Madness in Chuckleland

Welcome to the club, i dont think anyones heard from the guy since like, april

 

From since June. But the guy never promoted "think and fast" nor he pretend to have great Dev-community communication (it was pretty obvious he and his wife(?) were loners). And, btw, they still have well-written actual roadmap om their site. Game have turned to be not so cool and probably won't be released into 1.0 in couple of years, but where were never any attempts to mislead the Community and present false info thought it's Development. Just sayin'

 

What's that saying about what you should attribute to malice again?

 

Havent they aready done preety much atleast 60% of the curent progression?

Armor sets, rebalancing of weaponry and armor, new biomes, lots of new weaponry and assets, new ships and all, they dont realy need to make a 1.0 outta this, just use some good duck tape and rewire it so it aint unsafe to play.

They already have the assets, and its just making em available for normal gameplay progression, no need for it all to be complete right away!

 

I am really liking the game for putting a sci fi theme into a sandbox which made me buy it immediately. I do not mind waiting for updates since the devs show that they are working on it. A really good modding API with an easy to understand code allows for almost anyone to start making their own mods. I just do not see the point in hating this game at all.

 

I think an update to the stable build every month or two would go a long ways to helping maintain the popularity of the game and alleviate some people's fears. Many people, including myself, don't want to deal with unstable or nightly builds. The stable build is way overdue for an update IMO.

 

Neither did Chucklefish lel

 

Nice trolling, sir. So releasing a tech-demo (Tiy admitted it himself) as a beta is not a misleading or false info? Game would be released in 2013? Baiting ppl with "thick and fast"? Gladly offering refunds? Mock-ups which was never in game? Hm... i have quite long list, created by ppl how are dissatisfied with the game, but i'm pretty sure anyone who isn't new to this forum saw it a couple of times.

One could ignore or think those are not important, but it's facts not opinions. CF promoted or promised something but fails to deliver, for one reason or another. If you thinks their reasons and excuses pardoning them, that;s your opinion. But facts still stands.

 

kk

This is pedantry if I've ever seen it. He said what you're playing feels like a tech demo, compared to what they have in mind. They didn't necessarily say "Hey, this is a tech demo, not a beta!" He probably just used that term for the lack of a better word.

You still clinging to this?

"Baiting"? Why do you keep implying CF is doing all of this for nefarious purposes? And I'm pretty sure the updates were thick and fast, until the community became unhappy with that.

What's wrong with this?

Wow, what? Mock-ups aren't supposed to be exactly like what the final product will be; that's why they're called mock-ups.

 

It's not about clinging. Again it's about facts. They failed to deliver in 2013? Yes. It's a fact. Your or mine opinion on it is irrelevant.

Not nefarious, just to promote sales, and calm ppl down about not releasing game in full in 2013. And i'm not buying into "we stop because of community". But fact is - they stopped updating.

The fact that they stopped to do so.

They never said those were mock-up until forced to.

 

Sure, that's a fact, but I don't see why it keeps being brought up. They made an unrealistic estimate and have since rescinded on it.

That kind of makes sense. If you've played the game for a while, then go to ask for a refund, it's kind of like using an item in real life for a while then going back to get a refund for it. Not to mention that Steam does not make it easy to give refunds.

I'm pretty sure they stated that. If not, it's pretty much automatically implied.

 

I'm as eager to see the new update as anyone, but I have to admit I don't quite grasp the drama. It's not the first or only game that's been delayed while the devs put the kewl stuff in and fished out the bugs. I could understand the angst if they had just clammed up and stopped talking and no one knew what the heck they were doing...but that's pretty far from what's been happening.

I guess I feel like I pretty much got my money's worth from the beta, which was a lot of fun while it lasted, and now I'm of the opinion that what they add onto it is gravy on top of that...which means I am happy it's going to happen, but wouldn't be crushed like a bug if it didn't. It'd be a disappointment, sure...but one I'd shrug at and move on from.

I really enjoyed Starbound even in its current stable form. I compare it to some of the other things I would spend 15 bucks on, and it's hard to complain. I dunno, maybe that means my expectations are too low? I measure the value of a game by the fun I have though. And I had a lot of fun with Starbound. I am very excited it's going to be added onto and made even better, but I guess I don't feel like it HAS to in order to justify the time or money I put into it.

So I'm pretty happy right now.

 

I'd doubt that the characters get deleted, it's just that the game would choke on the save file if it tried to load it.

When major changes happen to a game, as are common for games in alpha and beta, it often means that the things being saved (and loaded) also need to be changed to handle the game changes. A couple of examples might help.

1. Items your character has in their inventory are generally referred to in the game by an id, which is usually their index in the object array. When the game is saved, the information about your character will include a list of object ids that are in your inventory. Now, in version A of the game, you might have managed to find the sword Excaliber, the best sword in the game. Excaliber happens to be item number 6 in the list of objects in the game, and so if you saved the game straight after getting Excaliber, the savegame routine would dutifully write a '6' in the save file in your list of possessions. If you loaded the save file after that, the load routine would read in the '6', and the game would look up item number 6, see that it happens to be Excaliber, and you would have it again when the game was loaded.

