A bunch of work was done today on the new combat system. I can honestly say the combat in Starbound is now a lot of fun. We’re not done yet though.

Shields now have a perfect guard timing, if you block an attack within the first 0.15 seconds your shield is active the shield takes no damage.

On top of that, shield health is now balanced for all shields across every level, monster melee attacks are tied to the leveling curves.

Monster AI is massively improved and continues to see new improvements. Myself and Metadept are working hard on giving each monster part a unique attack.

Tooltips for shields are now complete, and work on parrying with longswords has started.

The combat consists of 100s of small tweaks that would take forever to list, but once it’s done I’ll put out a new combat video.

Hey guys,

So I thought I’d fill you in on some of the proposed monster changes so we can have a discussion in a similar fashion to the weapon changes.

So first off we’re going to remove knockback on monsters.

Whilst removing knockback makes little sense in the current combat climate. When coupled with additional changes we’re hoping it will lead to more timing based combat and less standing and mashing swing fast enough to knock all the monsters away.

The next change will be to the way monsters try to approach players. Rather than attempting to occupy the same space as the player, they will now aim to move to a position in front of a player. That we’re calling the “attack position”

On the left you have the old behaviour, where a monster would try it’s best to get as close to the player as possible. Doing damage through touch. On the right you have the monster moving to it’s new attack position where it will eventually lunge forwards in an attack animation into the players space. We’re considering removing touch damage on monsters to assist in this change.

Monsters in the attack position will attack the player after a windup animation, warning the player an attack is coming. Coupled with the removal of knockback, this means the player will have to dodge or block enemy attacks whilst moving into range to deal damage. Blocking is also being reworked.

Rather than shields having a somewhat complex means of mitigating damage. Shields will now have an amount of “health” as one of their stats. When the player blocks an attack with a shield a health indicator will appear above the players head.

Blocking during a monster attack will also cause the monster to be knocked down and stunned for a moment, giving you time to counter attack!

Shield health will regenerate quickly over time. However if your shields health is fully depleted your guard will be temporarily broken and you won’t be able to use the shield until it’s regenerated all the way back to full health.

It will still block the attack that breaks it however.

Blocking at the very last moment before an attack will cause a “shield parry”. In this case you will block the attack but your shield won’t take any damage.

It will also be possible to parry attacks with two handed weapons. However, unlike shields the player won’t be able to hold down the block button to ensure they block an attack, instead they *must* time it correctly or they will be hit.

A parry with a two handed weapon will also cause a stun.

We’re also working on a vast range of skills and attacks for monsters to utilise. Each will have it’s own attack position that the monster will want to move into.

Some monsters will attack faster than others, and combat will be far more reactionary and active.

Let us know what you think

Hi,

I’ve seen some requests for information recently and whilst that info is out there I understand that not everyone uses every medium so I’m trying to make it easier to find.

So why have the Starbound updates slowed down a bit? The reason is two fold and it certainly has nothing to do with us taking the money and running.

The first reason is relocating the team. This is a complex and time consuming process that is (thankfully) almost at an end. We hope to have the entire team over here by the end of the month. Making this work has meant going through the visa process, setting up a work space, finding a new home for each person, team members driving for days to get legal documentation. It’s been a challenge.

Some people tell us that its a waste of time and there is no benefit to working in the same office when tools exist to work remotely. These people are grossly mistaken.

Starbound is a collaborative project and its biggest time overhead right now is communication. We have a team spanning multiple timezones. There are times when the expertise or knowledge of someone that won’t be around for another 8 hours is required for another team member to continue their work. Resulting in working days lost waiting for info. Explaining complex programming or architectural issues online is tricky and takes far longer, having to share files online or rebuild your game binary just to see a suggested change because you are unable to physically see another members PC is time consuming. The list of issues working in the same office will solve is very long.

This hasn’t been an easy decision for anyone. After all these are people dedicated enough to be uprooting their entire lives to come to another country, away from family and friends. Given that Starbound is a profit share they won’t be paid any extra and moving is expensive. But they’re doing it to ensure that Starbound is the best it can be.

The other reason updates have slowed down was the community response to faster updates. People like to point out that we said we would deliver near daily small updates and have failed to do so. They do not however point out that we made the decision to go back to more substantial updates because we were criticised heavily for putting out small updates without much substance (though larger updates were ongoing behind the scenes). Critics argued passionately that updates containing one new sub biome, or new guns, or new structures, or new weather was just pointless fluff and they wanted real ‘game changing’ updates. So we listened and that’s what we went back to focusing on. We’ve been working on building a new progression system, new ship upgrade system, new navigation system, new monster and combat systems, all behind the scenes for one bigger update. Bigger updates take time. You simply can’t have it both ways. Daily updates are small because small updates are all that can be produced in a day.

Once we have the team over in the UK we will be focusing on finishing our large game changing, progression update. Whilst providing bug fixes and small changes to the existing version. As well as pushing out updates unrelated to progression such as combat changes.

I hope this gives you an idea of what’s going on.