fix the beams and quit screwing with feature additions

[morb]

Seriously. Stop releasing new features like an kid with ADHD on speed and focus on core functions. There's not anything even attached to my slave computer and the power draw burns out a 1m battery in less than three ticks. If I see another feature drop before beams get properly fixed (their initial power draw for the damage/accuracy of the weapon was lackluster as well) I will continue to think on Schine as the amatuer operation it keeps looking like. No Man's Sky is coming with a stronger look and gameplay because they committed to a design goal and saw it through while you dithered. Get on the ball.

Also, boarding flies in the face of a million things that were already in the game. A faction module can be burned out by the torch as easily as anything else, did the trolling possibilities not occur to you or did you just say "screw it they can deal."

If you want to improve combat, there are other existing features you could just finish instead of pasting on new ones like a child with a macaroni box and a paper plate. The support tools need some serious love. Give me slave systems for support tools so I can build a fleet support that can recharge the shields of all allies with a damage pulse slaving a shield recharge beam.

3d printing?!?!?! MAKE THE GAME WORK PROPERLY BEFORE YOU TRY TO SELL ME MERCH.

I threw you some dough because I like your concept. Commit to the concept and solidify what it has rather than crowd sourcing the design process. I'd like to see this game leave alpha before 2020.

You don't need more new features. Just finish the ones you've already started and wandered away from like goldfish distracted by a mirror.

 

[Equilibrium21]

Wow what a flame bait.

 

[Majorfatboy]

OP get's it.

Don't bother, Morb, you'll just get shouted-down by the masses, then insta-banned by the staff. Adding quarter-baked "features" and then abandoning them for a few years is Schine's trademark.

That NPC trader at the spawn shop, the one with the useless "quests" tab? that came in a year and a half ago, with the promise of "Oh don't worry You guys, You'll totally have jobs You can take from the guild really soon(tm)"...
Or how about the faction permissions module? It's been in the game for the two-ish years I've been playing... And it still doesn't work.
They just now supposedly fixed the missile blast-radius issue, a bug that's been making carriers, stations, and any protective structure a pointless joke since day one.

And then there's all the things that were working at one point, that were broken with an update, that the devs refuse to fix.
Like the bug where You can't see any light or sprite-based effects or objects through glass. That's been broken for so long, the devs refuse to even comment on it now, and let the fanboys invent lies to cover it up, like:
"You gais! They can't get that to work because of Java! It's a fundamental issue with the game engine!"
Or "It's a problem with Open GL! It's not Schema's fault You dummies!"
OR: "Don't be stupid, That never worked! It's an abandoned feature!"...
... Go to the downloads section, go to the archives where the old versions are, and download and run this build:
starmade-build_20140404_194643
TA-DA! ALL effects and objects visible through glass! No more accidentally flying into star because You couldn't see them, no more not seeing where that enemy fire is coming from, no more not seeing loot drops. Oh, "But that feature never worked, due to everyone Else's code"...
Or how about those black holes? When They came out, We were told that any ship with a 1:1 thrust-to-mass ratio could escape them... I've had fighters, low-mass vehicles, with over 3:1 TMR, unable to break free of those things. There were bug tickets submitted to the tracker, which were brushed off as Nah brah, They totes work, CLOSED"... So now We have these utterly pointless suckholes that take up an entire system, who's only gameplay feature is making the player suicide-out and lose Their ship (Assuming They don't have admin commands).

And then there's the completely broken AI that used to work (mostly): Used to be, there were packs of bad guys wandering around everywhere, without the need to instigate a fight. Used to be, the AI's would chase You, and when They chased You, they would go as fast as They could, and You could have these epic running fights with bands of marauding pirates. and that's when They weren't busy sending "raiding parties" after Your ass, keeping the pressure (and loot) up...
... Now: The last time I bothered with an up-to-date build, there Were NO wild AIs running around, no matter where I flew. There were NO raiding parties coming to get My brown on Their hang-down. The only way to get a fight was to take a pot-shot at a pirate base so some baddies would spawn in, but now, instead of flying at You at full speed, and chasing You as best They could, All They would do is lazily fly at about 100 KPH in one direction. Sure, They'd pivot on Their axis to shoot at You, but that's it. No chasing, no high speed-fun, no nothing. They just drift by slowly and take a few jabs at You...

