• Fix a crash when trying to keybind unrecognized keys
  
• Fix masking on headband for avian beaks
  
• Fix a button position overlap in sign store GUI
  
• Fix border detection on adjacent signs
  
• Fix some bugs with cat AI
  
• Fix exploit with Dreadwing not properly aggroing player at long range
  
• Change default ‘hide interface’ binding to avoid overlapping with Steam screenshot key; now uses Alt + Z
  
• Update a few more human armor designs
  
• Alien biomes now properly apply radiation status
  
• Fix scrollable list widgets starting at bottom
  
• Fix reversed alphabetical sorting in songbook
  
• Fix a crash due to inconsistent animation sorting in networked animator
  
• Change a number of container sizes to better match their object sizes
  
• Fix a 32 – 64 bit compatibility issue
  
• Fix bug with servers not properly clearing temporary files
  
• Fix a few other miscellaneous server and client crashes
  
• New fireableItem Lua API
  
• Fix erroneous hotkeys listed in paint tool / wire tool descriptions
  
• Restore Nanostove to portable pixel printer unlocks
  
• Fix asset loading errors on several Windows versions including XP, pre-SP2 Vista, 10 preview
  
• Change Windows file locking to allow multiple simultaneous client instances
  
• Fix a bug sending excessive inactive client disconnect requests
  
• Change Erchius Horror phase 3 to not cross the beams
  
• More sign fixes
  
• More changes to container sizes
  
• Fix cooked fish hand position
  
• Fix more issues with keybinding international keyboard layouts
  
• Fix bug where NPCs were killed by breaking beds
  
• Updated more human armor graphics
  
• 3D printer shouldn’t show prices for items that can’t be scanned
  
• Fix monsters being hit while dying
  
• Fix wired objects being wired to themselves
  
• Fix a graphical glitch in aurora parallax
  
• Fix bugs with spawn adjustment and don’t allow spawning in liquids
  
• Fix a graphical bug where some monsters’ animation parts displayed the wrong image
  
• Fix universe server world corruption due to double world loading
  
• Adjust rarity of food items
  
• Fix hue shifting some stone types which prevented cobblestone from stacking properly
  
• Fix effects for player damage and energy depletion / regeneration
  

• **Universe and Worlds
• **
  
• Sectors have been removed, so all stars are part of the same map
  
• Star and planet types correspond to difficulty levels, giving players access to progressively more extreme environments as they advance through the game
  
• Added oceanic world types including tropical and arctic oceans, toxic and magma planets
  
• Added rare Barren and Asteroid worlds with no monsters for large scale building
  
• New biomes
  
• New surface and underground mini biomes
  
• Many changes to surface and underground terrain generation
  
• Improvements to background parallaxes and sky coloration
  
• **Ships and Navigation
• **
  
• Player ships now include an AI avatar specific to each race that gives access to the player’s techs, missions, 3D printer, and a variety of ship-related commands
  
• Each race’s ship has its own unique set of upgrades, giving players much more room to expand as they progress
  
• Fuel costs for travel have been reworked. Moving between planets within a system is now free, while jumps to other systems require fuel in proportion to the distance traveled.
  
• Coal no longer powers spaceships! Instead, they can use either radioactive ores or the new Liquid Erchius Fuel that now appears in Moon biomes
  
• Many improvements to the Cockpit interface, which now indicates more detailed planet information including weather and environmental hazards
  
• **Outpost
• **
  
• The universe now has a civilized hub containing shops, quests, and other services. This is where players will find quests, missions, and ship upgrades which allow them to advance through the game
  
• Includes a Sign Store based on the popular custom signs mod, where players can design and print their own signage for use in game
  
• **Missions
• **
  
• At key points in the progression, players will unlock special Missions
  
• Missions take place in unique instanced dungeons containing special monsters, bosses, and rewards not available anywhere else
  
• Some missions can be quite difficult, so you’ll want to prepare carefully - or bring friends!
  
• **Novakids
• **
  
• New playable race!
  
• Unique progression of craftable guns
  
• Unique progression of armor sets
  
• Unique progression of ship upgrades
  
• **Tech
• **
  
• Techs are now split into head, body, legs and suit slots, so you can equip up to four at once!
  
