Info About Whats Left to be Done in the Game Released

Tiy posted on Reddit today in response to some Reddit users about stuff thats left for release.

(It was in response to some people saying that it look like devs are having fun playing the game instead of it just getting released, frustrations, tension, so on and so on.)

Heres the raw paste text:

From Tiyuri:

"We certainly don't intend to tease. Not in any kind of negative way. We're not trying to cause you frustration or do a "ner ner we're playing and you can't".
Honestly we would love to have people playing the game, it's the most exciting part of all of this for us. But we want the experience to be more complete. I think Minecraft got away with launching very early because it supplied people with something relatively new, tech wise. The voxel world was something people just wanted to play with, regardless of how complete the game itself was.
We really want to provide you with an experience that makes you feel as if you're lost in a huge Universe and that requires a certain level of completeness.
We keep supplying screenshots because a lot of people ask for them on a daily basis. I understand for some people they just want to wait and play the game when it's out at this point, it's a difficult balance to keep everyone happy but we're trying our best.
Whilst a lot of our shots do seem very complete, of course we're mostly showing off shots of the complete portions of the game and it's a big game.
I'm working on the roadmap in my spare moments when I'm not working on the game (which aren't many). We'll get it up there soon.
To give you a vague idea until it's up. Universe generation is basically done. (Which is by far the most time consuming part of all of this). Navigation is done, weapon generation is mostly done, NPCs work but we want to add a ton of more unique behaviours and make them scale better with the planets threat level. Farming is done. Water physics are done, sand physics are done, explosion physics are done. Building is essentially done. Cooking is done.
We need to do a few more dungeons and villages. We also need to get some parts of the ship leveling system working in code. Crafting works but we're revamping it. We need to do a lore/book reading system. We need to put shields in. We need to work on friendly NPCs/Shops/Quests some. The pet and vehicle systems need work.
We also need some time to put in more fun tech items and then theres a bunch of miscellaneous polish and whatnot.
I'm sorry it's taking a while, sadly we were forced to make the game public quite a while before we wanted to, so the wait has been long. However, It will be worth the wait I promise you."



The important bits:

"To give you a vague idea until it's up. Universe generation is basically done. (Which is by far the most time consuming part of all of this). Navigation is done, weapon generation is mostly done, NPCs work but we want to add a ton of more unique behaviours and make them scale better with the planets threat level. Farming is done. Water physics are done, sand physics are done, explosion physics are done. Building is essentially done. Cooking is done.
We need to do a few more dungeons and villages. We also need to get some parts of the ship leveling system working in code. Crafting works but we're revamping it. We need to do a lore/book reading system. We need to put shields in. We need to work on friendly NPCs/Shops/Quests some. The pet and vehicle systems need work."

 

Also heres the link to the page http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/c...this_on_the_starbound_facebook_page_d/c8uze4p

So what do you guys think? Its sounds like good news to me. At least we finally have some kind of idea to whats left.

Mod edit: Direct link to the comment for simplicity.

 

Thanks man, I was wondering how far along the devs are. This game will be awesome!!!

 

YES. this is what i have been waiting for. starbound gonna be awesome

 

Certainly an informative post, cheers.

 

Oh nice crafting is getting revamped

 

Nice

 

Phew, that's a lot of work, code-wise. Using a mix of my knowledge of software programming and the WAG strategy, I would guess at least three months. I'm glad that universe generation is done, though, that's definitely a huge chunk of the game.

 

Thanks for posting this, and thanks to Tiy for providing this information. We know asking for dates isn't really feasible, but it's at least nice to see what's done, and what's still ahead. Now all that remains is the roadmap itself, to differentiate between what needs to be done before beta, and what's waiting til after that.

 

I'm glad they're taking time to perfect everything. My guess is, we'll have people playing in June.

 

I understand why they want the game to give a complete experience.

After playing Minecraft, I've been completely against selling an incomplete game. I purchased Minecraft the day before Beta release and I wish I waited until the full version before I jumped in. I was extremely bored of the game soon after beds in Beta 1.4 were released. I tried to play the game again when the full version came out, but I didn't enjoy it at all because playing the beta exhausted my experience with the game. I wanted to move on. I wish to have a complete experience with Starbound, which Minecraft failed horribly at giving me.

Also, I do not like the idea of selling a game that's incomplete. It's like selling a car that will have its wheels built in 6 months down the line.

This explains my plan for my own project as well, which is to release an entirely free alpha build as a small taste to potential customers and not update it much after its first alpha release (other than bug and optimization fixes), then release the 10 times larger, complete game for a decent price.

 

Thats maybe a little optimism, but hey I love optimism, so I'm not gonna hate. Hopefully a May release will be possible. But I'm sure people with a lot more knowledge of coding and stuff could give a better guess. At least this also answers the question as to why we haven't seen any of the pets or vehicles in streams.

Edit: Ah. Switched your message to a June estimation. Yeah that would probably be closer.

 

If we give them a week for everything on the list, it should come out to 10 weeks before they are done.
Some of the stuff, however, seems like it would take less than a week, so I expect it to take a little bit less.

 

I think part of the reason I'm excited for the game is because of the team working on it.
I have never seen a developer - or any person really - respond to criticism so openly and calmly.
Congrats, Tiy, my respect for you just grew from 'a lot' to 'a sh*t ton'.

 

Thank you for sharing! You've made a ton of people happy today.

 

The best news from this is that it confirms that Tiy and crew have a definite sense of what they want in the game for release, and aren't constantly second-guessing themselves or adding more and more stuff in at whim.
(aimed more at the slots who keep braying about "Vaporware". It clearly isn't.)
This clearly indicates crunch-time, and we as fans and customers, need to remain patient with them.

 

Mmmm... cooking is done. I would like to taste some of that... whatever that... is.

 

I feel sorry for Tiy and the guys, they always get pestered about this kind of thing.

They're always so understanding though, just a great indie dev team in my eyes. It's nice to be in such good hands.

 

Yeah, I kind of reconsidered right after I hit the send button.

 

I'm glad we finally got some info on where they're at. Shouldn't be too long now!
I hope