Dev Blog Discord Update v1.3.4 [UNSTABLE]

Discussion in 'Dev Blog' started by superconsole, Aug 31, 2018.

  1. The | Suit

    The | Suit Agent S. Forum Moderator

    That would be nice - asking for a while for a method to detect the liquid name without having to run a script through multiple arrays to compare liquid ID number with a name.

    It is kind of annoying when you want to find out what liquid is in a square and the game neutrons a number instead.
    Compounds the issue when mods alter the number order and name.
     
  2. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    Glad to hear that. :)
    Why don't you and the other modders join the Chucklefish? You know, why not just making the game content as part of vanilla version itself and not part of the mod. I think you are capable of dealing that kind of stuff.
     
  3. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Because I can't move to London?
     
  4. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    Wait, we should move to London to join them? So, if that's the case, then many modder have a hard time if they want to join the development. Sorry, I didn't know about it.
     
  5. Ragnarok10024

    Ragnarok10024 Aquatic Astronaut

    So just xbox? No switch or ps4 versions i take it?
     
  6. davoker

    davoker Cosmic Narwhal

    There are many people who do not use the type of mods such as FU (FU is not for everyone, I do not like it for example), there are people who only use some mod type interface because it is useful (such as Improve Food Descriptions), or mods that fix bugs, and there are people who do not use mods directly, prefer that the content is original CF, vanilla or whatever you want to call it.

    Starbound has several problems, there are a number of bugs, mostly small, that some modders have solved and that CF could have solved some time ago.

    I also see a problem with the language, I have said it several times, there are thousands of people who can not play this game for the language precisely, CF is literally losing thousands of sales by not putting a few languages, there are fan translations, but for the most are not complete, and as a translation leave much to be desired.

    Good example you have in this text, it probably seems that you are talking to some uncivilized Indian because you are not quite understand what you are reading xD, and let's be honest, Starbound is a game that is easy to be modified, but with languages is extremely complicated, procedural missions when translated have many inconsistencies, and this is caused by how they are made.

    Starbound needs new content urgently, nobody forces CF to do anything, they're supposed to have done what they had to do, but if you do not want to put new content, do not announce it, announce content and then cancel or pause it indefinitely is not the best idea, and more knowing that at least they could have taken something out, even if it was not enough, and in the meantime fix some bug xD

    PS:
    I come to the head ConcernedApe (Stardew Valley) and Unknown Worlds (Subnautica), several languages in the 2 games, in the case of Subnautica I know that they are translations of "collaborators", nobody pays them, they call it fan translation, but at less Unknown Worlds implement those translations officially and check that everything works as it should.

    ConcernedApe is a unique case, we speak of a game that started a single person, that has gone well and that has been able to hire translators to take it to more public, result? many sales, port to consoles, various commmunities in different forums, this also applies to Subnautica, who have seen enough support to even port it now to PS4, which was only in XONE, have already announced a free DLC with a new history in a new area, and they are giving everything (along with Panic Button) to solve the performance problems.

    That for me is doing things well, and things well done have better results, I do not despise the work of CF, I imagine they are working hard, I also imagine that after the port of XONE will update with something, but you can not neglect your current users either, they are not to blame.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2018
    Ickura likes this.
  7. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    I guess so, for now. Be patient, my friend. I believe it is not easy dealing with this kind of stuff.
    You've got a good long post over there. Yes, I guess CF needs more people. They need it, so that they can divide and manage the team to work on multiple projects. Maybe one team can handle the Starbound, while the other team can handle the other CF's games and developments. Beside that, I guess you're right if CF also needs a translator. I think it could improve their sale. The point is that CF is progressing too slow, and they need more people to progress more faster.
     
    Ickura likes this.
  8. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    @Moor Al-Malik : The problem is, though, is that a game that has already run its course and has sold most of the copies it will ever sell, it does not make much sense to go hiring people go assign to Starbound.

    In fact, we're lucky to get updates at all, because they are devoting manpower on a project that is only going to sell a few copies here and there to newcomers as time goes on, which would surely be well below the ROI of hiring new people that they would have to pay constant wages.

    One copy of Starbound is $15. Remember that Valve takes what again, at least 30% of that? So that's $10 per copy in revenue. That's probably close to what a programmer would make in one hour.

    You're telling me that you think they sell 1 copy per hour?

    EDIT: Okay, so a person usually only works 8 hours a day so... better question... "do they sell 8 copies of Starbound per day?"
    EDIT2: The problem of hiring people who are fans or modders of Starbound is what do you do with an employee that is a fan/wants to work on Starbound when you've decided to discontinue development of the game, and/or cut development of a grown game down, when said employee may or may not enjoy working on a different project?

    Let's say I'm a LUA Programmer (I'm not, but let's theorize here) and I know Starbound inside and out and they tell me to cut back to 4 hours a day working on Starbound and instead the other 4, I gotta work on, say, Wargroove. Let's say I know nothing about Wargroove and what would make for good game balance and/or I don't really know anything about its systems or how that game even works. So they'd have to teach me from the ground up about a game I may or may not even have an interest in (no offense, I'm only saying this for theoretics, Wargroove seems cool and all). Then what?

    EDIT3: They could potentially try to create a constant revenue stream for Starbound, but that would be disastrous I would think. One, the game is years old as it is, and a lot of players burned out during its rather lengthy Early Access phase, Two, the Triple A scene has already soured players towards things like DLC, Microtransactions and the like, and Three, one of the big draws to a game like Starbound, Terraria, and the like, is that indie games are usually inexpensive entertainment that you only pay once for.

