Vector Squared -- Community News! -- Issue #30

​

Hello fellow forum goers! Vector Squared is back, well, a few of us are at least. Nonetheless we are going to do our best to bring you a completely awesome, very community oriented edition featuring the results of the cosplay contest, multiple art features, a music feature, suggestions, and a recap of Starbound progress for those who missed it or who want to see it all again. With that, let's get rolling!

Table of Contents

• The New Vector Squared
• Art Features
• Music Feature
• Suggestion Spotlight
• The New Homepage Background
• Development Summary
• 1.5 Million Dollar Benchmark
• The Starbound Network News
• Comic Feature!
• Japan Trivia
• Test of Wisdom (puzzle)
• Question of the Week
• Closing Comments

The New, Mostly Temporary, Vector Squared
A while ago, Vector Squared announced to everybody that we would be taking a break from our work for an undecided period of time. Well, the time has come for us to (sort of) return. As many of you have most likely noticed, I am not Nababoo, but rather ReverseShadow, the teams former comic artist. Some of our team is still on break, but there are a few like myself that are willing to work to bring you folks a weekly news article. I decided to take the lead on this project as I have a lot of free time at the moment, and should be able to deliver a consistent issue for everyone for the next several weeks. When Starbounds beta is released, I may be booted out of the “lead” position, but for now I hope you all can tolerate the writings of somebody who is not as grandiose as Nababoo.




Our first artist for the week is forum user Taylor! The art we’ve seen so far from Taylor mostly revolves around highly detailed portraits of several Starbound races. As seen below the Hylotl and glitch are very detailed, and the art does a great job capturing the the actual, unpixelated qualities of each race, don’t you concur? You can find Taylors art thread right here.






But! We’re not finished yet! We’re going to be covering a total of not one, not two, but three artists this week to make up for the break. So with that in mind, we continue on to our second artist, Jaguarkia! Utilizing strong, crisp colors and dark outlines, Jaguarkia makes stunning images that really pull a punch. Some show the average day John Doe Avians having a relaxing evening in her den.



Whilst other images are of more epic proportions such as this one, showing off the Darkbound Queen. For those who do not know, Darkbound is a community project. A mod of sorts adding a lot of new content and lore.



Moving on to our third and last artist of the week, we have Shiro with some images that differ from the usual. I’m going to be nice and warn you guys, because these images will blow your mind. I’m not talking about the whole “Ooooh, that was nice. Love the butt on that Floran!”. No, no, no. Prepare for the most impressive eye-candy you’ll see in a long time. Ladies and gentlemen, Shiro’s mechas.










- WackyWocky



Featured for Vector Squared very first music spotlight is Artmanone! His fan track, titled “Dream Nebula” is a soothing melody that really places the listeners in the deepest regions of space upon listening... better have your space suit on! All corniness aside, the track really does sound great, and fits in well with the other starbound soundtrack songs. You can listen to the track by clicking right here.

~Shadow


Pulled straight out of Starbounds new Suggestion Center comes the idea of Bioluminescence (glowing organic material). This topic was suggested several times throughout the suggestions page, most notably by forum user SyberSmoke. His original thread on the topic received a whopping 800+ upvotes from the community, and can be viewed by clicking here. In essence (or should I say biolumin-essense hehe), the suggestion revolves the implementation of various plants and mushrooms which would shine in darkened caves or brighten your world when nighttime comes around. The thread discusses the possibility of entire bioluminescent trees and biomes, perhaps even underground glowing forests! Would you like to have this feature in game? Upvote the original thread or share your feelings in the comments!

~Shadow

The New Homepage Background
I'm assuming that a lot of you guys already noticed that the main background for Starbounds homepage has switched off from our usual, icy penguin infested landscape to a new forest setting. There is also the possibility in the air of a new color theme for our forums an main page, although this may have been replaced entirely by the switching of the main page background.

~Shadow



Here is a quick recapping of a few key development details that have been revealed to us over the past few weeks by the lovely men and women at Chucklefish:

• Examination Feature:Has been completely revamped; each race now has its own unique descriptions, opinions, and knowledge of in-game items. Forming multi-race teams is now rather beneficial as you’ll gain the combined knowledge of all the participating races within the team.
• Musical Instruments: Can be tuned in sync with other players who have musical instruments equipped, so bands can be formed. The instruments can each be programmed with various musical melodies that you can create yourself or pull of the internet. These melodies can also be shared with friends. It is unknown how many instruments will be present, although the standard piano, guitar, and trumpet have been confirmed.
• The Hylotl: Hylotl structures have been confirmed to appear underwater. They are entirely Japanese themed and are currently under development by GeorgeV. Ninja “ropes” have been confirmed, but their use is not yet known.

• Ore-Based/Tiered Furniture: Each in-game ore can now be crafted into its very own set of decorative furniture, with unique visuals! The developers did this because they desired a greater “use for the ores” outside of crafting armor and weapons. The furniture sets have been confirmed to include chairs, doors, tables, a command console, a bed, and a lighting feature.
  
  
• Introduction Sequences: The development team has revealed and shown off a few of the introduction cutscenes that will be seen when one chooses to start a new game after character creation. So far only the Human and Avian cutscenes have been shown, and you can view them in the links below. The voice acting is done by none other than Logan Cunningham! Please keep in mind that these are very much a work in progress and are subject to change and editing.

