Starbound Beta release (4th december)

[murillokb]

I'm completely hyped about it and i'm looking forward to play it!

It will be the best game of 2013 for me (or not, it seems like they are aiming too high)

Anyone feeling the same?

PS: I don't know if any of the devs played BTW but the first stage of hunger in Starbound is "feeling peckish"

This gave me some hope regarding the hunger mechanics but i don't know if the "peckish" status has any bad effect at all.

here's a link to the beta preview: http://playstarbound.com/starbound-preview-round-up/

Edit: grammar...

[Tsugumi Henduluin]

Part of me is really interested, but I've read that characters might end up getting wiped at some point... not really my cup of tea. I like starting over from scratch, but not when it's forced upon me. In all likelihood I'll just wait until a proper release before digging in, though whether or not my willpower will be strong enough remains to be seen.

[agentwiggles]

... characters might end up getting wiped at some point... not really my cup of tea.

Gods damn, that's no one's cup of tea. I was positively delighted to receive a text from my brother last night reading "I sent you a Starbound link, it comes out Wednesday" and am still excited, but that's a bit disturbing...

A kind of funny aside - guess I'm reaping the karmic reward of purchasing Terraria for said brother when that came out... with interest, given that I paid like $2.50 for his copy of Terraria. I had purchased it on sale and when I played a few hours I said fuck it, dropped $10 bucks for 4 copies, and gave them out to friends so I wouldn't have to play alone. Possible save wiping aside, I loved Terraria and am pretty excited to see what these guys have to offer.

[DaveYanakov]

I like the way the trees fall when cut down but I would have liked to see them hurt players that they fall on.

[BinoAl]

I'll likely end up grabbing this at some point, but I'm gonna wait until I can see a few LPs of it. It seems more like Terraria with planets and spaceships, but Terraria got old to me pretty quickly, I'm hoping that this is a bit more interesting

[murillokb]

it's on!

http://kotaku.com/starbounds-first-offi ... Socialflow

[myrkana]

just bought my copy :) luckily I have today off :D

[myrkana]

at 1:01 pm (10:01 pst) the forums broke :D and I think I'm about to break my refresh button for my e-mail ^.^

[murillokb]

i din't got a new email. My previous email from humble bundle got updated and the key was there *¬*

[FlowerChild]

Picked this up tonight and put a few hours into it. My observations so far:

-I really like the mining mechanic. It's such a simple thing, but damaging the blocks around the area you're mining makes such a big difference in terms of requiring just a bit of thought to keep you stimulated. It also has some nice side effects like being slightly less efficient mining at the full extent of your reach. Personally, I think this was a brilliant bit of design and it's the thing that's really stood out for me the most so far.

-Really like the way gravel behaves more like a fluid than a solid.

-Really like that survival is not a given and that you have to deal with stuff like hunger and cold.

-Really like that forward progress is slow and you really have to work for it. The overall difficulty seems to be right up my alley so far.

-Still not certain about the pixel (basically xp) mechanic for crafting, but I'm slowly warming up to it. Doesn't feel entirely natural at start, but really, it's a great way to provide incentive to stay alive, while not losing all your forward progress when you do. You basically get to keep all your equipment you've earned, while losing some of your progress towards the equipment you're working on next. Considering all that, I think I'll grow to like it.

-Don't like not being able to configure my controls one bit, but this is the kind of thing that will inevitably be added.

-Found some of the interface conventions to be obtuse at start, like having to mouse over crafting areas to use them instead of just standing next to them. This would be easily resolved with mention in the tutorials.

So far, I'm very impressed. There seems to be a lot to love here and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Already I can tell that my enjoyment of this will be miles beyond Terraria, which I very much enjoyed up until its last update.

[erikdk321]

Can anyone tell me if its a resource heavy game because i really wanna buy it and play it right now but i dont have my new pc up and running yet D:

[thekyz]

I have a 2 year old computer with a pretty shitty integrated video card (running minecraft on short all the time for instance), and this runs great. So i'd say you don't really need a huge computer for this.

