General Comments are quoted with a blue margin, and Comments replying to a question are in bold. Answers from Nathaniel are in a light blue colour, and questions are in black.
Chat begins at 17:52 UTC
Nathaniel: A lot of things are happening in the background
Yes all is well and the team keeps growing
Big news:
Think Shane will do an official announcement next week
Q from @butt: Unity side of the house or web dev (non-air) side of the house?
A: On all sides
Q from @Shocka144: Hey @Nathaniel any more terrain teasers please??
A: I've been working on terrain physics, which is working very nicely already, looks very convincing driving around in a buggy...
Q from @Crimsonfate: @Nathaniel will rudimentary buildings come out simultaneously with resources or will the resources be launched on their own first?
A: Not sure, it might be that resources would be launched first
Q from @E2Odyssey: What's up Nathaniel, wondering if you had any thoughts on the leaderboard glitch used by Willy Malik and Mysor to promote this https://trello.com/b/Aqt5PSej/earth2io that shows the 100s of issues we currently have with the website. We are asking for many minor adjustments to improve our quality of e2 life greatly and it has fallen on deaf ears. I believe it was you that said there were 14 web devs correct? We all are wondering why nothing has changed. Sorry to barrage you.
A: I will share it with the team...
Q from @RamenVR: Are there any roads that are prebuilt?
A: No there won't be, roads will be painted by the players on the terrain. I got that one working too.
Q from @Crimsonfate: Will water be able to be converted into land or vice-versa? Will terrain elevations able to be changed at all?
A: Terrain elevation is planned with a limit, so you could raise terrain of shallow water and the water would disappear
Replying to Nathaniel's comment above, Pacey asked: So river banks/ponds but not the ocean? A: We'd like to keep the overall earth heightmap intact
Q: Will we be able to build underwater or underground?
A: Underwater is planned yes, underground we haven't decided yet, but would be cool to have too only it's technically challenging
Q from @butt: @Nathaniel does your web dev team know their home page doesn't even load properly of their company? -- full of broken images... kinda like Akrotiri flag on Earth2
A: The web is currently re-done from scratch - The front-end web I mean..
E2News comment: Ugh, finally. These AIR guys need to step up their game.
Q from Hazy: @Nathaniel if resources are first (which would be amazing), how will they be collected/gathered? Any idea?
A: I can't say how it will work yet, but Wolfgang and his 2 helper designers have done a lot of work on this
Q from E2Odyssey: @Nathaniel are the 14 web devs all building a new UI for phase 2 or something? It wouldn't take much manpower at all to make significant strides on the issues that are handicapping us on the website.
A: No they are working on many things at the same time also on the back-end
Q: @Nathaniel could you please tell us if you know when the phase 2 might be ready for release?
A: I don't know when, depends on the opportunity Shane tweeted about, he's been very busy with that...
Q from Crimsonfate: @Nathaniel have you hit any sweet jumps in the E2 Jeep inside your terrain engine?
A: Yeah you can modify the heightmap on the fly make ramps and such, it's pretty fun already E2News comment: Now that's epic! Think of all the opportunities for real-time game modification in a metaverse
Q from DG: @Nathaniel would we have the option to merge properties? And did you see the Trello and if NFT is something that is that there will be only 1 then how can you give 50 of the same NFT to winners?
A: Yes merging and splitting properties is a planned feature as far as I know
E2News comment: I wish he'd comment on some of the things listed on the Trello page
Q from LP: @Nathaniel are you avoiding crypto tiles-related questions? A: Yes I can't say anything about that
E2News comment: Interesting...
Q: @Nathaniel Will tiles on mountains heavily affect our possibilities to build, or will we be able to reshape the terrain?
A: We're still discussing it, you are able to shape with a limit, we want things to keep looking good
Q from DG: @Nathaniel did you see the Trello and if nft is something that is that there will be only 1 then how can you give 50 of same nft to winners? for easter eggs
A: In that case there won't be one but 50 I think
Q from E2Odyssey: I think the community consensus is that some priorities are misaligned for the web devs. I realize there is a lot of future work being planned, but there are also many basic, 5 minute fixes that would improve morale all around. The only Earth2 product we have right now is the website, it should be presentable, functional, and intuitive. And it's not in a lot of ways.
A: I will share the Trello board with the team E2News comment: Argh, why can't he address anything in that Trello board?
Q from LordWarrior: Please fix the small bugs before releasing any other update A: Yes they are being worked on
Q: Is Dillion working on any E2 projects? @Nathaniel
A: Yes he's helping Shane out a lot on the business side
Q from TheBommer: @Nathaniel how is Shane's health? He mentioned some issues last time he was in. A: I think his health is fine
Q from Drew: It's probably more for Wolfgang, but any insight on additional resources added to stage 2 and when those will be rolled out? @Nathaniel
A: Many [more] resource types are planned...
Q: @Nathaniel Are we going to build structures on the website or in-game?
A: Both, plan is all will be accessible in web. E2News comment: Now this is really great news for people with lower-end computers.
Q from Tyrone: Yeah but will there actually be the same mt Everest in the same location in earth 2 or will there just be different biomes snow desert grassy etc. Just put in different places in different countries? @Nathaniel
A: Yes the heightmap will be the same, the biomes will be an approximation
Q: @Nathaniel zal het mogelijk zijn om beelden op de muren van onze gebouwen te plaatsen?
TRANSLATION: will it be possible to place images on the walls of our buildings?
A: Misschien lol TRANSLATION: Maybe lol
Q from Nameless: @Nathaniel - What can we, the community, do right now to help support you and the team?
A: Keep believing in us
Q from Guy: In the long term do you think biomes will get more and more accurate?
A: Likely, the procedural part we could keep updating, but players would be able to customize their own tiles... Currently, I have that you can paint different sub-biomes Q from Ramen: What's the timeline for Phase 3?
A: No timeline yet, but we're building the team for it with the most skilled Unity devs.
Q from Mimecrime: 2 years minimum right?
A: Depends on what we will release first, we plan to do it in steps
Q: @Nathaniel Nice to see you here. What‘s up? Do you know why support still has a very big backlog with frozen users? Frozen for 7 weeks without any response. There are about 20 other frozen accounts. None of us gets help.
A: Hi sorry to hear about that, did you make a ticket for it? Q: sure 7 weeks ago. But they just wrote 6 weeks ago "it may take time to check“. No response anymore after that.
A: Maybe you can DM me about it...
E2News comment: Make a ticket only if you want to wait 1-2 weeks for a reply, even with Shane's new-fangled system.
Q from Neodante: I still wanna know if the game will be a pay-to-win
A: We'd like to avoid pay 2 win
Q: @Nathaniel Communication with users and customer support seems to be the biggest causes of distrust. Do you have any plans to hire more people to cover these problems? Actually, I always heard that you guys are "planning" to fix it, but I'm curious about how it's actually going.
A: Yes a lot of focus has been on improving this which we did E2News comment: There is still a long way to go!!
I have to go now, thanks for chatting and talk later
Summary:
Nathaniel informed the community of a long-awaited announcement due next week. Hopefully, this addresses the plethora of complaints, questions and bugs we have. Nathaniel also took notice of the Trello page, only after it was plastered all over the Earth2 leaderboard...
The earth2.io website will see a hopeful redesign, and Nathaniel teased of a possible Terrain video displaying driving physics!
Well, I'll let Earth2Meta unpick the rest ;)
We have some big stories coming up, so keep an eye out Earth2!
- tobalobba
Peace!