Avian Introduction:http://playstarbound.com/23rd-june-progress/

Human Introduction:http://playstarbound.com/21st-june-progress/

• Improved Animations: The explosion effects for all ballistic weaponry and equipment has been redone visually to better look like, well, an explosion. There is now a sleeping animation in place, and your character can now rest in beds of all sorts. Chatting within the game will pull up a text box above your characters head, and your characters mouth and facial expression will move and change depending on what you say! Within the inventory screen, mannequins have been added to better aid in displaying armors and weapons you have acquired.

~Shadow


One (and a Half) Million Dollars!

The contributions to Starbound continue to roll in, with the grand total topping $1.5 million as of the start of July. Similarly, there have been over 63 thousand backers throwing in their lot. So, how much more will be raised? Only time will tell.

Here’s a graph showing how many pre-orders were made by each tier.

Pixel - 54917


Silver - 4371


Gold - 3227


Diamond - 1643


Platinum - 30 (out of 30)


Solarium - 23 (out of 30)


Impervium - 7 (out of 30)

By Jonesy


SBN (Starbound News) Team
If you’d prefer your starbound info to be relayed via a video rather than text such as Vector Squared, try out this link. While we aren't affiliated with this video team at all, I thought it would be nice to give them a shout out as they put a large amount of work into their newscasts (Just like us!).

~Shadow

Comic Feature
This issues comic comes from the wonderful and hilarious series Boundless Stars by forum user Aluvian_Est-Endrati. Figuring it contains the horrific tentacle creatures featured in the human intro sequence, it seemed very fitting for this week's issue.



Find the entire comic collection here, through this link.


Japan Trivia
As I have been away in Japan for the last year or so for college, I decided to add this little trivia section to share a bit of my experiences.

Traditional Japanese rooms are known as washitsu 和室 (literally translated into Japanese style room, with wa meaning “eastern/asian” and shitsu directly meaning room). The floors of these rooms are covered in tatami, or bamboo flooring. This flooring is arranged in “mats” or squares which comprise the entirety of the room. The rooms size is determined by the number of tatami mats that make up the floor, with 4-matt rooms being the smallest size and 8-mat rooms being rather large. There is also a 6-mat room, and half mats do exist although they are considered more untraditional and are uncommon. Tatami mats have their very own “counting” word in Japanese, Jyo. The doors of these rooms are named fusuma, or as we know them “rice paper doors”. If the family can afford it, it is common to find a tokonoma within the room, which is a small built in alcove featuring a hanging scroll (Kakejiku), a traditional flower or bonsai arrangement (called an Ikebana), and a Buddhist/Shinto shrine for honoring relatives and ancestors. Almost all modern Japanese homes contain a single washitsu, and the room is mainly considered an honorary room for hosting guests, although it can also serve as a dining room, tea room, or simply a room for relaxation. During my initial few months here I had the privilege to sleep within a washitsu, although my host family eventually wanted the room back I guess because they fixed up their bonus room and put me in it after a while...

~忍者友人


Test of Wisdom

The Floran Butt Maze:This issues puzzle is based off the growing Floran butt-rub meme. Complete the maze from one, errr, butt to the other in order to win! The answer is in the spoiler tab below (don't cheat!).

~MahBucket


Question of the Week
Q- If you had complete jurisdiction to change the starbound homepage wallpaper (in the background) into anything, what would you choose?

A- Post it in the comments! Yeah, you!


Closing Comments

• As I am spending a lot of time writing now, I probably am going to step down as the teams comic artist, at least until beta comes around or Nababoo decides he wants to manage Vector Squared once more. We are planning to implement some sort of “comic feature” section however, where we showcase comics we find from other, non-vector squared community members.
• Does anybody have any suggestions for what we should feature in our articles? If you can name off a pretty good suggestion, we will probably add it to our upcoming article.

Members who Contributed
ReverseShadow- Tokugawa Shogunate
Jonesy- The pen is mightier than the sword.
Wackywocky- He who uses imagery,to describe images.
MahBucket- Work and play must always be at balance.

 

Glad to see this up and running. A thanks to all contributors

 

My first thought when I saw the thread in general discussion was "Wat?"
You did a good job, though.

 

So it isn't officially made by you anymore?

 

I'll probably contribute articles, but ReverseShadow's in charge of it until an forever undisclosed time.

 

Until Starbound comes out, or until Half-life 3 comes out?

 

Probably until beta. Got lots of things planned for it *swoons*

 

I'm with Active Link here. I saw "Vector Squared" as a thread title and I was all "Dafuq?"

Great issue though. Nice to see that some of you came back to do this! I appreciate it!

 

I must thank you again for allowing me to do this, I have a lot of reputation to uphold now.
Also: Comic artist ----> Leader.... Wut?

 

This still needs a sticky

 

Keep up the good job!

 

Awesome that this thing is back!

 

glad to see vector squared is back and the artwork is awesome!

 

AAAAAND WE'RE BACK.

Woo! Keep it up, guys.

 

If only there were some fictional stories to read...

 

It is good to be back guys! Thanks for all the support!

 

Hey thanks for the shoutout This is my first time reading, but I love what you guys have produced! Feel free to embed our weekly videos if you'd like to!

I wish you all the best with your future content!

 

Great issue guys.
KILL IT WITH FIRE!