Aaand we’re interrupting our regularly scheduled program to announce that Chucklefish is publishing Heart Forth, Alicia, an epic Metroidvania RPG that combines beautifully crafted pixel art, modern mechanics and a set of immersive, unique and intertwining stories. It’s being developed by Alonso Martin.

Heart Forth, Alicia was a solo project first conceived by Alonso Martin seven years ago. He’s worked on the project on and off ever since, and he’s done just about everything– art, design, code and even some of the music, but he’s looking to speed up development with the help of other talented developers– namely Jonathan Geer, Andrew Silverman, Steve Seator, and the animation studio Fu Essence– so today they’re kicking off their Kickstarter campaign!

They’re a fantastic group of devs working on something truly beautiful and unique that we believe you guys will love, and we’re honored to be publishing for them. :)

There’s loads more exciting information about the game on their Kickstarter and website and they’ve got some really cool backer rewards, so go check it out, okay?

You can also check out the Heart Forth, Alicia forums here.

PS – Backers get an exclusive Starbound-inspired item! ;)

We’re super excited to be welcoming Metadept to the Starbound team.

Here’s what Metadept has to say..

Hey there, everyone, I’m metadept! I’ve been looking forward to Starbound since it was first announced and modding since the beta release, creating mods such as Sparkz and Starfoundry and helping new modders to learn about the game’s inner workings. Now, I’m very excited to be joining the Chucklefish team, where I can put my experience to use making Starbound better for everyone!

My first major task will be overhauling the monster AI system and helping Tiy and the others to add new monster attacks and behaviors, new unique monsters, and of course new bosses. The new “partparameters” configuration format that I added last week was the first step, making it easier for us to give monsters special attacks and skills that fit their visual appearance. Now, I’m changing the way that monsters select attacks to use, allowing them to have a variety of abilities for different situations. The Starbound universe is going to get a lot more dangerous in all the right ways!

In addition to general AI improvements, I’ve read through all the great suggestions for attacks and behaviors you’ve posted, and have a TON of ideas that I can’t wait to implement. I’ll also be helping to expand the Lua API and improve documentation for modders, adding more interactive objects, and hopefully even fulfilling a few of my own wishes for the game.

The future of Starbound is bright. Let’s explore it together!

Hey, listen! Patch notes for today’s update! It’s not a big one for content, since we’ve been focusing on some content-related things that are taking a bit longer. This one’s more focused on fixes or changes:

FIXES

• Added case insensitive option to regexMatch, case sensitive by default -> updated pak_ignore file for case insensitive matching
  
• Fix bug with background mods not being shadowed properly
• Some general cleanup of StarAssets.hpp/StarMonsterDatabase.cpp/StarMonsterDatabase.hpp/StarRoot.hpp
• Added timer to fix monster oscillation while in wander state
• Fixed some objects (drain, midjar1, windstorm2.projectile)
• Add /serverreload server side command, fix ImageMetadataDatabase threading crash
• Cleaned up the build process
• Retain script storage if retainObjectParametersInItem is set in an object
• All directional swords should not override the arm frame, fixes back arm drawing bug
• Don’t allow material ids out of the actual material id range (same for mods), fix skyrail ids by wrapping them to what they actually represent in the file
• Added tileIsOccupied to the Lua Bindings

ADDITIONS/OTHER CHANGES

• Changes to monster behaviors/skills as per this post
• Conversion of existing monsters to .partparams, with a few exceptions

EDIT: Some extra notes for modders provided here.