Terraria

I just got this game. Heard it was fun, and for $2.49 I don't have much to lose. Played it for 20 minutes so far, have no idea what I'm doing. And what the hell does parallax do?
 
I just got this game. Heard it was fun, and for $2.49 I don't have much to lose. Played it for 20 minutes so far, have no idea what I'm doing. And what the hell does parallax do?

yeah about the same here. i apparently made a wooden bench and no idea what to do with it, then night comes and i die over and over again.

That little guide dude needs to be a bit more informative.
 
Parallax has to do with how the background moves. If you have it set to a mid to high setting when you are underground you can see the background move with relation to the foreground, its a neat effect so I recommend to turn it up to about 50 or more.

As far as the workbench, forge, anvile, or table with chair and bottle: Once these fixtures are made and placed where ever you want them to use them stand near them. Then when you open your inventory you will see new crafting choices based on what material you have available in your inventory.

For example lets say you have a stack of 25 wood and some slime gel. If you open your inv anywhere without the above mentioned fixtures you can make a few items like torches and wood planks, and a work bench. If you make the bench and place it down you now have more options. You will be able to make doors ,wooden weapons, a table, chair, and wood walls. If you dont have enough material for a certain recipe it will not show up. However, you can now as of patch 1.5 talk to the guide and give him an item, he will then tell you what you can make with it, and what it takes.

I also think it will be useful to go over walls breifly as the wording can be a little confusing. You build structures with either blocks/ unmodified wood/ or bricks that you can make from the forge. Walls are what you use to put up backgrounds. So if you make a bunch of wood walls you do not use them to make a structure, use just the wood for that. What placing background walls is a finishing step to buildings, it will stop monster spawning in the building. You can not place walls on the dirt background, only on the sky and then rock background underground. To place a wall over dirt you must first remove the dirt wall using a hammer. However you must start at the edges and work your way down.

Hopefully that helps, I have had a fun time with the game and a little knowledge on how to start will should help engender that in all the new players.
 
I picked up a 4 pack yesterday for the cheap price, have not tried minecraft... this game is pretty fun just do some searching for quick tutorials on how to build a room/house quickly.

Some cool things I'm seeing, if you start out and don't like your world, save and you start another with that character, he brings the items on him.

Once you are able to make some better weapons/pick axe and learn the ropes on building your first room and then others, it gets interesting.

But yeah the barebones learning curve is rough unless you look it up online.

Enjoy.
 
Parallax has to do with how the background moves. If you have it set to a mid to high setting when you are underground you can see the background move with relation to the foreground, its a neat effect so I recommend to turn it up to about 50 or more.

As far as the workbench, forge, anvile, or table with chair and bottle: Once these fixtures are made and placed where ever you want them to use them stand near them. Then when you open your inventory you will see new crafting choices based on what material you have available in your inventory.

For example lets say you have a stack of 25 wood and some slime gel. If you open your inv anywhere without the above mentioned fixtures you can make a few items like torches and wood planks, and a work bench. If you make the bench and place it down you now have more options. You will be able to make doors ,wooden weapons, a table, chair, and wood walls. If you dont have enough material for a certain recipe it will not show up. However, you can now as of patch 1.5 talk to the guide and give him an item, he will then tell you what you can make with it, and what it takes.

I also think it will be useful to go over walls breifly as the wording can be a little confusing. You build structures with either blocks/ unmodified wood/ or bricks that you can make from the forge. Walls are what you use to put up backgrounds. So if you make a bunch of wood walls you do not use them to make a structure, use just the wood for that. What placing background walls is a finishing step to buildings, it will stop monster spawning in the building. You can not place walls on the dirt background, only on the sky and then rock background underground. To place a wall over dirt you must first remove the dirt wall using a hammer. However you must start at the edges and work your way down.

Hopefully that helps, I have had a fun time with the game and a little knowledge on how to start will should help engender that in all the new players.

Thanks for all the info! That helps a lot. Much appreciated.
 