[murillokb]

-Still not certain about the pixel (basically xp) mechanic for crafting, but I'm slowly warming up to it. Doesn't feel entirely natural at start, but really, it's a great way to provide incentive to stay alive, while not losing all your forward progress when you do. You basically get to keep all your equipment you've earned, while losing some of your progress towards the equipment you're working on next. Considering all that, I think I'll grow to like it.

Yes, at the beginning the pixels felt odd and death felt like a cheaty teleport back to home and a way of filling your hunger bar.

Then i realized how much you need pixels to craft more advanced stuff and dying started to hurt... not that much but it hurts.

Now i stay indoors at night trying to figure out stuff and let those creepy smiling-fire breathing-cat-dinossaurs out.

[Taleric]

The generated mobs are hillarious and fun. Every new one catches me off guard, staring at it trying to and gauge its' disposition. (Even had one blow damaging bubbles at me to my horror lol!)

It feels easier to interact with the environment that its' predecessors but I am still juggling the controls as I learn.

What a thrill warping the ship was, pretty sure I did a circle but it was cool.

The crafting and other systems have a neat level of depth that is challenging at initial look. Makes you feel like like "oh I am not ready, better mine/kill more".

[dawnraider]

This actually looks really promising. I'll have to snag a copy of this, as it definitely looks really cool.

[erikdk321]

I cant resist, i must get this right now

[Taleric]

My starbound combat experiance so far in one term.

Murder-holes!

[Battlecat]

I'm pretty impressed with the game, I'm still early but it's quite fun so far. Has quite a few qualities of terraria, especially visually, but there are a number of interface improvements that I prefer already.

[BinoAl]

I haven't played it too much yet, but I did grab it the other day after getting a larger-than-expected paycheck. It definitely seems harder than Terraria, in a very good way. A lot of my friends have complained about having to use the Hunting Bow in order to get meat from mobs, but I think it's a great idea, it diversifies combat in an interesting way. The Replicator is also a very neat idea. Like FC said, it offers a way to keep some of your progress, while still having a punishment for death (Though it should be less forgiving, imo).

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I took the day off (a bit of a rarity for me) yesterday to just play this game as it intrigued me so much, so I've probably got about 15 hours into it now or so. I'm currently exploring my third planet (a cold one which is presenting its own unique challenges), have full silver armor (and full iron for use on the cold planet since it seems to provide better insulation against cold...nice balancing there) and a gold pick (well, my 2nd gold pick as I've yet to find any platinum).

I *really* like it, and there is enough in the way of design innovation and focus within it (like the mining thing I mentioned previously which really is brilliant) that I am convinced the developer has their priorities straight. These guys obviously care and think about how their game plays and aren't just focused on providing back of the box wow factor features.

I'm just hoping they can withstand the amount of whining they're getting on their forums. The "it's too hard!" posts are fairly epic, usually from people that haven't even figured out what bandages do (like seriously...wtf?), and as we've seen now with multiple games on these forums, that kind of community pressure can do horrible things to a game's development direction.

But yes, for now, I heartily approve. WAY more interesting than Terraria, and like before, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface despite putting much more play time into it.

As a tip to new players: don't be afraid to leave your starting planet. I feel like I spent way too long there, only to discover once I left that different ores are more or less abundant on different planets (which makes me suspect that I just haven't found one with platinum yet) and that I could have upgraded my equipment much more rapidly had I left sooner. This isn't specified anywhere in the tutorials, but all you need to fuel your ship is some coal or wood (the distress beacon is only required to travel between sectors, NOT planets) , which means you can start hopping between planets VERY quickly at the start of the game. Make sure to check the threat level of any planets you are going to though, as higher level mobs will most definitely hand you your ass with starter equipment :)

[M!C]

[...] (well, my 2nd gold pick as I've yet to find any platinum).

[...] (which makes me suspect that I just haven't found one with platinum yet)

You actually don't need secondaries when it comes to picks as you can repair the one you are using. Just take ore into your "hand" and then right click on the pick in question. Atm it doesn't seem to make a difference which ore you use on which pick.

I've only found platinum in chests so far; even mining in the gamma-sector didn't yield results (only tried one planet so far though).

[FlowerChild]

You actually don't need secondaries when it comes to picks as you can repair the one you are using. Just take ore into your "hand" and then right click on the pick in question. Atm it doesn't seem to make a difference which ore you use on which pick.

