[bdjones2410]

Area tiling was the only customization setting not defaulting to use Vanilla as a value, this change puts it in line with the rest of the default values.

[blkerby]

This and many other customization settings intentionally use non-Vanilla values (Screen shaking, flashing, Reserve HUD, Screw Attack animation).

[bdjones2410]

Can I ask why? This is one of the most frustrating settings to be defaulted to.

Majority of players do not play with area-tiling, and especially in a race setting, if you do not change your setting (new browser, cleared cookies, new experimental seed), you can be stuck on area tiling and not know it until the race starts. The only option then is to continue with it (huge handicap), or re-downlaod a new rom and re-load it while the race is already under-way.

What purpose does this serve other than being frustrating?

[bdjones2410]

Those other settings are more quality of life improvements, but the majority of other settings (controller layout, door colors, sprite) etc, all the visual alterations remain as vanilla defaults.

[blkerby]

Area tiling creates a visually coherent game world which is a main goal of the randomizer. People can customize things how they want for racing or their own personal preference but it doesn't dictate what the randomizer defaults are.

The possibility of losing cached customization settings is a limitation of how the system works, and it applies to all the customization settings (e.g. the controller scheme -- not everyone manually confirms their controls before races). It could potentially be avoided if we had a sign-in system with stored settings that could transfer across devices, but so far we haven't wanted to go there; and it still wouldn't help in the scenario where the player was signed out.

[kjbranch]

I think there are pretty obvious reasons as to why the option exists, and to even consider that it has none is a bit silly. To me, the tiling is the most interesting part of the game, and it is the way that we hope that new players will experience the project. I am not sure how often players use it, but I think that only considering streamers/racers, the data will be heavily skewed towards players who don't use it.

Regardless, it could be nice to have some way to see if you're using your intended settings before the race begins. I wonder if there is some way we could facilitate that.

[bdjones2410]

This feels like a path of least resistance thing, do you have metrics on the number of generations of area tiling vs vanilla? Or metrics for the number of people who generate with area tiling, and then re-generate the same seed without it?

[kjbranch]

I do not believe we have tracked customization options. But area tiling is definitely something we plan on keeping as the default.

[bdjones2410]

So to be clear, this decision is based on how the devs want users to experience the randomized game by default, and not user data on what majority of users prefer, and there is no intent to capture that data or discuss this with the community as a whole?

[kjbranch]

I would say that is a negative and inaccurate way to describe it.

• The tiling is one of the most complimented aspects of the project.
• There is interest on capturing the data.
• You are always welcome to discuss it with the community in the discord server.

[bdjones2410]

You're right sorry that was more bitchy sounding than I should have. The feature is beautiful and cool, totally agree with that, will see about engaging community to get feedback, to me the change of visual non-quality-of-life improvement features as a default option feels out of place. Thanks for the responses.

[blkerby]

Yeah, I think it does highlight the larger issue that it's easy to not realize what settings are being used when generating or customizing a seed. It comes up in many situations, not just this particular setting. We are planning a revamp of the UI at some point and have some ideas about how to make this better. I think we will eventually have a way to make it more clear and it should mostly resolve this problem.