Starbound

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 3:14 pm

Yes, yes everyone who is a big Terraria fan already knows about this but we don't have a thread yet and it's a good day to make a thread.

Starbound, for those not in the know, is a Terraria-like game from the former lead artist of Terraria and some other dudes. It featurea gameplay similar to Terraria, however I think it will wind up feeling differnet enough (it has a rather large feature list, many of which are new to Starbound).

The pre-order page is up, and they are off to a big start. All pre-orders will get beta access if you care about such things but no date has been given.

More relevantly, the interactive development road map is really neat and has lots of interesting stuff if you bother exploring it all. There must be several dozen screen shots in there.

If you haven't watched this before, I recommend the shortish building demo. It really shows off the increased detail the game freatures, as well as UI differences from Terraria. The UI looks, at a glimpse, very friendly.

I'm super excited about the Terraria patch that's coming and unless something turns me off from either game see myself playing both going forward. Unless one does so much amazing stuff with the UI that I can't go back to the other.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 3:35 pm

I'm in. Loved Terraria

Baroquen · Post by **Baroquen** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 4:29 pm

Am I correct in my thinking that this one has a significant co-op MP option? That always sounds like fun, but I never get much traction out of that. Maybe this will be different.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 4:42 pm

Baroquen wrote:Am I correct in my thinking that this one has a significant co-op MP option? That always sounds like fun, but I never get much traction out of that. Maybe this will be different.

You are. To be clear it's not required, but if I udnerstand correctly they wanted to do more with coop. What "more" means is beyond me, but the game features quests and missions and such.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:08 pm

I wasn't a big fan of Terraria, but for some reason this one appeals to me from what I've heard so far.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sun Apr 14, 2013 6:29 pm

Preordered.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Fri Nov 01, 2013 6:34 pm

Beta coming soon.

details on how it will work

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue Nov 26, 2013 9:27 am

Twitter suggests "soon" is December 4th...

Cylus Maxii · Post by **Cylus Maxii** » Tue Nov 26, 2013 11:13 am

Ooh, this looks pretty cool. I may have to order it when I get home from work.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Tue Dec 03, 2013 2:53 pm

Beta releases tomorrow for this.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Tue Dec 03, 2013 3:32 pm

Zisteau (youtube dude) has some footage up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrmB4tw33Q" target="_blank (first ep).

Zurai · Post by **Zurai** » Tue Dec 03, 2013 5:26 pm

They've been giving the beta build to various YouTubers for a week or so now. TotalBiscuit, the Yogscast, and quite a few others either already have videos up or are processing them to put them up.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Tue Dec 03, 2013 6:11 pm

Can. Not. Wait.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Tue Dec 03, 2013 8:47 pm

The Meal wrote:Zisteau (youtube dude) has some footage up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrmB4tw33Q" target="_blank (first ep).

And here's Etho's take.

Hrnac · Post by **Hrnac** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 12:27 am

Wow, this looks fantastic! Automatic purchase for me and my son.

-Hrnac

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:58 pm

Keys are up at the humble bundle site, and it just popped up on Steam a minute ago... downloading now.

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:41 pm

Runs a little sluggish on my rig. That and the 3gb install probably indicate that they haven't fully optimized the code. Still, if anyone has any tweaks they discover...

16gb DDR2 Ram
560TI
Dual Xeon Processors (3.00gb)

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:53 pm

About 55,000 folks "in the game" right now.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 12:10 pm

I managed to get in some time with this yesterday, and so far it's a lot of fun. For some reason I never could get into Terraria, but I think I've already played more Starbound than I ever did Terraria.

One of the big things is just all the little interface improvements... mining goes faster since picks effect a 3x3 area, placing items in the fore or background is as easy as using left or right click, the crafting interface is straightforward. I absolutely love being able to pull up stakes and just head to a new, fresh planet whenever you want, and the randomization they do is very impressive so far. Each planet really does feel unique and you really start to get a feel for all the different plants and animals on each planet you visit. I've only visited 4 or 5 planets, but I haven't seen any repeating elements yet.

It definitely needs some work adding more content, and I haven't got far enough to say if the main quest is as well done as in Terraria, but I'm really having fun with it, and I really like the Robinson Carusoe feel the first part of the game has.

