Vector Squared -- Community News! -- Issue #37

​

Content

• Daily Updates
• Tiy’s Livestream
• Starbound in the News!
• Games to keep you busy until the Beta
• Weekly Art Contests
• Art Feature
• Suggestion Spotlight
• Gameplay Feature
• Weekly Puzzle
• Science Trivia
• Question of the Week
• Closing Comments

Daily Updates

• 3rd October - In addition to work on bugs and NPC shops / AI, new assets are being made for the Floran and Hylotl dungeons.

"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."


"What’s that? They’re making the game more child friendly? Cry some more."

• 4th October - Dungeons and their assets are being made, and NPCs placed in them. Balancing and bugfixing are also taking place. A mockup of a Hylotl city / dungeon has also been shown.

"Release the Hylotl lore, would you kindly."

• 5th October - Equipment tier balancing (i.e. damage and protection levels) has taken place, including what is equipped by guard NPCs on different level planets. Guards will generally have the strongest possible equipment based on planet level, but may also be using weaker gear as well. A stronger variant of the guard, the captain, has also been added. It’s possible that the player’s power will eventually outmatch guards, but having vendors turn you away as a result of fighting with the law may act as a deterrent.

"Exclusive image from the upcoming Jimmy Band film; The Glitch with the Golden Armor."

• 6th October - Work has been made on unlocking / adding lore to the player’s codex. Dungeons are being populated by hostile and non-hostile NPCs, more underground biomes are being added, item costs at NPC shops are being configured and ship-saving (saving the ship alongside the character) has been implemented. Guards will now forget about targets out of their field of view for a while, and move back to their original positions. They will also issue warnings to put away your weapon.

• 7th October - More work on minibiomes, particularly underground ones. Dungeons and villages are also being worked on and populated. Other things that the devs looked at include bugs, recipes, art assets and how badly Bart apparently plays GTA V.

"Here’s Johnny!"

By Jonesy


Tiy’s Livestream & Village Screenshots
Tiy recently had a Livestream in which forum-lurker AstroBlast was audience, and thankfully he snapped a good deal of screenshots when Tiy was wandering about in a Glitch village.



The total of eight images showed various aspects of Glitch culture, and many, many decoratives. The overall feel is a medieval town, mostly populated by farmers, smiths and tradesmen, something which fits the Glitch lore spot on. For those of you unsure or unfamiliar with Glitch lore, do not be worried. We’ve yet to get anything solid, but the general idea is that they were created by some master race, but eventually just left behind and died. Slowly, hundreds, maybe even thousands of years later, they started waking up, remembering nothing. They progressed through history much like we did, and at their current state are in medieval age, thus you have sci-fi robots wielding medieval technology and ideologies.





These are only a few of the images, to see the rest, go to AstroBlast’s topic here.

- WackyWocky


Starbound in the News!
It seems the buzz of impending beta has started to overflow from our forum community to the rest of the internet, as a number of recent articles about Starbound have cropped up on video game news sites. Most of these articles are short and the information is already known to most forum goers, but we've collected a few together in case anyone my have missed them. Here's what these sites got right, and what they got wrong (spoiler; every article gets something wrong).

WhatCulture - 6 Reasons Why You Should Be Excited About Starbound (September 30th)
What's right:
This article does a good job of highlighting the 'feeling of excitement' Starbound intends to bring to the sandbox, and compares some features to similar games like Terraria and Minecraft. It also mentions the post-release content that's been promised and praises the developers for their open communication about the game's progress. The writer states he thinks Starbound is "-the indie game of the decade!"!

What's wrong:
While this is a great overview there are a number of details in this article that are just flat out wrong. Inviting NPCs to your home, gathering and replanting plants, heat protection, procedurally generated galaxies, vehicle crafting, and DNA manipulation are all mentioned as features, and they won't be (although some may be added post-release). The most glaring problem is the article states the game will be fully complete by year end 2013, this is very misleading because there won't be a full release until next year.

Destructoid - Starbound will not release this year, but the beta will (September 30th)
What's right:
This article too correctly slates beta launch before year end, awarding 'bonus troll points' to Chucklefish if the launch is Dec 31st!

What's wrong:
It states that the game has been planned for 2013 launch since it was first announced. Those who follow closely remember the originally planned release was 2012, and this date was later adjusted to be this year.

Joystiq - Indie space adventure Starbound takes us to the 'beta' quadrant (October 1st)
What's right:
The article correctly states the beta will launch before year end with release following sometime next year, and correctly states that all those who pre-ordered will have beta access.
What's wrong:
The article states the game will be launching on the Ouya. While the developers received an early Ouya to test, but there hasn't been any definite plan to deploy on the platform as confirmed by Bartwe.

