Vector Squared -- Starbound Community News, Issue #24

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A tip of the hat, and we welcome you to the 24th issue of Vector Squared. This week we cover more interesting topics, following the vein of the successful preorder of last week. There was also information about further stretch goals, a fan competition, and an ask-me-anything that Tiy held on Reddit. The burst of news following is similar: new stretch goals, the fossil stretch goal reached, and a server in the making.

Oh, and Tiy in Dublin. Hooray.

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Table of Contents

• Pets as the Third Stretch Goal
• “It Belongs in a Museum!” “So do you!”
• Arrows of Destruction
• Zidonuke Presents *drumroll* Starrybound!
• Suggestion Spotlight
• Art Feature
• Science Trivia
• Weekly Comic
• Question of the Week
• Closing Comments

Pets as the Third Stretch Goal
Local giant robot mollygos brought up last Friday a quite interesting suggestion which ended up leading to a ton of debate.

Basically, through the aid of a poll, mollygos was assessing public opinion in regards to having non-combat pets (also known as Companions in other platforms) in the game, with the player being able to start Starbound from scratch already alongside a little friend. Moreover, each race would seemingly have a different choice of these starter pets, as may seen in the pictures below.




While the majority of users who have voted did so in favour of starter companions (1,534 voters, to be exact), many others have expressed their discontent towards it (827 of opposition votes). One of the arguments used against the starter pets was that a monster-taming system already seems to be in game, which may make this new option seem redundant. Other argument is that they appear to be rather useless and merely exist for vanity purposes. Perhaps bestowing these critters with an ability, such as more bag space, would help fix the issue? Just some food for thought.

Nevertheless, starter-pets were eventually enabled as the third stretch goal, which means that once Chucklefish manages to raise one million Gold Dragons, the option will be installed. According to their official page, these pets are customisable through the character screen and, as mentioned, each race will get a selection of pets native to the player’s home planet.

We now wonder, though, if a fourth stretch goal will be coming soon...



By: Keeper


“It Belongs in a Museum!” “So do you!”
The second stretch goal of $750k has been reached, bringing with it a new type of collectable; fossils! These remains of long-dead plants and animals will theoretically be found underground on different planets. They are very valuable, and can be placed as trophies. You will also have to be careful retrieving them, because removing the wrong dirt block might cause it to crumble. The initial information also points at there being special tools needed to unearth them, and that the properties of some fossils may be revived. This hints that fossils may also provide some sort of gameplay effect as well as being collectables. For further information, have a look at the details page here.



By Indianna Jonesy.


Arrows of Destruction
Lost among the flood of news regarding the pre-order and stretch goals, a small video of gameplay footage has surfaced. Starbounder backstabbeth first brought our attention to the video via a thread on the forums, although the video can also be seen on Tiy’s YouTube account. While only a mere seventeen seconds, this clip actually shows quite a lot about the progress of Starbound mechanics.

First thing to note is the distinct lack of the Fish of Doom, which is the typical weapon of choice for Tiy. Instead, we see Kyren using an interesting rifle of sorts. But before we get into that, take a peek at the dress Kyren is wearing. While jumping and falling, the dress animates in accordance with the action the player is taking, such as fanning out when jumping.

Alright, now back to the gun and the pointy arrows of explosive doom it fires. Take note that the green energy bar slowly depletes while the gun is being fired. Due to this being a pre-demo preview, it’s safe to say that the rate at which a weapon depletes the bar will likely be far different during release - or maybe the same, who knows!

Particle effects - who doesn’t like them? If you do, then too bad, this game has plenty! Watch closely as the poor creature gets poked to death by red arrows of destruction and you can see not only a red particle effect, but a grey one as well. The former is likely blood, and the latter being smoke from the explosive effects the gun seems to have.

Turn your attention to the top right of the screen and it can be seen that Kyren is a very poor spacefarer. Quite unfortunate. Stay tuned for a future fundraiser benefiting Kyren; all pixel donations will be accepted to help slay the evil poverty of space.

