Vector Squared -- Starbound Community News, Issue #8

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Welcome to the eighth issue of Vector Squared! In the previous issue, we covered topics such as the Holidays Contest, the possible Beta, the Community Age Poll, Clans, among others. This week, we’re bringing a slightly shorter, but still rich in content, issue. We’ll be recapping the Winter Contest, talking about Monster Sounds, the newly announced crops, as well as the Starbound Forum’s Staff Report Card. Most importantly, Merry Christmahannakwanzaakuh and Happy New Year to all of you! Enjoy your festivities, whatever you might celebrate!​

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(by blind sniper)​

Table of Contents

• Happy Holidays and a Joyful New Year!
• Winter Contest
• Monster Sounds!
• Starbound Report Card
• A Farmer’s Life
• Suggestion Spotlight
• Corporation Politics
• Science Trivia
• Question of the Week

Happy Holidays and a Joyful New Year!
Merry Christmahannakwanzaakuh, everyone! The holidays have come around, and with it, the good feelings that inevitably follow. The Vector Squared staff wishes you all a merry Christmahannakwanzaakuh and a happy new year! Thank you for sticking with us throughout our journey. We couldn’t have done it without you. Enjoy your festivities, people!

As you know, Starbound hasn’t been released this year yet, but hold onto your pants or skirts, folks, the Chucklefish group is working its scales off to bring us a fantastic game in 2013! Hip hip hooray!


Winter Contest
Now that the Hat Contest is over, it appears that the staff is ready to have another go at this kind of thing. As we said last week, there’s another contest, the Winter Holiday Contest, already in full swing. Only this time, it’s much more broad of a topic, and as a result, much more forgiving to all the other people out there; it doesn’t matter if you make a poem, write a story, or record some music! All that’s required is your kernel of creativity, and some nice touches to go with it.
There’s all sorts of interesting entries already put in place -- long poems, stories, parodies, heartwarming pixel art, screenshot covers, to name a few. This contest is really looking nice, with all the snow and santas abound in Starbound. And this is the perfect time for the well-known penguins of Starbound to make their debut appearance as well. But then of course, snow time is all the time for us folks here...
Get ready for the new storm of entries and news coverage regarding this topic. Next week, expect some features of entries that the Vector staff thought was rather nice.
~Nababoo


Monster Sounds!
Forum user Breather has shared with the community a very interesting topic about monster sounds that one may be able to encounter in Starbound. Breather has provided us a link to Sven’s blog, one of Starbound’s developers, where Sven provides an audio sample of several monster noises. What is most interesting is that the sounds in the clip were all produced by Sven himself! To quote him, 'Much to my delight, our monsters in game now sound off appropriately, and while it does feel a little weird knowing that all the sounds were ones I made by pushing my vocal chords to their limit, they seem to fit quite nicely.'

While the sounds do indeed fit game’s concept well, one can only do so much. As a result, animals sound might have to be used at a later point, just to add to the variety. Should be interesting to hear, especially when one considers that the fantastic (and creepy) sounds in the Alien series are actually tweaked animal sounds!

Keep up the good work, guys.
~Keeper


Starbound Report Card
Forum administrator mollygos has recently posted a thread where she asks for members’ honest opinions regarding how they believe the community overall has progressed throughout 2012. With the coming of the new year, it appears that they’ve made “New Year’s resolutions” regarding the community as a whole. Well, it’s nice to see that the staff is accepting feedback from the regular forum users, uncaring whether those opinions are sugarcoated or with brutal candor, though, of course, trolling will be swiftly dealt with.

So far, a lot of members have responded with positive comments, stating opinions such as “I've heard that there's an alert problem for some people, but since I'm problem-free, the only thing I can suggest is some new, not-completely-necessary improvements. For example, I like the idea of badges (...)” from AstroBlast, or “Other than that, this forum is quite nice and the overhyped criticism I've heard about seems... um, overhyped.” said by AyeAye13.

