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Starbound announced - new game from Terraria artist + new studio
- Thread starter dLMN8R
- Start date
Conciliator
Banned
This looks fuckin great. Can't wait to pay someone.
cheststrongwell
my cake, fuck off
Where can I preorder this, or is that option not available yet?
Not available. So far the Developer is just testing the water on twitter to find out if people would be interested in a pre-order option with no release date given, and possibly receiving Beta access when it becomes available.
cheststrongwell
my cake, fuck off
Thanks.
From Twitter:
Love the little tents, the variety of crates... putting together a little camp like this is cool, though I wonder if the gameplay requires you to actually set up base camps or if this is entirely for looks.
Either way, it's pretty cool.
Stephen Alexander @WorldOfSven said:Working on some caves.
Love the little tents, the variety of crates... putting together a little camp like this is cool, though I wonder if the gameplay requires you to actually set up base camps or if this is entirely for looks.
Either way, it's pretty cool.
RepairmanJack
Member
I hope so, but if it was required for a temporary sleep or something similar a pretty world would be needed. I'm perfectly fine with that, but I haven't really been expecting very large worlds since we're able to travel to different worlds.
Apparently some worlds are infinite in size, so...
Personally, I'm thinking tents will function like beds in Terraria, without the need to build a structure around them before they become functional. If you're exploring the world, you just drop a tent and bam; instant save spot.
It might be useful if you're just exploring a planet and don't really want to build anything permanent but still want a save point.
Then again, it might just be really cool decoration, or even something they just plop down in the world to discover ("Oh, I'm not the first person to land here, let's see what they left in their chest...")
RepairmanJack
Member
Either one would be great. I thought the infinite worlds just looped back around like a planet? If that's changed even more great news.
According to the list of announced game info, "Worlds that are not infinite in size will loop around, so if you travel far enough you will end up back at your start area, as if the planet is a real sphere."
However, things may have changed since that detail was leaked / announced / discovered, so who knows. Infinite worlds seems a little wonky, I'd prefer to have planets I can fully explore and 'finish'.
I'd agree with this. I'd prefer to be able to explore a section of the galaxy/universe fully, and then move on. Even if the planets can be completely random, I still prefer being able to explore it all. That was one of the big draws for me in Terraria, you have a finite world you can explore and find interesting things in and 'conquer' by having a decent base/town with your NPCs.
Obviously I wouldn't feel the need to conquer the whole galaxy in Starbound but it'd be nice to be able to explore it all and build cities or towns or even just a landing base on various planets that you've visited.
Planets aren't entirely random; they're generated based on coordinates, so if you and I both visit, say "125, 871", we'll both have the same planet to explore (at least in theory; I don't know if coordinates determine the actual landscape or just the plant/background/color style).
But I definitely hope for contained worlds.
Yeah, I read about that and thought it was a pretty cool idea, because if I'm exploring in a solo game and find an interesting world, I could tell a friend the co-ordinates and they could check it out too.
I'll be interested to see how multi-player works. Any chance we could reserve planets for a GAF server once we start playing? Like, have a set of co-ordinates to a planet we like and that person can build whatever they want on that planet? Might allow for a bit more creativity with planets and building.
From what I've read, players on the same server do not need to be on the same planet, so in theory every player could theoretically have their own 'homeworld'. I see no reason why we couldn't scout for a good sized planet and make that the "GAF Planet" where people congregate.
Multiplayer is definitely going to be a strong point though; each race has their own armor style (including armor set bonuses) that can be traded, so we'll want lots of players to be working together so everyone can have access to that kinda cool stuff.
Franklinator
Member
I would give so much money to have this game right now.
I honestly can't wait to try out the multiplayer in this game. I spent a lot of time in single-player in Terraria before I played it with friends. I made a giant castle that had boss rooms and 2 PvP arenas, plus a giant treasure room with approx 100 chests in a gold brick vault. All my NPCs in the castle with their own apartments, decorated to what they sold. And a greenhouse on top of it for my plants.
I'll be interested in trying this out, and seeing how the decorations work and interact. Trading with other races will be awesome, and I'd love to contribute to a hub planet that everyone could go to for trading and general conversation. That's another thing, can players on one planet talk to players on another planet?
Likewise; before I got on Harlan's server I had gone through two worlds; my starter world where I just had a basic castle, and then a world where I had expanded to a whole town (one building per NPC). Then I thought "I should try this multiplayer stuff" and it really kicked the game into overgear for me. I spent so much time just building goofy shit on the GAF server it was insane.