--Strife


Zidonuke Presents *drumroll* Starrybound!
Community member Zidonuke has recently unveiled a server that he would be establishing upon the release of the beta. He provided the details in an interview:

Jonesy: So, what's Starrybound?

Zidonuke: It is going to be a massive Starbound Server hosted on high quality, reliable hardware for 24/7 uptime, and is going to be well managed in preventing grief/abuse. Its just going to be one massive server where all players can have their own planet to control and own. With a few community run planets for markets and battle.

Jonesy: Hey, that sounds pretty good. When was it announced?

Zidonuke: I never did make an official announcement at this time because the game is not out, as soon as the beta is released the first thing I am doing is launching the server up and letting it go. After that I'll be working on seeing what I can do to mod it, and then develop a proxy server to handle administration and control to keep it all sane.

Jonesy: Oh, so you're the one doing it?

Zidonuke: Of course o.o?

Latter details he spoke about included:

“I currently have a single small webserver/database along with beefy game server that I'm going to order to put this on. Intel E3 - 1245v2, 32 GB, and 4x 1TB SATA3 in RAID-10. 200 Mbps unlimited, and professionally hosted with a provider that offers me a 1 hour SLA to network and hardware issues.

As I said before the plan is to have a massive community server that can handle as many players as possible under a 0 lag and 24/7 stable environment. Each player can control, administer their own planet when I can make the mods required to implement it, if they want read only guests or ban people, etc. They can have the option.

And then my staff/builders will be able to create community zones for PvP, Markets, and Cities, then the rest of the universe is like the wild west. Really think about EVE Online styling here if I can figure a method for that. Aka Empire Space, Low Sec, Null Sec.”

Starrybound is perhaps the most intricately planned Starbound server we’ve seen yet. Anyone interesting in Zidonuke’s server should keep an eye out for more details closer to the beta.


Written by Jonesy



Allow me to ask a question: what happens when you get bored of the bosses present in-game? Even with the potential randomization that comes with the Starbound package, the basic behaviors could get dull. Even mods can’t remedy this. Unless...

Human-controlled bosses. Just as inventive, just as creative as the person fighting the boss. Suggestion author shiokuri proposed this idea. The possibilities are endless, as is stated: multiple people manning a boss, or, in the comments, one user stated they could pit two bosses against each other and players could influence the outcome.

Even if this isn't implemented, it'd be simply too genius for it not to be made into a mod. *cough*

~Nababoo



This week in the Art Feature we move away from beautiful landscapes and stunning cityscapes to focus more a one single race, mainly the ever popular Florans! Now we tend to forget what the Florans really are like. Bloodthirsty, freaky, aggressive, territorial creatures capable of unspeakable horror. They kill with little to no provocation and have survival as their one and only goal.

This weeks Art Feature reminds us of their true nature.

“Did I mention freaky?”

Drawn by a quite well known artist here on the Starbound forums who goes by Aesthetic-Defile with the original drawing found here.

What makes this drawing so wonderfully eye-candy is not only the crazy focus on details, great lighting or the perfect color compositions, but frankly the way it strikes fear into the viewer. There is nothing vaguely human about this creature we’re presented with which quickly provokes our most subtle unconscious into a fear reaction. The glaring of horrendously sharp teeth. The unforgiving and almost bug-like eyes. The pointy, claw-ish fingers. The spiked skin. And of course the large amount of eyes throughout the background. All of these factors make this image into, quite frankly, one of the most soul-wrenching drawings ever. It scares me, and reminds me of the true, brutal nature of the Florans. It is beautiful. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is art at it’s best.

- WackyWocky


Science Trivia
Bioenergy

People hear all the time about global warming, and the energy crisis.

The reason for these is that:
1) Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere.
2) People have burnt so much fossil fuels that they are running out.

That causes:
1) Gas, and electricity prices to rise for the remaining fossil fuels.
2) The oceans will rise and flood low lying areas of the world.
3) The world heats up, and normally temperate areas become deserts.