So a few tips in no particular order:
- I assumed fuel for my ship was some magical resource... nope... coal and raw wood are both good fuel sources, so all you need to do to start traveling the stars is chop down enough trees or find a good coal cache, take it up to your ship, and put it in the fuel tank (it's the panel right behind the cockpit)
- You can place objects on your ship so once you get established it's not a bad idea to add the crafting structures there. That way you always have crafting available as you travel the stars. I just used a wooden platform to add a second level to the main cabin and put my anvil, smelter, etc. up there.
- If your screen starts turning white and you start seeing your characters breath, that's not a storm coming in, it's you starting to freeze to death (there's also a cold gauge that pops up at the bottom of the screen). In a pinch you can slowly get warm next to a torch, but a campfire will warm you up fastest. (I still need to figure out how to make some sort of cold weather gear to explore snow planets though)
- If you kill something with your weapon it drops money, if you kill it with a bow it drops leather and meat
- Don't worry about building the distress beacon until you are WELL equipped, and FYI, you don't need to build it to travel to other planets, so go explore before you try it. Also know that the first time you do try it will probably not end well.
- If you get into trouble you can instantly teleport back to your ship from anywhere on the surface

Edit: A few other tidbits from perusing the forums:
- You can restore durability by grabbing a raw metal and right clicking it over your pickaxe.
- Iron is about 30 blocks down in large quantities.
- Silver blends in with cobble stone

More details about the beacon:

Spoiler:

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:02 pm

Sepiche, how exactly do I explore other planets without the distress beacon? I have no fuel and so I am unable to go anywhere else.

I am also having trouble finding quantities of iron. It may be that I have to dig horizontally, rather than head further down. I can fine copper and silver pretty well, but iron seems to be the rarest!

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:11 pm

I think he said that if you beam back to your ship you can add wood or coal as fuel. It looks, when I tried it, that 1 unit of wood = 1 unit of fuel and 1 unit of coal = 2 units of fuel.

I am also having trouble finding iron on my starter planet

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:13 pm

baelthazar wrote:Sepiche, how exactly do I explore other planets without the distress beacon? I have no fuel and so I am unable to go anywhere else.

Yeah, this part is really unclear how they present it, but apparently they are changing to tutorial text today to make it more clear. You don't need the beacon to go to other planets though.

1) Harvest some coal or chop down some trees
2) Go back to your ship and access the console immediately to the left of the cockpit
3) Drag and drop coal/trees to the box that opens
4) Hit "Fuel"

That should load up your tanks a bit. Coal = 2 fuel , Wood = 1 fuel.

To go to another planet:
1) Access the cockpit
2) On the screen that shows your current planet you can left click on any other planets in orbit to go there for free, or right click to zoom out to the system view, and right click again to go to the galaxy view

When you select a new planet part of your fuel bar will turn green... that's the amount of fuel it will take to go to the new target.

I am also having trouble finding quantities of iron. It may be that I have to dig horizontally, rather than head further down. I can fine copper and silver pretty well, but iron seems to be the rarest!

It's all very random, but it seems like iron has a greater tendency to clump at lower levels. I had to explore for a while to build up a lot of iron, and silver is even harder (although silver's problem is it's hard to see which should be fixed in the next patch too)

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:17 pm

I don't think it's up yet, but here's todays patch notes btw:

- Massively reducing the pixel cost (sometimes eliminating it entirely) on early weapons/armor. You can build a refinery in later tiers to turn ores of all kinds into pixels. (done)

- Monsters now have a small chance to drop meat when killed with normal weapons. (done)

- Bandages are now craftable with 4 plant fibres, no longer require fabric (done)

- Fix human starter chest showing apex starter items (done)

- Monsters now have a 70% chance to drop meat when killed with a hunting weapon, up from 50% (done)

- Make the refinery appear earlier in the game (done)

- Reduced fuel costs a bit to go to other planets (done)

- Tweaked wording of starter quests to encourage exploring of more planets. (done)

- Added hunting knife weapon that also makes monsters drop meat (done)

- Added new legendary weapon (done)

- Pixel loss on death reduced to 20% for testing, might change further (done)

- [16:27] <Mortvert> Tiy_, Also, could you make silver more visible, please? (Done)

- Added new armor that provides a good amount of warmth early on in the game at the sacrifice of armor levels. (done)

- Tweaked the UFO boss to make him smash blocks. (done)

- Also make him a little bit easier by changing him to level 9 from level 10 (done)

- Revamping the warmth bar to make it more obvious (suggestion by thedbp on reddit)
http://i.imgur.com/O2IYd6k.png" target="_blank (done)

- Increase mining speed a little (done)

- Tons of bug fixes

- Bartwe is working on the windows XP issues, not sure yet if it'll be done by tonight but fingers crossed.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:34 pm

Is there a way to erase characters?

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:58 pm

msduncan wrote:Is there a way to erase characters?

Not yet from in game.

