Starbound

Talk on any game/console that doesn't have its own forum, including browser-based games

Moderator: Forum Moderators

friznit
Heavy
Heavy
Posts: 5147
Joined: October 3rd, 2005, 21:51
Location: South of England
Contact:

Starbound

Post by friznit »

This has the potential to be a very 5punky game. Multiplayer, sandbox, exploration, building - very reminiscent of Terraria but in space! Currently open for preorders, I'll probably buy when the beta is out.

http://playstarbound.com/
Starbound is a brand new game undergoing active development by Chucklefish, an indie game company made up of a lovely group of dudes and dudettes. If you like what you see, please feel free to leave a comment or tell your friends. We hope this blog can be an insight into the trials and tribulations of the development process, the people behind the game, and what we hope to achieve.
A story within a sandbox

Starbound begins with you fleeing your homeworld in a space shuttle, just as it’s destroyed by an unknown enemy. With nothing to guide it, the escape pod shoots into space without direction, becoming hopelessly lost in a sea of stars. As luck would have it, the space shuttle makes contact with an abandoned space station and an adventure begins that will take you hurtling across the universe. Starbound contains both quests and story driven missions, buried inside its vast sandbox universe.
The Space Station

The space station in Starbound is sprawling and full of potential. Throughout your travels you’ll find ways to upgrade and repair it, restoring it to its former glory. You’ll need to find a crew, conduct research, catch rare creatures, and unlock its multitude of facilities. From a factory capable of producing mechs to labs where captured enemies can be studied and trained, the space station contains everything you need to explore the universe.

Endless Planets to visit

Planets in Starbound are entirely procedurally generated and filled to the brim with unique content. We went into the planet generation with one simple goal: no two planets should be the same. By procedurally generating even the smallest details, we’re doing just that. Not only is the terrain of the planet procedurally generated, but the weather, the gravity, the difficulty level, the plant life, the behaviour and appearance of alien creatures, and much more all contain random or procedurally generated elements.
We want you to feel like an explorer!

Because we’re working so hard to make each planet unique, we want to give you the tools to catalogue the things you find and make sure absolutely everything you find has depth in the world. Much like old school point and click adventures, absolutely every object in the world, right down to the trees and flowers, can be examined for a description.

See a weird alien tree? Examine it! Maybe you’ll discover something about its use! For any explorer, sharing discoveries is important. So whilst the game is fully coop (Bring your friends along! Form an expedition!) you can also record your findings in an electronic logbook. Not only that, but each and every planet has unique coordinates in the Universe that you can share online, so other players can check out exactly what you found!

Finding a new home

Exploring is wonderful, but everyone needs a place to call their own. That’s why we’re letting you claim an entire planet!

When you claim a planet as your new homeworld, a whole new aspect of gameplay opens up. Everything that makes a planet unique is at your command. Feel like changing the weather? Build a weather centre! Don’t like the terrain? Terraform it! Every aspect of the planet is under your control. Once you’re happy with it, start populating it with characters you’ve met in your travels and take care of them! They’ll have needs and desires and won’t hesitate to ask for your help if they require assistance.

This is only just scratching the surface of what we have in store for you in Starbound.

Make sure to visit often for news updates, reveals of new features, and other goodies.

We’ll be announcing more exciting features on the dev blog soon, so stay tuned!
Grimmie
Master of Soviet Propaganda
Master of Soviet Propaganda
Posts: 7672
Joined: February 5th, 2005, 19:00
Location: Birming-humm, England
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Grimmie »

IIRC the lead developer is the other half of Terraria's Re-Logic design team, the one who left the project to create his own ideal side-scrolly adventure thing. And lo, here it is. I'm rather interested.
Grimmie
Master of Soviet Propaganda
Master of Soviet Propaganda
Posts: 7672
Joined: February 5th, 2005, 19:00
Location: Birming-humm, England
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Grimmie »

Also, there's a 4-pack available. Works out at roughly £7.33 per person.
Mr. Johnson
Mr Flibbles
Mr Flibbles
Posts: 4957
Joined: August 10th, 2006, 10:58
Location: belgium

Re: Starbound

Post by Mr. Johnson »

Grimmie wrote:Also, there's a 4-pack available. Works out at roughly £7.33 per person.
hmm, I might be tempted by that. But I never really got on with terraria so I'm in doubt.
Dog Pants
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 21653
Joined: April 29th, 2005, 13:39
Location: Surrey, UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Dog Pants »

I liked Terraria and I like the idea of crewing and upgrading the station, and visiting different worlds. I'll get in on a 4-pack if we're doing it.
friznit
Heavy
Heavy
Posts: 5147
Joined: October 3rd, 2005, 21:51
Location: South of England
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by friznit »

I found terraria fairly limited because there didn't seem much of a long term goal other that than spelunking around, which was only fun for a while. With a space station to upgrade, planets to claim, terraform and explore I hope there'll be more of a feeling of progression to this.
shot2bits
Zombie
Zombie
Posts: 2082
Joined: February 7th, 2005, 17:40
Location: england