Since we’re probably going to get more visits to this thread from the recent Steam sale I’d like to contribute a little by putting up a newbie guide:

Starting out in Terraria


First thing you need to do is start chopping down trees to collect wood. Equip your axe (defaulted to slot 3) then get to left clicking on the base/very bottom of the nearest tree. Trees will drop wood and Acorns. Acorns can be planted in grass to grow more trees. Make sure to replant more trees as you chop them down since wood can become a rarity later into a game if you're not careful. Also make it a point to kill any slimes you come across, you will need the Gel they drop to create torches. Try to get about 400 to 500 wood at least.

Take the wood you collected and build a house. Just place a stack of wood in one of your usable item slots then left click on a flat piece of ground to place your floor tiles. Make sure you’ve got a decent sized strip of flat, treeless, plantless ground to start off and use your pickaxe to even out the dirt if necessary. Build your walls at least six high and then close off the roof. Use your Axe to then cut out 3 squares from at least one of the sides for a door. For a proper house you need the following things in place:

Table – 1 per house
Chair – 1 per house
Door(s) – 1 per entrance
Light (Torches) – I like to do 1 per 6 squares of vertical wall
Background Walls – make about 200 or so of these for starters as they get used up quickly

To acquire these items you have to build them which requires a Workbench. You can build one of these with wood. To do so go into your inventory, scroll through the list (at the left side of the screen) to the workbench, then left-click on it until the workbench appears as your cursor. To place it in the world you will use it like any other item by putting it in one of your usable item slots, switching to it, then left-clicking a location on the ground. Once placed, stand next to your workbench and go back into your inventory. This time your list of craftable items will have expanded. Build the necessary amount of each item and place them in your house.

Viola, you’ve got your first shelter made to survive the night. The Guide NPC will basically occupy the first house you build so it’s a good idea to build two houses during the first day. To lure in more NPC’s you must have additional unoccupied houses available with all of the same requirements listed above. Once you have the house built then you must simply meet one additional requirement, per NPC, to lure them to house. For example the Vendor requires that you have at least 50 silver on your character before he will show up to occupy one of your houses. I recommend that you build up at least 4 to 6 houses before you go off adventuring. That way, as you meet the requirements to lure NPC’s, they will have already moved in and be waiting for you when you head back to your home. And yes, houses can be built one on top of each other but make sure to build an additional floor layer on top of the existing roof. You'll also need to provide platforms (created at a workbench) to allow your NPC's to jump up to the second level.

That’s it! The rest is up to you and Google! :D
 
Is there any difference between a wood house and a stone house? If there is, should I not bother making a big wood house first and move right to stone? And when I do make my "big" house, I read somewhere I shouldn't make it right next to the spawn, but around how far away should it be?
 
there's no real difference in the material you make your house out of, as long as it's not dirt... As far as moving it away from spawn, I think the only reason people did that was to avoid having the Guide move into your house, one less room you have to make.

Also, if you make a bed (uses silk created by cobwebs), you can set your spawn point where ever you like once you place the bed down by right clicking on it.
 
Also like to add: This game encourages more exploring caves/open areas more than just straight digging into the ground like minecraft did (not to make a direct game comparison, but if you're coming from playing minecraft you might have that tendancy)
 
, I read somewhere I shouldn't make it right next to the spawn, but around how far away should it be?

Reason some people say to not build at the center is because there is a random goblin "train" that will storm over land and they all gravitate to the center of the map.
I have yet to see it but thats what I read on the wiki.
 
Reason some people say to not build at the center is because there is a random goblin "train" that will storm over land and they all gravitate to the center of the map.
I have yet to see it but thats what I read on the wiki.

I have only encountered the goblins in coop
 
You can get a goblin invasion at any time during the day in SP or MP. I think there are certain conditions, like you have to have destroyed one Shadow Orb and at least one player (or just you if SP) must have at least 200 HP currently...something like that.

You can do the weird de-focus time warp trick to get them faster...just listen for the three "clicks" (announcing that a goblin invasion is approaching).
 
