Author Topic: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?  (Read 2791 times)

Offline MonkeyBrush

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Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« on: October 26, 2020, 11:41:46 am »
Man, I played the heck out of this game from 2011 to 2014. I was so disappointed when the plug was pulled on IT because I never got to play it and thought nothing could possibly fill the void in my heart that yearned for the Customizable Animal Avatar 3D Graphical Chatroom experience. Can you imagine how nuts 13 year old me went when the creator announced he was developing a successor? I still remember the WIP videos he posted on YouTube before the game was released.

Now then... and I apologize if this topic is still frowned upon - I promise I'm not here to dredge up old drama for drama's sake - but it seemed to me that the game started to slowly fizzle out following the removal of General chat and the subsequent schism that formed between the moderators and some of the players. Not that I'm trying to attribute the current state of things solely to that, or place blame on the mods, but I've seen what can happen to a game when its userbase feels it's being treated unfairly by those at the helm. Skimming through the forum for the past three years, I've noticed:

• Users expressing a lack of confidence in some mods/admins,
• Calls for greater transparency, and
• Talk of rumors

Seeing as the forums are still operating, I imagine nothing too serious could've gone down, but it looks like you've all gone through a rough patch or two.

For me, the disabling of General chat was not the final nail in the coffin, but did mark a turning point. Perhaps it just coincided with other events, or perhaps it was just the first of many changes to later come. I think the reason I eventually stopped playing was twofold. Firstly, a growing preoccupation with school, and secondly, a shift in the game's atmosphere. Sometime in 2017 or 2018 though I re-installed FH to check out the big map update. Sad to say it, but that pretty much obliterated any desire I had to reconnect with the community. I missed the old maps, even if they were small and barren by comparison. While the new maps would have been welcome additions, I think as replacements they sort of disrupted the "ecosystem" of the game.

Ficho Tunnel's layout was cumbersome to navigate, and the other maps felt too similar to one another. I see it as a missed opportunity that a wider range of biomes were not represented (no desert? no jungle? no swamp? just the same rolling mishmash grassland with minor differences in the terrain and palm tree to acacia ratio?) and a shame that more thought wasn't put into making the maps feel both varied and cohesive. As they were when I last looked at them, they suffered from the usual pitfalls that many open world style games do: huge areas with few points of interest, haphazard terraforming, and poor flow. Quantity over quality. The original maps were nothing stellar, but at least each one felt reasonably distinct, and for an overhaul I guess I expected more.

Of course, I understand that the people behind the scenes have their own artistic vision that doesn't need to align with mine, and there are limitations to how much you can do before encountering performance issues (especially for players on older machines) - if you're reading this, I'm sorry for knocking your work! It's an honest critique and in all fairness, one probably marred by the rose-tinted glasses permanently glued to my face. I appreciate the improved attention to certain details, particularly the greater rock and foliage density, as well as better terrain variation. The new maps look more realistic and fleshed out, I just have a lot of little gripes over what I see as unrealized potential.

There were also not many users on, and nearly all of them were concentrated in the default map around the tunnel entrance. Whether or not the number of active users was already plummeting before the map update, I do not know, but it had definitely fallen by the time I re-installed the game. I gave it at least three more tries, but couldn't get back into it. I haven't really played since, and have no intention to play now.

Which brings me to my two questions:

1) What on earth has transpired in the time I've been absent? I get the feeling there's been a falling out of sorts. If so, how has it impacted things? What is the future of FH?

2) I presume FHU is "FeralHeart Unleashed," but what is it? Is it a FH server using FH's source code? Or is it meant to be a totally separate game, just using assets from FH? I know that for years people have been inquiring about the source code to no avail, as no one was able to contact KovuLKD. Has this changed?

Anyways, sorry for the long post! It's been ages since I was a participant here (over six years), and while I'm not planning on sticking around after I gain more insight into the situation, the game still has a special place in my heart and I'd like to know more about its fate.

The way I look at it, this game is dying, but if you believe it will see a resurgence (or will at least manage to keep itself propped up on its last legs), I'd still like to hear your perspective.

Thanks.

Offline Ame88

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Re: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2020, 09:35:36 pm »
It's all good! Topics like this are alright so long as all conversation is civil, of course.

General Chat and the old map's removal... General Chat was removed due to how hard it was for moderators to, well, moderate it. This was before my time as a staff member, but it's what I've read, heard, and talked about with others. However on the contrary, some of the staffers at the time didn't have an issue moderating it. All things considered, I feel that adjustments were made so that it would be easier for the staff at the time to moderate. If it was brought back now there wouldn't be much strain on moderating it due to how slow it is, however if things were to get busy again, it would be labeled to possibly be removed again if moderating it becomes a hassle once more.

The maps. I do not agree with how these new maps were introduced. It was like a rug being pulled out from underneath everyone, with a new rug being thrown on top of them right after, essentially suffocating them. I wasn't a staff member when this happened so I received the full slap to the face alongside everyone else. If changes had to be made...at least give the community a heads up first. Tell them what's going to happen to the maps and let them have that time to see them off.

Ficho Tunnel's layout was cumbersome to navigate, and the other maps felt too similar to one another. I see it as a missed opportunity that a wider range of biomes were not represented (no desert? no jungle? no swamp? just the same rolling mishmash grassland with minor differences in the terrain and palm tree to acacia ratio?) and a shame that more thought wasn't put into making the maps feel both varied and cohesive. As they were when I last looked at them, they suffered from the usual pitfalls that many open world style games do: huge areas with few points of interest, haphazard terraforming, and poor flow. Quantity over quality. The original maps were nothing stellar, but at least each one felt reasonably distinct, and for an overhaul I guess I expected more.

