I'm scared for Starmade

[Edymnion]

I don't suggest to fix all the bugs. I just suggest to fix main bugs that makes game just unplayable for some players. It wouldn't be so hard.

Like what, exactly?

And remember, if its something 0.001% of the playerbase ever encounter, even if it is game breaking, it simply is not a priority. If something like typing the entire preamble to the South Korean constitution into chat makes the entire game uninstall itself, it might be a gamebreaking bug, but its not one that exactly requires any immediate or concerted attention given how rarely it would ever come up.

 

[jijiji]

The way the devs update the game is based on dependancies; Having AI that properly work would be nice, but they'd be even better if we could get the npc factions in first, or getting fog of war in would be nice, but listening to the community and adding a long requested feature (force fields, slabs, etc.) would be a priority every so often. Also, please remember that the Devs have a life outside of the game, and I highly doubt that if about 500 people that are in and support this community pay for the game, that it would be enough to pay for servers, modeling, required tech, and appropriate pay for each member of the team regularly.

If you want to see a vague outline of what they're working on and when, visit here.

I think that creating of NPC update will be a bit easier after AI update. But it doesn't matter now cause NPC update is here.

Is development process so expensive for Schine? I hope that hired developers makes discount for Schine untill release. I think that alpha-discount makes development less expensive and faster.
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Like what, exactly?

And remember, if its something 0.001% of the playerbase ever encounter, even if it is game breaking, it simply is not a priority. If something like typing the entire preamble to the South Korean constitution into chat makes the entire game uninstall itself, it might be a gamebreaking bug, but its not one that exactly requires any immediate or concerted attention given how rarely it would ever come up.

Don't exaggerate. Most of bugs are not rare. Furthermore, they are reproducible. And you will not have fun while see massive bugs at least every 1 hour.

 

[Criss]

That's why Starmade is being abandoned by players. Tell me if I am wrong, but if you think so, you should to listen to players first.

Actually Schine is doing fine right now. More players than ever are buying the game. We get spikes in sales. We seem to be doing alright. If this is the interest that is held when we are not actively advertising or marketing the game, then I think we will do fine.

Development process without bugfixing

We do bugfix. Every single update has them. We have tried the big bugfixing rounds before. We have also tried bugfixing as many things as possible before moving on. In any case we upset players who think our priorities should be different.

fences and forcefield wedges

Blocks like that are easy to add in. We can add any block in the already defined shapes within an hour. Of course we wait a bit for textures, as that is the longest process required to add a new block. That isn't hard at all. Let's take a look at the past few updates and see what their purpose was.

Fog of war - A major component to future faction gameplay.
New logic and effects - Improvements to shadows, logic, rails, graphical effects and additional blocks. New radial menu.
Auxiliary power system - A necessary replacement for docked reactors. Improvements to shipyards. Rail collision improvements.
Optimization round - Improved physics, load time, lag correction, collision and cannon fire performance and bandwidth allocation.
Physics update and model exporting - Updated physics. Memory leak fixes. Model exporting. Bug fixing.
Chunk performance update - New chunk format, necessary for future development. Increased performance, decreased load times. Smaller server size.
Trade system - New trade system to be used for NPC and player trading. Virtual trade convoys, the predecessor to real trade convoys.
Level of detail system - New LoD system that will come into play when we work on planets. For now limited to unique blocks.

Out of all of that, the only update I would deem unimportant is the model exporting, and yet that update came with bug fixing and physics updates. All of them, to some degree have major components of gameplay or will effect future updates. It seems a lot of these update focused on fixing performance relating to the building side of the game. We aren't focusing on building anymore. We are focusing on the NPC update, and AI. The update we are working on right now is the foundation for a lot of it. Once it is in, we will start to see a living universe, and we will tweak it as needed along the way.

 

[jijiji]

Actually Schine is doing fine right now. More players than ever are buying the game. We get spikes in sales. We seem to be doing alright. If this is the interest that is held when we are not actively advertising or marketing the game, then I think we will do fine.

We are focusing on the NPC update, and AI.

I think AI improvement would be great! Drones are much less useful sometimes while can't be controlled.

 

[Bench]

The way the devs update the game is based on dependancies;

This is probably most accurate. Criss highlighted it well above as well. Our development focus is generally driven by what we want to add in next. These next few updates need to start with the NPC Faction generation going in, as it's the foundation that everything else gets built upon in terms of that side of gameplay. We plan to go back to AI, Fleet mechanics, balancing etc after the NPC update drops, as well as prepare for the next big project that will build upon NPC faction generation.

It is true, we're in Alpha. If we used the analogy mentioned about the engine and the tires, yes we're still putting the engine together. You may think to yourself, but StarMade has been around for years. Yes but most people forget that for half of that it has been just one person working on the game. There were a lot of ideas but it wasn't until we worked towards getting an established team behind schema that we could start on the road towards all we wanted to do with StarMade. Too many people like to jump and say that because it's been very much the same for a number of years, that that then clearly is what the game is about. In reality all the building is merely the foundation for everything else planned for the game, well... majority of it. After all, it'd be hard to introduce weapons systems after an NPC update that requires all their ships to have been built.