But then, one of the changes that the devs make in the next major revision of the game, version B, deletes Excaliber from the game for some reason. It no longer exists in the game. instead, all the items past number 6 get moved up a slot in version B, compared to version A. So item number 7 in version A becomes item number 6 in version B, item number 8 becomes number 7, etc. Now, item number 7 in version A happens to be 'a rusty dinnerknife'. Since the save file doesn't know that Excaliber has been removed from the game, if you try to load it in version B, it will happily tell the game that you have item number 6, which the game will look up as being a rusty dinnerknife now, and you'll find that instead of proudly swinging Excaliber, you're instead waving around a rusty dinnerknife. You'd probably be a little bit upset.

2. Where you are located in a world is recorded as a a pair of coordinates, a couple of numbers which record your position horizontally and vertically. These coordinates are all that is needed to be saved to tell the game where you are - when you load a saved game, the game will generate the world according to whatever world creation routine it uses, and then make changes to it based on what the save file tells it is changed (such as blocks which have been mined,) including putting you in the location that the save file specifies. But what happens if the devs make a change so that the flat area you're currently crossing in the savegame in version A, suddenly in version B has a massive mountain right where you were walking? The load routine will dutifully tell the game that you are located right in the middle of all of that rock, which will either be instantly fatal for you, or crash the game because it doesn't understand how to reconcile somebody being teleported into solid rock.

These examples are pretty simplistic. The save and load routines handle a vast amount of data, and it's all likely to have fairly complex interactions that need to be accounted for. It is possible to make a game recognise when it's dealing with an older save file, and make adjustments so that everything works properly, and that's what usually happens with mature games - when a game is patched, older savefiles will generally happily load, with the game knowing the older format and converting as required. It will then save in the new save format. (Obviously, this can't work the other way - you can't load a save game from a newer version of a game on an older version, because the older version has no way of knowing the future format that the new game version saves its files in.) It usually isn't practical to do this in alpha and beta simply because of the vast amount of changes makes it too much work to have the game try to track between versions.

 

@Darklight The surge in people playing is because cards were released, those aren't active players you're seeing, but people just booting the game up to farm cards. I know I've done it. Not to launch some insane conspiracy theory, but Starbound also launched with 8 card drops, which is quite a lot from my experience, so people will be farming for longer, further boosting those numbers.

As to your comment on the reviews, the average of it's entire release span is Very Positive, but that isn't an accurate representation of things now. Having looked at them, most of the positive reviews came from near the games launch, most of the negative ones have been popping up recently. In short, people bought the game, reviews it as good, then didn't change their review to reflect the current state of development. You only need to look at the Steam Community page to see the massive amount of dissatisfaction from a community which isn't the SB forums. Put bluntly, when two communities mirror each other to such a degree, I'd say it's more than likely that the prevailing views are in fact, the majority.

 

I more or less feel the same way now. Ever since I joined this forum ages ago, I've been very passionate about the game's potential. I drew creature ideas, sprites, etc etc. I was glad to see this game was in a way, Terraria's spiritual successor. Time went on, the beta came out finally and the forums were exploding with activity. I even tag teamed with my friend and made a mod or two. Then the long period of silence happened with the move. People changed for the most part from being happy go lucky players to the exact opposite. I watched people I knew become bitter over the development period. Even some of my favorite devs (bartwe and Rho) left the team with silence. It was disheartening, yet I remained vigiliant willingly.

In recent months, the devs finally started doing consistent (for the most part) blog updates which is definitely appreciated. But after the long wait period, the same magic I felt upon joining diminished greatly. I don't really have the same motivation to contribute art/mods for the game as I used to, and I just spend most of my days here just talking in chat. Heck, even Terraria, the previous game people used to think Starbound would usurp has came back from the dead and gotten consistent updates over the year.

I still want the game to succeed, that I can assure you all. However, my enthusiasm for it will remain stagnant until the devs get things rolling again. Even then, I'm afraid things still won't be the same as it used to prior to the negativity.

 

That's a HUGE presumption to make.

 

Uh.. No, that's how statistics work. Cards were released on the 2nd of October, that's when we see a small increase. I'm not presuming anything, I'm looking at the evidence, and providing you with a reason. Unless you're referring to something else?

 

Whoa, when did Rho leave?

 

I am refering to your belief that people didn't edit their reviews being majority in the negative now. That is a presumption until we get the figures once the patch hits. Because if those numbers spike correspondingly that will prove that the majority WAS in fact just waiting for the next patch. These statistics are not absolute no matter how much some people would like them to be

 

I don't understand why you think I'm referring to the patch. I'm not, I'm just referring to peoples opinions overall, nothing related to people being upset while waiting for the next patch, because yes, that would be a massive presumption, which you apparently presumed I was making. Presumception.

I was just pointing out that people are gravely unhappy, and that regardless of whether overall the reviews were "Very Positive" as you pointed out, that doesn't reflect the current attitude. That was the point I was making, hope I cleared things up.