Frontiers - New Developer Posts

Lars Simkins posted a few new updates for Frontiers on the games Early Access page. The first one is a Warning to not buy the game for a Christmas present this year.

A lot of folks have told me: I'm buying this game for my kid/friend/spouse for Christmas, they love exploration games! And I say the same thing every time: DON'T!

The only people who will love it are players who seek it out for themselves, because it's NOT FINISHED. Your kid/friend/spouse will just be annoyed with you. I'm proud of this game, and with everyone's help I believe it's going to be great - but it's not great yet, so in the meantime get your kid/friend/spouse Dragon Age or The Binding of Isaac or something, trust me.

The December release date unavoidably puts Christmas gift in people's minds. That's why I'm only releasing a trickle of press copies till after the new year. People are prone to impulse buy right now, and you don't want people impulse buying an Early Access game, especially not for others.

His second post talks about adding the option to only save in campsites.

I've been mulling over this one for a while. Another couple of bug reports convinced me to bring it up.

Saving inside of structures is dicey and often ruins save games. The safest place to save is on top of solid empty terrain. It will get better in time, but it's going to be a while before we iron out the kinks.

One way to prevent ruined save games is to limit saving to campsites. Campsites can only be created on solid empty terrain, and they can't be created inside, so if you had to be in a campsite to save, boom problem solved. (The requirement for a nearby water source would be turned off.)

In the future when saving inside of structures becomes more stable this can become a global setting like 'SaveOnlyInCampsites,' which can then be toggled using difficulty settings.

Pros: This would 'fix' the save game problem. Wouldn't take long to implement.

Cons: Losing the ability to save anywhere might cause some rage due to general instability. People are already clamoring for a quicksave options so I can't imagine they would love this.