Hey guys, another double-update for you! I apologize for the tardiness on these posts, but rest assured everyone has been very busy working and a lot of really great stuff has made its way into the game these past couple of days. Of course more unique dungeon NPCs have been thrown into the mix, with some really cool AI behaviours being hammered out by the ever-talented Jordo. We now have NPCs that can chatter to themselves (right now for instance, they say “open sesame” when they open doors) and we’re very close to having them deliver dialogue when interacted with. The rest of our coders have been making sweeping optimizations under the hood, improving a lot of functionality that was lacking in places, all in the name of making a better (and more mod-friendly) game.

The wire system in particular that was put on the backburner a few months ago is finally getting some much-needed attention. While previously you could rig up doors to switches and it would work well enough, there were a handful of very specific functions I was still waiting on. One really cool addition in particular is that we can now attach wires to objects with AI like automated turrets and security cameras. This paves the way for things like alarms going off when a camera spots you, summoning more enemies, and locking you in until the alarm is stopped! Soon I should be able to start really going to town with some trap and puzzle orientated setups (there’s are a couple of dungeons I’ve specifically avoided starting on until these functions were ready).

As per usual, this past week I’ve mostly busied myself with this work on the dungeons. I’ve pretty much wrapped up on the prison for now, though I’ll likely come back to it after we launch the beta to add more content and expand it further (it’s already pretty big). It’s been interesting to tackle an inherently darker dungeon like this one, and I’ve occasionally surprised myself with the results I can get with creative use of just a handful of different block types.

I’ve long appreciated games that can tell the player a story purely through the design of the environment itself. Games like Bioshock and Half-Life 2 are still firmly in my mind as two of the greatest examples of this craft, and I’ve tried my best to imbue my work with this same kind of magic. Obviously there are limitations I have to deal with, I certainly couldn’t create something with that amount of detail in a retro-styled game like ours, but I’m hoping that when players will happen upon one of the prison blocks in this dungeon, they’ll be able to look at the contents of every cell and piece together just what kinds of people were kept in each one.

Thank you for your continued patience guys! I realize the tensions are high as many in our community are keen to play the game right now, but rest assured we’re doing everything we can to get the game into your hands in a truly enjoyable state as soon as possible! We’re continually humbled by the sheer amount of passion and eagerness on display from our community, and we’re very fortunate to have you with us! Please bear with us a bit longer!

Hello!

GeorgeV here.  Today I’m going to talk about a small change (still in testing) that we’ve done due to some experiences at i49.

Basically the demo at the booth went pretty smoothly except for one detail.  Towards the beginning of the game some players would get a bit confused.  The first thing you’re supposed to do when you get on the ship is read the quest that you’re being offered.  It ideally would direct you to the ship’s locker where all of your gear is.  However, apparently the ship locker wasn’t obvious enough and many players simply beamed straight down to the planet without gear and without knowing what to do.  Some players simply didn’t know where the ship’s locker is or what the different objects on the ship were leading to stuff like beaming down on accident.

The good news though is once they got past that bump in the road generally everyone was easily able to play and have a good time.  So us booth people would only need to check up on new players to make sure they didn’t get confused and beam down to the planet too early.

So we’ve thought up a few ways to address this issue.  One step is simply labeling!  Yeah, the text is a bit… texty but when it comes to playability maybe easier is better?  The booth at i49 was practically a first Beta test as we discovered several things us Devs overlooked.  It makes me look forward to the Beta Testing even more!

Hopefully now it’ll be painfully obvious what everything on the ship is.  And it’s been brought up that it might be TOO texty and obvious so who knows, maybe we’ll change it.  We are still in the testing phase after all!  We also might use other systems to help make the “tutorial” even easier such as quest markers or anything that’ll help people unfamiliar with Starbound get around and play our game (at least for the early part of it).

Anyways, that’s that!  See you next time.  Feel free to discuss the “texty” looks.  Everything is subject to change.  :)

-GeorgeV

Waz! Salutations! Hello! It’s my turn to do the update again, please be gentle!

Work has been continuing on the same fronts. Omni’s been doing a ton of back-end stuff to allow for more special items, which judging by what he said, sounded complicated as heck. Bartwe implemented particle effects for death/near death states such as freezing, starvation, etc, and art assets have been supplied in turn. Kyren is working on navigation stuff (sector unlocks, travel logs) and object scripting, the latter of which might sound innocuous, but it paves the way for some really cool things down the line like monster spawners and traps.

On the art side of things, we’re continuing to pump out unique NPCs for dungeons, a couple of which were posted yesterday. It’s a lot of fun being able to return to doing unique NPCs – so far the Apex and Human sets are completed, while all the others have at least one implemented or ready to go.  We’ve had a lot of creative freedom with the unique NPCs we design, which helps a lot with forging different gameplay styles for each dungeon. Much of this is thanks to Jordo, a coder who’s been implementing each of these NPCs specifically with their own unique behaviours and been extremely patient with our reckless artist demands.

I’d divulge more, but at Chucklefish spoilers are kept to a minimum, so you’ll have to wait!

As penance, I leave you with chickens.

And a rare look at what goes on inside our chat:

<@kyren> IIIIII hate OOOOOObjects
<@kyren> booooo Objects
<@kyren> boo Object

Thank you, goodnight! Much love!