Okay, so I'd like to clear some things up regarding these items, as it seems there's been some miscommunication here. Stairs, Ladders, Handrails/Fence, and slabs were in fact all discussed in our latest meeting with the council. HOWEVER, ladders are not officially planned, stairs are in fact a maybe, and climbable half-slabs was merely a suggestion I gave out. What I can say is fairly likely will happen is handrails, which if oriented a certain way also look like fences. This is based off the prototype I spent about 10 minutes making, so it could change where the appearance of a fence isn't as obvious.
Now I know where would be a lot of follow-up questions if I left it at that, so I'll give some further explanation broken down item by item:
Stairs - Stairs would be nothing more than an aesthetic block with the hitbox of a wedge. As such there would be no real benefit to adding them right now when walking up a wedge and walking up stairs perform exactly the same task with only an aesthetic difference. I realize we are adding other aesthetic blocks currently, but the decision from the team was to table the final decision on stairs (as well as ladders) until a later point of development.
Ladders - Ladders are a bit of a different story, while their final decision has also been delayed until later development, this is more because there would have to be a system created to make them function correctly, this is not something I have any knowledge as to the workings of as I'm not a programmer. Making the model is easy, making it so you can climb it, or are attached, or however it would work is beyond my knowledge as a graphic artist. Because it would require time for Schema to work on this block the final decision has been postponed until later in development.
Climbable Half-Slabs - This was merely a suggestion I made for an alternative to stairs, if a player was able to climb half-slabs. As such I don't know if it will be made possible or not, but I wanted to reiterate that it was simply a suggestion of mine to the rest of the dev team.
Now here's the good news. Handrails, as I've taken to calling them are purely an aesthetic block, and while I was initially opposed to the idea (as I felt slabs completed the same task just fine) after speaking with the council about it I saw the benefits such an item could have. So later in our staff meeting I made a quick prototype and am fond of how it turned out. Right-side up the hand rail resembles that used on Firefly-class transports from the show Firefly. Upside down they should do a fine job portraying a fence (unless their design changes). When used in unison with other handrails they can be used as grates, vents, or even prison bars. Because of this versatility I now feel it could be a beneficial block for players and should be able to implement it without much trouble. So unless I hear otherwise directly from Schema, we should be getting handrails in the near future. I'll keep people updated on the details of that on my thread in "Schine!"
Anyway I hope that explains it, I know people want stairs, I know people want ladders, but I wanted to make sure things were clear with where we stood now, we aren't ready to make a final decision on them, but I'm aware of the communities desire to have them.