• Head techs provide various activated effects triggered using the tech hotkeys
  
• Body techs provide lateral movement abilities triggered by double tapping direction keys
  
• Leg techs provide vertical movement abilities triggered with the jump key
  
• Suit techs provide passive protection from specific environmental hazards
  
• New tech unlocking system makes a variety of techs visible each time the player upgrades their ship. The player can then use Blank Tech Cards to unlock and equip these techs
  
• Many new techs
  
• **Mining
• **
  
• Matter Manipulator can now be upgraded over the course of the game to increase its mining power, area of effect, and allow it to collect liquids as well as blocks
  
• Pickaxes and drills are more powerful, but have lowered durability and cannot be repaired, making them a consumable alternative to the Matter Manipulator
  
• Smashable rocks found rarely underground contain richer deposits of certain ores
  
• **Combat
• **
  
• Energy regeneration has been changed. Rather than continuously regenerating energy at a slow rate, energy rapidly regenerates when not being used
  
• Using energy that exceeds your maximum pool will disable energy usage for a few seconds until your energy has fully recharged
  
• New weapon type staves!
  
• Use a staff by holding the fire button to charge it, aiming, then releasing the button to unleash a powerful effect
  
• Unlike guns, staves manifest their projectiles directly at your targeting cursor for precision combat
  
• A variety of staves can be crafted at the new Manipulator Table
  
• Beginning at Tier 5, armors are divided into three different progression paths with different stat balances
  
• Separator armors have high armor and low energy for melee weapon users
  
• Accelerator armors have a balance of armor and energy for ranged weapon users
  
• Manipulator armors have low armor and high energy for staff users
  
• Many new unique biome weapons
  
• More bows (and crossbows) for higher level hunting
  
• Many new thrown weapons of various tiers
  
• Defense Turrets have been massively improved and can be equipped with a variety of weapons for different effects
  
• **Monsters
• **
  
• New monster type: large flying monsters
  
• New monster type: large aquatic monsters
  
• Many improvements to monster AI
  
• Birds less of a menace
  
• **Survival Mechanics
• **
  
• Temperature has been replaced by a system of specific planetary hazards, which the player will need to unlock new technology to resist
  
• Hunger has been removed for now, replaced by an expansion of the cooking system with a variety of buffs (see below)
  
• New difficulty option to drop ores and other valuable materials on death
  
• **Farming and Cooking
• **
  
• New crops
  
• Hundreds of new cooking recipes
  
• Cooked foods now provide a wide variety of buffs, with more elaborate recipes giving stronger effects
  
• **Bug Catching
• **
  
• Bugs unique to each planet type now spawn across the universe
  
• Use the bug net to collect and display them!
  
• **Wiring
• **
  
• Most lights in game can now be wired
  
• More interactable switches
  
• More sensors, switches, and logic gates
  
• Fixed lots of usability bugs with wiring
  
• **Other Content
• **
  
• Many new status effects
  
• Many new costumes
  
• Many new biome furniture/object sets
  
• Many new block types
  
• Many (over 150) new underground microdungeons
  
• Many new toys and novelty items
  
• **Performance Enhancements
• **
  
• Tile rendering
  
• Liquid processing
  
• Many other optimizations
  
• **Miscellaneous Improvements
• **
  
• Specialty hotbar slots and keys for Matter Manipulator, Wire Tool and Paint Tool
  
• New font
  
• Keybinding GUI
  
• Character deletion option
  
• **Modding Features
• **
  
• Items are now scriptable
  
• Status effects are now scriptable
  
• New Script Console functionality gives a client-side scripted canvas to build your own GUIs, games, or whatever you can imagine
  
• Many new Lua API bindings
  
• **Server Features
• **
  
• Access to tile protection system, preventing modification of specific dungeon IDs
  
• Ability to set spawn point for a world
  
• Several other new admin commands
  
• rcon support
  

9th January - Exciting Post About Exciting Things

As Tiy mentioned in his last post, we’re now back in the office after a refreshing holiday and back to work preparing for a stable update. Hooray!

There are a few things that we need to address before the update will be ready. One is, of course, bug fixes. We’ve been looking at your feedback and bug reports over the break, and this week I’m focusing on working through as many of these miscellaneous issues as possible while we get up to speed. Today I cleaned up a number of annoying things with staves and bows, such as: players being forced to walk/stand when cycling weapons, right click charging but not firing, being able to charge (and being forced to walk) without energy, etc. I’m hoping to get through most of this rapidly shrinking issue list by the end of the week.

After that we’ve got a few large-ish but clear tasks. We need to balance the effectiveness of armor against very high and low rate of fire weapons. Kyren will be doing everything she can to improve performance for both servers and clients. Omni will be fixing the parallax transitions between layers. Artists are adding more micro dungeons and miscellaneous content to improve variety of exploration, particularly underground. If we have time, we’d also like to add a key binding GUI and possibly some form of planet bookmarking or teleportation. Once all that’s done, we can finally update the stable branch, and move on to more new and exciting features!

13 January - New font

Hey Guys!

We’ve spent some time today updating the Starbound font amongst other things.

Hopefully this font should be easier to read, contains some fun symbols and also contains a huge amount more special characters.

