Info About Whats Left to be Done in the Game Released

Huh. Said nothing about the storyline either way.

 

Maybe it was implied with the stuff about NPCs, but im not sure

 

That seems correct, if a bit optimistic.

 

It's been my understanding that the storyline has always been the last thing that will be added to the game, so it doesn't need to be mentioned on a list of things that aren't implemented yet.

 

So basically the gameplay part is nearly done, but most things story or mission -wise are barely starting.

Honestly that wouldn't bother me much, I'm not expecting a Sci-Fi epic-level quality story here, and the sandbox aspect (which is nearly done) is really all I'm interested in; but other people want it.

I do have to point out though, if they needed 3-4 years to make the game conform to their vision maybe they shouldn't have announced it until a few months before release... I am curious though, what actually forced them to make the game public so long before they wanted.

Ah well, the wait goes on~

 

Wow that's a lot of features to work on. I'm happy to see they have so much done at this point, it seems like just touching up or finishing off everything they have now, so hopefully we can see this before summer.

 

Universe generation sounds like it will be amazing. Atmosphere will be deep and details will be layered. It will be so much fun to explore, and also to build on these planets. You may not spend much time on each one, but other people might find the remains of whatever little bits you leave behind. Navigation looks beautiful as well, and the fact that you'll see the actual solar system in the background while playing is so cool. Finished.

Weapon generation is probably going to be a strong point of the game. I have a huge thread about the subject, but I have no doubt in my mind that there will be a wide array of unique weapons and combinations of mods that will make them very fun to collect and use. 1 week and it should be good, longer if they can even manage to think of more to add.

What he says about adding behaviors to NPCs and making them scale better sounds a lot like making good mob A.I. so that they are easy to dupe and predict. The fact that they are putting thought into this is very encouraging, because having a wide variety in enemy behavior is crucial in combat focused games. 1-2 weeks, but I wouldn't mind them taking their time here.

Farming is done. Building is essentially done. Cooking is done. Water physics are done. Sand physics are done. Explosion physics are done. All of these are obviously important, but I don't worry about them too much. It is nice to know that they are out of the way, and they look good from what I have seen. For some reason he didn't mention Lighting, which from what I gather is functional and beautiful but could be streamlined more. I don't think they'll worry about this unless they have free time after everything else. Days at most.

Adding in additional dungeon rooms and villages will probably be simple but time consuming. The developers might just be tired of building so much stuff, though, if that is possible. As long as there are a lot of possible rooms, I'll be very happy. The key is that good dungeons have a wide variety of sizes and shapes to the rooms, and the rooms should not repeat often enough to be noticable. Villages also need good variety, but the NPCs will probably help a lot with that as well. 2 weeks would generate plenty of content, if they really focus on this and want it to shine. Otherwise, updates could easily expand on this if they want to cut corners.

I have no idea how long it would take to deal with the "ship leveling system" in code. It doesn't sound complicated, but that is probably because I haven't really heard much about it. I'm sure the crafting system will be fine, but I have more fun scavanging for stuff in dungeons so I don't really care that much about it. Days? A week, maybe? What does revamping crafting even mean?

The lores don't seem like they'd be that hard. For example, take random lores from a select portion that are appropriate to the threat level of the planet and the type of race that built the structures and simply insert random tidbits into the books and computers in those structures. Days, I suspect. Actually writing the lore probably takes much more time. If they want lore appropriate to specific missions that may take longer.

Shields will probably be more about balance than anything. After they code it in, the beta will iron out balance issues, I'm sure. The Pet and Vehicle stuff will probably be much more difficult. Coding the Pets in a way that makes them useful without being broken could be an issue, and how the original mob A.I. would translate over when it is tamed as a pet would have to be more complex. Vehicles will be strange and I have no idea what they will be like. I just hope they look fine when they travel over the blocky terrain. 3 weeks each for pets and vehicles, 1 week for shields and balancing efforts. That's 7 weeks.

Working on friendly NPCs, shops, and quests will be easy but very time consuming because it is mostly creative writing work. The shops might deal a lot with fair pricing of items and such, which is not too bad, but quests might take a while. It depends on whether they want to make really involved quests, or if they'll be simple fetch-quests and the like. All of the writing, including lore and dialogue, could take any amount of time, but I'd guess 3 weeks if much of it is done already or if they already have most of the ideas.

