids hey

By compromising the game's efficiency and integrity. You need a stronger PC to play beefy mods like Clamity at peak efficiency. Vanilla Terraria can easily run on low-end PCs and I think Re-Logic wants to keep it that way.

tmodloader probably has a better engine

That could also be a part of it. Tmodloader is probably optimized in a way that makes mods run better.

 

[Zallaraxium]

tmodloader probably has a better engine

Being serious they could move to a new engine and/or make their own but that would take a lot of time and effort, plus Terraria even though the development is still going, it's by development standards an old game, ten years old, there would be only so much they can physically add to the game before enough is enough, and I agree TModLoader is a great engine, though I like it as much as vanilla, though id admit a comprehensive technical comparision of the vanilla and TModLoader engines would be nice to read to fully understand the difference.

Also Russ you are right some of the really good mods like Calamity do need a pretty good computer to run but Vanilla can run just fine on low end computers. But thats ok with me. And lets not forget about Consoles and Mobiles versions, they need to also be taken into consideration when Vanilla is ported over, the Old Gen aka Legacy Consoles versions and good, but sadly theyre no longer updates as the consoles and devices in question, might not be able to handle the additional content.

 

[ehtaedemit]

i honestly cant wait for the dead cells update

 

[punchready]

i doubt it, cause the engine IS reaching its limit.

they've already hit a limit on trees, liquids, and paints, haven't they?

probably won't be much longer before other things start becoming impossible to add onto.

While they do have reached a "limit" on liquids and paints, this has NOTHING to do with the engine. Consider, the engine doesn't have any inbuilt liquids or paints, it doesn't even have a concept of blocks or items inbuilt. All it does is provide a basic framework with an update and draw loop and graphics and i/o support.
The "limit" reached is due to the way Terraria stores blocks in a world, which i explained before in another post about paints, but here it is again: ReLogic has designated 5 bits of the storage to storing tile paint, which happen to be able to represent 2^5 = 32 different values and thus the game has 31 paints and a "no paint" value. Similarly, 2 bits were designated to store the liquid type of a block, which is able to store 2^2 = 4 values, one for each liquid that currently exists ("no liquid" is stored by setting the liquid amount to zero).
"Why not just use more bits for these?" you may ask, and the answer is that this would either explode the amount of memory used by the game (because there could be up to 8400*2400 = over 20 million tiles at once, so every byte matters), or degrade performance significantly due to complicated bit operations being necessary.

TLDR: "The engine" is mostly responsible for graphics capabilities such as shaders, and liquid types, paints, or trees, are developer-implemented features and not affected by graphics capabilities of the engine.

This also means that no, tModLoader doesn't have a better engine, they simply expand the block data storage. Sad to see people spread pure speculation as facts.

 

[ZeroJinKui]

While they do have reached a "limit" on liquids and paints, this has NOTHING to do with the engine. Consider, the engine doesn't have any inbuilt liquids or paints, it doesn't even have a concept of blocks or items inbuilt. All it does is provide a basic framework with an update and draw loop and graphics and i/o support.
The "limit" reached is due to the way Terraria stores blocks in a world, which i explained before in another post about paints, but here it is again: ReLogic has designated 5 bits of the storage to storing tile paint, which happen to be able to represent 2^5 = 32 different values and thus the game has 31 paints and a "no paint" value. Similarly, 2 bits were designated to store the liquid type of a block, which is able to store 2^2 = 4 values, one for each liquid that currently exists ("no liquid" is stored by setting the liquid amount to zero).
"Why not just use more bits for these?" you may ask, and the answer is that this would either explode the amount of memory used by the game (because there could be up to 8400*2400 = over 20 million tiles at once, so every byte matters), or degrade performance significantly due to complicated bit operations being necessary.

TLDR: "The engine" is mostly responsible for graphics capabilities such as shaders, and liquid types, paints, or trees, are developer-implemented features and not affected by graphics capabilities of the engine.

This also means that no, tModLoader doesn't have a better engine, they simply expand the block data storage. Sad to see people spread pure speculation as facts.

regardless, the point still stands that this game has reached a limit, and while they can feel free to add more to it, how much more can they really do?

it's probably far better to move on to a sequel where they can push things to a whole new level and REALLY let their creativity go wild.

but in the end, it's re-logic's decision... but i am personally curious what they could pull off with a sequel, or whatever else they decide to make.

 

[punchready]

regardless, the point still stands that this game has reached a limit, and while they can feel free to add more to it, how much more can they really do?

it's probably far better to move on to a sequel where they can push things to a whole new level and REALLY let their creativity go wild.

but in the end, it's re-logic's decision... but i am personally curious what they could pull off with a sequel, or whatever else they decide to make.

Of course the hundreds of thousands of lines of legacy code are a huge annoyance to maintain and make large additions to, i'm just trying to fight misinformation 👍