Of course, there are a few complaints here and there of minor issues. Some discussions about foreign languages being used in the forum have arisen and that topic is currently under debate. Gladly, the users’ feedback and interest coupled with the staff’s have made the thread a proper and healthy place for community and forum maintenance discussion.

Vector Squared thanks and praises the fantastic Starbound Forum’s Staff for their terrific and caring work!
~Nababoo & Keeper


A Farmer’s Life
Slaying various creatures by the hoards to near-extinction levels, plundering every container you can find like that of a ravenous thief, and building monuments that may impress even the galactic gods are all possible occupations in Starbound, and we’ve been presented with yet another: the humble life of a farmer.

At first, we only got a text-based confirmation on crops and farms, but Tiyuri recently presented us with a beautiful visual as well. As we can see by this picture, there are some terrestrially identifiable crops such as carrots and corn. If we’ll be able to encounter alien plants that we can farm, that is yet to be seen.

Sadly, we’re left in the dark as to the mechanics of the farming process, but we can see an Apex holding a scythe. The presence of such a common agricultural tool suggests that other tools - hoe, plow, watering can, etc - might be required for the full farming experience.

With cooking already a confirmed feature it will be interesting to see how crops will tie into this. As for the rest, we’re forced to fight the all too familiar enemy Time before we can see anything else! So until then, Starbounders, be content in the fact that soon you can put your digital feet into some digital soil and grow some delicious digital plants!

P.S., head on over to a recent discussion thread regarding crops and farming, started by our very own Keeper.
--Strife


Suggestion Spotlight
Are you power hungry, always craving for more and more power to go to your head, but are also very environmentally conscious? No worries, Mokunen has you covered with a brilliant idea inspired by blind sniper.

All those fantastically beautiful plants that sit around may make your air smell fantastic, but how about those lazy bums help you with your machines! Essentially, that is what these Power Plants will do. With genetic manipulation and electrical wiring that fringes on nano-technology, he suggests that a plant’s photosynthetic process be tapped into producing energy that will be harnessed into a useable power source.

What does this mean for us Starbounders? If such an idea were used, it may be possible to build an entirely ecosystem-friendly base! Without most of the nasty metal that stands out like a sore thumb in the plant ecosystems.
--Strife


Corporation Politics
Chaotic Roleplay

Lurking in the depths of the Corporation Section are a breed of forum posters quite unlike the kind that scurry about any other section of the Starbound forums - the Roleplayers. Other roleplay sections do exist, but Corporations just happen to be Starbound’s own game-related roleplaying, despite the fact Corporations will likely not be in the game itself (at least not on release).

Unfortunately, activity in this area has plummeted considerably since it was created, only experiencing a handful of posts per day. Everyone has their reasons for abandoning their roleplaying endeavors, but a few reasons come to surface as being more common than others.

Boredom - probably the number one killer of any fun activity, because no matter what you do, eventually you’ll grow tired of it. However, most people get bored frequently because they cannot find engaging and interactive roleplaying with other Corporations. A possible solution for this is also a solution to another big problem.

Organization. No matter what event or activity is going on, even minimal organization can help things move forward. Sadly, the Corporation section doesn’t really have any sort of planned direction, with events and pixel value being a huge mess. Certain people have tried to help remedy this, such as the Acknowledged Corporation List and the seemingly defunct Corporation Politics Meeting, with only a short-lived success.

After a bit of investigating, some individuals seem to have a plan. One group is working on a sort of reference guide for the general value of certain items and services in pixels. In this guide, each entry will be listed as to what the average “market value” of the item or service is, and what people can expect to get from it. Note that people can set their own personal value as lower or higher, this reference guide will just act as a sort of corporate standard for any business that wishes to participate.

With projects such as that on the way, it’s possible we’ll see a more organized and thriving Corporation section in our community. If you have any plans or ideas to help the Roleplay community, let us know!
--Strife


Science Trivia
A Matter of … Fact?

