We’ve talked a lot about working on generated quests, and if you play the nightly build you may have seen some crop up in your colonies! Here’s an example of a new sort of quest that will result in the questgiver wearing a new hat. The idea is that your NPCs will be customized over time via quests.
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend! Let us know what sort of colony quests you’d like to see. :)
Lots of stuff happening this week! Let’s go down the list:
Making sure monsters spawn in the right places
Tweaking, balancing and testing generated quests
More work on vehicles/mechs
Several people have started work on the next update, which is story-focused
Chickens finally lay eggs, enabling players to cook up more egg-based treats and definitively proving that the chicken came first. That’s just science.
Necotho has been creating microdungeons! Lots and lots of microdungeons! Click the image for high-res and check this link for more pretty screenshots. :)
We’ve got a new programmer onboard – say hello to Ian! He’s working on preparing Starbound for Xbox One Game Preview, but in the meantime he has kindly taken the time to set Starbound’s hoverbikes on fire. All of them. There are no more hoverbikes, they are all on fire.
This week’s off to a good start, with lots of testing ahead of the upcoming combat update, as well as some work on the story update that’s coming up after that. Here’s a new weapon that’s totally not a boomerang, because it is a Lunarang! Harness the power of Earth’s moon to crush your enemies and stuff!
We’re still ironing out bugs and fixing/tweaking/updating things ahead of the combat update! SamuriFerret has been tweaking some of the existing missions to make them a little more dangerous. Here’s an example!
I've been absolutely loving the entries in this week's community Build of the Week! This build is by DemonDog47 and is called 'The Quarantined District'. :)
You can now jump into a hoverbike with one of your friends and hover off into the sunset together, to the tune of Haddaway’s “What is Love”. Check it out!
We’re fast approaching an unstable build of the combat update! Keep an eye out. :)
What to expect from the next update, 1.0 and beyond
Happy Halloween!
So here we are, only a few updates left before 1.0 and I wanted to give you a run down on what to expect.
There are 3 updates planned before 1.0. The Combat Update, The Story Update and a miscellaneous Polish Update.
Let's start by talking about what's coming up in the next patch, which isn't far away now.
The Combat Update
We've been calling the next patch the combat update, and with good reason. The goal of this patch is to entirely revamp the combat and the moment to moment gameplay in Starbound by revamping weapons, monsters, quests, rewards, vehicles and more.
Weapons
Until now, weapons in Starbound were a combination of hard coded engine features and the configuration files that controlled them. This has changed drastically in the combat update with the engine now allowing for scripted weapons. Creating entirely unique weapons has become massively easier and as a result from this point forwards Starbound patches will include wonderful new items far outside the scope of the previous item engine.
Modders will also be able to take advantage of this system to create incredible new things. The sky's the limit on this one.
Weapons in vanilla Starbound now fall into two categories, generated and unique. Generated weapons have been converted to the new scripted weapons system and we've given them awesome special moves as a result. The general weapon classes have also been revamped in their primary fires. Hammers require a charge up, spears can be held out defensively and so on. We've worked hard to give each type of weapon it's own identity and have built the special attacks around this identity.
Weapons also have elemental types and in future patches we'll be using those to give damage bonuses and reductions on certain enemies.
Unique weapons are hard to find, will require multiple steps to obtain and will do entirely unique things. I don't want to spoil too much, but this is the kind of thing you can expect:
We've worked really hard on ensuring all of the feedback and damage responses from these weapons is satisfying and spot on. Knockback has been massively tweaked, hitboxes, hit sparks, sounds, you name it. Combat 'feels' so much better.
Monsters
Monsters in Starbound have been a mixed bag. We've worked hard on the procedural monster generation system and whilst it achieves a lot of things, we felt that the game was missing recognisable monsters with truly unique hand crafted behaviour. That's where these hand crafted monsters come in.
In a similar manner to the weapons (though not quite to the same extent) we've built a system to allow us to add unique monsters efficiently and easily. This also extends to modders.
The addition of these monsters will allow us to use them in quests, provides hand crafted challenges for missions and gives us a good way have monster drops make sense. There are unique monsters for each sub biome and a large pool of general unique monsters that will pop up from time to time.
We're making sure there's incentive to catch every unique monster and put together a complete menagerie.
Quests
All of the current Starbound quests are going to be replaced by 1.0. We've been building out the quest system and we're finally at a point where we can replace some of the placeholder quests. Many of the new quests will appear in the story update but the combat update will contain procedurally generated colony quests.
From time to time your colonists will have errands they'd like you to run. These quests form a quest line with an overall goal that may have a small, permanent effect on your colony as well as your colonists relationships. Quests are varied, you might be delivering secret notes between colonists or protecting your colony from bandit attacks. The generated quest system is something with the potential to expand into something huge in the future.