Just a heads up for anyone that wants to build a house for themselves:

Over the course of the game you unlock a total of 7 npc's. These npc's will move into houses you make, regardless if it is one you are using. I would recommend creating a structure somewhere in the world with 7 rooms for the npcs to move into, if one moves into your house take out the light and they should move to the next available room.
 
Developer Tiyuri has news for builders:

**This will NOT be in the upcoming patch** I wanted to let the builders know we haven't forgotten you, working on this: http://t.co/P5Sffm5
Link goes to this picture:
sMLOH.png


Also, source.
 
No 2560x1600 support.....

Of all the things that could go wrong in development of a game, they sure seem to gloss over the simple things...
 
You do realize the game keeps 1 to 1 pixel mapping when you increase the resolution? If he allowed that high of a resolution it would break many parts of the game. For example the grid tiles only load when they are a certain distance from the player and the distance that enemies spawn in is based on your view only being a certain size. Honestly I'm surprised the game even supports 1080p because of such an advantage it gives over lower resolutions (you can see enemies and ore veins much farther away than people at lower res). Some people even purposely lower their resolution because the higher res makes the game too easy and feel less confined.
 
You do realize the game keeps 1 to 1 pixel mapping when you increase the resolution? If he allowed that high of a resolution it would break many parts of the game. For example the grid tiles only load when they are a certain distance from the player and the distance that enemies spawn in is based on your view only being a certain size. Honestly I'm surprised the game even supports 1080p because of such an advantage it gives over lower resolutions (you can see enemies and ore veins much farther away than people at lower res). Some people even purposely lower their resolution because the higher res makes the game too easy and feel less confined.

Yeah, it was really different playing it at 1920x1200, I wanted to set it back to the default settings after a short while.
 
Honestly I'm surprised the game even supports 1080p because of such an advantage it gives over lower resolutions (you can see enemies and ore veins much farther away than people at lower res)

That was DICE's logic when they didn't initially support widescreen resolutions in Battlefield 2. I understand the thought process that led to the decision, but I disagree that the only way to address the issue is limit supported resolutions.
 
That was DICE's logic when they didn't initially support widescreen resolutions in Battlefield 2. I understand the thought process that led to the decision, but I disagree that the only way to address the issue is limit supported resolutions.

Do you have any solutions? I've been trying to find a solution to this very problem for my game, which is pixel art from the same side perspective. I don't have the problem of it not being fair, as unless a player has already been to an area, it won't be lit. The extra information on the screen will only help the player see places that have already been visited, except when they are at surface level during the daytime.

A bigger problem comes with enemies. First, you don't want them popping up on the screen, unless they are something like a ghost where it's expected that they can spiral up out of a tombstone or something, so you have to spawn them past the player's visible area.

Then AI routines become an issue. You can't have something waiting for the player. Say you want a fight to take place in a certain area. So you spawn the monster in that spot. An 800x600 player would trigger the AI just as they hit 400 pixels away from the monster, keeping the fight in the region you wanted. Now, if you do the same thing with someone running 2560x1600, the AI is going to look retarded because the player can see it 880 pixels sooner than the 800x600 player. Now the player can pick off the monster from a huge distance, without the monster even noticing the player. In this case, the low resolution player hits the AI's activation distance and its party time. Meanwhile, the high resolution player is given a choice on how he / she wants to approach the situation. On top of that, even if the monster is patrolling, or doing some other idle AI routine, it looks like it is really stupid to this high resolution player.

Say we take the other route and push out the AI's distance. Now you can't have fights happen in certain spots. The monster needs to seem more intelligent, see further, etc. so it will start charging the player a further distance away. To the high resolution player it is acting as you'd expect for the most part. The low resolution player, you then have the monsters acting on data the player doesn't have access to. Monsters can see the player up to a screen and a half further than the player can see them.

Boss AI becomes trickier to nail. If you have the boss only use a bit more space than an 800x600 players resolution, then it can be an anticlimactic fight to the high resolution player. If you go the other way and design the fight to work on high resolutions, then the boss could be spending most of its time off the low resolution player's screen. This would change the entire dynamic of the fight, all depending on what resolution you run at. Someone isn't going to experience the fight the way the developer intended.