We're being strategic in our development, and I'm excited for what's ahead.

 

[kaemcedlra]

With games coming out like dual universe and star citizen and space engineers <-(updates) I'm scared that Starmade will be forgotten endless we grow the community maybe some advertising. The true is people want games with voxel so they can make massive holes in ships and planets and I like that too. Maybe so years in the futere is their is anStarmade 2 it would be like that. I don't want to sound mean but we need updates every Thursday or every other Thursday to make quick fixes. Also features like break off mode need to be fixed.


I love Starmade but we need to exspand leave comments (hope dev's read) because I want this game to be better than the others. (Sorry if I sound like a jerk)

I am a long time lurker around here and don't participate at all in the forums really, but your panicky post has prompted me to make a reply. Having owned many of the games you mentioned and other 'space genre' games, I can tell you that I come back to view the updates weekly on this game (and a few times a year I splurge on playing for a month), which despite their lesser release frequency than space engineers, they matter more. As a matter of fact, I look at space engineers updates less often than starmade because more often than note they don't contain much progress at all anymore. Nearly every time starmade makes an update its either revolutionary or setting up the next update to be revolutionary and game changing. Starmade may just be blocks, but it's miles ahead in development in terms of what people who play space games really want: a living, breathing, emergent, and immense world. This game is laying the foundation for features which games such as star citizen won't even attempt to try at (think players commanding fleets, factions, warring for galaxies!) What the developers are doing is delivering a game that is what we want, and that takes time, look at no man's sky, it was rushed.
People often get mad expecting developers to serve them, well its a two-way street. The equation to a great game means developers giving updates to the players frequently (and when updates are taking a while, giving posts about what they've been up to), and just as importantly it means players having faith and not trying to throw the community into a panic. It means inspiring the developers to continue on through the slower parts and to pat them on the back for great releases. They hate the slow parts just as much as you do, but if we can help them get through it we will all benefit.

As a side note: I've been a free player for a long time, and after the holidays conclude I will purchase this game officially and give my support to our lovely developers. I urge players like me who have been lurking in the free zone to contribute this winter as well and show them we love starmade.

 

[kulbolen]

not speaking to sms longevity... but theres no current or currently planned game that offers what sm does. du is not block by block its prefab by prefab. theres a massive difference in the creativity allowed. that said, im still interested in other offerings

 

[Shaker]

Considering this game is still in early alpha, its not worth advertising yet.
The current population is dropping off overtime, my guess is everyone is waiting on this update, a week after it they will be gone again. The reason: nothing to keep them playing.

Its all good to bring out large features, but if nothing gameplay wise is added, noone is going to stay around in its current version.

 

[arouq]

The current population is dropping off overtime, my guess is everyone is waiting on this update, a week after it they will be gone again. The reason: nothing to keep them playing.

Its all good to bring out large features, but if nothing gameplay wise is added, noone is going to stay around in its current version.

What's amusing here is the fact that the NPC update will be one of, if not the largest update to StarMade. If this isn't adding something "gameplay wise" I suspect your expectations for the game are not realistic.

"noone is going to stay around in its current version." Incorrect, there's people who have stayed here far longer than you or I have been around. People have stayed from 4 years ago, I fail to see why no one will stay coming along today.

 

[KiloZulu]

I posted similar sentiments to the OP this last summer. I look at any space game as a competitor to StarMade on the assumption that players only have so much time and money, so how many space games are they going to want to play at the same time? I know that my friends have expressed much more excitement for Star Citizen than they have StarMade, and the fact that both are running on somewhat the same time table has me a bit worried.

At the same time, lets recognize how wonderful it is to see the bevy of space games being worked on right now. It's nice to see the genre making such a wonderful comeback, and every game has the potential to generate interest in others like it. Chris Roberts presented an open letter of congratulation to Elite Dangerous when it was released and hailed them not as a competitor but a fellow contributor to the genre. I hope that's the case with all these games, and they all find room for success.

I can't say as I agree with the idea that Schine should shun the spotlight (and I can't imagine that they are trying to.) They offered early access for a reason, and you don't do that and then hide from prospective customers.

 

[Shaker]

Yeah people have lurked on here for 4 years, but have they played this game non stop since then? Or in bits and pieces each update.

The NPC update adds faction

 

[MChain]

Well, I checked websites of all of the games noticed by the topicstarter, I even had some time playing Space Engineers (before the planet update) - for me Starmade beats them all.
Engineers are far more resource-demanding and get even more and more resource-hungry with each update (not to say if you want a nice detailed ship you should either download mods, build it from small ship blocks (thus increasing its hit on your PC even more) or do an insane amount of operations to integrate small ship blocks into a big ship);
Dual Universe promises to fry my PC in several minutes while offering nothing of particular interest for me that isn't already included or sheduled for SM (and yes, I don't like realistic graphics);
and Star Citizen just seems to be more like X-series or Freelancer than a true "do what you want" style sandbox. It's going to be great, but it's just a different type of game.

