Vector Squared -- Starbound Community News, Issue #5

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Greetings again, fellow Starbounders, to the fifth issue of Vector Squared! In the previous issue, we covered topics like the Hylotl (aquatic race), special, metallic trees, a private Beta, more politics, and more. This time around, we’ve gone through and finished our contest-long coverage of the Hat Contest -- a news flash will show the results relatively soon. In the meantime, we have plenty to tide you over, from Chucklefish’s new website, to the Fanfiction Section’s slow and painful organization. We got slower-than-light starships, we got bacon, we got art. We have so many articles, this time around, we’re even making a Table of Contents, for easier reading.

Prepare yourselves for awesome.

Table of Contents
Hat Contest
Suggestion Spotlight -- Derelict Spacecraft
Cookin’ in Space
Chucklefish Website
Art Feature -- Christmas Wallpaper
Friday Monsters (With Interview)
Avian Armor and Armor Tiers
The Star Archives -- Fanfiction Compilation
Interview on Community Fanfiction
The Release Date Issue
Fanfic Review -- 2075
Corporation Politics
Science Trivia
Q&A
Closing Comments and Credits

The long-awaited hat contest is now over! Thanks to all the community members who participated, giving their blood, sweat, and tears to make an epic hat for all the community to enjoy. By the time that this newspaper publishes, the hat contest will be over. However, judging will end on the tenth -- about a day after this issue. Expect a news flash then!

In the meanwhile, congratulate all your fellow forum members. With all those excellent entries, it’ll be quite difficult to be the judges, I imagine.
~Nababoo

Suggestion Spotlight
This suggestion is a very creative idea. It revolves around the concept of abandoned ships, and all the possibilities that may lie within its time-battered hull. These relics may hold spooky surprises, or perhaps some grand treasure you were supposed to collect an hour ago. This idea is a staple of the science fiction genre, and one can expect it to mesh well with the atmosphere of Starbound.

This suggestion also gives plenty of potential options to the player. The ship may contain sleeping colonists, who can be used for whatever nefarious purposes you may ever wish for. Alternately, you can be a good person and send the ship (after retrofitting it, a difficult task) and send them off to be a colony.

Essentially, this is an idea of a space dungeon, filled with many astro-themed creatures and dangers. It would certainly spice up the space travel to find this monument and get your ship stranded in the middle of nowhere. Then, you’ll have Reimburst to thank for it
~Nababoo


News Flash -- Hat Contest Winners Released!


Ladies and gentlemen, according to one of Tiyuri’s recent tweets, it seems that Starbound now has a new feature ---> Cooking! That’s right, get ready to roast some bacon and prepare for some universal fine dining! From lone wolves to community leaders, everyone needs to eat! Get your campfires ready and your knives sharpened... It be cookin’ time!
~Keeper
Source: https://twitter.com/Tiyuri/status/277538155828236288


Our Overlords Above, Chucklefish, has finally created a website for all their world-domination purposes! It’s a bright and spunky place, with that pixelated art style we all know and love. It’s wonderfully presented, too. There’s no visible text-options or anything as bland as that. Instead, there’s little secrets hidden around the page, useable by clicking

Hopefully this will bring some sort of future teasers to us, and/or give us any news on the development of the games under Chucklefish’s banner.
~Nababoo


The Starbound Forum members have come up with a lot of cool stuff. There’s around ten separate sub-forums dedicated to creations. Each one is filled with magnificent art, writing, and media. But THIS is quite possibly the best art of the Christmas season. An 1800X900 resolution wallpaper including the entire Chucklefish team celebrating Christmas in their own way. This huge project, made by WackyWocky, is rife with easter eggs, funny little quirks, and best of all, is completely free!

So hop on over to the thread, give WackyWocky a like, and download his fantastic work. Have a happy holiday season, or at least...have a great start to a happy holiday season. I dunno.
~Mercenary Lord


This thread’s been lying around the forums for quite some time now, and it’s about time Vector Squared turned its attention to it. So basically this thread showcases the many possibilities that may rise out of the random generation code. It certainly hasn’t disappointed yet -- all the monsters displayed have a good, creative twist to them, and some laughs along with the bunch.

