What IS the Software Development Cycle, exactly?

my inner child is screaming O.M.G that would be so cool. thank you

 

He dont always work in this way, it's a developer choice. For example, in Cube World who is in Alpha, is still playable and tested by players.

 

Those terms are use loosely at best. They are.
Gmail was not 90% feature complete. It was complete. it does have more features now, but that is the natural incremental process. The beta at that time was to load test it more than anything. I don't think they sell it on the beta phase too, but they could and that is the point.
When does it go from Beta to complete? It up to the developer and how much closer to perfection do you want your product to be.

From what i saw, Starbound could be selling as a complete product in a few week if the devs want it. It would be lacking a lot of features, but could sell it as a complete game and just add more and more "content".
There are other games out there with a lot less being sold as complete games.

I understand what you are saying, but the circle is not set in stone and there is no real line where you change from one stage to the other but the ones the developers create.

English is not my first language, but i hope i can make myself understandable.

 

When used, this terminology helps clearly state the stage of development of a piece of software. Whether it is being used correctly or not, the general public seems to assume it is a metric for how 'finished' the game is. This is a very misleading notion. The very fact that any one of these phases can easily outlast the others depending on the type of game, team size during different stages, and unforeseen obstacles along the way means that attempting to judge when a game is close to 'actual' release is always going to be better left up to the devs to 'tell' you. We know only what they've told us so far, which is a LOT, about the game development of Starbound. However, I think I can safely say the information we DO have on it is less than 5% useful for telling when it will actually be ready or ready to transition to another stage, UNLESS the devs 'tell' us it is.

 

World of Warcraft's beta WAS feature complete.
It was not content complete. It isn't a problem to add more content if the actual features are done.

New features include new physics, pet system, combat mechanics, etc...
New content includes new planet types, crafting recipes, bosses etc...

I think I'll add this detail to the OP.

 

There's also the point that especially public betas might not have all things in them, not because they aren't done, but because they've been specifically disabled. If I'm not mistaken, Chucklefish trimmed down Starbound greatly when they showed it (wish I could remember where I saw this stated). Reasons for this can vary - wanting to focus bugfixing on a manageable scope is one valid reason, but so is not wanting to spoil the entire game before it's even done. Torchlight II only showed a very small area of the game in its beta, both in terms of maps/quests and even in terms of skills - with the perhaps unfortunate consequence that major game-changing elements of the game didn't get nearly the degree of testing that those initial portions did. Given how many bugs and issues were found within the content that was accessible, this is a significant concern, and it's a line that developers have to draw with care when putting out a beta or demo.

Which is another reason not to call the game "not feature complete" just because you can't get to see all of it - not only might that be only a distinction of content, but more of that content might be done than is accessible to the beta testers.

 

Considering the way this game is seemingly being developed, and the blatant lack of communal understanding about the game's location in development, it would appear that Starbound does not have a Game Design Document. That, or not everyone on the team has it. Whatever the case may be, this lack of communication and understanding amongst the team is extremely worrisome.