Polygon - Starbound beta expected by the end of 2013 (October 1st)
What's right:
This article correctly quotes the newsletter with the teams reasoning for pushing back full release. It also has a simple, but accurate overview of a few features controlled by procedural generation.

What's wrong:
Gives outline of some homeworld features like found NPCs populating planets and terraforming. Homeworlds have been pushed back and won't be included in the game's initial release, so that information was taken from an out-of-date information source. The article also incorrectly states the game was funded through Kickstarter.

Click - Starbound announces approach of beta testing (October 1st)
What's right:
It correctly states the beta will launch this year with full release next year, as well as emphisizing that all pre-order customers will have beta access.

What's wrong:
Like a few other articles this one incorrectly states the game is Kickstarter funded and will launch on Ouya.


Kotaku - For goodness' sake, have some manners (October 3rd)
This wasn't an article, but a share of the humorous screenshot featuring a Glitch embarrassed by Molly's drifting eyes. This was the only article reviewed this week without incorrect information published, but the "article" is only one sentence long so that's not saying much!

- Katzeus


Games to keep you busy until the Beta
I’m sure we can all relate to BlastRed in his forum topic here, in his desperation for a Beta Release he has gone to the forums to ask for something to keep his mind at ease for the next months. People were quick to respond, with many sandbox games both 2D and 3D, known and lesser known, and we at Vector Squared figured “Hey, let’s just compile a list!”. So here it is ladies and gentlemen, a list of the top 10 games to keep you busy until the Beta:


Minecraft: Admit it, you saw this coming. The ever popular 3D voxel-based game which has been encouraging creativity and a sense of adventure for a long time now. It’s a no-brainer that this game provides hours of entertainment and is a good candidate to keep you busy. Added bonus: Lot’s of mods. Like, oh so many mods.


Terraria: Yep, another obvious one. Despite the seemingly questionable relationship between Starbounders and Terrarians, this is a game to be played. It covers revolutionary concepts, hours of fun (Especially if you play with friends), and will fill that gaping hole in your soul for a 2D sandbox adventure game. Added bonus: Cheap and newly updated!


Darkout: Here is another 2D sandbox, set in a sci-fi environment, with amazingly stunning graphics, covering fighting, building, exploring and surviving in a hostile alien world. Definitely worth checking out.


Edge of Space: Yet another 2D sci-fi sandbox, a lot like Darkout, but with a whole lot more pixelated style, lot’s of focus on combat and building, and, oh, this game is brutal. You will die, it will be pitiful, probably from tiny jellyfish. It’s like the lovechild of Darksouls and Starbound. Sadly, it’s heavily in Beta and doesn’t have a lot of content yet, but still enough for a good 10+ hours of playing. Added bonus: Terraria creator Redigit is working with them in the next update, adding, amongst other things, a giant biomechanical Skeletron to space. Did I mention this game was brutal? It is.


FTL: A brutal, fun, combat and story-based space game with a nice pixelated style. It’s basically a spaceship simulator where everyone in the Universe is out to blow you into cosmic gore. You control units and have to maintain all parts of your ship such as power and weaponry, making sure to not get pummeled by the Space-Cockroaches who are currently throwing missiles your way, while attempting to shoot back. Added bonus: Cheap. Lot’s of game for little money!


Planet Explorers: An open-world voxel-based sandbox adventure rpg game. Lot’s of building, fighting, more building, more fighting and running for your dear life. It’s still heavily in development, but contains an amazing array of stuff to do, as well as one of the most advanced building abilities of any 3D game we’ve ever seen. From large walls and turrets, right down to designing the hilt of your gun and the shape of your tire studs on your space-buggy. Totally worth checking out.


Signs of Life: A 2D sci-fi sandbox game, of which we can never get enough! It has a combination of procedurally generated and handmade content, beautiful sprites and art style, mysterious dungeons, cool bases, and lots of combat and building. All that we want in a sandbox!


Cavestory: You looking for sci-fi game following some older, more platform’y game styles? Maybe some deep lore and a well-written plot? Oh, and make it 100% FREE you say? Sure, take Cavestory! This game is not quite up the “sandbox creative” alley, but is an amazing game nonetheless. It’s story is captivating at the least, and utterly stunning at it’s best. The combat is smooth, difficult and varied with all of the many, many enemies and weapons. More or less a must-play for gamers. Added bonus: Multiple endings and hidden secret items!


