• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Starbound now available for preorder [Up: Stretch Goals]

Yep, you're pretty much it. It's seeing a game with a lot of potential hindered by a lot of really bad decisions and a developer who, at this point, drives everyone he works with away (and not on good terms).
Isn't Starbound from the same Terraria team or I'm missing something?
 
Isn't Starbound from the same Terraria team or I'm missing something?

The lead developer of Starbound is Tiy, who did sprites for Terraria before Redigit decided to abandon it. Tiy went off to make his dream game, while Redigit (and more notably, his wife) make snide comments about it not being done yet.

That's the only connective tissue the games have.
 
I'll buy in for the beta. Hell the original release version of Terraria was pretty much a beta in comparison to what was added/fixed in the only a few months and I got at least 24 hours out of it in the launch week alone.
 
I actually haven't been playing it much lately. I mentioned this in the OT3, that I've kind of reached the point where I'm experiencing frustration more than fun. I'm very big on building and this patch was supposedly loaded with new stuff, but it turns out almost all of it is either a recolor, a re-texture (which has the added benefit of making all old build projects look like ass) or just isn't that interesting.

Let me sum it up this way; I've run out of things to build in Terraria because all of the ideas I have are impossible to build with the limited tools and painfully bad design decisions. But I look at a screenshot from Starbound and I have a ton of ideas.

It's not that I hate Terraria, just that I am disappointed it probably won't get any better than this, as the developer has clearly hit his limitations and is just sort of flailing about. I can't imagine how much of a buggy re-tread "Terraria 2" will be if it ever comes out.


Yep, you're pretty much it. It's seeing a game with a lot of potential hindered by a lot of really bad decisions and a developer who, at this point, drives everyone he works with away (and not on good terms).

Fair enough. Starbound definitely seems to be a builders 2D dream.

It also seems to have a way around one of the things that put me off of building anything to elaborate in Terraria by letting you go to different planets within the same game. Terraria always made me feel like once a world was tapped/cleared that wasn't really a reason to stick around in it anymore. Even more so now that there are some biomes and ores that are exclusive from one another. Even if going to a different planet in Starbound is basically just logging into a different world in Terraria, the latter just felt really disconnected.

(Also re-reading my question from this morning made me realize that it came out a lot more...aggressive? than I meant for it to. Like I was upset or something, which I wasn't. So I apologize for that.)
 
Let me sum it up this way; I've run out of things to build in Terraria because all of the ideas I have are impossible to build with the limited tools and painfully bad design decisions. But I look at a screenshot from Starbound and I have a ton of ideas.

A screenshot can be misleading. I highly doubt with all the feature creep currently ongoing in Starbound that everything you envision wanting to do by looking at a screenshot will be possible at release. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it was not possible by release. There's too much they're promising to include in it unless they plan on releasing in 2016, and/or asking for more funding.

It's not that I hate Terraria, just that I am disappointed it probably won't get any better than this, as the developer has clearly hit his limitations and is just sort of flailing about. I can't imagine how much of a buggy re-tread "Terraria 2" will be if it ever comes out.

It's been out for quite some time and does quite a bit on its own. I've never bothered with mods for it and it's felt fairly complete as is. Minecraft on the other hand, needed quite a lot of mods (for me anyhow) to be more of a cohesive experience. We won't know anything about how Terraria 2 will turn out until it comes out. I put over 275 hours into Terraria, if Terraria 2 could replicate that it in any way I'd consider that a fairly big success.

It also remains to be seen how buggy Starbound will be in beta. Demos and streams only go so far. When lots of other people are playing it there will be a lot of problems that will creep up, no matter how much they delay it to try and have some smooth beta.

Yep, you're pretty much it. It's seeing a game with a lot of potential hindered by a lot of really bad decisions and a developer who, at this point, drives everyone he works with away (and not on good terms).

