Dev Blog : November 27th 2015

[Bench]

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Welcome again citizens to another Dev Blog. As we head towards the holiday period we’ll be letting you know a bit more about our plans as they continue through to January and beyond, but for now some exciting things that are happening that you should know about.

Translation Project
With the recent addition of language packs a couple weeks ago, we can now support multiple language options for StarMade. We have an incredibly passionate community from all across the globe, and so this was another way we could enable bringing StarMade to more people.

But let’s be honest, while Schine is made up of a number of people from all over the world, we need you, the community to help with translating the game as we go on.

To help us to that end, we’ve started the Translation Project on Crowdin. You can find the translation project at http://translate.star-made.org/. The website is an online translation tool, allowing users to collaborate in real time on language pack translations. Anyone can suggest translations for the game, however we will have language pack project managers who oversee all translations. Those who speak the language can also vote on a suggestion translated in the site. If anyone wishes to translate a language that is not on the site currently, or has a XML file for a new language they need to PM DukeofRealms.

Already we have translation projects for Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. So check it out and get involved.

Game Balance Suggestions Thread
The council has been doing a great job. One of the recent things they’ve been working on is all the balancing in the game, coordinating with some of the dev team to discuss and make suggestions. However balance can be such a subjective thing. So to facilitate the community’s input on a larger scale, a Game Balance Suggestions thread has been started to feed through suggestions specific to game balance, you can find the link here.

Make sure to read all the rules and flick through the suggestion lists up the top before posting.

Council Term 2
Speaking of the council, the current term 1 will be concluding on the 20th December. Applications for Term 2 are already open so if you think you would be a good councilor then hit up the application page here. Applications for Term 2 will close December 31st at Midnight (New Years Eve). With the voting for Term 2 commencing shortly thereafter. All being well Term 2 of the council will commence on January 20th and will be 4-months (actually 4-months this time) as each consecutive council will also be.

You’ll hear more in the lead-up to then, but for now those are the dates you need to be aware of.

In-Game Assets & Competitions
We announced in the Game Direction thread a number of things, one was about the change in default factions for the game. There’s a number of factions that will be default in every game, and then a number of procedurally generated ones as well, making each server experience unique in that regard. There’s massive plans for that entire system, it’s slightly intimidating but I know the end product will be incredible.

As part of our move towards this though, more refinement is happening with the existing faction’s in-game assets, and adding new ones. That means an overhaul of stations, which ones they’re assigned to, new ships etc.

But what about the station competition that happened? I hear you ask. Some of those will be re-assigned to a different faction, some will remain with the one they are, some will go into the pool of stations and ships that the procedural factions will choose from.

So does that mean no more competitions? For the Trading Guild, Scavengers, and Outcasts that is correct, for now. Maybe in the future once their styles are well established in the game and community, then we may run another competition for them, but it won’t be for a while.

Does that mean no more competitions? No it doesn’t. Remember I mentioned the procedurally-generated factions, if we do run ship or station (or both) building competitions, it will most likely be for these procedurally-generated factions. The competition might have certain restrictions, but this setup allows for more freedom to build, allows us to run competitions more regularly, and makes encountering new factions more interesting as it’s less predictable.

Of course none of this is set in stone, but that’s the explanation of why things are changing.

Schine has an in-game assets team taking care of the construction of the ships and stations for the Trading Guild, Scavengers, and Outcasts, along with the other default factions you have yet to hear about (yes they’re out there….. somewhere).

You can check out his thread here to keep up with what’s being constructed etc. but for a bit of a tease, here we have the small freighter. You may recognize it from the spawn station.

That’s it for this dev blog. I don’t know about you but I’m looking forward to end of next week when the next release comes out.

Until next time,

- Bench

 

[Lecic]

wooo devblog

 

[LunaIsBestPony]

Bleg dov! :D

 

[Ithirahad]

...Blev Dog?

 

[Blaza612]

For the generated faction competitions, I think they should be more of a style competition, since a faction will usually have one style that it sticks to. So people could submit any number of ships/stations to show off their style, then x amount of people who's styles got in will then be tasked with/will be working with Schine to make the various ships, stations and planets. It would be odd to see a faction flying a bunch of random ships from different styles. :p

 

[Bench]

For the generated faction competitions, I think they should be more of a style competition, since a faction will usually have one style that it sticks to. So people could submit any number of ships/stations to show off their style, then x amount of people who's styles got in will then be tasked with/will be working with Schine to make the various ships, stations and planets. It would be odd to see a faction flying a bunch of random ships from different styles. :p

Or it could be a larger and longer comp where it's build three sizes of ships and a station, all the same theme.