It’ll also be useful in the upcoming custom controls GUI.



Still have the buttons to update, but here’s how SAIL looks now..

15 January - Microdungeons!

Hello!

For the past week and a half, a bunch of us have been busy adding many more microdungeons to the game.

These will be small to medium sized areas that you’ll discover while exploring beneath the surface. Right now we have about 100 of these microdungeons prepared for implementation. Here’s a few examples:









Until next time!

19 January - You're Not The Boss of Me

This last week programmer Healthire and I have been working on another new boss for the next update. I don’t want to show too much, but let’s just say you battle this one a bit differently compared to other Starbound bosses.



That place looks familiar. Where could this battle be taking place? You can play through this when it’s completed in the next stable patch, or you can take a sneak peek in the nightly right now.

Until next time!

How to Switch to the Unstable Branch

World/Character File Compatibility

Known Issues:

12th December - Balance in all things

Evening folks!

When Starbound’s overall balance structure was first established, humanoid NPCs weren’t really a primary consideration at the time, nor was PVP, so the game was largely balanced based around the damage between players and the monsters. While this system was fine at first, it has been the root cause of much difficulty in balancing humanoid NPCs who were primarily balanced to fight against the player and got absolutely trashed by monsters, which was a problem, especially with our growing focus on missions. This necessitated a rethink of how everything was balanced.

To that end, Tiyuri and I, have gone over almost everything with a fine-tooth comb. Here’s a brief overview of the biggest changes.

- NPCs now use armor, so damage inflicted on them is reflective of their armor. Additionally their health now scales on a curve similar to the player’s.
- Damage values across the board have risen. Monsters now die more easily, but they can also kill the player faster too. Fight carefully!
- The energy scaling curve on guns has been completely reworked for a more gradual and consistent climb.
- Tiered armors have been completely rebalanced to suit the new armor and energy scaling levels.
- Players now start off with access to two weapons from the offset, with most races gaining a one-handed shortsword in addition to their broadsword. The novakids gain a two-handed rifle.
- Generated weapon values now typically sit somewhere between the tiered weapons. Rare weapons may still potentially be more damaging, but this should help to keep tiered weapons useful all throughout the game’s progression.

It might not seem like much but these changes have involved a frankly exhausting amount of configuration, but it has transformed the game feel quite significantly. A pleasant side effect of this humanoid-centric rebalancing is that the game is largely balanced for PVP too, provided all parties have suitably leveled equipment.

Guns are more dependable weapons overall, but melee inflicts monstrous damage for those willing to take the risk. In our testing, we found ourselves having heated 1-on-1 exchanges, rapidly alternating between ranged sniping and clashing swords when our energy reserves were locked away. It was both frantic and fun! I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys make of it.

Winter update trailer is here!

Evening, everyone!

In my recent post, I mentioned that we’d soon be uploading a trailer highlighting some of the biggest changes we’ve made to Starbound since the last stable build. Without further rambling, here it is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sz2zr3pZEo

As Tiy noted yesterday on Twitter, we’re trying to push these updates to the unstable branch next week and, depending on how that goes, pushing them to the stable branch in January.

Katzeus at Starbound has done an awesome job summarizing most of the changes here.

Thanks again for your continued support and patience. :) Enjoy the trailer!

16th December - Alien Alpaca Blog!

Alpaca in spaaaaace!


Alien Alpaca packin’!


Alien Alpaca jumping sweet jumps!


Alien Alpaca playing video games and cooking!


Alien Alpaca taking a breather!

Alpaca in spaaaaaace!

5th December - You must find balance

What a week it’s been. I found myself tasked with examining and improving overall game balance. For a game packed with randomized elements that has undergone some pretty significant changes in the combat system, this proved a bit of a long-winded process that involved a lot of convoluted spreadsheets. These changes involved addressing the way damage from weapons and monsters scales up across the tiers, along with health scaling on enemies. It seems to be shaping up pretty nicely so far.

One of the biggest changes to hit has been the implementation of a new energy system. The team has been aware for a good while that the guns were in need of attention. The biggest problem was that players didn’t really have a lot of options beyond burning through all their energy while shooting, and then would be left waiting an obnoxiously long time before their bar refilled enough to be of any use. With balance being a key focus at this time, it seemed a good opportunity to address it.

The biggest change is how your bar regenerates energy. Rather than a slow and constant regeneration like the one you’ve likely experienced in our stable build, the regeneration will now only kick in if you haven’t used your energy for a few seconds. To compensate, the regeneration is much faster than it was before, restoring your full energy in just a few seconds. No matter how big your energy pool gets, it will take precisely the same length of time to refill, effectively giving you both more shots and even more energy per second.