What confounds scientists these days are a multitude of very interesting questions, but one in particular is “Why do galaxies spin at such great speeds?” By itself, the question doesn’t seem to be all that remarkable, but it has been asked due to a startling observation: galaxies spin at a speed far greater than that caused by the observable mass. The relevance? Mass in the universe is much greater than we currently thought.

However, we’ve accounted for all known, directly observable mass, so there must be a kind of mass that we cannot see. It has been given a name, Dark Matter. It is hypothesized that dark matter is a currently unknown type of subatomic particle that accounts for more than 80% of the universe’s total matter.

What makes dark matter so hard to find is that it neither emits nor absorbs electromagnetic radiation, including visible light. Due to still being theoretical, the properties of such a strange type of particle are hypothesised, but still unknown. One such property is that it is so small, it can pass through objects without any direct interference. Fortunately, that may be the key for discovering dark matter!

Two proposed methods of detection use this theory to try and find such an elusive particle. Both take place far underground in shielded laboratories to try and reduce “background noise”. Using cryogenic detectors, one such method measures the heat produced when a particle smashes into an atom. The second method uses noble liquids and how a particle creates a type of light called scintillation light when a particle strikes the liquid. Testing has garnered interesting, but so far inconclusive, results.

So are there tons of tiny dark matter particles flying around through the universe? There are other theories that account for universal mysterious and do not involve the existence of dark matter, but they are not as widely accepted.
--Strife


Question of the Week

Q: What new holidays festivity would you like to see celebrated?
A: Make up your own festival and tell us what it is about!


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Staff
Nababoo -- Manager/Writer
Keeper -- Wordsmith
Mercenary Lord -- Lector Ficta
That Guy -- Scientific Consultant
Strife -- Mysterious Stranger
Slaticus -- Author from the Shadows

Credits
blind sniper -- Banner

Previous Issues:
Issue #1 [] Issue #2 [] Issue #3 [] Issue #4 [] Issue #5 [] Issue #6 [] Issue #7

 

You guys are putting these out so fast!

 

molly is female ._.

 

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You had me at Sharchestra. ​

Really digging the new banner btw. :U

 

Another great issue, and I say keep them coming!

There seems to be a formatting issue between some of the links you posted and the text that came before it. It doesn't really bother me, but I thought I would mention it.

 

Oops, I apologise. Thanks for the correction.

Yeah, it's a little bit tricky to mess around with it in the Starbound forums. Not always what is typed into the box is what shows in the preview, so there was a lot of checking back and forth. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out 100% flawless. Been editing it, though, so it should be better. And thank you! ^^

 

Yeah, I have a lot of problems when I make longer posts too. When I was making my contest entry I had to edit it several times just to get the spacing right, so I understand how that goes.

Besides, it is I who should be thanking all of you for such a fantastic piece of work!

 

Yeah... it's always a pain to change that stuff. This should prove to be a nice learning experience for our comrade Keeper, though.

*hinthint*

 

Did some more editing again. Should be more forum-like now. :alien:

 

Looks much better now. To make the links from dark blue to the customary shade, just "space" in front of them. That should fix 'em up quick.

 

There we go.

 

Now we just have to change the title to fit all the others.

"Vector Squared -- Starbound Community News, Issue #8"

 

It's almost harder to post this than to create it.

I'm afraid we'll need a moderator for that, though, as titles can't be edited at the moment by regular forum members.

 

I have experience from all the writing I've done. It's so frustrating in the beginning

 

It's the new tiny violin I use to mock people.

 

Writing like this is so official! It's like reading a newspaper, keep up the good work!

 

Q: What new holidays festivity would you like to see celebrated?

A: The celebration of the end of a planets life span. There's nothing more beautiful then seeing your planets final moments. End of The world day~... Well there's absolutely nothing wrong with speeding up the process.

 

Really cool stuff man. Great job!

 

A rather morbid... holiday...

Sounds fun