There are a lot of people trying to find solutions to these problems.
One solution is the development of bioenergy sources.
Bioenergy is energy derived from biological sources.

That means that people can grow plants then use their biomass by either processing them into biofuels or directly burning them.
People don't even have to grow the plants they can just take the by-products of farming, or (and most people are disgusted by this ) sewage.

The advantage of this is that any carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere was already removed from the atmosphere when the plants (other organic matter) were grown. In the case of sewage it would just have been released into the ocean, and hurt the environment.

Finding ways of developing this, and other renewable energy sources to be large and reliable enough for use in powering cities is a major concern of governments all around the world. Scientists are also experimenting with ways to convert biomass into energy more efficiently, and genetically modifying certain plants to be easier to process into larger quantities of biofuels.

~harnackam


Weekly Comic




Q: What would you like to see as a fourth stretch goal?
A: Post. See. Win.


Closing Comments

• Any feedback you guys have for us? Any, and all, would be appreciated.

Staff
Nababoo -- <Insert Boring Title>
Keeper -- Wordsmith
WackyWocky -- Space Banana
ReverseShadow -- Comic L0lcats
shardival -- Legend of the Brush
Jonesy -- He Never Asked For This.
harnackam -- Science Consultant
Strife -- ???

Credits


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Blue’s Fanmade Newspaper Archive

 

Nice to see the paper kept going on and on like this. It's been more than 6 months since you've started, if you've done one issue every week. Congratulations Vector Squared. This is amazing and Hylotyl is my favorite pokemon race so far.

 

Awesome as Always Cousin! (I WASN'T THE FIRST, MODs ban the guy up there!)

The Tiy one Epic eheh, let me grab my pot of gold now!

 

Heh, only two weeks 'till our half-year celebration.

 

I would always write a quick "heh" as a post, then take my time editing it later. It's working well so far.

Sure, that'll work.

 

I would want to see starship battles

 

as a new member, and a fan of reading newspapers, I love it! I hope you guys keep it going through after the game have been released and never grow old on information!

 

Damn, comic good as always. Wait, theres other bits?

Science trivia: Actually, methane is the largest impact on global warming, due to cows and sheep.

 

Oh my, Aesthetic-Defile sure went up a couple notches.

 

That floran deserves to be in a horror comic. It looks like an evil dryad.

Also, you guys might wanna fix a sentence in Arrows of Destruction, the particles effects part which contains two formers.

As for the 4th stretch goal, I personally would love to see more/alternate tiers of armour for the differences races or maybe equippable armour/items for pets.

Keep up the good work.

 

That floran... I will have nightmares.

 

Sucks not being first.

 

http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Talk:Zidonuke

For those of you interested in Zidonukes server you should be aware he is a very well known griefer on minecraft, as well as griefing other websites.

 

He actually helped in the launch bukkit, before he was kicked out due to his anti-hacks creating a little problem in the programs by Dinnerbone.

He then created hacks, and tested them privately, before telling Notch and Jeb. They never responded, or even bothered. So he had to get their attention somehow.

Neither did Redigit, whom Zidonuke tried to help with the horrid server system.

Luckily Bartwe is really helpful with this kind of stuff.

 

His help with bukkit launch involved putting in backdoor hacks that would allow him to crash any servers running his version of it, as shown in those videos, if you wanna trust a guy like that go ahead, personally I will avoid known griefers.

Trying to pass him off as some sort of good samaritan who was only trying to help by ruining the fun of many many people strikes me as hilarious.

 

No, that was with MCBans, after Jeb and Notch decided to not care about multiplayer safety.

 

Spin it anyway you want, the guy is a massive griefer, he is a nasty piece of work who takes pleasure spoiling other people's fun, that is all there is too it.

If you want to play on a server where everyday you will log on not knowing if you will even be able to contact the server, or if your stuff will be intact rather than destroyed by griefing, then feel free, personally I will avoid it.

 

The evidence is there, everybody is free to make up their own mind.