What exactly was the issue that drove others away he worked with? I've never heard exactly what it was that was the falling out/bad blood between Red & Tiy? I'd like to think I've paid decent attention to both games but I've never heard of a solid reason, other than theories, as to why there's some supposed animosity between the two.
 
A screenshot can be misleading. I highly doubt with all the feature creep currently ongoing in Starbound that everything you envision wanting to do by looking at a screenshot will be possible at release. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it was not possible by release. There's too much they're promising to include in it unless they plan on releasing in 2016, and/or asking for more funding.

The generally don't show things in screens in the daily updates unless theyre completed, or close to completed. Most of the build stuff that Retro is talking about is completed. Not sure why you think they would suddenly take them out.

What exactly was the issue that drove others away he worked with? I've never heard exactly what it was that was the falling out/bad blood between Red & Tiy? I'd like to think I've paid decent attention to both games but I've never heard of a solid reason, other than theories, as to why there's some supposed animosity between the two.

I don't believe there were issues. Redigit wanted to take some time off. He got married and had a kid. The rest of the team just moved on.
 
A screenshot can be misleading. I highly doubt with all the feature creep currently ongoing in Starbound that everything you envision wanting to do by looking at a screenshot will be possible at release. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it was not possible by release. There's too much they're promising to include in it unless they plan on releasing in 2016, and/or asking for more funding.

I'm referring to the number of building materials and objects, along with the quality of the tools. If they're in a screenshot or video, chances are good they exist. We've already seen the "Matter Manipulator" at work, placing objects and walls/backgrounds quickly and easily. We've seen the "Paint gun" working nicely. And we've seen screenshot after screenshot loaded with lots of placeable objects; if the art assets exist, chances are good those are in too (obviously, that doesn't apply to mockups, but those are pretty rare lately).

What exactly was the issue that drove others away he worked with? I've never heard exactly what it was that was the falling out/bad blood between Red & Tiy? I'd like to think I've paid decent attention to both games but I've never heard of a solid reason, other than theories, as to why there's some supposed animosity between the two.

It's never 100% clear. His first artist, who I believe went by the name "Yoshi" left early in the project. His "PR Guy", Blue, left after basically selling the shit out of Terraria (seriously, the "Let's Play" videos he did really got people worked up for the game, spreading valuable word of mouth). They've never come out and said what happened, but you can tell from the tone of their comments about each other that it wasn't on good terms. As for Tiy, he left when Redigit abandoned development on the game. Since then, you can find little jabs from Redigit (and, as I mentioned, his wife) at Starbound. In the AMA they just did on Reddit, when asked about Starbound he'd say something like "I'll let you know what I think if they ever release it", while his wife's comments on the Official Forums are usually references to them "Having too much money to work". It comes off as extremely jealous.
 
It's never 100% clear. His first artist, who I believe went by the name "Yoshi" left early in the project. His "PR Guy", Blue, left after basically selling the shit out of Terraria (seriously, the "Let's Play" videos he did really got people worked up for the game, spreading valuable word of mouth). They've never come out and said what happened, but you can tell from the tone of their comments about each other that it wasn't on good terms. As for Tiy, he left when Redigit abandoned development on the game. Since then, you can find little jabs from Redigit (and, as I mentioned, his wife) at Starbound. In the AMA they just did on Reddit, when asked about Starbound he'd say something like "I'll let you know what I think if they ever release it", while his wife's comments on the Official Forums are usually references to them "Having too much money to work". It comes off as extremely jealous.

You're right, none of that is clear. It's just sounds like reading into something too heavily which no one really has any facts to tell what's what. You can do the same thing with Starbound devs and read into what they're doing and spin it/view it in a negative light as well.

The only thing clear from any of this is that probably neither are very good with PR or information control.

As for the "I'll let you know what I think if they ever release it" line, I think that is quite valid at this time considering how long it's taking, it's not like he's the only one saying it. It's just stating the obvious.
 