As far as players talking to eachother, I think chat will be universe wide? No idea.
Definitely looking forward to getting each race's decor items. I like everything I've seen so far, so there isn't a race that jumps out at me just yet. We still haven't seen any of the Water or Robot buildings yet, as far as I've seen... wonder what the water guys' stuff will look like.
One Foul Note
Member
That's quite a nice idea. This is probably beyond their engine capacities and I am a bit of a jerk for asking this, but I would be mega mega impressed if they implemented a feature that if you dig down enough you eventually get gravity reversing then (if you keep going) you come out the other side of the planet. Or if they go the route if you get down to the lava layer the gravity greatly increases and the looping circle on the planets decreases.
Actually, this line of thinking just gave me another thought, did they say that they are doing any kind of variation on planetary condition in regards to things like gravity and day night cycles? Could be interesting landing on a new planet finding that its days only last 15 seconds, or 6 hours. A little more useable then my crazy dig through the entire planet idea.
From a coding perspective, and a square-based building perspective, this would be insane to try and do. You'd have to make the blocks not quite square in order to actually have a circular planet. It shouldn't be amazingly difficult to code for an experienced coder(though I'm not sure), but the only way that it would work would be not using square blocks for everything.
As a gamer, I would like to see something like this implemented into a game at some point. Spherical/circular planets that you can entirely explore and colonise. Would make for an awesome MMO.
The other ideas are certainly interesting. I would like to see varying day/night cycles and possibly even multiple suns/moons on planets. etc
It doesn't have building or anything yet I think, but it has a circular planet. If you fly high enough, the horizon starts to curve -- the game world is literally the size of a planet. You can fly from the ground and into space in real time. Made by 2 people with the help of the community I think.
http://outerra.com/wgallery.html
And then there's Evochron Mercenary -- it's a space sim, and it features seamless space to planet transitions with towns and such. It's all procedurally generated of course. And it's made by 1 person.
http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/
Awesome! I will check those out now. I figured there were games like that out there. It was always an interesting concept to me though and having a physics system that works with it and everything so...
universalmind
Member
Looking forward to this game more than any other. Carn.
"Round planets have a super-heated core at the centre that could melt the player. But not all planets will have molten at their core, some may have other impossible barriers."
and
"A planet may be generated as infinite in size, however, only left or right, as planet depth has been capped for obvious reasons."
"Planets day and night cycles will differ based on the planet, some may even be eternally dark or eternally light."
Awesome. I figured they'd do something with day/night cycles!
However, the planet thing, due to the square nature of the blocks, I would assume will make the maps end up looking like Terraria, except you can end up back where you started by heading in one direction or the other. I might be wrong, but just making observations based on the shape of building blocks. If they do turn out to be a circular planet somehow (and I mean you actually explore around it and the exploration distance becomes smaller at deeper levels) then...well...I'll be wrong, and happy about it!
I think it will just loop you back around to the opposite side of the map, rather than trying to do anything spherical. It's a 2-D game, after all.
They have said that we will visit more than planets during the course of the game, so perhaps asteroids, derelict ships/stations and, who knows, spherical bodies. I wouldn't get my hopes up though.
universalmind
Member
If you zoom in enough any sphere is made up of square surfaces. You wouldnt notice any curvature in this anyway.
Yeah, I'm not really getting my hopes up haha. It'd just be interesting to have a game like this or like minecraft where you can completely effect the world around you, but have a spherical and finite world with proper gravity pulling towards the centre and such.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic a bit. Definitely loved the videos of this so far, really can't wait to get my hands on this, in any form whatsoever.
Nice.
I am a bit worried that the guns can lead to some serious trolling. We had a bad enough time with idiots lobbing TNT in Terraria.
RepairmanJack
Member
That second gun!Somehow I keep forgetting the improvements to building. Everytime I see it it makes me more excited for this game. I couldn't get into building that much in Terraria, definitely think this will change that.
From the sound of things, you will be able to disable explosives on your home planet. I assume that means no trolling if you don't want it.
More stuff (6 different versions of everything, one for each race) + Build Gun + Real background placement (Terraria was always off by a half-block) = Insomnia
Gah really hoped there would be a playable beta by now. I mean sure given the choice of getting a buggy beta and having them focus on bugs vs actually taking their time and getting everything right, I'd go for the latter. Just want to play it though.