Star-Made: Often described as “Minecraft in space”, this 3D voxel-based game features procedurally generated ships, planets, spacestations, asteroids, space pirates, amazing graphics, brutal combat and the ability to build ships of astonishing sizes (Picture something 250x75 blocks in Minecraft, that’s a medium sized cruiser in Star-Made). You can even land on any planet, mine ore (There are over 40 kinds) and build yourself a base, with turrets. Or maybe you’d prefer a huge spacestation, with docks, that you can fly. Yes, you can put ships, IN a ship. Added bonus: IT’S FREE!


SpaceEngineers: Releasing this October, the 23rd is SpaceEngineers. It too is a 3D voxel-based game, covering combat and building such as Minecraft, but with ships and planets such as StarMade. It takes graphics of 3D block games to the next level with eye-candy landscapes and explosions. Blocks “crumple” and “crush” during impacts, like, say, during a spaceship accident. And each block has “layers”, providing a whole new feature never seen before. You want to hack into your friends base door? You have to blast through the computers first 2-3 layers of metal plating before you can reach thos circuits. Oh, you you hull damaged during the last pirate battle? Well, it seems most hull-blocks are only missing about 40% of the layers, you should be fine till you reach base. This game is looking to be amazing, and probably will bring some revolutionary and new ideas to the gaming world. Added bonus: See the youtube videos, such realistic physics!

- WackyWocky


Weekly Art Contests
Interested in proving your art skills in a contest against others? Well, Tectal and pigrocket have got you covered. They’re hosting weekly contests within the categories “Digital Art” & “Pixel Art”, respectively. All may enter, but only one will win. Are you up for the challenge?


[LINK]


[LINK]

- WackyWocky


Art Feature
For this week's Art Feature, community member Wargod's Pixel Art thread is being featured! He's exceptional at sprinting weapons and such! Here are some examples:



He's still updating his thread quite often, so make sure to go check out his thread here!

~ LazerEagle1


Suggestion Spotlight
Chemistry -- the indoor man’s favorite explosive !!SCIENCE!! Psuedoboss has introduced a way to experience this in Starbound under the audacious title, “Chemistry: infinite, procedurally-generated compounds.” This suggestion, delivering on its copywriter-worthy title, is based on a very simple premise: mix stuff to do stuff.

The average Starboundian would start out with any random set of materials and mix them together in the appropriate crafting station. These would turn into any of a few base chemicals. So we have several of these -- let’s say five, for discussion’s sake. You would be able to mix these five together to produce any of a combination of five times five -- 25. But this is where the kicker is: you can mix these new chemicals with the previous ones, allowing for an infinite series of newer items like an infinitely playable Doodle God.

Players will be able to explore from these chemicals and find the stranger ones the farther they go out, providing a means of exploration for those who are trapped in their arcologies due to a catastrophic AI failure. The effects of these potions will be interesting, wacky, and contradictory at times, with stuff like reversing gravitational fields, changing your size, randomly changing into items, blinding, healing and invincibility, to name a few (many of which were thought of and written by pankakeman).

Other members such as DeadlyLuvdisc commented on the article, proposing a way the chemistry system could work via seeds. Solomon Darling also commented.

A sentiment we all agree with. After all, if you’re going to be subjected to a lab accident, better to do it with friends right?


This system really allows for an incredibly versatile range of things you can do with a basic structure in the beginning. Thanks to Psuedoboss for sharing this extremely intriguing idea with all of us mere mortals. Don’t be afraid to add to the general hubbub of the thread. There’s plenty of ground we can cover within this massive suggestion.

~nababoo


Gameplay Feature
The music system in Starbound is something that really sets it apart from other games in the genre. Originally developed as a ‘secret weekend project’ it’s developed into a really unique and interesting feature. It was revealed at the beginning of the summer, but hasn't been shared much since then. Here’s a basic overview in case anyone didn't catch those updates, or just wants a refresher on how it works.

