Happy Caturday!
May 19, 2012 in Media
Forest Biome
May 13, 2012 in Media
The following is a demo of just a SMALL number of the forests the game can generate on the fly. Each forest appears on the same terrain type in this video (as we’re not ready to show those off just yet), but forests are capable of appearing across all different kinds of terrain.
More info in the video description!
May Wallpaper of the Month!
May 7, 2012 in Featured, Media, News
Oh man, it’s new wallpaper time!
This month features a battle on the tentacle planet! This is one of my favorite planets, and I’ve been so excited to do this wallpaper.
You guys don’t even know. I mean, look at this screenshot! It’s pretty boss!
May Wallpaper of the Month
1920×1200 | 1680×1050 | 1440×900
1280×800 | 1920×1080 | 1600×900
1366×768 | 1600×1200 | 1024×768
Biomes
May 4, 2012 in Featured, Media, News
Hi there guys,
Just a quick update to show you what we’re working on. We’re also looking for some feedback on this. So feel free to comment and tell us what you like and dislike about it.
Right now we’re working on biomes, in particular we’re sinking a lot of time into the forest biome.
Each biome will be different per planet, so a forest on one planet may look entirely different from a forest on another. It’ll contain different spawns, different loot, different terrain, ores, you name it.
Here are a few work in progress shots. They show three forests, all on the same terrain type, on different planets.
As explained these are work in progress shots, the procedurally generated plants aren’t in yet (the small ones), and in the first two shots the pine trees in the background are placeholders. In the final version the background trees will match the trees in the foreground, as with the final screenshot. Also in general as we add more content everything will become more varied.
Some questions for you.
Do you like what you see? Is it pretty?
Is there enough variety from planet to planet?
Do the forests feel cohesive in design?
Give us your feedback and we’ll take it on board 
Hopefully we’ll get a video out to you this weekend or shortly after showing some more of this stuff off.
What are we working on?
April 11, 2012 in Featured, Media, News
A quick update on what each member of the team is working on at the moment!
Kyren‘s been hard at work putting the finishing touches on object integration and tweaking the netcode; it’s now at a point that online play is very very smooth and seamless. Net play has been in for a while, but it wasn’t featured in the last update because we wanted it to be more about the fantastic lighting she did.
Among making various assets, Tiy‘s actually been working more on the code side of things – defining and inputting assets, setting to work on putting as many finished things as possible into the game for testing.
Omni is specifically working on creatures; defining their AI and behaviours and recently got flying creatures working. Flying creatures were a problem because we have winged creatures, which have to move a specific way to look right. The solution we came up with for winged creatures in particular is pretty ingenious, maybe we’ll be able to show it to you in a future update!
George has gotten lots of random armors done, along with some creatures and object work to keep things varied. The random armors in particular are a very hard and lengthy process, so great job George!
Legris the Tree Master is focusing mainly on the biome side of things – parallax, plant and tree (big surprise!) production. Right now he’s concepting a system for dynamic trees, which could mean trees being much more varied.
Lastly, I (Rho) have been working mostly on creature production, inparticular on the contest winners, as well as various other things. Congratulations, by the way!
Here’s Tiy messing with a flashlight whilst I stand lookout
Click for full size
Weekly Wallpapers now Monthly!
April 9, 2012 in News
Hey guys!
The wallpapers are going to be released at the beginning of every month, rather than every week.
This schedule will work out a little better, because I’ll have more time to make sure the wallpapers are extra awesome!
So see you guys in May! In the meantime, have a SPACE BUNNY!
Happy Easter, everybody!
The Monster Monster contest Winners!
March 23, 2012 in Featured, News
It’s been a long and hard road, but after spending days examining all the wonderful entries, the dev team have finally settled on a winner.
We’d like to congratulate TomServo for his awesome creature, the Poptop. A mysterious creature that hides its true form behind a cute illusion.
We were really impressed both with TomServo’s concept and presentation, many of the team were desperate to catch a Poptop to keep as a pet!
We think the Poptop will fit perfectly into Starbound and we plan to implement both the young and adult versions of the Poptop.
TomServo has won a free copy of Starbound at Launch and we’ve already begun implementing his creation.
But there were so many great entries that we couldn’t limit ourselves to just one winner.
Our first runner up, at #2 was thefluvirus with his variety of Virorbs. We particularly liked the range of abilities and the gameplay involved in the way the Orbs attack.
In 3rd place is Cyan the Red and her Mindwurms, aside from the great presentation, we loved the idea of a creature that feeds on information. As well as its ability to inflict Amnesia on the player.
In 4th place is Yen with her incredibly creative Bad Moon, we were blown away by the creativity here and Yens great spritework.
Each of the runners up will have their creatures implemented
We’ve also selected a number of entries as honorable mentions. Click read the rest to see them!
