Closed playtest relating to beta release

No, no it isn't. As far as I know they've only done it twice. Once was 2012 and the second time was somewhat recently where they said a 2013 full-release is unlikely, but beta will definitely be in 2013. If waiting for this game is getting you so worked up perhaps you should find something else to do in the mean time and wait for that email saying the beta is out.

 

Tell me about one other game that is JUST like Starbound. BTW, Terraria doesn't count as it doesn't have interstellar travel.

 

Honestly, having the game released almost a year after the preorder is completely pointless and defeats the purpose of having a preorder to begin with if the game is being released a year after.

Usually games that has preorder available means it comes out atleast a month or two after preorder, so what was the point of having a preorder this early on if its going to be released late 2013/early 2014? People expect the game to be released shortly, not a year after.

At this point there are other games coming out that I'm looking forward to and Starbound is just "oh, whatever, idc". Theres no point in being excited about it anymore.

 

First of all, the preorders for Starbound allowed most of the dev team to work on the game full-time. Before that they had jobs and were working on Starbound part-time when they could. If I remember correctly, Tiy was hesitant about asking for money without having anything to give us for the moment, but a lot of people wanted to give them money anyway and it would help those dev team members who needed it be able to work on the game full-time.

Secondly, MANY games have very long preorder periods. There are already a bunch of games able to be preordered for April and May of next year, and probably some even further out!

 

The first release estimation was - end of summer 2012
The second one - end of 2012
The third one - late 2012/beginning 2013
The fourth - Q1 of 2013
The fifth - sometime in 2013

And now we are waiting for the sixth.

And these estimations were for the full version.

Edit: I'm sick of estimations

 

Hopefully you are not pointing towards it being vaporware :\

 

However, Tiy was specific (even regarding preorder reach goals for 250K, 500K and 750K) that adding new stuff to the game won't delay release because of increased efficiency of the team.
Now I wonder if they (or we) fall into a trap, and the game was actually delayed because of the preopder fundrise success. And the added features in fact taking more time and effort then they expected (and that's often the case).
Again, preorder was meant to add more content within the same release window.
Now, the team made announcements about game future availability for PS Vita and PS4, that's certainly not was in plans then preorder started. And I don't think that adding more platforms into consideration doesn't slows down the development.
Not really sure, but to some degree that can be considered as misuse of our trust (and that's more important than money). I'll not preorder more Chucklefish published games for now, think that would actually speed up the release, contrary to what it says in the text.

 

I doubt that is the case but I am not saying that you're wrong but I read somewhere (Can't remember where) That the added features for the pre-orders were not going to be in the beta when ever it's released, I'm not sure if we're both on the same page or not but if not then please be more specific. I can't say i'v been waiting as long as other people have for Starbound but I have been waiting since late may (Like I said, Not as long as other people) and I myself do get impatient for the release but complaining about a release date ain't going to make it come any quicker. I do wish the beta gets released soon but at the same time i'm quite happy to wait until they are happy with it.

 

I'm not talking about beta at all. Now this:

So, that was "even faster". Wow.

 

Sorry, Like I said I wasn't sure if we were on the same page or not. Thanks for clearing that.

 

Its 2013 for sure ( at least the beta ) So theoretically it could come out tomorrow, or in a week, or in two weeks, or on Christmas of 2013... Patience is virtue!

 

Or maybe it came out yesterday and they never told us!

 

To the guy that said that they should push a bare-bones Beta:
Tiy said that they wanted to have a good amount of content, not the bare minimum. Without content, the game would be boring.
I can't remember his exact words, but something along the lines of them wanting the game to have a certain atmoshpere and feel. There is no "feature creep", this stuff is all on the original list. Sure, some weekend projecys were implemented, but Omni has said that their list of features planned has not grown much.

 

Maybe it would be boring, but it would be entertaining at least for few minutes. Also, people didn't seem bored when played i49 demo, did they?

 

Yes, but that's not quite the point. The devs have a vision, and they want that to be the beta. Not just an hour or two of content that crashes at every opportunity.
That would probably lead to a rush of "I want my money back!" threads

 

Assume that pretty much every picture and image we've seen is in the game and you have at least one tier of items.... that's a decent amount of content.

I'm still trying to understand why it is taking so long to put tiers 2 and 3 in since supposedly that is all tiy said was needed for them to be happy about the number of items in beta.... Hmm...

they couldn't POSSIBLY be putting off programming THAT in in order to delay the release to try and feature creep more stuff in.... like poop monsters or NPC speech.

 

1) Each tier adds new elements of gameplay. That means coding, testing, bughunting, and more. Since each tier will undoubtably have a large amount of contnet, this takes time. It's not a push of
2) And how do you know that this is feature creep, and wasn't at least partially planned?
Heck, they didn't need to plan every exact detail. They wanted to have a variety of dungeons, well, the Po are part of the ongoing work on dungeons. the sewer dungeons, specifically.
NPC speech would tie in greatly to the Quest system they're developing, plus if you want to interact with an NPC, it should speak to you, not just stare blankly.

edit from Omni Q&A:
. What still needs to be done before beta release? Please try to refrain from calling something a spoiler. Use code names if you have to, but we would appreciate a little perspective.
Quite a bit. We need to gear up tier 2 and tier 3 story quests, flesh out quests in general, party mechanics. Lots of stuff. The roadmap has much of this information already. We want the universe to feel "lived in" much more than it currently does. I mean, some things that seem simple still need adding, like, "configurable keys." Or even, "gui for more options." Just a million little things to actually bring the game to a shippable level of polish, and turn it from a bunch of systems into an actual game that you can have fun playing.

 

I'd rather find an abandoned planet and build up a nice big tower or castle first before exploring for lost civilizations or other talkative people.

The point is that they don't NEED to have everything feature complete to the nines for the game to be fun. even one tier of items in game could be fun... but aside from that they have the tiers done artistically, so focus on putting and coding those into the game rather than coding NPC behaviors.

it just seems like the priorities are all garbled sometimes.

 

I can understand that. (and yes, their priorities do seem strange sometimes). I agree that full feature completion isn't needed, but many features are still incomplete, and need to be worked on for beta.

And having some logical NPC behaviour is important. In Skyrim, the stupidity of NPC dialogue can be annoying. I kill a dragon, and then approach a guard who says "What is it, dragons?" or my high elf being referred to as a nord. etc. I'd probably be annoyed if a Hylotl called my Floran a Hylotl

edit: reworded

 

I'm guessing it will be released when I will no longer have time to play it !