I just play an older build now, and I have a crapton of self-inforced rules that I play by, to add to the challenge.
I want this game to be awesome, but all the dev wants is some watered-down, low-quality EVE knockoff for demented thirteen yearolds, instead of a legit sci-fi game.

 

[Deepy]

No more accidentally flying into star because You couldn't see them, no more not seeing where that enemy fire is coming from, no more not seeing loot drops. Oh, "But that feature never worked, due to everyone Else's code"...

Don't forget radiations (UV, X...) : StarmAde glass is basically super-efficient sunglasses so you can't see the sun, therefore saving your eyes. Thanks schine instead of blaming them !

 

[Megacrafter127]

Or how about the faction permissions module? It's been in the game for the two-ish years I've been playing... And it still doesn't work.

It does work? any block adjacent to it is treated as if the entity it is on was not faction-protected.

 

[Deepy]

What I find sad is that story is that a lot of people bought the game (I did not yet) to support the devs and that few effort is done on polishing the already done stuff. If your base is not stable, your roof will collapse. Today Starmades seems to behave the same way Minecraft did : an amateur project with no rigor and methodology. OO languages might be more permissive than stuff I worked with back in the days, but an important thing is

If it's broken, fix it.
If it's broken don't add feature. Really, don't.

Really, if you let bugs multiplying like miasmas, and continue to add feature, you'll just fuck up an awesome project.
I did not buy the game because of the flaws I pointed out. Please Schine, give me a reason to buy it.

 

[Tydeth]

Majorfatboy:

The thing about OpenGL, is that in order to handle transparency properly, it requires the developer of the software using it to set up the rendering priorities to make it show stuff properly. That older version had the rendering code set up in that way, hence glass worked.

https://www.opengl.org/archives/resources/faq/technical/transparency.htm

IIRC, Schine reworked the graphics code since then, to make it more efficient (I do recall an update having to do with making the planets and large builds less FPS-murdering to load and render). In the process, the render order was changed, and OpenGL didn't much like the new way. Result: the issue we have with everything-not-a-solid-block not showing behind glass/crystal-armor/etc.

So it is because of OpenGL, but as I said in another thread, it would be fixed by Schine with enough effort. It's just likely to wait until after more features are in, depending on how much work Schema or either of the two other guys will have to put in to rewrite the rendering code enough to make it work while not breaking something else or killing FPS somewhere.


As for the broken pirate spawns, I agree that they need repairing. I miss seeing random pirates or hearing they're raiding from a nearby pirate station.

Black Holes... Sounds like they decided to change their mind on the thrust needs.


morb:

Last I heard, beams were fixed in the Dev Build, so next update will have them working properly.

 

[Deserea]

I dont know so much about the AI being broken, something is wrong i think though...ive been building a station in a neutral zone over the last few days...well trying to and ive had to give up entirely. every hour i was being attacked by 10 Isanth Zeros and they would just destroy half of everything i had built. My heavy frigates turrets cant deal with 10 of those at once, so i have to abandon the station each time to get into the frigate and use my heavy weaponry. Im actually considering shutting off pirates for now just to get the station built. Its a shame i think, because i love the raids, but my goodness...

 

[jzimmerman4]

I have bought the game and I never have regretted it. It is in Alpha so you cant expect it to have immediate bug fixes as if it was a finished game. Schema adds so many new features so that he can see how they work with other parts of the game, which is what alpha is for. Like the guy at spawn was more of a proof of concept but quests arnt the main focus right now since ship building and combat, which are fundamental to the game, are still being worked on. So really you have the wrong attitude about the game because you expect it to be fully polished when it is more of a collection of ideas slowly but surely starting to work together.

