20 December

Winter update [UNSTABLE] Edition! ~*The More You Know*~

Hey there!

We pushed the changes mentioned in our recent trailer to the unstable branch last night– rejoice! Anyone who’s been playing the nightly builds won’t see a huge difference, but anyone who makes the switch from stable to unstable will see some pretty massive changes.

So here’s what you need to know about the unstable update, starting with…

• Many progression quests aren’t final, some are placeholders for future missions
  
• Combat balance is still WIP
  
• Performance issues, particularly in dense areas like dungeons and the outpost
  
• Background parallaxes have problematic transitions between world layers, e.g. oceans
  
• Pixel costs and rewards not yet balanced
  
• Interface windows (containers, AI, etc) can remain open after switching worlds or moving away from the triggering object
  
• Cooking recipes for tier 5 and 6 crops need to be implemented
  
• Crops sometimes get out of sync when grown on ship
  
• Enemy hit/death sounds sometimes fail to play
  
• Some errors in enemy movement and pathfinding
  
• Rare crash when removing items from containers, appears as “(InventoryException) Not allowed to discard stack when locked.”
  
• The launcher, on some people’s machines, will spew dll errors about missing ordinals. This is not fatal however, and the launcher will still work after you close them.
  
• And a whole lot more (probably)
  
  We’ll keep everyone posted as we make more updates and plans evolve, but thank you all for being so patient! Have fun!
  
  ---
  
  Tiy also did an AMA on the Starbound subreddit last night answering lots of questions about development and the unstable update, so be sure to check that out. :)
  
  Hope you all have a nice weekend and a lovely holiday. <3 :)
  
  ːSBHorseː

19 December

[DAILY BLOG] Weekly Update Round-Up 19/12/2014

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

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.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

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!

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

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!