Be sure to give your support to the devs on the thread! They’ll appreciate your donated mead, surely. We’ve also interviewed forum member Breather for his thoughts on this matter.

What effect do you think the Friday Monsters has had on the community? Add to its sense of excitement? Deflate hope?
I think it's mostly added excitement, even though a lot of the monsters have the same basic shape. The devs however really came through and have shown quite a few original and hilarious mobs!

What do you think the monsters reflect about the nature of the monster generator?
It shows that the generator can really put some good combinations together. All the randomly generated mobs are very unique and go really well together.

Are you anticipating the monsters in particular? What interesting combinations do you hope to see?
Absolutely! I'm really excited to see what monsters I can find on different planets. I'd really hope to see some bigger more vicious monsters.

What’s your favorite monsters so far, and why?

It's hilarious.

Interview conducted by Nababoo

Avian Armor and Armor Tiers
Last week, we saw the ‘leak’ of special racial armors. This week, WockyWacky shared with the community a picture from Tiy himself, showing a first look at the Avian armor. Now, according to the grapevine, the armor shown is only the first tier of several. What’s more, the armor is being worn by a robot. If there were any doubts about the ability to wear other racial armors, they are gone now. The armor itself is pretty neat, too, sporting a nifty feather.

Tiy confirmed that higher level tiers will have wings. Wings. This is yet another lovely surprise from Chucklefish. More and more is being brought to light. One such detail is armor tiers. Shared by Stompopolos, we now know, although this is not set in stone, that there may be ten tiers of racial armor, for EACH race. That’s sixty special armors, along with armor from shops, special unique armor, and procedurally generally, we’re looking at easily a hundred or more distinct armors. This is gonna be good.
~Mercenary Lord


This thread not only has an impressive name, but it will soon revolutionize the Fan Fiction section. It is a compilation of all the pages and stories in the section, allowing for easy access, good recommendations, and more importantly, a centralized location from which to read all the good works of text-art out there. This amazing thread was made by forum member Galactic Mindswipe -- be sure to give him a thanks for making such an effort.

The Star Archives is going to be updated as soon as Galactic manages to fix some technical issues -- after that, expect the war forges of the fanfiction writers to spring into life. Hopefully, this will increase community awareness of this often-neglected section, and make a user-friendly environment.
~Nababoo


An interview with forum user Shark on the topic of the Fan Fiction section.

Q: What impression does the fanfiction section have on you?
A: I really love reading all the stories that the members write for the fanfiction section. I'm going to be honest, though- It's a bit overwhelming! So many great stories to read, I mean.

Q: Why do you think people are writing about Starbound, even though it has yet to be released? Is it just all speculation?
A: I think the possibilities involving Starbound's plot are in great quantity. We haven't heard much about the "story within a sandbox", and I think that's what is really making writer's minds wander. So, yes, I suppose some of it could be speculation. Though let's not forget how fun it is to write Sci-Fi.

Q: Are there any notable stories, or any influence the fanfiction section has had on you?
A: While I cannot quite name any specifics, (mostly because I can't decide which favor the most) I think everything in there is really unique and special. I woudn't be able to count the number of fanfiction threads I've read, and they're all great. I actually started a fanfiction there, once, but I just kind of forgot about it due to the craziness of life.

Q: What hopes do you have for the fanfiction section?
A: I'm excited to see what writers come up with after Starbound is actually released, and the plot is revealed. That is when the real "fan-fictions" will be written. People will start taking characters from Starbound (perhaps even the developers) and putting them into their own little scenarios and adventures. Stories like that are just really cool, in my opinion.

Well, that was quite a quaint interview. Do you feel the same, readers? Feel free to post your opinions below.
Interview conducted by Nababoo


Recently, there have been several topics and posts created by people who can’t wait to get their hands on the game and are demanding a release date, not only in these forums, but also in other social networks, such as Facebook. We can understand this eagerness. After all, Starbound does look very promising! However, does this pressure coming from the audience carry a negative connotation?

One thing that Chucklefish does quite successfully that, unfortunately, many other enterprises do not, is establish a relationship, a bond, with us - their potential customers. We can communicate with them, present our issues, voice our suggestions and such. In turn, whenever they find the time, they’ll give us feedback. This extremely strong bond is beneficial to both the company and customers and, as such, they have more than earned our respect.