My only real worry so has been that all footage shown of enemies so far just seems to be of the 'Ramming' kind ala terraria. Other than the first few screens showing enemies with weapons, which was shown at the start and the gif of the melee demo, there has been nothing since then :/
My only real worry so has been that all footage shown of enemies so far just seems to be of the 'Ramming' kind ala terraria. Other than the first few screens showing enemies with weapons, which was shown at the start and the gif of the melee demo, there has been nothing since then :/
They asked if people would be interested in Pre-purchasing the game before a release date is announced, with pre-purchase granting access to a Beta (when it's ready). Response here seemed to be positive, but a cursory glance at the official forums has people whining that they want it 'for real' and that a beta will 'slow them down' (which is of course moronic).
As far as enemies go, most of the footage we've seen has enemies turned off. Hopefully there's more complex stuff waiting in the wings.
Rygar 8 Bit
Jaguar 64-bit
how dose a beta slow things down? lol
True, but the 'friday' monsters have not had one weapon. This could just be due to the way the generator works, but yeah all of them have been the ramming type.
Initially they did say that they'll do a beta and include people who are active in the community and stuff. So the paid for beta thing would just be an extension ... which would be stupid if not taken.
I think it's mostly to do with having to push it to a functioning build everytime they want to update something. or that they're stuck with fixing bugs rather than investing into new content/ systems?
Hell if i know TBH. It might be the E3 demo mentality, where creating a vertical slice is just consuming time. Ofcourse I don't agree with this, since a public showing vs a beta is different beasts.
They seem to be under the impression that making a public beta takes away resources from development because everything has to be cleaned up and prepared for people to see.
Thus, the moronic comment. To be fair, the forums are pretty bad (as they are with any gaming community) where people tend to get very very upset over very very small things.
I think the Friday Monsters haven't had weapons just because they're generating a raw monster. This latest one (with the mouth for eyes and eye in its chest) has arms, so it can probably carry some kind of weapon.
As for having more people involved in the Beta... granted it's been about 12 years, but when I was working in game development I would have welcomed as many eager testers as possible, as it increases the chances of finding weird little bugs and glitches exponentially. Sure, you're letting people into the game 'early', but so what? The developers seem to benefit much more in this case.
Maintaining a beta does slow down development, there's overhead involved in pushing out builds that are expected to be stable and fun to play. The only value in it for the devs is driving pre-orders if they need money, and large scale testing(which can wait until the game is largely done).
Another retro-looking-game
Wow. Way to judge a book by its cover. Do you know anything about the game other than what it looks like?
Doesn't look like it, I'm thinking March or April 2013 at this point, but I base that only on the fact that it's as late into the year while still being "early 2013", and because Guild Wars 2 has a huge pair of content patches coming in Jan/Feb and I don't want to have to pick between the two.
As for the teasing, I know I'm not helping by bumping the thread every time there's a little update, but if I didn't do it, HaRyu surely would, just later on. The day we get a release date is going to be huge.
Well, I stand corrected, but from the sound of things they wouldn't push the Pre-Purchase Beta until, as you say, the game is largely done.
I wasn't talking about the gameplay or the content. It's an easy cash-in, making a retro style game. Take Retro City Rampage - people went crazy about that game when it was announced and the following years it was in development. When it came out it was recieved as a poor, poor game with extremely cheap thrills. So, yeah, i'm pretty cynical when it comes to these "retro" games.
Hey, 2d art is cheaper. And this game builds off Terreria, which people already love. It really does seem like you're judging a book by its cover, in fact that's pretty much the definition of it.
Hey there is a game called Terraria that you definitely do not want to check out, but if you did check it out you might sound like a person with more of a clue.
Making a "retro" game is hardly a guaranteed cash-in. It's not like GameLoft is shitting this out in 3 months; it's been in development for a while.
Finn of Ooo
Member
In what way is this a retro game? Other than the graphical style. Your own example was of a side scrolling beat-em-up based on an existing IP, ya pretty retro. However I cant think of many retro space games with procedurally generated content and in depth crafting mechanics. If you wanna make rushed judgments go ahead but you sound a bit ignorant.
Ok.
Entitled to your own opinion, but sure, ok.
Wait, so... you're NOT talking about the gameplay and/or the content, but you give an example of a retro-style game that's bad because... of the gameplay and/or the content?