Vehicles
Up until this point vehicles in Starbound have been using the tech system. That means vehicles were merely extensions of the player, with their movement entirely being controlled client side. This system had a great number of limitations. With the combat update we're introducing true vehicles into Starbound. Much like the weapon system, vehicles are scriptable, they also exist server side as a separate entity separate to, but controlled by players. This means multiple players can enter the same vehicle, players can leave their vehicles to sit in a garage persistently and vehicles can have their own health, collisions and so on.
To start with we'll be adding a handful of finely tweaked vehicles. But again we haven't just built some vehicles, we've built an entire system so both the developers and modders can add new, completely unique vehicles quickly and easily.
Besides these features, the combat update contains a great deal of miscellaneous additions and fixes. More than I can list here.
The Story Update + The Polish Update
So what about after the combat update?
We're planning to put out 2 more patches before 1.0 (and many afterwards).
So what will these updates contain? There are a great number of additions planned. Highlights include an entire set of missions, an opening mission that will explain your role in the world, a great deal of new quests that tie the world together, a cast of wonderful unique characters and a huge amount of new content. It'll also include a much improved pet system, a new means of scanning and examining the world, the much improved reimplementation of survival mechanics like hunger and more.
We’re also planning to revamp how mods are applied and managed, add steam workshop support and simplify multiplayer, with the ability to join games via the steam friends list.
There’s a great deal more to these two patches, including massive performance optimisations, multiplayer improvements and controller support but we’ll be talking more about those closer to their release.
Post 1.0 and Beyond
We plan to support Starbound far beyond the 1.0 release. We're building a universe that's capable of being taken in a great number of different directions and we'd like to start polling the community to find out where you'd like it to go next.
One thing we'll be looking into soon after release is Director Mode. Something you're able to find information on here.
Thank you for supporting Starbound guys, we're almost there!
- Tiyuri
Starbound Devblog Round-Up! 23/10/15
Hello! We've been updating our development blog near-daily, and I've been reminded that we should cross-post some of our updates here. :)
It's difficult to fit several posts within the Steam Announcement character limit, so I'll try to make a habit of posting excerpts here with links to the full posts. You can also access these posts via Starbound's launcher!
We had a group chat about Tccoxon‘s procedural quests system. It’s just about ready for the team to start work on the many quests the system will pull from, hopefully we’ll have some further information to share on this shortly.
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We also have another round of monsters to reveal! We’re proud to introduce the Yokat, Quagmutt & Toumingo
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Work on vehicles has continued today, and we’ve been having some fun working on quests for the generated quest system. Also, Healthire implemented these little guys!
I’ll have more vehicle stuff to reveal next week, but for now, here are some cool monsters. :)
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Metadept has been working on alt weapon abilities, and I particularly like this shotgun vacuum. The art is placeholder, and the effect itself still needs some tweaking, but I think it’s a pretty great new way to annoy your colonists.
I’ve got more monsters to show you, too. Meet Crustoise, Wisper and Sporgus.
You’ve sort of already met Crustoise, as he made an appearance in Friday’s post, but I figured he deserved a proper introduction. Which one is your favorite?
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Kyren’s been doing a lot of work on the vehicles system, so we’ve got a newer/cooler version of the hover bike to show off. There’s still work to do, including damageable vehicles and keeping track of the damage status of vehicles.
We’ve had loads of stuff going on this week. GameCity starts today, so yesterday Harriet and Rosie went up to Nottingham to get us all set up with the help of our friends at Creeperhost! If you’re in the area, stop by and participate in Operation Colonisation and you’ll get a super cool penguin sticker. :D
Time to reveal some more monsters! Meet Squeem, Crabcano, and Smoglin!
Look at Crabcano go! He’s so adorably mad that you just kind of want to give him a hug and tell him to calm down – don’t do that though, because he will spit fiery rocks at you.
So much has changed in this patch, and most of it was covered in our unstable patch notes from the 17th. We’ve changed and added a few more things since then though and it won't all fit within Steam's character limit, so check out this blog post for known issues, a note on existing characters, and patch notes!
Also, check out the update trailer below! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6db4718sRY
<3
[UNSTABLE] Pleased Giraffe Patch Notes
Hey everyone! There's a new unstable update... which means a stable update isn't far away! Yay! <3
I'm struggling to fit the whole changelog here with all of the formatting, so I'd urge you to check out the full post for a more complete list of changes, information about the unstable branch and a list of known issues.
Without further ado, here's a list of the major changes!
27th April - [STABLE] Bug Fix Update
Hey there, everyone! We've been reading your feedback from last week's stable update, and it seems like most people are really enjoying the new features. We've also seen reports of several minor bugs, so we've pushed out a new update which should address most of these. Thanks to everyone who's given us specific and detailed bug reports; it's a huge help!
Fixes in this update:
Hopefully these fixes will be helpful to those of you experiencing issues. Let us know in the comments if you find anything new. Enjoy!