I haven't tried it myself, but supposedly you can delete characters by deleting their files in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Starbound\player

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 7:07 pm

baelthazar wrote:I am also having trouble finding quantities of iron. It may be that I have to dig horizontally, rather than head further down. I can fine copper and silver pretty well, but iron seems to be the rarest!

Doing a little more reading today I've also learned that planet level has a direct impact on what types of ore you encounter and how large concentrations of it are. If you get lucky you can definitely find large concentrations of iron on level 1 planets, but higher level planets can yield huge deposits of rarer metals.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:43 pm

Well I did all I could do on the first planet. Fueled up my ship and made the jump to a level 2 planet. I'll report back in after going planet side.

Entry 2:

Forested planet. Purple hue to the ground. No signs of civilization yet. Aggressive birds and a small pokemon looking creature that is very tough and has sent me to the regen chamber twice. Going to venture further from beam down area.

Entry 3:

WOW. Ok this planet IS inhabited. Encounted aggressive robots with shield technology and laser guns. Had to beam out to avoid death. There was an underground facility of some sort that I didn't get a chance to explore.

Unsure if these robots were devices of some carbon based life form, or if the robots themselves were sentient. These are unlike the (peaceful)humanoid robotic sentient life on my starter planet. These robots rolled on wheels and immediately threw up shields when they saw me. More investigation to come unless I deem it too dangerous for my current tech levels.

Entry 4:

The wheeled robots were some sort of sentry for humanoid unfriendly aliens who have technology much more advanced than I do. I tried to make contact and was blown to pieces. Time to fuel up and leave this planet.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:16 pm

They ended up patching about 2 EST last night and introduced quite a few cool things including snow armor. I also played around with the different races and have finally settled on an Apex as my favorite. I made him look a bit like the gorillas from Planet of the Apes, but with a stylish, red officers uniform.

Here's the soon to be growing list of things for tonights patch:
http://community.playstarbound.com/inde ... ber.38932/" target="_blank

- Major work has gone into making the game work correctly onto windows XP (done, needs testing)

- Fixed (nerfed sorry), Snow infantry armor (done)

- Make matter blocks discover-able in a new dungeon (done)

- Experimenting with a new leveling/damage/armor curve (Thank you to Chewymouse) (done, needs testing)

- Complete ore rebalance (working on it)

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:19 pm

Do they have a newsletter of some sort to get emailed updates?

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:25 pm

Not that I'm aware of, but they've been keeping their blog updated with patch notes (although the very latest one isn't up there yet):
http://www.playstarbound.com" target="_blank

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 8:02 pm

So far I'm loving it, BUT:

I have run into an identical building on two different worlds, as well as a village with pretty much identical layout and beings. For a supposedly procedural game, that seems a bit off.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 1:58 am

Captain Sepiche sailing the stars

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:54 am

I seem to have hit a wall on crafting and I am unable to deal with... umm... the thing that appears when you use the beacon. Not exactly sure how I will do that without some better weapons, but I have no schematics for anything new. Any ideas? Do I need to do more exploring? I'm wondering if all of the craftables have not yet been implemented in Beta 1.

So far I have little use for gold, other than the pickaxe and the small amount needed for the beacon. How do I get gold recipes?

Zurai · Post by **Zurai** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 3:30 am

Most equipment in the game is upgraded from existing equipment. You get the recipes for them by crafting the preceding level of equipment. For example, you get the recipe for silver armor by crafting copper armor.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 1:46 pm

It just occurred to me that I haven't even been trying to explore underground on planets. Is there a bunch of stuff to discover down there?

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 1:55 pm

I found an underground bunker guarded by robots with machine guns on my starting world

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:02 pm

IceBear wrote:I found an underground bunker guarded by robots with machine guns on my starting world

Yeah but it probably had a surface entrance didn't it?

I mean following a cave down, and then digging to find something deep underground ala Terraria.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:08 pm

I don't know. I was digging down and came upon it from the left and had to dig through the walls to get inside. I haven't made it to the right side of the structure to see if there's an entrance to the surface; I die everytime I get near it

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:19 pm

msduncan wrote:
IceBear wrote:I found an underground bunker guarded by robots with machine guns on my starting world

Yeah but it probably had a surface entrance didn't it?

I mean following a cave down, and then digging to find something deep underground ala Terraria.

I haven't found anything underground personally, but I've seen a few people claim to have dug into structures deep underground without surface access.

The deeper you go the better chance you have of finding larger clumps of better metals too. The biome also changes once you get deep enough... my starting planet for instance turns into a snow biome if I go way down.

The devs have also said though that a lot of the underground placement is preliminary and will get revamped at some point.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:28 pm

Yeah, the vibe I got from the structure I found was that it was an underground bunker or fallout shelter