Starmade just got 0wned...

[GRHayes]

My point was we have to have separate entities to do that...excessive entities cause lag, shouldn't have to use a SHIP core to make a more intricate door other than a blast door.. They have it as a block. There is a massive difference between the two. We don't have it.

While I get your point and agree it would be more convenient for building. We currently also have plex and blast doors and the shields.

Its not limited to 1x2.

I see what you're saying, and in response to that (despite it being incorrect(its not my intention for that to sound impolite)) logically speaking it could be built on further in the future because the platform they have for it is already there.

The system isn't limited to a 1x2 door. You can see that in this video hear from the developer. He takes apart the door and then shows a 4x4 elevator made using the same system after that.

One other note for people interested in it. The game uses the unity engine. To me that is a bit of a turn off impart because of the use of dotnet and the number of bad games that have been put out with unity.

This developer hasn't had to write his own engine where at starmade they have. From my experience with unity being used as sand box it tends to run into issues down the road.

 

[Edymnion]

This developer hasn't had to write his own engine

Which is generally a cause for concern, at least to some degree.

A company that built their own engine knows how that engine works from the ground up. They know what can be tweaked, what can't, what rules can be bent, and which ones can be outright broken.

Not that you can't get that level of flexibility and know-how on someone else's engine (things like the Unreal engine have seen crazy stuff done with them), it does mean that there is a higher degree of... whats a nice way to say "scrub developers throwing crap out there" without actually calling them scrubs?

 

[JinM]

I once buyed a game, some sort of sandbox mmo. I don't remember its name anymore. Anyway: It was in early access and really promissing. The game got released 2 years after my purchase and was aviable for half a year (!). Then they shut down their servers. Long story short: I am never buying a game that I am not sure about its success, if it is a multiplayer only game. I mean even if Starmade doesnt get finished, I still can play clientside a singleplayer game. I paid for something and I will allways have it. And this is something you allready know, when a game is still in early access: Is it a game where I exactly know that it will have a singleplayer I like, and if not...well I am not trusting any dev studio anyway, the game industry is capitalismn =(.

And so I think Skywanderers might be a nice game, but anyway I only buy EA titles that I want to play even in its EA state. And for SW this doesnt apply for me. It needs more content to attract me, and I am not talking about building, I talk about questing, trading, exploring and fighting. Switching to another sandbox, just because the building is sliiiiightly better or in some slightly different way fun, is not enough. :D I mean if it were for an singleplayer action game I would play a newer one, but Sandbox games are different in that matter.

Same goes for Dual Universe and Star Citizen, as they are booth mmo without singleplayer - I mean I am not doing the same mistake I did with that other mmo-sandbox twice. :D

That are my thoughts about early access.

 

[GRHayes]

Which is generally a cause for concern, at least to some degree.

A company that built their own engine knows how that engine works from the ground up. They know what can be tweaked, what can't, what rules can be bent, and which ones can be outright broken.

Not that you can't get that level of flexibility and know-how on someone else's engine (things like the Unreal engine have seen crazy stuff done with them), it does mean that there is a higher degree of... whats a nice way to say "scrub developers throwing crap out there" without actually calling them scrubs?

100% agreed.

 

[Valiant70]

well, well, well... look at this, another Minecraft in space pops out of nowhere and looks to be much farther ahead in development.


...meanwhile, we sit and gnash our teeth debating how to re-invent the wheel of power/reactors... again... Schine, you're looking to a lot of us like you're going nowhere fast. Stop dinking around, and move different directions.

Take this video with a grain of salt. These sorts of trailers normally make a game look better and more complete than they actually are. It looks like they use more modeled parts and focused more on graphics early in development than Starmade. Have you played this other game yet?

 

[GRHayes]

Take this video with a grain of salt. These sorts of trailers normally make a game look better and more complete than they actually are. It looks like they use more modeled parts and focused more on graphics early in development than Starmade. Have you played this other game yet?

The reason they could do that is they didn't have to create their engine from scratch. In short they were able to focus more on content rather than spending as much time on the engine.
That said it is a negative as well because the engine isn't designed for the type of game they are creating.
The engine is unity if you are wondering. Yep, lots of games are trying to make sand boxes with it but the number of issues they end up having is more than enough to be concerned.

 

[Alsos]

While I get your point and agree it would be more convenient for building. We currently also have plex and blast doors and the shields.




The system isn't limited to a 1x2 door. You can see that in this video hear from the developer. He takes apart the door and then shows a 4x4 elevator made using the same system after that.