How to Retrieve Your Home Planet
Hello!
As you may have read in our patch notes, the newest stable update saw the 'home planet' feature replaced by planet bookmarks and direct teleporters. This meant that existing players would have to lose their home planets.
But never fear! Ideally you'd have written down your planet's coordinates, but either way your home planet still exists and is intact and you can find it using the following method. :)
Elite Space Hobo from our community beat us to posting a guide, which you can find here.
I hope this proves helpful! <3
21st April - [STABLE] Update Notes
Afternoon everyone!
We're happy to say we are releasing a new Stable Update today! Nearly every change has already been covered in a previous blog post from Metadept, with the stable update also including even more bug fixes, plus huge server stability updates!
Before I get to the actual patch notes, please read this big red warning text:
As of this patch, the 'Home' planet feature has been replaced by planet bookmarks and direct teleporters. EXISTING CHARACTERS WILL LOSE THEIR HOME PLANETS! Make sure to write down your home planet's coordinates or leave your ship in orbit so that you don't lose track of its location.
Now, on to the good stuff!
Existing characters and universes are safe (aside from the codexes and home planet, as listed above). However, a few of these changes may require a new universe or new planets to take effect. Hope you all enjoy the changes, and for those of you playing on the Unstable branch, let us know if you find any bugs or have other feedback!
2nd April - [UNSTABLE] Update Notes
It's been a busy month and a half since our last stable update, and now it's time for the unstable branch to be updated in preparation for the next! Before I get to the actual patch notes, please read this big warning text:
As of this patch, the 'Home' planet feature has been replaced by planet bookmarks and direct teleporters. EXISTING CHARACTERS WILL LOSE THEIR HOME PLANETS!!! Make sure to write down your home planet's coordinates or leave your ship in orbit so that you don't lose track of its location.
Now, on to the good stuff!
Existing characters and universes are safe (aside from the codexes and home planet, as listed above). However, a few of these changes may require a new universe or new planets to take effect. Hope you all enjoy the changes, and for those of you playing on the Unstable branch, let us know if you find any bugs or have other feedback!
[STABLE] 17 February 2015
These changes have now been pushed to the stable branch, along with a few other small fixes. Enjoy!
It’s been a busy week and a half since our last bugfix update. While the artists have been forging ahead on content for the next major patch, we programmers have been going through lots of user feedback, stomping out bugs, and cleaning up a few annoying problems that have been on the To Do list for too long.
<*>Crafting and inventory windows can be closed by pressing the key or activating the object that opened them
<*>Crafting (and other interfaces) close when you are no longer near the object
<*>Interacting with objects now requires the player have line of sight to them. <*>This means that you cannot sit in chairs, flip switches, or use crafting stations through walls.
<*>Add race-specific craftable storage lockers, accessible from the Robotic Crafting Table.
<*>Fix bug with Erchius Horror causing beams to deal damage in areas different from the visual beam positions
<*>Fix bugs with Targeted Blink which allowed blinking through walls and could result in players being thrown outside of the world. Any characters previously broken by this bug should be usable again.
<*>Fix bugs with server banlist functionality
<*>Fix ‘Not allowed to discard stack when locked’ crash when moving items to/from containers
<*>Fix bug causing servers not to display error messages for some crashes
<*>Support user specific username/password login for servers
<*>Bow tooltips now display damage and energy cost
<*>Container tooltips now display storage capacity
<*>Penguin Bay will now tell players to come back later if no quests are available
<*>Most beds allow players to sleep more comfortably, without armor
<*>More changes to human armor designs, some old designs now available as cosmetic items
<*>Capes now craftable on spinning wheel
<*>Foods that poison/burn you won’t do so for as long
<*>Fix appearance of tents while in use
<*>Fix hand positions of a few items
<*>Make Red Dye craftable to facilitate quest
<*>NPCs spawned on the ship from spawner objects will have clothes again
<*>Human Prison dungeons shouldn’t spawn without shield generators
<*>Add less obtrusive graphics for wire nodes
<*>Fix a few bugs with the custom signs including frame numbers for wired signs and light colors
<*>Added some music tracks and ambience to biomes that were missing them
<*>Added /whereis and /whereami commands to display players’ celestial coordinates
<*>Make Steel Platforms craftable
<*>Make Alien Wood placeable
<*>Various improvements to cat AI
<*>Fix a bug where sounds would build up while invisible, then play all at once
<*>Restore suffocation warning sound
<*>Better loot in microdungeons
<*>Fewer lights in microdungeons
<*>Back items are no longer stackable (for consistency with other armor types
<*>Fix invisible sun
<*>Fix consumable/weapon items ‘queueing’ when switching slots during windup
<*>Add biome parallaxes to some mission dungeons
<*>Lots of tiny changes to descriptions, graphics, object orientations, etc.
