Important BETA RELEASE DISCUSSION - DECEMBER 4TH (*ALL* beta discussion goes here. Other threads deleted)

I am so hyped up for Starbound! It looks like a mix of Terraria in the retro-ish type feeling, with some elements of roquelikes and games such as FTL in my opinion. FTL and Terraria are some of my favorite games so I'm excited! Keep up the great work Tiy and the Chucklefish gang! -Shanked-Oh god I just farted because of excitement-U

 

Forum keeps turning these into media links but, go to past broadcasts on these channels.

They are the only ones that remain officially up unfortunately.

This has quick links to those developers who stream and show if any are (its random.)
http://starbounder.org/Main_Page

Bartwe does the most regularly. Check out the reddit, as an automated bot will usually let you know when he is.
http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound

 

Info from the tail end of one of those streams, from Tiy (please correct me if I misheard this, or took it in the wrong context!):

Basically, he said that the Beta wasn't out because there's still a bunch of stuff in it that is incompletely implemented, and just crashes the game when you touch it/use it/break it/fix it/drag it/drop it/zip/unzip it.

In my subjective opinion, "Too much broken stuff" is, as far as reasons to delay release go, not a bad one.

 

I just wanna play amazing games ;~; is that a crime?To wish to play Starbound?To hope?To dream?

 

Yup. People thinking it looks playable from what the devs are doing need to consider the possibility that the devs, who obviously know what is playable/not playable, will avoid the broken bits during playthroughs because they already know they're broken.

These updates are still saying they're fixing things. I know it's not popular to listen to the devs when they say things, but they wouldn't say that unless there was actually something to fix.

 

I think its more likely Tiy is a perfectionist and doesn't want to release an incomplete game, while a lot of it already is playable. Of course, being a perfectionist isn't a bad thing. For better or worse, the beta is (finally) less than two months away! Huzzah!

 

I think a fair number of people just don't care either way about when the beta comes out and missed deadlines and stuff, they assume we're gonna get to play it eventually and are cool with that. It's just since these people are so ambivalent towards the state of things you don't hear from them much, so shout out to them.

 

I don't understand CF's process here at all. If the goal is to release a beta for fans to have an early look at the game, why keep adding features which then requires more bug fixing? From what I've been reading over the past few months, a lot of people just wanted a version to get a feel for the game. Something to just play around with until the final version is completed. But for some unfathomable reason it seems like CF does'nt want to release the beta at all, they drop hints that it's coming but then they take weeks to add additional features which require more and more debugging. Part of the fun of playing a beta is seeing some of the more ridiculous things that happen with buggy game play and un-tweaked settings.

I'm very disappointed with how this beta has worked. I've been teased for weeks and months on end, 2014 is fast approaching and we still don't have a commitment from CF on when they're going to deliver on their promise. With just under 6 weeks left in the year, I would think someone on the development team could speak with confidence about a firm date on at least the beta.


Show some respect to the people who have willingly supported this project.

 

This ^^

I dont care if there are still bugs in the game/beta. You should finally release the beta which you promised for this year. We have waited so long and supported the development .. not to speak of the simple amount of testing-hours you could get with the release of the beta. You will get so much buxfixing input that you can work another 6 month with that.

 

Watch one of Bartwe's streams sometime. He's doing nothing but bugfixing. No new features or any crap like that, just bug fixing. And when he plays, he has to be careful not to do stuff that'll cause an instant crash to desktop. Hell, he had a stream earlier with the developer of Risk of Rain, and he had to constantly point out, "don't touch that, if you activate it, the game will crash because it's not properly implemented yet." I'd hardly call that "adding features that then require more bug fixing."

 

Those streams from Tiy, fyi, are fairly old. They don't represent where the game is now at all.

Even if they did reflect the current state, betas are meant to be buggy and crash and all that. It IS a testing stage. You are arguing the game has to be mechanically sound near one hundred percent for beta when that simply isn't the case. When that absolutely wont be the case anyway according to info from the developers themselves that says the game will be buggy and crash often.

 

Don't be in a rush, beta! We understand you need to prepare for good!

 

While I understand this, I really don't see the issue with putting out a "broken" beta unless they were only releasing the beta for hype/publicity purposes. Which is feasible.

 

Beta.

Beta here? Beta where?

Beta not here. Beta. Beta. Beta.

Betta beta? No betta beta than beta.

Pls. Beta.

Thank you for your time. (beta)

:catface2:

 

Honestly I think they should put any new features they are working on on hold for a minute, fix the game breaking bugs with the current features, and release the beta. When they do release new features via update, bugs for it will be found a whole lot quicker due to community assistance, which means it can be fixed quicker, which means the game can be finished sooner. Right now I am having trouble finding a reason as to why they aren't releasing it.

 

That's exactly what they're doing right now.

Just some additional thoughts of mine, since I rarely write walls of text:
They won't release first beta stage till all of already implemented things start work as they should. No one wants to keep crashing to desktop every ten minutes or lose any in-game progress. Even if there are tons of people who don't care if it crashes all the time and stuff, there are people who won't deal with it (some percent of players will start whining about money they wasted, spreading words that the game is absolute crap and unplayable all over the Internet). I remember one person sharing his thoughts on some anonym forums about leaked alpha version (don't even ask about it, it's like more than half year old thing), so he whined about game is crap, most things won't work, "you can even build outside of spaceship", that sort of things. Don't pretend you played a lot of games which had bugs and crashes everywhere, because most betas are absolutely playable and bugs are pretty rare. You don't need to prove me anything here, I don't care, honestly. Everyone want to feel Starbound gameplay with their own hands, no doubts, but you better don't mess with glitchy Terminator, if it doesn't sure you're John Connor (yeah-yeah, I suck at metaphors). Just think about game you already love and wait so long, I bet you won't some people saying bad things about it everywhere, right?

Too long; didn't read:
You can't change anything anyway, so let it go and let Chucklefish keep doing their great job

 

It's been said often enough before, and I know that your personal opinion of a beta is that it should be an early release where the devs are still adding features, but CF clearly aren't doing that sort of beta. The sort of beta that they have envisaged is one where they have essentially finished the features of the game and fixed the bugs that they can find on their own, and beta is for wider testing to find the bugs that aren't obvious to the devs. Which is a classic beta.

The only point there would be in releasing a game with bugs that are known to the devs is to allow players to play the game earlier. While they are busy fixing known issues, there is no benefit to the devs in releasing the beta. While there might be more reports of bugs if they released the beta now, they are already fixing as many bugs as they can, and those reports wouldn't help them until they had finished fixing the bugs they are currently fixing anyway. At which point they might as well have waited to release the beta, which is what they are doing. (It sort of sounds like circular logic, but it isn't, and it does make sense!)

 

Well, they have 5 weeks until the end of this year, so i think the beta will be released around 22-28 of december (maybe the 24)

 

I'd be surprised if it's cut that close to the end of the year. I'm not expecting it to be later than mid December at the latest.