 

[Deleted member 433088]

I can't really speak for "the issues of the game" since I haven't played it all that much and can't consider myself veteran enough for that, but I just wanted to point out the issue majorfatboy spoke about, of pirates not spawning... well, I don't know what might be wrong in their side, but I don't have that problem, really. It seems there are pirates in half the sectors in my home system, and I've seen the "sending raiding parties" messages, I've seen them engage in fights with trading guild ships, I've seen them fly by while on my planet... while the AI is derpy at times, it's not utterly broken for me.

 

[Equilibrium21]

I dont know so much about the AI being broken, something is wrong i think though...ive been building a station in a neutral zone over the last few days...well trying to and ive had to give up entirely. every hour i was being attacked by 10 Isanth Zeros and they would just destroy half of everything i had built. My heavy frigates turrets cant deal with 10 of those at once, so i have to abandon the station each time to get into the frigate and use my heavy weaponry. Im actually considering shutting off pirates for now just to get the station built. Its a shame i think, because i love the raids, but my goodness...

You should make your station a homebase. It will become invincible along with everything docked to it.

 

[Deserea]

You should make your station a homebase. It will become invincible along with everything docked to it.

Oh i know! Im trying to avoid that though, as for some reason when i set my last station as a homestation all pirates got shut off in that section of space(the sector thingy that you can claim?). The entire pirate faction just stopped working, moved to the sector im in now and they are working again. I attacked multiple pirate bases(the old ones) in that sector and never once had a wave of reinforcements come in. Dont know why, but it happened.

 

[Equilibrium21]

Oh i know! Im trying to avoid that though, as for some reason when i set my last station as a homestation all pirates got shut off in that section of space(the sector thingy that you can claim?). The entire pirate faction just stopped working, moved to the sector im in now and they are working again. I attacked multiple pirate bases(the old ones) in that sector and never once had a wave of reinforcements come in. Dont know why, but it happened.

Thats weird, that doesn't happen to me. Perhaps homebase your station, put good turrets and shields and then take off the homebase power.

 

[Deserea]

Thats weird, that doesn't happen to me. Perhaps homebase your station, put good turrets and shields and then take off the homebase power.

Hmm that could work i guess, station is huge though, but i suppose id only have to get shields on it really. My ship(s) can handle the pirates given enough time.

 

[Deepy]

I have bought the game and I never have regretted it. It is in Alpha so you cant expect it to have immediate bug fixes as if it was a finished game.

Go to the supermarket, buy an apple that is not ripe yet. The apple should ripe within a few days. If it does not after +2 years you're right to complain imho.
It is actually the same here : they're selling you the game as an "alpha", which means it has flaws, but that they will work on it to remove these flaws. Now we just have one or two bug fixed per realease, and more "features" are added in the same time, leading to more and more bug to fix.

you expect it to be fully polished when it is more of a collection of ideas slowly but surely starting to work together.

It's exactly how you should not develop a game (at least before first release). First you try sh*t in a sandbox/prototype. Does it works ? Ye, the gameplay is nice. Now, we can implement them, sowly but properly, into the game.
I can say you that in studios where AAA are made, they first polish the "intellectual" part of game design in sandbox engines, then ask for tester, fix wrong gameplay, reiterate until it's decent. The gamedesign is then ported into actual program by devs and artists. And here you have a fully polished game. Some features might be implemented afterwards, but they're minor and most of the game is already finished.
Designing (and programming) games is exactly the same process than building houses or painting art. You first do a draft, you think how to arrange the geometry of your artwork, then you ask for people suggestions, adapt your draft. And only then you start painting. Each coat after each coat. Every step of the painting process is done and fixed in the right time : when you do it. You don't start adding details when you don't know how the final scene will be.
And unfortunately StarMade isn't going the good way. Not only the game is a sandbox game, but the development process also is.

Really, I bet you will never see a decent StarMade until a seismic shift is done in the dev process.