Oh man, thanks for the tip. I never would have figured that out on my own, and my 2nd gold pick was beginning to wear down when I stopped playing last night.

I will restate my original point that the interface is rather obtuse at times :)

With regards to platinum chests and such, yeah man, it feels off at times that you can't melt down the stuff you find. It creates a lot of "I don't have enough gold, but I have all these fucking golden duck statues!" moments. Guess I'm too habituated to BTW in that regard as it winds up feeling really unnatural to me.

[Pfilson]

I've put several hours into playing as well. And I'm enjoying it and the challenge so far. I'm still on my first planet. Only realized that coal and wood could be used as fuel by random testing. So far I tend to live off of my crops more than I have hunting, and that's just bread and the basic starter crop.

It looks like they may be giving in to some of the whining.. See the change log below (since I haven't seen it discussed here yet.)

I'm waiting for the game to updated at the moment and some of the interface/quest changes seem like a good thing, but I'm worried about the pixel changes. Seems like they might be approaching the solution form too many angles, but I haven't had access to the refinery yet and am still on my basic anvil tech (not even silver armor). Maybe the pixel costs do get to be a bit much later on, but as it is now I actually regret dying and use my starter sword more than my iron bow.

Anyway, update downloaded, time to go test out my theoretical wankery..

Spoiler

Show

- Massively reducing the pixel cost (sometimes eliminating it entirely) on early weapons/armor. You can build a refinery in later tiers to turn ores of all kinds into pixels. (done)
- Monsters now have a small chance to drop meat when killed with normal weapons. (done)
- You can no longer teleport to another players ship from underground (done)
- Bandages are now craftable with 4 plant fibres, no longer require fabric (done)
- Fix human starter chest showing apex starter items (done)
- Monsters now have a 70% chance to drop meat when killed with a hunting weapon, up from 50% (done)
- Make guards you’ve summoned refer to you as their boss (done)
- Make the refinery appear earlier in the game (done)
- Reduced fuel costs a bit to go to other planets (done)
- Tweaked wording of starter quests to encourage exploring of more planets. (done)
- Added hunting knife weapon that also makes monsters drop meat (done)
- Added new legendary weapon (done)
- Pixel loss on death reduced to 20% for testing, might change further (done)
- [16:27] <Mortvert> Tiy_, Also, could you make silver more visible, please? (Done)
- Added new armor that provides a good amount of warmth early on in the game at the sacrifice of armor levels. (done)
- Tweaked the UFO boss to make him smash blocks. (done)
- Also make him a little bit easier by changing him to level 9 from level 10 (done)
- Revamping the warmth bar to make it more obvious (suggestion by thedbp on reddit)
http://i.imgur.com/O2IYd6k.png (done)
- Increase mining speed a little (done)
-Add numbers above the hotbar slots http://i.imgur.com/qTJiFrS.png (done)
- Craftable climbing ropes! (done)
- Make sure hunger bar is always shown when eating food (done)



- Make hunger bar display when the alt key is held down (done)

- Added a dumb, quick way to advance through some of the tier 4-10 content (armors, weapons), just for fun. Complete tiers of content are coming really soon. I’d like to get 1/2 tiers of content done per week. (done)
- Fixed a bug where minibosses over level 11 were not dropping the rare items they were supposed to be dropping. They now drop guns. (Thank you to <ippia> for finding this) (done)
- Ufos should hopefully not fly off anymore, they were actually flying off to attack birds! (done)
- Tons of bug fixes
- Bartwe is working on the windows XP issues, not sure yet if it’ll be done by tonight but fingers crossed. Might be tomorrow.
This is just what I’ve done so far this morning, I’ll add to this list as more is added for tonights update.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, just saw that change log myself, and there are a number of points that have me worried.

Looks like good stuff overall, but the whining seems to have taken a toll.

[Shinxy]

It looks like they may be giving in to some of the whining.. See the change log below (since I haven't seen it discussed here yet.)

That is... disheartening. I've been hyped for Starbound for a while, but been holding out on a purchase until I'm confidant the devs won't go the Terraria route with all flair, or do something to make things easy for the whiners. And this is foreboding. Still, I hope any pressure they give in to won't be too severe.