It has been stated that the developers require time, with no extra pressure besides the one that they already have (after all, their lives are intertwined with this project) and Starbound will be released when they believe it has reached that state. Not only has a release date not been shown because the extra pressure will be transformed into an obstacle, but it is simply not known yet when it will be ready.

We do not know the release date, but what we know, though, for sure, is that the developing team is doing its best to bring us a fantastic product that will definitely justify the wait. We just have to keep on playing our part and remain patient.
~Keeper

2075 - A Short Story​

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Welcome back, everyone, to the Fanfic Review. I’m Merc, your host, and today we’re taking a look at a piece of work by AstroBlast, titled ‘2075’. Now, strictly speaking, the story isn’t exactly Starbound related, but I don’t care. I’m not limited to Fan Fictions, and the story is close enough to Starbound that I’m going to review it anyway. This story is good. Really good. Aside from present tense diction, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and the occasional error, this story holds a respectable amount of water.

***​

Our story begins with an unappreciated Astronaut with a master’s degree in Geography, Jason. Limited to occasionally helping around the spaceship, known as Sirius, and making sandwiches for the others, Jason doesn’t exactly have the best job. He and the rest of the crew, have been in space for a long, long time, and Jason is sick of it. Thankfully, however, the journey is almost over, and the crew is getting ready to explore.

The ‘novel’ grammar is steady here. I will continue to state my ridiculous infatuation for attractive wording, and this story is well formatted and easy to read. That’s the first check for me, grammar wise. NOTE: Fictional stories do not usually have ‘technically’ perfect grammar, like the kind you would learn in school. This is good. Stories with ‘perfect’ grammar mostly read boring, like textbooks. Characters should talk like real people, and the narrator’s wording shouldn’t be text book, either. 2075 pulls this off well, for the most part. A few words are misused, and sometimes the characters seem to be kind of stiff because of their speech, but other than that, it’s quality work. Props for that.

Spelling is great. The only misspellings I found were intentional for effect. I had no moments where the story was ruined by a misspelling or lacking a comma, which is always nice. There were a couple places where punctuation was off, but it was almost perfect, over all. Well done, indeed.

Intrigue. His is a major point. I definitely was pulled in, I’ll say that. I wanted to finish it. However, I was not holding my breath at every turn. I even made some hot chocolate downstairs in the middle of reading. I was going to finish it, but I wasn’t sucked in and held there without exception. Especially near the end, the story rushed. In the span of less than five hundred words, things went from pristine to hell, and I lost some of my interest as things sped up. All in all, it isn’t bad, but it was a little disappointing.

The characters were sort of a letdown, as well. I felt some empathy with the protagonist, but I barely knew who any of the characters were. They didn’t really strike a chord with me, nor do I think I’ll remember them very long. The characters make the story, so this is kind of a big deal. I just didn’t really connect with any of them.

And finally, lasting effect. This story had the potential to stay with me for a good deal of time, but the rushing near the end made me rush over it. I didn’t absorb it as much as I could have. Sad to say it, but the lasting effect really wasn’t too much with me. That isn’t to say I won’t remember it: it’s a great short story. I just won’t remember as much of it as I could have.

***​

2075 is a good story. You should definitely read it. Of course, there were some problems here and there, and the characters were a bit unremarkable, but all in all, it is a very nice work.

As a short story, I won’t be rating each part. Therefore, only the other scores remain.​

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GRAMMAR: 9/10​

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SPELLING/PUNCTUATION: 10/10​

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INTRIGUE: 7.5/10​

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CHARACTERS: 7.5/10​

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LASTING EFFECT: 8/10​

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FINAL AVERAGE: 8.4/10​

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~Mercenary Lord

Corporation Politics
It’s been quiet recently. Either that, or our corporate informant has been hiding information from the mass media... well, anyways, no major conflicts in the Corporation world. At least the end of the universe has been delayed, one may say.

Well, ahem, anyways... several new corporations have sprung up! Welcome to the community, Saint Industries, Haest & Settler’s, and SpacePanda Corporation. Let’s hope you spice things up, somewhat.
~Nababoo


The weirdness of the quantum world is well documented. The double slit experiment, showing that light behaves as both a wave and a particle, is odd enough – particularly when it is shown that observing it makes it one or the other.

