HomeStation Presents: The Upload, Episode #21 — Home 1.6
by Jersquall, HSM Podcast Editor
The 1.6 core client update gave the Home community considerably more freedom in decorating their personal estates; for years, one of the most heavily-requested features was an expansion of the furniture limit, but how to make that happen with the finite amount of resources available? The solution was rather ingenious.
Of course, the major controversy introduced by 1.6 was the change to the targeting system. A decent sub-community of glitchers utilize Home in ways it wasn’t designed to work, and while this has undoubtedly provided amusement over the years, the fact remains that “glitching,” by the very definition of the word, shouldn’t be happening at all. Video game titles go through ridiculous amounts of bug testing before being released, but Home has to stay online and keep forging ahead on architecture that’s more than half a decade old, with content coming at it from all directions and the constant drive to introduce new features.
Major core updates are arguably the most-anticipated events, each year, for the Home community. Anyone remember the horrendous loading times prior to Home 1.35? Go back and look at what Home was three years ago. Sure, there’s going to be nostalgia for certain parts of Home no longer available, but we’re talking about the functionality of Home. There’s no question that Home, in just over one-thousand days, has evolved tremendously, both in terms of functionality and content.
But let’s get back to glitching.
Video games force you to play within very narrow parameters, if you think about it. And as virtual reality uses the architecture of a video game, it should ideally function the same way. The catch is that it seems a big part of the fun of virtual reality is manipulating physics in ways the real world doesn’t allow. Go back and rewatch Dark City, The Matrix or Inception and think about how those films have worked their way into our collective zeitgeist. So when an opportunity arises to bend or even break the rules, some people in Home will do just that.
The lesson here, however, is to not define the Home experience by what it’s not supposed to do. Glitches and bugs need to be patched (and, yes, there are many other issues on the punchlist which need to be fixed as well) in Home, just as they would need to be fixed for any video game. Everyone wants a more functional Home with fewer technical issues. Right?
Right?
Someday, perhaps, Home will be sufficiently rigorous and advanced as to allow certain physics-bending functionality as part of the program itself, as opposed to a glitch. We can but hope. For now, however, kick back with The Upload team and let’s dive into Home 1.6!
Play that funky music, white boy!
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December 15th, 2011 by Jersquall | 3 comments
Jersquall is a retired Home Community Volunteer, co-founder of Club HOMEinformer, and podcast commentator for HomeStation Magazine. His views expressed in HSM are his own.
Just finished listening to this. Another great job yall! ^__^
Great job as always guys, I can tell you have a lot of fun with this, hope to join you again soon.
That “KHAAAAAAAAAN!” moment in this episode is one of the funniest bits ever put into The Upload. And there’s a lot of really good discussion here about the various *technical* limitations of Home which I think the audience will benefit from.