Has there been any mention of events like Terrarias Blood Moons or Goblin army happening in Starbound?
Nothing I'm aware of. Though I am expecting at least some of the planets to have a corruption-like mechanic. If there are invasion style events, they'll probably only pop up on the higher threat level planets. Should work out great that way. You can live on a low threat planet if all you want to do is build, or you can try to maintain a forward base of sorts on a high threat planet, being aware that there will be disruptions to what you're doing. I feel the separate planets in Starbound gives them a lot more freedom to have enemies that will destroy land and your structures. If they don't have invasions, then they should definitely be added post-release.

It's kind of strange. In Terraria, the piggy bank and the safe could be seen as your "ship storage," and you just change between worlds in the menu for your "space travel." They're essentially the same thing, and Starbound's system may even take longer than it would to load another world in Terraria. It's even more so the case now in Terraria that not everything that you'd want to find is in one world, though not to any major level unless you're a completionist.

Bit strange to me that we're nearly halfway through October and they can't even nail out which of the two remaining months we'll see the beta. I guess if they have to, they'll push it all the way to the last day in December. Oh well. Better to end that line of thought before I get too whiny.
 
You're right, none of that is clear. It's just sounds like reading into something too heavily which no one really has any facts to tell what's what. You can do the same thing with Starbound devs and read into what they're doing and spin it/view it in a negative light as well.

The only thing clear from any of this is that probably neither are very good with PR or information control.

As for the "I'll let you know what I think if they ever release it" line, I think that is quite valid at this time considering how long it's taking, it's not like he's the only one saying it. It's just stating the obvious.

It's hardly a long time if you consider the scope of the game which is being made by what 7-10 people over 2 years? It's about the timeframe one would expect. Starbound has so much stuff in it that it's getting VERY close to feature creep.
 
They posted this with the latest update, I think it's time to pack it up.
pWfDBFM.png
 
They posted this with the latest update, I think it's time to pack it up.
pWfDBFM.png

And before anyone starts complaining about that, without actually checking the site, the quote before that pic was:
"PS- Here’s what happens when the team’s trying to decide which horse mech looks more like an actual horse:"

Here's the actual pic of the mecha horse.
ss-2013-10-16-at-01.24.00.png


As for the actual post, looks like they're done with most of the AI, and they're mainly working on dungeons and items.
 
18th October Progress
October 19, 2013 in News

Good morning/afternoon-ish! Yesterday we continued work on bug fixes, dungeons and adding existing items to treasure pools! We’re doing a lot of cleaning up, tweaking and balancing in preparation for…beta.

So most of our commits for yesterday are fixes like…”Object imageLayers should also use relative pathing” and “reference unlit objects” and “change flip to flipImages” and…not a terrible amount of visibly exciting changes, but really good changes nonetheless.

Continuing with these sorts of changes, plus NPCs/enemies and some object implementation into today. Hooray!

I’ll leave you with this tiny cropped screenshot of a newly finished dungeon. :)
6krrz1ecjk6kmvdqgr9ixcdsdd.jpg

For what it's worth, they scaled down the font size on their site for the "...beta" part, not sure what they're getting at there, but there it is. Lots of bug fixes and stuff to get ready for... beta.
 
Still so many things they're working on.

I bite my nails.

This is the most I've ever contributed to a "crowd funding" game, so I think it's obvious I have a lot of faith in them.
 
Cool, can't wait for the..... beta.
Hopefully it will be really.... soon.
Beta in November, right?!

I'm not getting my hopes up for anything at this point. The game looks like it's getting there, but it's an indie game and Terraria looked good at one point too. Then it launched and it was a mess. I'd rather they take their time.
 
I'm not getting my hopes up for anything at this point. The game looks like it's getting there, but it's an indie game and Terraria looked good at one point too. Then it launched and it was a mess. I'd rather they take their time.
You're right, Terraria launch was very bad and I don't want to see something like that ever again.
 