 

[BrotherLazarus]

That freighter is just gorgeous.

 

[Blaza612]

Or it could be a larger and longer comp where it's build three sizes of ships and a station, all the same theme.

That could work, but I would find it more interesting to see how exactly people wish to show off their style, basically allow their imagination to be the limit, rather than force them into a few sizes and station. In other words, don't have a minimum or limit, allow people to submit any amount of ships/stations (all compressed into the one submission/thread of course :p).

It would allow people to freely flesh out their style, and show what they can do with it and how it can be used in different ways, and if someone is inspired to make ten ships for the compo, then I'd say let them submit them all as removing a barrier to people's inspiration can allow for a lot more submissions of much greater quality.

 

[kiddan]

-snip- Already we have translation projects for Chines Simplified, Chinese Traditional -snip-

Might wanna translate that typo too... :p

Awesome Dev Blog! Also, will it be a standard for default in-game ships to all have airlock-style docks on the side, like the freighter has? It would be pretty neat and also be one less thing that has to be changed on the ships if/when oxygen might be added.

 

[Bench]

Might wanna translate that typo too... :p

Awesome Dev Blog! Also, will it be a standard for default in-game ships to all have airlock-style docks on the side, like the freighter has? It would be pretty neat and also be one less thing that has to be changed on the ships if/when oxygen might be added.

All default ships in-game where possible will come with a USD included.

 

[Blaza612]

oxygen might be added

Oh god no, Schine plz, don't do this! Don't turn this into a survival game! D:

 

[Lecic]

I think a cool way to do procedural factions would be to have them have random weapons and hull colors/types.

First, have 2 "random" hulls- primary and secondary. These can only be accessed by commands/creative mode. When a procedural faction is created, it designates a "primary" and "secondary" color and a faction-wide armor tier. When the game spawns a ship for that faction, the primary and secondary random hulls are replaced with the proper colors and armor tier. This will allow for a wider variety of ship color, armor strength, and movement speed (heavier ships are slower due to all versions having the same thrust strength)

The same system could be applied to weapons/weaponized support systems, weapon effects, and passive effects for a huge variety of unique AI ships from a smaller pool of actual ships.

 

[StormWing0]

Lecic you just reminded me to bump a useful idea of blank parts that could help with that. XD

 

[Comr4de]

Hello everyone, I'd like to announce my resignation from this council term

I will be stepping down om December 20th because I just hate schine so much

It is very sad

However I will run for the next term

Thats the joke

 

[Blaza612]

announce my resignation

\o/

However I will run for the next term

 

[BDLS]

Hello everyone, I'd like to announce my resignation from this council term

I will be stepping down om December 20th because I just hate schine so much

It is very sad

However I will run for the next term

Thats the joke

 

[Byamarro]

Could u add polish translation project?

 

[Tshara]

I think a cool way to do procedural factions would be to have them have random weapons and hull colors/types.

First, have 2 "random" hulls- primary and secondary. These can only be accessed by commands/creative mode. When a procedural faction is created, it designates a "primary" and "secondary" color and a faction-wide armor tier. When the game spawns a ship for that faction, the primary and secondary random hulls are replaced with the proper colors and armor tier. This will allow for a wider variety of ship color, armor strength, and movement speed (heavier ships are slower due to all versions having the same thrust strength)

The same system could be applied to weapons/weaponized support systems, weapon effects, and passive effects for a huge variety of unique AI ships from a smaller pool of actual ships.

I like the idea of primary and secondary hulls that can change colour on command but it feels to limiting to just the one type.
I usually work with 2 main colours but within those primary colours I work with all hull types.

A design feels more varied when doing so.

So I would rather have a primary and secondary colour with all hull types.

 

[kiraen]

It would be odd to see a faction flying a bunch of random ships from different styles. :p

Umm...that sounds like a Scavangers faction to me. Maybe Schine should put one into the game...


So, council turn over. Does that mean we will be seeing the new launcher officially released soon? (iirc, that was the major delay)

As far as the competitions go, I would define the style and then let players submit entries. The definitions don't need to be really in depth tho. A couple colors, a few adjectives, a general purpose and direction for the faction.

ei, Red/Orange, mean, rowdy and dirty, likes to make lots of money and want to open a broadway musical.​

 

[Blaza612]

Umm...that sounds like a Scavangers faction to me. Maybe Schine should put one into the game...

Scavengers

kiraen plz, actually read the dev blog instead of just the colourful titles. :p