 

[jzimmerman4]

Go to the supermarket, buy an apple that is not ripe yet. The apple should ripe within a few days. If it does not after +2 years you're right to complain imho.
It is actually the same here : they're selling you the game as an "alpha", which means it has flaws, but that they will work on it to remove these flaws. Now we just have one or two bug fixed per realease, and more "features" are added in the same time, leading to more and more bug to fix.

It's exactly how you should not develop a game (at least before first release). First you try sh*t in a sandbox/prototype. Does it works ? Ye, the gameplay is nice. Now, we can implement them, sowly but properly, into the game.
I can say you that in studios where AAA are made, they first polish the "intellectual" part of game design in sandbox engines, then ask for tester, fix wrong gameplay, reiterate until it's decent. The gamedesign is then ported into actual program by devs and artists. And here you have a fully polished game. Some features might be implemented afterwards, but they're minor and most of the game is already finished.
Designing (and programming) games is exactly the same process than building houses or painting art. You first do a draft, you think how to arrange the geometry of your artwork, then you ask for people suggestions, adapt your draft. And only then you start painting. Each coat after each coat. Every step of the painting process is done and fixed in the right time : when you do it. You don't start adding details when you don't know how the final scene will be.
And unfortunately StarMade isn't going the good way. Not only the game is a sandbox game, but the development process also is.

Really, I bet you will never see a decent StarMade until a seismic shift is done in the dev process.

You are an angry person.. lol
And Schema certainly does tons of bug fixes every release which constantly improves the game.
But its pretty funny because 7 months back he went on a huge bug fixing spree and didnt release many new features and so people complained. Now he is adding features and people are complaining... guess there's no pleasing some but hey, tons of people love this game so Schema must be doing something right

 

[Planr]

OP took the words right out of my mouth.

SCHINE, stop messing around with these stupid feature additions and actually fix the dang game. So much stuff is broken or so poorly optimized.

 

[Deepy]

I'm not angry at all, just doing my best to write english that I don't speak/write/understand well at all.

And Schema certainly does tons of bug fixes every release which constantly improves the game.
But its pretty funny because 7 months back he went on a huge bug fixing spree and didn't release many new features and so people complained. Now he is adding features and people are complaining... guess there's no pleasing some but hey, tons of people love this game so Schema must be doing something right

Did I personally complained about the lack of new features ? No.
Here you describe everything that seems broken in the way starmade is developped : features are a way to calm down impatient people who need a proof that the development of the game is alive. For most of them, since you have nothing new in the game, development is dead.

He fixes a lot of things every release? His engine is now +12 years old. I'm pretty sure he totally reshaped it (maybe several times), but at this point, you should fix all the bugs of the precedent release in the new release. Else as I said his game will end up doomed by bugs.

Tons of people love this game, and what? I like the idea and the potential of StarMade, but hey, since when is it a decent argument? Schine seems to know how to occupy a lot of persons, ye, but I can give you a huge list of things that a lot of people "love" that are full crap. (I'm not saying that StarMade is crap, I'm just saying the argument is invalid).

EDIT : Fixed possible misinterpretation

 

[jzimmerman4]

Maybe pessimistic is a better word than angry
I am just saying there will always be people who complain about how the game is being developed. It is possible Schema is adding all these features because thats what the community told him they wanted when he was bug fixing. So you cant get upset with him and ridicule the game he has put years into, its rude and not what this community needs.
I am not trying to argue I was just saying the game isnt doomed since players are still playing and after all it is Alpha, all bugs will be fixed by the time it is released but yea its far from that point

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Schema(I'm paraphrasing): "Alpha is for implementing core gameplay features"

we're in the "rough outline" phase of development meaning that we should expect half baked features to be added so we as players can give necessary feedback on how it should be done. admittedly I think shine should prioritize hot fixing certain experience breaking bugs like the damage beam power usage before buggering off to work on the next feature but thats just me. Beta is where most of the optimizations and fine tuning will come.