How could one solve this problem? Adding a fog of war to the high resolution players screen could work, but is a pretty lame approach. You might as well have run the game at the lower resolution in a window. I can scale the graphics in game code. That is extra code, more places for bugs to pop up, etc. yet what have I done really? With hand drawn pixel art, I'm not doing anything different than what the graphics card or monitor could / would do, but I'm wasting time just to let the player see that they are running at 2560x1600 instead of 1280x800. I can limit the player to only have certain resolution options in the menu, but that causes an outcry. I can lie to the player: give the player the high resolution option, but actually run it at a lower resolution. That doesn't seem very nice, but I have a feeling there would be less complaining, as many wouldn't even notice what was happening.

It's a complicated issue. It isn't like a FPS where increasing resolution or FOV doesn't dynamically change the game. Seeing a little bit more, when you can spin around to have seen it in the first place isn't a huge change. But here, it can change the entire dynamic of the game. It's easy to support any resolution higher than your base, but what else does it affect? A whole crapload of things in a game like this. There is more at stake than just letting the player see a little bit more of the screen; A change in resolution can change the entire way the game plays.

TL;DR : A pixel art 2D game has to make far more considerations to gameplay when allowing high resolutions than a FPS. It is simple to allow any resolution over the base, but doing so affects many different core gameplay aspects, not just how much the player can see or how many pixels.
 
Had to bring this thread back. I love this game, and want to play with some [H] folks. :) Where u @?
Is there a server up? Can we get one? I am completely addicted now, where you guys at? Lets make an awesome world!
 
I've been playing on a server with about 10 co-workers. Got into hardmode and doing other various things. Always open to further friends ;)
 
I've been using this server list, http://terrarianet.com/?or=1 and connecting the the ones with the most people. Found a game with 50 last night, the lag wasn't too bad amazingly.

This is going to be bad....
Terraria just passed L4D as my #4 most hours on a steam game (53hours).
 
Anyone want to play on a [H] members server, I have a perma server running on an OC'ed i7 920, 120meg/10meg line. Just try not to destroy anything that looks like it has a purpose.
 
Someone came on to my server and activated hard mode when I only had copper gear :( Now it's hopeless.
 
How did he manage to change the server's game type to hard mode? Some kind of cheat? I haven't played MP in a long long time.
 
How did he manage to change the server's game type to hard mode? Some kind of cheat? I haven't played MP in a long long time.

Hard Mode is separate from Hardcore, which is a per-player thing anyway. Hard Mode is essentially you beat the last, presumably most difficult boss, and it changes the world automatically.

Corruption begins to spread rapidly, a competing biome called Hallow (colorful trees, angry fairies, unicorns, etc.) appears and also starts to spread. The existing biomes have their mobs replaced by beefed up MUCH nastier ones.

If you don't have at least a Molten Pickaxe at that point in order to get yourself the entry level new ore, you're pretty much boned unless you want to cheat.
 
It's also worth mentioning that Terraria is no longer in active development. Half of the team moved on to create their own kind of spiritual successor to Terraria on a grander scale, and the other half that remained is taking a break for family reasons or whatever.

The Terraria "replacement" is called Starbound.
 
I do wish they'd provide more development tools to allow others to extend Terraria if half the dev team want to quit so swiftly and the other half move on to another game that is basically Terraria 2: Extended Edition in Space (not that I object to them moving to another project). It would be nice to allow the community the chance to port it to OSX and Linux, as well as to add more content. There are lots of items that will likely never be added because of the cessation of development.
 
This starbound game looks much more interesting then terraria ever was, Im ok with the devs shifting over to it.
 
This starbound game looks much more interesting then terraria ever was, Im ok with the devs shifting over to it.

Starbound seems to have a better framework for the future. Multiple worlds makes it better for persistant Minecraft style servers. They could implement player ownership of worlds, and so on.
 
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