But it gets stranger. According to an experiment proposed by the physicist John Wheeler in 1978 and carried out by researchers in 2007, observing a particle now can change what happened to another one -- in the past.

According to the double slit experiment, if you observe which of two slits light passes through, you force it to behave like a particle. If you don’t, and observe where it lands on a screen behind the slits, it behaves like a wave.

But if you wait for it to pass through the slit, and then observe which way it came through, it will retroactively force it to have passed through one or the other. In other words, causality is working backwards: the present is affecting the past.
~The Internet


Q: What metal do you imagine would be strong enough to withstand the pressures and turmoil of Starbound space conflict?
A: Post in the thread! For teh lulz, as my colleagues would say.

Closing Comments

• This newspaper is certainly going well. Show your appreciation towards the staff members in any way possible, and give them some fuzzy joy as a reward for all their suffering
• Thank Mercenary Lord for a bunch of those banners! They add quite a nice touch...
• As this is getting to be very difficult to do every week, we want more writers -- your talent is needed!

Staff
Nababoo -- Manager/Writer
Keeper -- Wordsmith
That Guy -- Scientific Consultant
Galactic Mindswipe -- Typer of Corporate Truth
WoxandWarf -- Artisan of the Arcane
Mercenary Lord -- Lector Ficta

Credits
Mercenary Lord -- Banner and Banners
Breather -- Interview
Shark -- Interview

Previous Issues:
Issue #1 [] Issue #2 [] Issue #3 [] Issue #4

 

This is getting long.

 

It's getting hard. Really hard...

We need moar writers.

 

thanks for the review, I will definitely use this to edit the story.
And for any readers who might be disappointed by the abrupt ending: remember - it was a 5 page limit! (on Word).

 

Wow, this is getting really good!
Q&A.
A metal that would survive the turmoils would have to be strong, flexible, not brittle, does not rust quickly, light.
Here are some examples; Gold (Heavy, soft/flexible and can be rolled 5 atoms thick and really conductive) Iron/refined iron (Strong, reasonably flexible, rusts terribly) Copper (oxidises well, flexible, strong, shiny, conductive, weak) Overall answer, combination of all 3 +diamond.
Also are black holes going 2 be in starbound?

 

MOAR MOAR MOAR

 

Oh lordy lord. Now i see where your time goes naba. o.o

 

How do you even find the time to do this every day?

 

Well, he gets plenty of help.

 

-Sips coffee- I do always love reading this.

 

Makes for a good read.
good work as always nababoo.

as for the Q and A
aluminium (apollo 11)
with a shield made of plasma surrounding the ship for combat and asteroids in general.
(sorry about being a bit vague.)

 

I'd offer up my time. And I naturally have ideas, but I got a lot on my plate too.

Good read as always. Corps doesn't have a whole lot going on out in public there. Some stuff behind the scenes, but nothing that needs to be public at this point. Stuff's always going on at GeneriCorp, but I really don't want that to take over the news for corps. Now that my character's out of jail though (that's been fun), I'll be back doing business with everybody. Hopefully something comes up. And regarding your informant... I think he's been pretty busy too. We're all busy.

Keep up the good work Nababoo...

and the Nablets.

 

He made all the banners in a half and hour -__-

Well, hopefully next issue will be easier. Thanks for all the positive feedback, people!

 

Yes, indeed. All this feedback is what keeps me going.

yes those banners were hell to make

 

You know, like Niblets, but... Nablets.

It's kind of like the name of a band or something. "You wanted the best... you got the best! NABABOO AND THE NABLETS!" Would you prefer The Nababoo Experience? Nabbie and the Woahfish? NABA?

I could do this all day.

 

We each have our specific titles. If you wanted a collective name, I think 'Team Vector' would work well enough.

 

Very nice and interesting read, Nababoo & co. Keep up the great work!
As for the question about metal...

Nothing will ever stop the Heavy Metal! "Pressures and turmoil of the Starbound space conflict"? hah! nothing that the Heavy Metal cannot handle! \m/ *headbanging in space*

 

Somebody actually reads my reviews? *GASP*

Happy.