Of course, I understand that the people behind the scenes have their own artistic vision that doesn't need to align with mine, and there are limitations to how much you can do before encountering performance issues (especially for players on older machines) - if you're reading this, I'm sorry for knocking your work! It's an honest critique and in all fairness, one probably marred by the rose-tinted glasses permanently glued to my face. I appreciate the improved attention to certain details, particularly the greater rock and foliage density, as well as better terrain variation. The new maps look more realistic and fleshed out, I just have a lot of little gripes over what I see as unrealized potential.

I agree with you completely. All the maps are all too similar. They are all a savannah esque feeling, with Cherika, Seaside, and Eastern as exceptions. I can't say too much on this topic, and I WISH I could say more (I'm literally dying to), but I will say that I'm very sure that more biomes to implement have been thought of. c;

1) What on earth has transpired in the time I've been absent? I get the feeling there's been a falling out of sorts. If so, how has it impacted things? What is the future of FH?

Everyone will have their own explanation and viewpoints on this, so what I say may, and probably will, vary from what others say.

I personally feel it's a big combination of things over the years of this game being up. In no particular order; sudden changes to the game without notice, players feeling suppressed and censored, frustrations on both ends coming out in a not so pleasant way, and keeping changes to the game away from the players until it actually happens.

As for FH's future, things have been planned. The game will still be around for the foreseeable future.

2) I presume FHU is "FeralHeart Unleashed," but what is it? Is it a FH server using FH's source code? Or is it meant to be a totally separate game, just using assets from FH? I know that for years people have been inquiring about the source code to no avail, as no one was able to contact KovuLKD. Has this changed?

FHU, or as I personally call it, FU, is a server that uses FeralHeart's source code, but it is entirely separate from FeralHeart. It's not a continuation of the official game but just another server that uses it's source code. How it came to be is another story, though.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2020, 09:51:26 pm by Ame88 »

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Offline MonkeyBrush

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Re: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« Reply #2 on: October 27, 2020, 04:28:53 am »
Thanks for the response!

Yeah, I remember the issues presented by General chat. Lots of advertisement spam, arguing, and users treating it as their personal radio broadcasting platform when totally unnecessary. I think a potential fix would have been to introduce flood control, restructure the public chat system so advertisements had their own chat, and implement an in-game guide or help section to brief players on the appropriate use for each chat. At the very least, it would have gotten more people on the same page. General was always a bit of a wild west. I got a lot of enjoyment out of it because of how casual it was (it was great for stimulating conversation across the map too) but it was hard to maintain a balance so as not to interfere with other users' enjoyment... I think there were clashing ideas on what General was "supposed" to be used for.

Quote
I can't say too much on this topic, and I WISH I could say more (I'm literally dying to), but I will say that I'm very sure that more biomes to implement have been thought of. c;

Heh, well I hope you won't have to wait too much longer before you can say more.

As for the remainder of your reply... seems I have a bit of digging to do if I want to piece things together. I'm quite surprised to hear that someone has managed to obtain the source code. Glad to see that FH isn't yet going the way of the dodo, and I wish you and the rest of the team luck in hopefully revitalizing it.

If anyone else has something to add, I welcome your thoughts.

Offline Telluric

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Re: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« Reply #3 on: October 27, 2020, 04:31:31 am »
ame summed up your questions with some pretty decent answers -speaking as someone who's been involved w/ the community for a decent amount of time now but i'll still throw my own two cents into the topic where i feel i can address.
i'm someone who has over the past few months spent a lot of time in all the maps and i feel inclined to agree. i love each and every map but i feel like the base items do well detailing and fleshing out maps, but are incredibly redundant, not to mention pretty much only four/five of the same textures are used on the ground. grass, sand, rock, rinse and repeat. i'm hoping there's been more contact with meshmakers to expand upon the current "default" items they have for mapmaking because there's so much to be done - and that any new maps utilize more of the fun textures the base game already has.
i've talked about my hopes of more biomes ingame and perhaps elsewhere.
all in all i don't know where the line'll wind up being between having a simple game that can run on most computers vs. complexity and beautiful visuals will lie. i'm hoping they stick closer to the first and keep letting the community do their thing with the latter.
all i can really say for certain is i know maps are going to keep being detailed... but we're probably never going to get something as expansive as say.. south pole or fluorite plains ever again.
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Offline Oddonelynx

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Re: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« Reply #4 on: October 27, 2020, 11:56:01 am »
Everyone summed up what I wanted to say already, so I believe FH will have a resurgence, at first we only had 30 members player, then it got up to 52.

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Offline Bullseye

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Re: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« Reply #5 on: November 01, 2020, 02:31:51 am »
i don't think general was that big of a deal, but the maps definitely were. I would include Red's departure from the staff team as a good timeline mark for FH's downfall, not because him stepping down was a big deal (which it was), but i feel like ever since that happened everything dramatically worsened

Offline Oddonelynx

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Re: Checking in for the first time in years - Also, what is FHU?
« Reply #6 on: November 02, 2020, 12:27:53 am »
i don't think general was that big of a deal, but the maps definitely were. I would include Red's departure from the staff team as a good timeline mark for FH's downfall, not because him stepping down was a big deal (which it was), but i feel like ever since that happened everything dramatically worsened
Really? How do you think it became worse? ???
« Last Edit: November 02, 2020, 12:32:02 am by Oddonelynx »

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