This new system doesn’t come without risks however. If you use your energy without allowing it to time to refill, completely emptying it, your bar will lock during its regeneration cycle, restricting you from using energy in any way shape or form until it has completely refilled. This means you will not be able to fire your guns, nor use energy-based techs.



The general consensus among the team so far is that new system feels much better than the old one. It opens up opportunities for strategic play and encourages players to be mindful of their reserves. In the wake of this change, my next task is to rebalance energy levels across armors. That’ll be fun!

In any case, that’s it from me. Have a nice weekend folks!

9th December - Nightly launcher is broken

Recently, we made a change to how the nightly manages its current working directory (to make managing servers more sane, to make launching the command line utilities less mysterious, and generally have less spooky action at a distance, and to potentially support multiple profiles in the future), but unfortunately, that change broke the launcher. I’ve worked for a few hours and found that there seems to be no good answer to our problems without reverting the changes we made, and we can’t really justify reverting those changes.

As mentioned, the root issue is now that we’ve made changes the launcher has the wrong working directory. In order to fix that, I had to move the launcher to the proper location (or do a change to the working directory for the starbound executable, which is what the change was originally intended to prevent.)

Eventually, we decided to move the launcher to the same directory as the executable, but now it’s screwing up because Steam wants it to be in the same location as the current stable.

We can’t change launch paths by branch, it’s set per depot, not per build. We’re sending in a support request to Valve on the matter. It might be as simple as “just add another launch option that’s valid on the other builds, but invalid on the stable, and it will try them all.” And I’m hoping it’s that simple. But it’s not something that I want to test out right now without knowing for certain.

So what does this mean to you?

The nightly on Windows and OSX (OSX was broken as well by the same change, even though it doesn’t use the launcher), you will need to launch the executable directly, rather than through Steam, until further notice.

Executable launching instruction can be found using this elegant and finely crafted link.

9th December - Jigsaw falling into place

Evening! So in preparation for the next stable update, we’ve been arranging things so that quests and missions all work together as part of a functioning progression. For my part, I’ve been rebalancing the several missions in the game so that they are as challenging as they need to be for when you reach them.



What is the context of this dismal cavern? You’ll have to find out for yourself!

It’s all coming together! If you haven’t already seen, we’re gathering lots of quickfire feedback for the current nightly build to see how people are finding it. Hit us up if you’d like to chip in!

1st December - Bioluminescence

Hey there! Things have been relatively quiet on the blog recently, but very busy in the office. Lately I’ve spent most of my time helping kyren improve the way we configure biomes and planetary layers. This is necessary for ocean planets, but will also facilitate a lot of other cool stuff in the future. I’ll be able to talk more about that when it’s closer to finished. This evening I took a little break to put Supernorn’s bioluminescent plants in the game. They’ll be getting their own biome soon, but I thought they looked nice enough to warrant a screenshot of the progress:

2nd December - Here and there and everywhere!

Despite repeatedly getting sidetracked to tackle other tasks, we now have over 120 functional food items and recipes that the player can discover in their travels, and that’s just in tiers 1-4! You will typically receive one or two basic recipes upon collecting a new ingredient, and then you can earn more by spending some time preparing these items. Even the most unassuming recipe may eventually lead you to something particularly potent, so if you want the best food buffs you’re going to want to spend some time with your cooking table.

One of the more unusual concoctions I’ve particularly enjoyed playing with is a drink that imbues the player with great bounciness. When under the effects of this buff, you are completely immune to falling damage, your jump power increases by 25% and you bounce when you impact any surface. It can be a bit hard to control if you’re in a particularly rough patch of terrain, but if you can time a jump the moment you hit the ground, you can bounce higher and higher. This is especially fun when combined with the double jump tech!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KlrpuEo0eI

Combat practical? Perhaps not. But it sure is fun!

One year later...

Happy Anniversary!

A year ago today, we launched Starbound on Steam Early Access to more love and support than we could ever have anticipated.

Starbound’s development has had its ups and downs (as all game development cycles do!), but we’ve been able to work far more efficiently together since settling into our little office space. We’ve been super hard at work on a very large update that changes and expands upon the progression system and it’s nearly ready for unstable.

If you’ve been keeping track of our updates and the nightly build, you’ll have seen just how much has changed since the last stable update. If not, never fear! In lieu of 10+ pages of text outlining all the changes, we’ll be posting a trailer next week highlighting all the biggest features we’ve added to the game. In the meantime, Katzeus at Starbounder has neatly summarized most of the changes here.

We really can’t thank you enough for your continued patience, feedback, supportive messages and contributions to the community. :) I know a lot of you have been waiting aaaages for a stable update before diving back into the game, but I think you’ll find the wait worth it. :D