Hi, I'm a pre-alpha tester for Skywanderers. I've played some, as well as watched gameplay content, so I have a rough idea of where the game is in development. I'm a game developer myself, so can speak a little on my perspective of the two games.
Skywanders positives...
- Skywanderers is visually superior to StarMade. The post processing effects, lighting, particles, UI feedback, universe backdrop are much more refined, giving the game a polish lacking in StarMade.
- The logic system is more compact, allowing ships of all sizes to have neat contraptions, with limited space. Whether this is an improvement or not, is opinion, I view it as a plus.
- Plenty of 3D models to compliment the blocks. While StarMade has some 3D models, Skywanderers has more. It gives the game a more "realistic" feel, allowing fine details in smaller builds and interiors. Something which StarMade lacks. Additionally, the 3D models contribute to a "more" unique appearance to the game. Again, whether this is a plus or not is opinion.
- Universe layout is superior. Entities are more spread out; it seems much more natural, unlike StarMade's grid galaxy system.
- Sounds are present in the game.
- LOD system, although a bit hack and slash, is in the game. I'm not sure if LOD is also for ships, but asteroids have a working LOD system, reducing graphical load. Additionally, planet rings are "functional" they appear as a 3D model/texture from a distance and transition into a cluster of LOD asteroids when near. A LOD system in StarMade for asteroids and planets could alleviate significant graphical load on our computers, as well as allow for larger entities.
Skywanderers is visually superior to StarMade, it has a lot of eye candy, and this alone is going to gain them players. From trailers and screenshots, it'll look like StarMade either has tough competition quickly catching up, or even appears to have surpassed StarMade. Clever marketing there.
This isn't true, and I'll tell you why
Skywanderers is created in Unity, which is quite a popular game engine. Games made with Unity include: Cities: Skylines, Firewatch, Kerbal Space Program, I Am Bread, Ori and the Blind Forest, Broforce... It's a great little engine and can be incredibly powerful in the right hands on the right project (ie KSP). A game engine basically makes game developers' jobs easier, by providing them with a lot of prebuilt tools to cut down development time, things such as rendering, physics, sound, animation, networking, scripting, AI...
Unity is particularly notable for its great rendering/graphics. Unity provides almost all (if not all) the fancy graphics (lighting, flares, particles etc) and LOD systems. Little to no work involved there. Unity also provides its own audio engine. Notice how my list of positives for Skywanderers mostly comprises of things that Unity handles? Notice how almost all Skywanderers videos focus on aesthetics
StarMade, for the past 4 or so years has been leading the voxel (boxel) space genre. A lot of game development is about figuring out what works and what doesn't, when you're leading the pack, you get the privilege of dealing with the brunt of that work. Skywanderers has been able to piggyback off system design from StarMade, you can see the StarMade "inspiration" in a lot of their content. The most noticeable is in their logic system, which is nearly a direct copy of the Logic and Rails system in StarMade, with the benefit of being scaled down. Great, no need to reinvent the wheel, StarMade expanded from Minecraft's redstone, Skywanderers has adapted StarMade's system. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's an important point.
Skywanderers has the illusion of having faster progress than StarMade, this is where we need to be very careful. Skywanderers hasn't had to create their own graphics system, they've adapted Unity's great tools. Skywanderers also has the benefit of learning from others who have covered a lot of ground in that genre already (ie StarMade).
Now, there's a sacrifice to pay for using Unity, and for many games, the sacrifice is well made, as the loss would have contributed little to no benefits. However, in Skywanderers case, this "shortcut" might be fatal. The issue with using Unity is that access to low-level code is limited/restricted. For a voxel game that wants to scale, that's a problem. Massive optimisations? Forget it. When you start hitting millions of blocks, hundreds of entities not just static, but dynamic too, you need serious optimisation work. Games like StarMade and Skywanderers need access to the low level, it's no small feat to achieve a massive living universe. I think if Skywanderers is aiming for the same scale as StarMade, Unity was a poor choice.
Which leads me to what I think are the biggest negatives for Skywanderers.
- Made in Unity, great for getting smaller to medium projects off the ground quickly, but the lack of access to the low level leaves little room for optimisation work necessary for a massive voxel space game with millions of blocks entities flying, colliding, fighting in 3D space.
- Won't scale effectively, for the reasons listed above in my talk about Unity, but also the design choices made. A heavy focus on aesthetics takes up a lot of resources. Unity graphics, while nice, don't really scale too well. With the plethora of non-block (smaller) objects able to be used, the performance impact doesn't allow for this sort of detail to be scaled. Again, if Skywanderers is aiming for the scale of StarMade, this was a poor design choice.
- No Physics implemented. This is a big one, most people won't realise how big of a thing this is. Physics is a lot of work. Not even collisions. If graphics in Skywanderers is 0.5-1% (using Unity) of work (which is quite generous), Physics is at least 25% of the total work required. Physics in a continuously changing voxel environment is a beast to deal with. This point alone is enough to see how much work they have to catch up.
- Planets are 3D placeholders. All the cool planets you see? Don't exist. They are merely 3D models, you can not go to them. This is not implemented at all. That's a lot of work to implement.
- No game mechanics are functional, power, shields, weapons... While there are turret systems and "weapons" they are all visual. Why do you think the scenes in the trailer either cut before weapon impact or are disguised by explosions?
- Lacking plenty of content already in StarMade, to name a few... NPCs, Fleets, Crafting, Trading
- Multiplayer appears to be minimal, lots of work still needs to be done here. This is another big point, multiplayer is hard to do. Although Unity likely handles a lot, I'm sure there's plenty of development time to be invested there.
So if it's missing all of this, what is Skywanderers now? It's a fancy looking (thanks to Unity) spaceship builder, literally. As in, that's all you can do, not as in that's the only fun part, it's the only part. The developer appears to have his priorities set wrong, focusing on aesthetics and marketing, when he should be working on the foundations for the game. It's nice eye candy for sure, and he's been able to appear to make plenty of progress thanks to a great game engine and games that have already attempted the content.
StarMade has made a lot of mistakes, but let me put it this way, if I had $1,000,000 I wanted to invest in a voxel space sandbox, I'd invest it in StarMade over Skywanderers any day. Pretty things are pretty, but I'd rather have my developers working on the foundations for the game, instead of prettying it up so early into development.
There is no doubt in my mind that StarMade will always be the better game. That being said, there's a big risk that Skywanderers is going to catch the attention of the public with its eye candy, making promises it can't achieve and misleading people (
cough No Man's Sky). Making the market sceptical of similar space games dooming StarMade to be ignored by the public forever, a lost gem.
I swear I saw you build the exact same thing,it is you right?!