One other note for people interested in it. The game uses the unity engine. To me that is a bit of a turn off impart because of the use of dotnet and the number of bad games that have been put out with unity.

This developer hasn't had to write his own engine where at starmade they have. From my experience with unity being used as sand box it tends to run into issues down the road.

One of my previous posts covers the plex and blast doors and why i think they are inadequate.

 

[kurosawa]

I once buyed a game, some sort of sandbox mmo. I don't remember its name anymore. Anyway: It was in early access and really promissing. The game got released 2 years after my purchase and was aviable for half a year (!). Then they shut down their servers. Long story short: I am never buying a game that I am not sure about its success, if it is a multiplayer only game. I mean even if Starmade doesnt get finished, I still can play clientside a singleplayer game. I paid for something and I will allways have it. And this is something you allready know, when a game is still in early access: Is it a game where I exactly know that it will have a singleplayer I like, and if not...well I am not trusting any dev studio anyway, the game industry is capitalismn =(.

And so I think Skywanderers might be a nice game, but anyway I only buy EA titles that I want to play even in its EA state. And for SW this doesnt apply for me. It needs more content to attract me, and I am not talking about building, I talk about questing, trading, exploring and fighting. Switching to another sandbox, just because the building is sliiiiightly better or in some slightly different way fun, is not enough. :D I mean if it were for an singleplayer action game I would play a newer one, but Sandbox games are different in that matter.

Same goes for Dual Universe and Star Citizen, as they are booth mmo without singleplayer - I mean I am not doing the same mistake I did with that other mmo-sandbox twice. :D

That are my thoughts about early access.

You seem as jaded as me in regards to the game scene

I would suggest you rate games on $/hours spend playing them, by that i mean for each dollar spend on a game you have to play it 1 hour.
So if a game cost 50$ and you play it 50 hours it was an OK game, 50$/100 hours good game, 25$/hours bad game and so on.

But then you say you only buy EA games which makes no sense at all, with EA being one of the giants that buy good ideas and crushes them in to dust.

 

[JinM]

I dont know what you exactly mean kuro. I wanted to say, that I nevertheless buy EA titles if I allready know: hey even if the game wont be finished, I will play it for this or this long in its EA state. That's something that was true for Rimworld, Empyrion, Rise to Ruins, and Starmade. The only time I was wrong with buying EA titles was with this bloddy mmo. So i have an EA fail rate of 20%. I think thats totally fine. I rather waste some bugs, but help some dedicated devs, instead of keeping all my money and not influencing things at all.

 

[Valiant70]

The engine is unity if you are wondering. Yep, lots of games are trying to make sand boxes with it but the number of issues they end up having is more than enough to be concerned.

Oh no... Unity? For that kind of game? I doubt they'll ever be able to have 1000m-long ships.

 

[Brokengauge]

You seem as jaded as me in regards to the game scene

I would suggest you rate games on $/hours spend playing them, by that i mean for each dollar spend on a game you have to play it 1 hour.
So if a game cost 50$ and you play it 50 hours it was an OK game, 50$/100 hours good game, 25$/hours bad game and so on.

But then you say you only buy EA games which makes no sense at all, with EA being one of the giants that buy good ideas and crushes them in to dust.

I think he meant Early Access, not Electronic Arts.

I almost had an aneurysm when I read EA in his post. My brain couldn't make sense of it at first lol

 

[Fynnarius]

Half the trailer looked suspiciously adobe after effected to me.

Well, Raiben played that game and confirmed, that everything shown is currently ingame

 

[kurosawa]

I think he meant Early Access, not Electronic Arts.

I almost had an aneurysm when I read EA in his post. My brain couldn't make sense of it at first lol

you right, i seem to have had a mental break down when Jim said he bough Electronic Arts (EA) games.
sry for the confusion

 

[apelsinsaft]

Unity has a bad rep for being babby's first gamedev engine and being overly represented on the market by shit shovelware early access games doomed to obscurity.
But say what you want about unity, this baguette knows how to code.

INSTANTLY loading gpu generated voxel asteroids. (yes, literally instantly)

Volumetric galaxies. (not just a collection of sectors in a 3 dimensional grid)

Procedurally animated stars (not just a sprite hanging in space)

Obviously it's too early in development to assess if it's actually going to "own" Starmade, but it's well on its way so far.

 

[Criss]

Procedurally animated stars (not just a sprite hanging in space)

We can animate stars. Does that matter though? It's just a star. You aren't using them for gameplay purposes (at least not now). There are more pressing matters. Not sure what it truly adds to the game for a star to animate.