 

[MacThule]

Dual Universe looks scammy. They've raised 1/2M Euros with their hustle, but it looks like it's all front. The ships they show are model wraps from Turbosquid but the trailer says "all built in game." People will say anything when 1/2M Euros profit are on the line.

 

[StormWing0]

Yeah people have lurked on here for 4 years, but have they played this game non stop since then? Or in bits and pieces each update.

The NPC update adds faction

Try to keep in mind if you just mindlessly slap the parts to a car together you want but not enough of the ones you need you end up with a useless blob of parts that can't do squat. It's the same way with game development. If you try to rush or make the end result you'll end up dead in the water without any way to get out of it.

 

[Crusade]

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that because Schine is adding features to the game, they totally ignore bugs. This is simply not the case. Every update brings new bug fixes. Read the update notes.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I can't say as I agree with the idea that Schine should shun the spotlight (and I can't imagine that they are trying to.) They offered early access for a reason, and you don't do that and then hide from prospective customers.

The purpose for Steam EA is to provide funding to projects that might otherwise never have received it. EA allows developers to develop their game and receive funding for it based on their progress. This is all decided by the customer, the benefit for the customer is they get to take part in the development process and play it before it's completed.

EA games are not for mainstream audiences, they're incomplete, buggy and constantly changing (ideally). We've been very careful to limit exposure of StarMade to only as many people as we need to continue with developing the game. The reason being is because we want as many people viewing StarMade with a blank opinion until we feel it's appropriate to ramp up promotion. It's a balance we take seriously and a lot of my job goes into ensuring we have sufficient funding to complete the game, no matter what. In the past I've spoken about how we haven't utilised any of our promotional tools on Steam yet, which is a massive venue for exposure. Every single time we've ramped up promotion we've had incredibly successful runs, we know the interest is there.

That being said, releasing on Steam EA was vital. If we hadn't released on Steam EA when we did, StarMade certainly wouldn't have made the progress it has, it's very likely the project wouldn't have made it past 2015.

 

[BDLS]

this game is still in early alpha

lol

I wonder how long people are going to be saying "early" alpha for? Isn't the engine over 10 years old now?

 

[Edymnion]

lol

I wonder how long people are going to be saying "early" alpha for? Isn't the engine over 10 years old now?

You don't seem to understand what the term means.

It has nothing to do with how old the game is, it has to do with the state the game is in.

To put it simply:

Pre-Alpha: Test builds, mostly just smoke tests to see if the code even compiles.
Alpha: Basic code is running, features and core gameplay elemenets are being added
Beta: Main gameplay is finished, tweaks and optimization are being done and final bug fix passes are made
Release: Game is now ready to be released to the general public and sold.

"Early Alpha" means the game is A) Still having features and mechanics added (hence Alpha), and B) It isn't even half way done adding in everything that will be in the final release (hence Early).

One person did most of the work we can see in the game now. Comparing the time it took him to do that to how much a full dedicated company like EA or Blizzard could have done it is disingenuous because they have dozens or even hundreds of people working on just that one title.

So yes, "early alpha" *CAN* last for years and years. Its an indication of progress, not of time spent.

 

[KiloZulu]

The purpose for Steam EA is to provide funding to projects that might otherwise never have received it. EA allows developers to develop their game and receive funding for it based on their progress. This is all decided by the customer, the benefit for the customer is they get to take part in the development process and play it before it's completed.

EA games are not for mainstream audiences, they're incomplete, buggy and constantly changing (ideally). We've been very careful to limit exposure of StarMade to only as many people as we need to continue with developing the game. The reason being is because we want as many people viewing StarMade with a blank opinion until we feel it's appropriate to ramp up promotion. It's a balance we take seriously and a lot of my job goes into ensuring we have sufficient funding to complete the game, no matter what. In the past I've spoken about how we haven't utilised any of our promotional tools on Steam yet, which is a massive venue for exposure. Every single time we've ramped up promotion we've had incredibly successful runs, we know the interest is there.

That being said, releasing on Steam EA was vital. If we hadn't released on Steam EA when we did, StarMade certainly wouldn't have made the progress it has, it's very likely the project wouldn't have made it past 2015.

As long as you have the funding you need for the game, I shan't complain. Of course, you could add stretch goals and create Minecraft-sized worlds like I mentioned in another post...

You, too, could be in the Guinness Book of World Records!

 

[Tshara]

As many people have already said. The game is still being developed at its own pace. I’m not worried about that. Just look at this thread how open the team is what they are trying to accomplish.

Games like DU might show some impressive graphics but the information available now does not tell me much on what the gameplay experience will be. The whole MMO direction they want to go in is not something I’m interested in. With StarMade you can set up your own server with your own rules or play creative single player. Perfect for a builder like me.

It comes down to personal preference.