    Add additional fees/things to buy on top of that and I think we would have problems.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2018
  9. Kawa

    Kawa Tiy's Beard

    If you were, you'd know it's "Lua" ;)
     
  10. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    *shrugs* Either/or...

    But yeah, I mean, I looked at lua code, and it has similarities to things like PERL and C++ but yet found it kinda confusing because it has a lot of terms and syntax I'm not familiar with.

    That, and it's been years since I touched PERL, so... I probably wouldn't remember it all that well anyways.
     
  11. 777Dan777

    777Dan777 Cosmic Narwhal

    *breathes* P R O G R E S S
     
  12. Kawa

    Kawa Tiy's Beard

    I'd hate to be this predictable but eh... the same thing holds for Perl.
     
  13. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    That is exactly what I thought before. That hiring more people will only mean more money need to be spend. But some people think that they need more people in their company, even there are some people willing to join the company with a cheap payment or no payment at all. Well, I think that is nuts, because who in the world would want to work on something complicatedly hard without no payment at all. So, the post that I post before is not all from my head, it is some people's thought that I read. But, if I am not mistaken, they do need some people that are good in pixel art and programming.
     
  14. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Perhaps for other projects, but not Starbound.

    Not really interested in semantics, everywhere I've ever saw it written, it was written "PERL" so.... *shrug* same thing, really. I studied it enough to maintain/tweak/understand a PERL/CGI-based chatroom years and years ago when those were the thing, and I studied enough of it to come up with a custom script to decode/convert ICQ .cht files to .txt when they decided to remove the chat viewer from one of their updates and I had hundreds of .cht files I wanted logs of.

    Was I ever a professional programmer? Of course not.... if I were, I would probably have remained one up to this day. I only did it on the side to tinker with stuff when the need arose.

    So yeah, not really caring about the "proper" way to "spell" it.
     
    Kawa likes this.
  15. Kawa

    Kawa Tiy's Beard

    @Xylia, I don't know where you've been looking but I think these guys would know how it's supposed to be written ;)
     
  16. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    I wasn't debating which was the proper way, I was just noting what I always saw online when I was looking for resources and such when I was studying it.

    Buuuut anywho, maybe someday I'll try the lua thing, sometime I have drive, time, and energy... which might well be never, lol.
     
    Kawa likes this.
  17. Daikon Ocelot

    Daikon Ocelot Spaceman Spiff

    I guess they are hiring for Wargroove, but it would be nice if Starbound too. The pixel art in Starbound is kinda old, especially the characters potrait, I think it needs to be renew to make it more relevant with the other CF games' pixel art.
     
  18. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    I already pointed out above why they would be unlikely to hire more people to work on Starbound... I mean, I'm not saying that I think it is entirely off the table, just... highly unlikely. If they did, it would surprise me.

    EDIT: I know it sounds like I'm being negative or snide or what-not, I'm really not -- I meant no offense whatsoever.
     
  19. Yavor

    Yavor Big Damn Hero

    Xylia I agree with you, that it would not be financially wize to hire people for Starbound, but then again, what if there is a DLC for that? (I am sorry if I missed any info on any possible DLC comments) I mean I would gladly pay again the price for the game, (and it is quite the offer too!) if that would mean more content on it, and the return of polished old content (I'm looking at the Special Monster Attacks, and big monster bosses, cuz I jost love those!). Even if it is just to revive the interest in the game, I am sure that there will be enough people to chip in, to bring back any revenue for Chucklefish (and any possible newcomers). A lot of people love this game, really! I know about 4-5 of them in my home town only, and I live in a small city in Bulgaria... so there must be a lot more, who are silent in the community, but would support the game. If there is an official statement saying that they will not ever publish a DLC, then I am sorry I've missed that.

    Furthermore, I would like to ask you, Xylia and Kawa, as one of the most active modders in the forums: What if there is a DLC or a FLC, composed of quality community content, mod packs, and everything, that CF handpics for an official part of the game? I've always wondered about that for most of the games I own. Is there any moral dilemma, or any legal problems, or anything, that would impair them from branding any mods as official part of the game? (and of course including the modders' names)

    All in all, I understand that Chucklefish are rather buzy with Wargroove, and about Starbound they are aiming for a broader audience (not just PC). However, I bet that there is much progress in that and soon (this year or the start of the next) the work will be done. And then? Is there a chance that they will actively work on Starbound updates, fixes and content again? I hope there is! What do you think?
     
  20. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Eh, I dun think that DLC would really be a wise direction to go for a game like Starbound, unless it was comprised entirely of CF's work... just too many headaches and things involved in that. And then again, you have the danger that people will just simply pirate it, as Starbound addons/mods are easily pirated unless they find some way to encrypt the assets or something.

    I know way back in Oblivion Days, it took all of days for people to pirate some of the Oblivion content because it was all packed in .esm files which were easy to move around. Maybe back then, larger downloads were difficult, but not impossible and once you had it downloaded... the game didn't know one way or the other.

    That, and how many people would actually pay for DLC? Would it be good PR for Chucklefish, an indie developer to do such a thing? etc etc. These are all things they gotta weigh. Some people might go "WTF? DLC? Terraria offers its updates for free!" or something. Or they might go "pfft, that's just tacked on stuff like the Mechs, I ain't buying that" ....

    That, and for you to really get much money out of it, say, $15... it'd have to contain nearly as much content as the base game itself does, if not moreso.
     

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