 

[apelsinsaft]

We can animate stars. Does that matter though? It's just a star. You aren't using them for gameplay purposes (at least not now). There are more pressing matters. Not sure what it truly adds to the game for a star to animate.

You're definitely right, but the Skywanderers star is pretty nice for a backdrop when you want to take pretty screenshots. Along with the myriad other things the game has going for it aesthetically. This helps bring attention to the game on image forums and such, which is something that CANNOT be underestimated.

Note: The new HD textures and such in Starmade are nice and definitely an improvement, but i can count on my five hands the amount of people who abandoned Starmade because it still feels a little like a tech demo after all these years. How far along are those sounds and soundtrack that were announced a while ago? Are we going to get more improved graphical effects along the line of the new thruster plume and weapon flares? You guys are clearly working on it, but at this rate games like Skywanderers might just outpace Starmade, which would be a shame.

Also, this has to be said, Skywanderers is likely not even trying to appeal to the same userbase as Starmade. The developer stated he's aiming for something like an Elite Dangerous / space trading/exploration sim kind of feel to the game rather than the big MMORTSFPS space opera of Starmade. The end result might be something very alien indeed, Starmade definitely has its niche.

 

[Criss]

How far along are those sounds and soundtrack that were announced a while ago

Currently being worked on. More so in the last month than before. Not sure when progress will be shown, but it's picked up the pace.

Are we going to get more improved graphical effects

Sure, but graphical effects mean nothing if the game is boring. It helps with selling the game, sure. Take Elite Dangerous for example. I bought that game because It looked cool. The whole milky way to explore? Sign me up.

I haven't played since beta. Why? Because it was boring. I can trade for a while and get a bigger ship, or explore uncharted space, or engage in the faction combat. Mining was horribly dull, and you need tons upon tons of materials to construct new space stations, stations that you can never control. I haven't played it since. Graphics are important, but they are probably towards the middle of the priority list, not the top.

Skywanderers is likely not even trying to appeal to the same userbase as Starmade

Oh I believe it is. Not really a problem if players are willing to buy both games. Their main dev, I forget his name, claims the game will focus on exploration. However in a recent interview with a space-related gaming podcast, they claimed Skywanderers would attempt to accomplish everything set out to do. They even wish to create a faction that is essentially the Scavengers of StarMade. So no, I think it's going to hit some of the same marks. We will have to see.

 

[apelsinsaft]

Oh I believe it is. Not really a problem if players are willing to buy both games. Their main dev, I forget his name, claims the game will focus on exploration. However in a recent interview with a space-related gaming podcast, they claimed Skywanderers would attempt to accomplish everything set out to do. They even wish to create a faction that is essentially the Scavengers of StarMade. So no, I think it's going to hit some of the same marks. We will have to see.

Well i suppose in the end it's all space voxel games after all. I can't say you're wrong but i have a gut feeling some people will feel inclined to play the more immersive, first person exploration oriented Skywanderers, and some people will want to play the more grand scale faction building, diplomacy and fleet logistics oriented Starmade.

They even wish to create a faction that is essentially the Scavengers of StarMade.

(Space scavengers aren't exclusive to starmade, that's like saying they're ripping off the Galactic Empire in star wars whenever there's a galactic empire in a fictional setting.)

 

[GalactusX]

In my personal opinion, what would make starmade a more "interesting" game ?:

- Solve all bugs / errors / failures (Starting with the most demanding and most frustrating).
- Add more content for the player: missions, interaction between alliances, complex trade, manufacturing, exploration more competitive, more options of decoration, etc ...
- Facilitating things so that players can also generate content (not only create texture packs and blocks), possibility to "add" new features to the game, move / change things in the game UI, change the game's text fonts ... in one word, MOD's. (MODs can help the development team take into account aspects that they have not taken into account, or embrace a possible new content from another perspective, and add it to the game).
- More events for the game / forum; Everyone likes the events, whether they are construction or fight between players, this helps the community, to be looking forward to the next day, instead of waiting for the next week / month for an update.
- Some other talk about the future of the game, and what is expected, a live session of questions & answers with the developers of the game would be great .

As I said before, it's just my personal opinion, suggestions & wishes, I love starmade and I would like more people to play and know how great it is. (Sorry if any sentence is not understood or is poorly constructed, I have used google translator)

 

[Criss]

Space scavengers aren't exclusive to starmade, that's like saying they're ripping off the Galactic Empire in star wars whenever there's a galactic empire in a fictional setting.

Oh true enough. I do hope they style them differently though. Wouldn't be in good taste if you ask me.