What are your thoughts on Starbound and its development?

>Joined: Dec 7, 2013

Yes, please, tell me how I haven't been on this forum long again.

My verdict is definitive yes, and I claim that Starbound needs more work. In no way am I claiming that I want this to be another Terraria. That game has its niche, this one has its own. To me, it appears as though you interpreted what I said to mean that I want this to be another Terraria.

 

'cause that's how it came off lol. you can't tell me that, "I call it 'still has a metric ton of work before anyone can claim it's a worthy rival to Terraria.'," doesn't imply a bit by itself. from what Starbound has come from, a former self as it were, it's hard to tell how much more work is required to be anything other than something one compares it to.

the reason I brought up your time here is because not too long ago, people held Starbound up to Terraria and compared the two, as if they were somehow in the same division. whether it was by your design or otherwise, you compared the two when that shouldn't really be the case because they're rather different beyond their building and sandbox elements.

it's like when people compare to movies of similar style or animes of the same genre, and use one show generally considered to be of a better tier (heh puns) to destroy the other, instead of using the other show's (the one that is thought to be worse) faults to justify an argument against it. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and re-read your long post critique thing and still I have issues with its delivery, from ignorance on a subject to simple bias (the irony is rather strong with this one, go figure.)

I dunno, mate.

edit: I should mention that you didn't exactly use a Terraria to destroy Starbound, that was my bad for not clearing that up. apologies.

 

Dec 6th 2013 here..so join date doesn't really account into activity. People will always have opinions and some people will never ever be happy until they get exactly what they want.. they will meh all over that also. Chucklefish has done their best to deal with lots of players requests. Many systems I am sure none of us expected were put into play. 1.0 is the lift off, space is endless..we just have to see where the Chuckle Express takes us.

 

That's a beautiful metaphor...

 

and that's how we got the new name for the Novakid's ship.

 

Thomas the Chuckle Express

 

Starbound has come a long, long way.

I started playing SB in Early Koala (Day 1 of Steam Early Access).

The game was a hot mess seemingly without direction (or so it seemed from our PoV) at the time, you could just tell that it was a tech demo at best, weapons and enemies and damage values were unbalanced, every few months saw the release of another update that forced a player/universe wipe, there were obvious placeholders everywhere, <todo> or "this item needs a description" in several items, etc etc.

But even despite that, and peoples' whining about the state of the game, Chucklefish gave us exactly what was advertised: when the game first appeared on Early Access it was very much labelled an EARLY Beta. I don't understand why people were expecting a polished game, in fact, I was surprised by how relatively stable the game was (it rarely if ever outright crashed on me). Horrible FPS, and poorly optimized spaghetti code yes. Crashing? No.

Well, the months began to pass and at some time in late Koala, I took a break and then came back about a year and a half ago, and it was Giraffe now (seriously, what's up with the emotional animal versions? lol) and I played through, I think it was Upbeat Giraffe when I ran across Frackin'Universe. I installed that, and man... I was having some serious FUN in Starbound. It was no longer a "Start game, get to Tier 10, done in 10 hours" thing... I actually had goals, things to do, etc. Eventually, Glad Giraffe came out and I did another playthrough or two of Frackin'Universe (because SB without FU is kinda like cereal without milk, no offense to the CF Devs meant) and I eventually also found the Avali mod, and had some fun times with that.

That said...

I think Starbound's strength and niche is it's modability. Terraria is a great game, but it just doesn't have the easy modability that Starbound has. A game like Starbound (and Terraria) NEEDS to embrace the modding community. Players can and will add 1000x more content than you could ever come up with on your own, and IMO the best thing Chucklefish can do post 1.0 is add new functionality to the game and allow this functionality to be accessible by mods.

I would say that they needn't worry about implementing said functionality themselves as much as to make it available and easy to add in mods that utilize such (though obviously, the vanilla game should have some examples as to how such functionality could be used). This gives modders more tools in the toolbox to make some truly great and awesome mods, the kind that keep people coming back for more Starbound.

Many easily modable games (especially Bethesda games, lol) have not only survived, but thrived years past the development cycle was done thanks to Mods. Skyrim is still busy these days, with there being thousands and thousands of mods you can download on PC (and now some mods are going to be available on console too), despite the fact it's active development ended a few years ago.

IMO, this is the number one mistake Terraria made; Terraria should have embraced modding very early in the game's life. Re-Logic has said that they want to eventually add easier modding, but IMO, it's far later than it should have been done; that should have been done earlier when the game was smaller.

so... tl;dr: CF needs to focus on giving modders more tools post 1.0, lol

 

actually, they've updated their modding tools and are trying to add Workshop support before release. so, basically, if you know how to mod you'll be able to do so much more than you could've back in the Koala days.

 

Also joined around that time. I remember how the hunting knife literally slashed everything to bits for no apparent reason x) (It was more like a one-handed hunting greatsword, lol)

 

Yes, I understand and agree, and I am in no way say they aren't doing such. I'm merely saying that they should continue to add more and new things that can be done in the game. When I say tools, I'm not talking about coding stuff like JSON and LUA and the Steam Workshop, I'm talking about in-game hardcoded stuff that we can't create ourselves, but we can only call on with LUA/JSON.

Like.... right now, it is rather difficult to mess with one's ship outside of changing what it looks like. You will always have certain elements, the ship is always upgraded in a certain way, etc, etc, etc.

So what if at some point, they decide to code, I don't know, a way to land your ship on a planet? That could be something modders could access and write into their mods. that's just a rough example I pulled out of my behind and I am in no way suggesting they should actually do that.

It's an example of more in-game stuff that can be accessed, harnessed, and used by modders to make their own content.

 

oh OH I see. I thought you meant the coding computer magic, not actual assets and scenarios. that'd be pretty cool! imagine it, building a super base on a planet, a base in which your ship is a transient piece of.

 

wait wait there is modding tools @_@ where do I get these?

 

I've had Starbound since day 2 of release and have over 320 hours in it. I can say that this is one of my favorite games ever, the main problem I've had with it is the nerfing of techs or specifically the nerfing of the energy dash. Sure, it was a little op but not game breaking you used to be able to dash in the air repeatedly which made it so much fun to use. Nonetheless the game is still a blast to play.

 

Well even after nerfing that, you could still dash and jump with the same effect... Until they took that out as well.

 

While talking about techs, I wish we could use two techs at once. I hate not being able to dash and then do a Pulse Jump.

 

The passion and hard work the team has put into making Starbound is personally inspiring for me. Thoroughly enjoying the nightly builds. Love how Starbound has a beautiful foundation for creative gamers to create and share or play together.

Impatiently waiting on the updated lua documentation.

 

I agree with the guy saying the development has often seen an unfortunate ratio of steps forward:steps back.

If you liked Terraria or Minecraft mainly for the building, I'd say don't hesitate to buy Starbound. Otherwise, maybe do hesitate, imo.

 

With 1.0 OP's questions are kind of pointless.
I've been around since the beginning. Chucklefish has made many, many mistakes and they admit that.
I am hoping 1.0 will impress me as I have avoided playing for over a year (or is it two...)
Starbound will definitely be unique. For whatever reason the development cycle was far longer than originally planned.
I just hope for a polished game at this point.

 

I couldnt have put it better myself.

 

Not sure if this is true but I heard that there is gonna be some tech upgrade that would let you dash in the air