Do anyone know if this game will work like terraria with regards to game resolution. If that affects how zoomed in/out the camera is?

Personally I play terraria at 1200p. And vastly prefeer how it looks when playing it like that. Compared to say 720p. So I hope starbound will work the same as terraria when it comes to the resolution.

Just wondering. Since the footage I've been watching of this game, since learning about it today, kinda looks like how terraria looks at around 720p resolution. At least in terms of how far the camera is zoomed in.
 
Well this is not surprising but here's an update about the release date (not the Beta)

" October 22, 2013 in News

Hi guys,

The very first thing I want to say, to avoid any confusion, is that we’re still estimating the beta this year. This news post isn’t written as a precursor to an upcoming delay. It’s just a topic that has been discussed at length and one I felt like trying to address.

So, video game delays..

Let’s start with an overused but wonderful quote from nintendos Shigeru Miyamoto.

“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”

This is right on the money. We’ve all seen the monstrosities churned out by development teams pressed by money hungry publishers. Those are teams that failed to meet their development deadlines but were forced to put out their game anyway and we’ve seen it time and time again.

In contrast to that we’ve seen teams like Valve delay their games over and over again only to release something magnificent. They had the time to create THEIR games, the games they envisioned, scrapping and reworking anything they weren’t completely happy with. The result was a collection of some of the best games ever made (and Ricochet).

The debate on whether or not games are art rages on and I won’t summon it’s ardent squabblers by telling you you can’t rush art. But the fact that games now set out to provoke emotion is undeniable and when that’s your goal your chances of meeting a theoretical deadline based on list of features is near impossible. Producing a game is like molding clay; it evolves. By the time you’re done your original design document and the game you produce are sometimes night and day.

Indeed, even among triple A developers the list of delayed games is staggering..

On top of that, we’re at a time in the games industry now where gamers are demanding innovation. Often those demands fall on deaf ears where AAA studios are concerned and there’s a good reason for that. Producing something new requires overcoming uncertain challenges. When you’re producing a game that does something different, particularly when it’s something complex, judging how long each technical challenge will take you to overcome is a complete nightmare. Uncertain challenges and untested genres don’t mesh well with the AAA world of budgets, publishers, deadlines and goals.

So gamers look to indie studios for innovation, studios willing to take the risk, willing to put their livelihood on the line, willing to deal with ‘as long as it takes to make this happen’ development. This is what we do here at Chucklefish and that’s something I’m very proud of.

Realistically there are only three types of games..

Games that are released before they’re done. The buggy and often rushed to the finish mess you regret purchasing in that steam sale binge.

Games that do nothing new. Basically a rehash of a game you played last year, Fifa 2040, Call of Duty – we added giraffes edition.

Games that are delayed. Games that aren’t remembered for their development period or the number of times they were delayed, but the care and attention lavished upon them in that time. (let’s not talk about Duke Nukem Forever).

And we’d much rather be in the final category.

All this said, whilst I won’t apologise for delaying the game a couple of times, we have made mistakes along the way. The most obvious of which was to give out estimated release dates on a project that’s aiming so high and I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever do that again. We also underestimated the time spent on communication overheads when working with a remote team in several different timezones. (Honestly I think if we’d all been in the same office we may have met our release date goals).

But the finished game WILL be worth the wait, we’re all happy with how its shaping up and super excited to get it to the point where we’re happy with it. You’ll have the chance to help us do that this year with the beta and we’re looking forwards to that too.

Thanks for reading guys "

Good news is the Beta is still coming this year , It's probably better this way.

Edit: Forgot to add link : http://playstarbound.com/category/news/
 
Well this is not surprising but here's an update about the release date (not the Beta)



Good news is the Beta is still coming this year , It's probably better this way.

someone who has better knowledge than me can tell me if this part is true?

In contrast to that we’ve seen teams like Valve delay their games over and over again only to release something magnificent. They had the time to create THEIR games, the games they envisioned, scrapping and reworking anything they weren’t completely happy with. The result was a collection of some of the best games ever made (and Ricochet).