The music system allows players to sing and use instruments to create music. There are a couple ways to do this; The first is using the keyboard keys, by pressing different keys notes can be generated. The second way is using a method called ABC notation. ABC notation is a way that songs can be transcribed using simple text. That text can then be imported into Starbound as pre-composed songs. Imported songs are saved in the ‘Starbound Songbook’ (shown below)

Songs saved here can be quickly retrieved to allow playing your favorite songs anytime. There’s even a method of synchronizing notations between players to play with friends, opening up the possibility of player-made bands!! Here’s an example video the team shared of a group performance…


The key to busting out your favorite tunes in Starbound will be acquiring instruments. The developers have stated that each race will have at least one unique instrument they’ll be able to access early in game, and collecting other races instruments will be available in later game. At last count there were over 22 instruments in game already setup. A few examples;

• Trumpet
• Guitar
• Bass
• Keytar
• Flute
• Violin
• Drums
• Piano
• Ocarina
• Harmonica

Additionally players can sing if they don’t have an instrument available. Singing sounds very unique (it’s been compared to Animal Crossing) and allows players to truly "find their voice"in the vast universe of the game. We’ll close this gameplay feature highlight out with an early WIP singing video that was shared when the feature was announced. Keep on rockin’!!


- Katzeus


Science Trivia
Life Support
Hello again V^2 readers! This week is about a topic that is very important where spaceships are involved. To be able to survive in a spaceship in outer space for any length of time, you need several things.

Atmosphere: One of the most important things for humans to have is a breathable atmosphere. On earth the air you breath is recycled by plants/autotrophic organisms, removing carbon dioxide and adding oxygen to the air. But on a spaceship, there aren't any naturally occurring autotrophic organisms to process the air. Scientists are developing methods to combat this, such as using specialized algae to process the air, building efficient carbon dioxide filters, and even making small farms capable of surviving on a spaceship.

Water: Another important need for humans is water. People need water to carry on all the functions of the body. When in space, there is no source of water to be found, so the existing water must be recycled. There are mechanical and chemical methods of filtration that can remove the impurities from human waste to get water, but that isn't a very appetizing prospect and furthermore isn't that efficient. The way that scientists are thinking of solving this problem is by using organic processes to recycle the wastes.

Food: Yeah, food is always essential. People need to eat. And dry frozen rehydrated food tastes awful. A great way to fix this is to grow your food right up in space. Have a patch of tomato plants growing in your spaceship recycling your wastes.

There is a lot of other things like radiation blocking, getting rid of dangerous fungus and microbial growths, etc. that would take too long to write here. For more information check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_support_system#Atmosphere
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/10/iss-hardware-providing-lessons-learned-deep-space-missions/

~harnackam


Question of the Week
"If you any song into the game, what song would you add, and why? Also, maybe where and when it would play. A specific NPC? A boss battle? Biome?"


Closing Comments

• Congratulations to Jonesy for being a moderator! It’s great to see one of our staff members being active in the community. Just another step towards the Age of Turtles.

Contributors
WackyWocky - Space Banana
Jonesy - Master of the Obscure Pop-Culture Reference
harnackam - The Puzzled Mind
nababoo - The Homeland
Shardival - Ink Mage
Strife - The Scriptor
MahBucket - The Unidentified Object
Katzeus - Sirius Business
LazerEagle1 - "Vote Lazer for moderator 2014" ...Nothing to see here folks.


Previous Issues
Issue #1 [] Issue #2 [] Issue #3 [] Issue #4 [] Issue #5 [] Issue #6 [] Issue #7 [] Issue #8 [] Issue #9 [] Issue #10 [] Issue #11 [] Issue # 12 [] Issue #13 []Issue #14 [] Issue #15 [] Issue #16 [] Issue #17 [] Issue #18 [] Issue #19 [] Issue #20 [] Issue #21 [] Issue #22 [] Issue #23 [] Issue #24 [] Issue #25 []Issue #26 []Issue #27 [] Issue #28 [] Issue #29 [] Issue #30 [] Issue #31 [] Issue #32 [] Issue #33 [] Issue #34 [] Issue #35 [] Issue #36

Blue’s Fanmade Newspaper Archive

 

These, a long with the daily updates.. are the highlights of my days :O

 

When describing Star-Made you misspelled "picture."

I'm definitely interested in Space Engineers now though.

 

Everyone's heard about minecraft, and most starbound fans have heard about terraria. Just saying.​

 

And this totally made ours!

 

Wait you can't invite npcs to your homeworld? I thought that it was confirmed a while ago?

 

Remember, in game development nothing is actually confirmed until release. Everything is subject to change.

 

It's great to be back in the groove and author an article for once

Yeah, congrats to everyone on this issue, and boy, that's a lot of pictures.

 

Minecraft: Upside: Tons of mods. Downside: Very boring without mods.

Terraria: Upside: Extremely fun in vanilla. Downside: Modding community is much smaller.

 

Awesome issue! Gonna be playing a few of those recommended games. StarMade looks pretty cool.

 

So much information iv missed. This might take a while to digest!