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

It's amazing how you people can complain about the mods here censoring discontent, while still going unbanned for completely failing to contribute to any topic past snide remarks and sarcasm.

Literally mind boggling the level of mental gymnastics involved. Or maybe just an incredible lack of self awareness.

 

You might be the most neutral SB forumer I know.

 

I've been careful not to be too naughty, but don't worry I've had multiple warning by the mods for my tame expressions of dissatisfaction. One of them was for "Being a jerk". lol

 

There is a reason for the amount of time terraria took though. I'm sure anyone who followed terraria from the start remembers that red left development in February of 2012 as his wife wanted him to focus on raising his child (which is completely reasonable, though the announcement did come out of nowhere). It took over a year before he came back and continued development. It wasn't so bad considering terraria was, while more flawed at the time, an actually released game. You can see this by looking at the distance between certain announcements on terraria's forums. Also note, terraria's dev team only got larger in the last year. 1.1 was released in the same year the game was, and 1.2 was released a few months after he came back to development, after the year and a half leave.

Starbound on the other hand, has been in near constant development since early 2012, and still hasn't had all that much progress made (remember, a lot of us found starbound through the "my fellow terrarian's" post on the terraria development blog around red's initial leave). The only major leaves were the 4 month move and possibly a vacation period for some of the developers, but otherwise it has been in development for a continuous 2 years, while terraria has technically a similar time in which the game has actually been in development; if you cut out red's leave time and starbound's move time, then the development time gap comes much closer, leaving starbound less reason for being so discombobulated. Mind you, perhaps the next few updates will fix that, but even then, the next major terraria update is coming out within the next few months as well.

Hopefully the next starbound update changes how things have been going. I'd rather see the game become something worthwhile, then have the feeling that I wasted 45$ on a four pack for no reason, but with time my hope dwindles further. They say a little patience goes a long way; but doing the same thing over and over again (waiting) and expecting different results Is not a particularly good way to get said results. I'm hoping this update will break the chain.

Edit; Ah, and before I forget, the console versions of terraria were handled separately by 505 games, and redigit spent no time developing those versions himself. The most he did was give them the rights to do so.

 

I used to be more sarcastic, then I took a multiple warning points in the knee :/ .


My butt hurt aside comparing these games development is dumb because they were developed very differently. Just because they are pixel art and 2d is not a reason to think it's developed the same that's genrecist.

 

Hmm timelines are still in Terrarias favor. Game is in development in Jan 2011, released on May 16 2011, 1.1 update on Dec 1 2011, then the announcement of no further updates was in Feb 2012. Without even counting 1.2 or anything after they are still far ahead of Starbound.

 

If Starbound ditched seamless worlds, a procedurally generated universe, settlements, NPCs aside from fixed merchants, instruments, procedurally generated weapons and monsters, used some kind of simpler equipment system rather than techs, simplified its lightning system, simplified character animations, got rid of the ships, scrapped a big chunk of its UI, scrapped quests and the work done on the quest system, scrapped pets and the pet system, and never did all the work to make the game as moddable as it is now, I wonder how much time would be saved?

(I bet those things took a while)

 

That is what I mean when I mentioned all the little tiny systems you tend to take for granted.

 

Most definitely. The only procedural generation I'm aware of in Terraria is when the the map. Mobs are linked to biome types, as well as chests. It's all pretty static.

To me it makes perfect sense Terraria's development would be significantly quicker. There really isn't very many game features Terraria had to implement. If all Starbound was doing was having a planet with a few biomes and 5 or so static NPCs they would have been finished eons ago. Starbound is in a whole other realm when it comes to gameplay features. A lot of it original and unique in this genre of game.

 

I don't see the point in comparing a cooked beef steak to a recently hatched baby chick... I'd finish this analogy, but I find myself hungry all of a sudden...

@Fiben Bolger, I can play Terraria on a controller, too.

 

Id like to ad that when you think about it terraria side

Id like to add that when you think about it, Terraria sidestepped a lot of the issues Starbound is dealing with the procedural generation by keeping the design basic. They avoided the problem with dungeons by making sure the entrance is always generated at ground level with the rest of the dungeon generated procedurally but without having to worry about underground entrances lining up with the terrain and always at a relative position on the map (Always to the opposite side of the jungle and nearing the beginning of the ocean biome).

NO structures (Houses or villages) other than the dungeon are generated at world creation on the surface (This changed later with the introduction of the Lihzahrd temple and other things but were introduced years into development) With hell they basically created a second "surface" by giving a wide gap between the end of the underground and the hell biome and even then you see some of the procedurally generated structures are completely encased with no entrances (And they are simple shapes) I love that game and I'm in no way saying it is bad for any of the things I previously mentioned, I just wanted to point out how that game dealt with the issues of procedural generation to keep the development of the game relatively straight forward. Now if we look at Starbound from that perspective the scope and complexity is much too different to compare fairly and it becomes rather obvious that Starbound is going to take a boatload of time to get finished.

 

This is hardly specific to the conversation but I'd like to see certain techs ditched for items, namely the mechs. I thought I'd be able to build one and own it after that... Having "technology" that makes a magic machine appear for 5 seconds is really lame... I honestly haven't played much since I found out how mechs work.

 

The devs are planning on making a dedicated vehicle system separate from techs

 

This is great having a mech tech that would run out is horrible.

 

Awesome... that's really good to know. Certainly relieves one of my greatest fears about this game's future.

Back on topic, I think some folks need to just calm it down a few degrees, step back, and let the devs take their time where they need it. We can compare Terraria to this game all day long, but I don't want another Terraria. I admittedly want a lot more from this game, and I'd be willing to wait for it. It's actually quite refreshing to get away from these forums for a while and come back to see real progress and hear about things like the vehicle system you mentioned.

 

But really, though, I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment.

 

It is. It's really hard to continuously respond to a topic without using previous experiences that while related might not apply... While also not just sounding like a devils advocate

 

Terraria is one world, Starbound is one universe. Asking a Universe to be crafted & polished to a fine gem in the same amount of time a world was built is not reasonable. I'm confident Starbound will be worth the wait, & i'm VERY glad it's choosing to do it right, instead of fast. (Aka the Hank Hill way.) In the end, we will have quality.

 

Yeah... But its one universe of the same planet over and over and over again with differing skins. Lets not be naive here...

Heck, the planets, the weapons, the armor, the baddies are all just reskins of the same generic placeholders. To say that StarBound should take longer because there are more reskins is to be willfully obtuse.

 

With all due respect, this is what people got for whining at the Devs to Release the Beta less than half-baked. Let the Devs cook, then we can have a proper Cake.

I wanted the Devs to have their proper amount of time to get stuff done right, but alas, too many people are weak at patience... & this is saying something coming from me, I don't consider my own skill at patience to be strong. Heck, I would outright condone Character & World Wipes to come back if it would directly aid in the proper development of this game.