It's interesting to compare the development time between Starbound and Terraria

Looking at the Terraria wiki page I was surprised to see that the first build of Terraria was released in about 4 months with the work of 3 people. Of course as most Terraria fans are aware the game continued to be developed and updated until it developed into the title it is today. So it makes me wonder why the development cycle of SB is so much longer considering the fact they are pretty well staffed and funded. Is it due to the procedural generation mechanics or is there some other factors that's lengthening the process

 

didnt it take like 3 years for terraria 1.1 and 1.2 to come out

 

you beat me too it took two years and the rage that took place between those updates

 

I think deciding to rework the progression system is likely why the game is taking longer than expected, and considering they decided to rework it based on player feedback, I'm totally ok with that (and I didn't like the tier system to begin with anyway). Comparing it to terraria is hard imo, they are different games, different development teams, and have/had different goals and are/were subject(ed) to different external factors. I don't think the procedurally created universe makes THAT much of a difference, it's really just the same thing as terraria except planets don't have oceans at each end and have less biomes. I think the amount of art assets probably took longer though, but from what I understand that is the easiest part of development so in the grand scheme of things it might not have made much difference.

 

Yep, I see a lot of people with rose tinted glasses about Terraria. Its an excellent game, but I saw just as much "DEVS HAVE ABANDONED THE GAME" posts about Terraria as I do about Starbound.

 

Procedural generation is actually harder than manual generation.

Manual: A game dev can draw a dungeon by hand, knowing exactly what they want it to look like, and that will end up exactly as he draws it.

Procedural: A game dev must create a program that can draw a dungeon procedurally, hoping that it looks like what they want to but that it can also be changed (dimensions, color tint, contents) when given different parameters or even when called a second time.

The problem is that drawing something yourself requires no translation, but telling a computer how to draw it DOES require a translation, and that layer of separation is why procedural generation is so much harder.

Oh, there's also scope. Terraria has a much smaller scope than Starbound, even if it has more content right now (duh, it's a finished and polished game, Starbound isn't).

Essentially, Starbound's goal is to make every planet into Terraria, while Terraria's goal is to create a single Terraria.

 

i haven't checked the terraria forums in awhile but I am sure the rage to get the lunar update is building I do remember some posts that constantly ask when the next update is they get the same response they get here.
It will come when it comes plus with terraria you're lucky just to get a peek at what they are doing (dang you Chrowno and your blurry peeks at 1.3) and it hasn't been updated since may . I decided to peek my head into the steam forum of terraria and the update question gets asked a lot gets the same answer.

 

well tecnicly he did abandon the game (it was finished at this time) but his wife then wanted him to keep working on it
(thats when we got 1.2) but thats a topic for another forum

 

Wife > Husband. This is an important factor to remember in every single forum of life, because it is inescapable and always happens.

 

Yeah, but they DID release the full game first. Terraria had no Napoleonic plans as Starbound, it was supposed to be very simple game. It all come after 1.0 of Terraria was released. And Red had no obligations to continues work after bugfixes in 1.0, everything after and till now is an extra... Starbound is exactly opposite.

You know it. i know it, looks like Blizzard (hint, D3) and some other developers know it, but for some reason CF team didn't took it into account enough.

 

Not only that but there are a lot of little things we don't even think about, Starbound needed to have an engine built capable of tossing together not just random biomes but also solar systems and universes. A bulk of the 2 years may have gone into getting the engine to operate properly. There is also the modular design aspect, Tiy wanted the game to be completely modifiable and for the game to function as more of an add on to the engine (Basically like the bundled game that comes with a console to show it off) this means you can't just slap things in always, sometimes you have to rethink a solution that does not require hard coding. Minecraft was built with modding as an afterthought and now they are having to go back and redo the various systems to make them easier to modify by removing how much of it is hardcoded into the game and thus requires editing game files to change.

 

Didn't the dev at one point say he was only going to continue development on consoles?

 

It has since been proved untrue obviously, but I really do feel like he said that at one point.

 

I think kinda, I think Red said that the Xbox version of Terraria was going to get updates after the PC version since it was fairly new, that and 505 games was going to be the ones making the content.

 

Development had stopped on the PC version. It was expected to be the end of it. 1.2 was something that came after but was not originally planned for the PC. The game was "complete" before 1.2.

 

Comparison: One is a game. One is a Cash grab.

 

*eyeroll*

The worst part was when they repeatedly added new and interesting content to their already finished game at no cost. I hate regular updates and content, hence my undying love for Starbound.