So my conclusion is about 16 weeks until release date is announced. That would be 4 months or so. They should not give out a release date until all the above is more-or-less finished, because otherwise I'd be worried about them rushing the details and not having a very polished product on release. It doesn't have to be shiny (they'll be polishing forever with updates and all) but the beta should be focused on balance and clearing up anything they may have missed, not finishing content that is incomplete.

My guess, from all this consideration, is a completed public release in late August. The beta should be at least one month, maybe two, so it might get released just before or after school starts, screwing over all the procrastinators out there. From there, I hope the first update will be within three months from then.

Just my guess. I'm far from an experienced professional, of course.

 

Thanks for posting, the wait just got bearable

 

Just looking at all the screenshots there appear to be hundreds (if not thousands) of possible things to craft.
I'm hoping the the "revamping the crafting system" includes some sort of search function or at least some kind of category filtering.
I'd hate to have to scroll through 900 items just to get to the one I want, but I'm certain they've already thought of this.

Knowing my luck, Starbound will be released the day my son is born and I'll have to choose how to spend my time between the two.

 

If they could give us brief updates like that every couple weeks or even monthly, I could live without the roadmap.

 

I like how we imagine that features get developed one at a time, back to back, and really fast.

"Bartwe, we're done with shops! We need you to write lore now!"

 

legal dispute they won there case but as a condition court said hey you guys have to reveal your project

 

It's funny you mention this because I actually was considering saying something about that in my post above. Actually, I expect the order is all jumbled up, but what I'm considering is that if you actually logged the time they spend on different objectives, it might add up to near the amount I'm guessing. Likewise, since they work as a team, some members will be working on different things at the same time, so when I say 3 weeks I don't mean one person's time, but rather 3 weeks of the team's time.

If you worked it out in individual time, an eight hour work day could be more like hundreds of hours. So when I say 3 weeks, I mean that the group of developers who work on that element will spend roughly 3 weeks of their time on that element, with a few days or hours here and there, peppered throughout the 4 month period that I'm predicting.

The only reason I didn't include that was because it seemed complicated and unnecessary to explain it to everyone, but now all the curious people will know.

 

I'm curious what forced them to make the game public before the intended time? Was it because of similar games being worked on?
It couldn't have been Signs of Life since that one was revealed (I think) in December. Crea is too different as well as Edge of Space.
There was one other sf sandbox game, can't remember the title now, but I'm sure it was announced later on as well.
Or the reason was something totally different?

 

All I hope is for the game to be finished in, or before September. I hope the game will cost less than fifty dollars. I hope that multiplayer will be great. I hope that the developers are proud of their product and themselves, are successful in their work, and that they will keep updating the game to be better. I wish them luck.

 

They've confirmed the price will be below $30, if I recall correctly and that there's a rather large plan for weekly/monthly content releases after the game's release. Judging by what they've said, they won't compromise their pride in the product to rush a release date. Really, the only thing they haven't confirmed is the release date, and that's because they don't know yet.
I think it's too soon to estimate a release date accurately. We don't know the state of their systems or how much work it'll actually take to get them up to snuff. Even the 4 months I've seen thrown around sounds pretty optimistic.

 

see here or two posts just above yours.

 

I quickly skimmed through the thread the first time and missed that. Horribly imperceptive of me.
Thanks.

 

That's why I hate these threads.Because I have to read pessimist posts.It's still possible for the game to come out in october,bud dammit,pessimism helps noone.

 

This right here is one of the two biggest bits of information i've been waiting and asking for since early january. Awesome. Not hung up on this, but i'd like to say it's kinda sad it had to come from a repost from reddit instead of on the official forums but the information is here. This is the exact stuff i wanted to hear about so i could stop wondering what is taking so long and curious as to whether or not it was worth it. NPC Behaviors? Totally worth it. The world feeling alive and like you are not the only one in it is a great feeling that almost every game falls short of. The more NPC interaction possible the better. If that is one of the things holding the game up i'm cool with this. Finishing touches on weapon things and crafting? Good.

There is only one thing i think the benefit of getting the game out there would outweigh having at release is space ship stuff. The system is awesome and all but it really does feel like the racial ships, ship battling, and all the other stuff associated with it can wait till either first major update or after beta is released to us. Besides any incredibly minute polish it's the only thing in the list that i'd not be happy to hear it is the reason we can't finally play the game.