I know Valve is pretty famous on not tell a release date, not to delay that.
 
It still feels like they're totally missing the issue. No one will blame them for releasing a buggy beta, people just wanted their hands on something, even if it's just a small chunk. Instead we saw months upon months of feature creep and misleading completion percentages.
 
I'll pre-order when we get a beta. Probably a 4pack for myself and my friends. We love Terraria too much not to give it a shot.

The wait just sucks.
 
someone who has better knowledge than me can tell me if this part is true?



I know Valve is pretty famous on not tell a release date, not to delay that.

Valve had a huge ATI event planned with Half-Life 2 and just cancelled it and delayed the game and left ATI scrambling.
 
It still feels like they're totally missing the issue. No one will blame them for releasing a buggy beta, people just wanted their hands on something, even if it's just a small chunk. Instead we saw months upon months of feature creep and misleading completion percentages.
I think the worst was the fact there was a playable demo during whatever event ( don't remember, in august I think ), and that even that didn't get shared to people who brought the game + beta access.

That a beta with most of the game content, isn't shipped too soon to avoid mass piracy, and bad publicity, I can understand. But a demo, very limited in content, in which they could even add big ALPHA DEMO ALPHA DEMO everywhere, sent to people who already spended their money on the game, couldn't have been a bad move.

At least with all those dev delay etc I now have multiple bet going : dayz alpha before starbound beta ? Cube World will get a decent patch before any of those game get their beta/alpha release ? out of ffxiv ARR 2.1 patch, starbound beta and sayz alpha, which one of them won't make it before 2014 ? 0 new hero in dota 2 before any of those event happen ?
 
I think the worst was the fact there was a playable demo during whatever event ( don't remember, in august I think ), and that even that didn't get shared to people who brought the game + beta access.

I'm sorry, but that really pissed me off. You can drum up whatever excuses you want, but the fact that a playable demo of the game was offered to anyone outside of those who have pre-ordered is ridiculous to me. I pre-ordered the game with the sole purpose of being able to see the beta, and they seem incredibly uninterested in releasing anything that isn't a finalized product. I don't mean to whine, but I feel my issues are legitimate.
 
I'm sorry, but that really pissed me off. You can drum up whatever excuses you want, but the fact that a playable demo of the game was offered to anyone outside of those who have pre-ordered is ridiculous to me. I pre-ordered the game with the sole purpose of being able to see the beta, and they seem incredibly uninterested in releasing anything that isn't a finalized product. I don't mean to whine, but I feel my issues are legitimate.

Sounds like when Wollay gave the Alpha of Cube World to a few well known person on Youtube so they can play it and show it on youtube a lot of people on forum were complaining .

Except this time we paid for the game in advance and still got nothing after like 6 + months
 
Games that are delayed. Games that aren’t remembered for their development period or the number of times they were delayed, but the care and attention lavished upon them in that time. (let’s not talk about Duke Nukem Forever).

How about Daikatana then?
 
I haven't pre-ordered yet, but when they get to Stage 1 and I can play the game, I will buy it instantly. I don't care how buggy it is or how many times I need to start over, once I can play it I'm buying.



SOON.
 
Ooh, beta news. I'm in for the stage 1 pain. I need to play this. Glad they're finally nailing this down and setting expectations.
 
Tiyuri is asking for opinion as to how we want the beta:

Via Steam Early Access, or DRM-free download?

Differences between the two as follows:
Updating a DRM free version is a far lengthier process that would cost us too much time if we were updating the game several times a day. Perhaps even daily. Meaning we would hold off on pushing out any updates until a few have built up and push larger updates out all at once.

Updating via steam lets us quickly and easily push updates to everyone, so we could update as and when new content is finished.

Send him a tweet or hop on their forums to let them know what you prefer. I'm fine with Steam Early Access myself.
 
Top Bottom