Re: Starbound

Post by shot2bits »

Grimmie wrote:IIRC the lead developer is the other half of Terraria's Re-Logic design team, the one who left the project to create his own ideal side-scrolly adventure thing. And lo, here it is. I'm rather interested.
You are correct, in fact he was Terraria's only developer iirc the other guy was pretty much the PR guy

Anyhow I've had kept an eye on this for quite a while now so hearing they're getting close to finishing is great, definitely looks to be a huge improvement on terraria

Put me down for the four pack too if there's still space
FatherJack
Site Owner
Site Owner
Posts: 9597
Joined: May 16th, 2005, 15:31
Location: Coventry, UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by FatherJack »

This looks like something I would like to own. I've never really got started with Terraria, but this looks as though it's more compelling with - as friz notes - possibly more to aim for.
Dog Pants
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 21653
Joined: April 29th, 2005, 13:39
Location: Surrey, UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Dog Pants »

So, Starbound is out on Steam early access and at least four of us have it. How are we getting on?

I found myself in orbit above a verdant planet with eyeball trees. I've dug deep into the planet but haven't found anything of note like other people seem to have done, I have managed to summon the first boss, and twice I have been annihilated. The second time it destroyed half of my house before it fucked off. I now have a third distress beacon, but I'm in no better position to win the fight. :-(
Grimmie
Master of Soviet Propaganda
Master of Soviet Propaganda
Posts: 7672
Joined: February 5th, 2005, 19:00
Location: Birming-humm, England
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Grimmie »

Apparently bombs are the answer.

Shot2Bits and I teamed up on multiplayer and had a bit of a mess around. For some reason you seem to appear on different planets initially, but you can teleport to another party member's ship with the click of a button, and thus their orbited planet too. I firstly ran around my entire planet (they loop back around to where you begin if you just keep heading in one direction) and looked to see if there was anything on the surface I could use. Each planet has one major themed dungeon, and I found an abandoned mining camp with a bunch of crates inside, and some bombs. According to the internets bombs are integral to taking down the first boss, 5 or 6 will do it.

Oh, and get a iron hunting bow, it's death at a hundred paces and yields meat and leather from monsters. Why would you want leather? The developer's put in a set of leather armour you can make at the spinning wheel to avoid the grind of early levels, but I gather it's just a temporary measure and he'll either increase the price or decrease its stats in future. Regardless, we donned some leather scout armour and readied our explosives.

We found one person taking on the ship, and another occasionally tossing bombs and firefighting evil penguins with melee weapons worked well, but most of Bits' house got demolished in the process. He got a Molten Core as a prize and a couple of green weapons. The core lets you build a sort of advanced forge, but the only difference (so far) between it and the anvil is the ability to make a tech upgrade for your ship, to allow travel to beta systems (higher level areas).

In conclusion, you only need to call on the mothership if you've outgrown the alpha system planets, which I think is "difficulty" levels 1-10. Incidentally, they're completely re-working the level systems in an upcoming patch. Oh, and will probably wipe characters. Bums.
spoodie
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 9246
Joined: February 6th, 2005, 16:49
Location: Essex, UK

Re: Starbound

Post by spoodie »

A handy little tip I picked up was setting up home on your ship to begin with, bed, crafting tables, etc. Even crops will grow if you put soil down. At first I was having to move my bits each time as I wasn't happy with the planet. 10 hours in and I think I've finally found a place to call home, for now. Perhaps this will be stopped with future updates.
shot2bits
Zombie
Zombie
Posts: 2082
Joined: February 7th, 2005, 17:40
Location: england

Re: Starbound

Post by shot2bits »

It appears you can destroy your ship blocks as well, which leads me to assume you can build onto it too, I've not actually been brave enough to try and break any of the walls yet for fear of vacuums but if it works how i suspect you could potentially build everything you ever need and keep it on the ship.

In fact i think i will make a new character just to try that now
Dog Pants
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 21653
Joined: April 29th, 2005, 13:39
Location: Surrey, UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Dog Pants »

You can. At least I hope you can, because otherwise the devs put this in the game:

Image

Also, why the fuck does image resizing in BBcode never work for me?
shot2bits
Zombie
Zombie
Posts: 2082
Joined: February 7th, 2005, 17:40
Location: england

Re: Starbound

Post by shot2bits »

:lol: thats awesome, but it turns out you can take the background out, but you cant destroy the foreground blocks or add anything onto the outside of the ship so you are limited in the space you're given to begin with
spoodie
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 9246
Joined: February 6th, 2005, 16:49
Location: Essex, UK

Re: Starbound

Post by spoodie »

Character wipe for small update in the end, big update pulled. :(

As nice as it is to be on the ground floor of the Zeitgeist, I wish I could wait to get involved with these interesting games. Minecraft is better now than it ever was. Would it have been better to wait until now to play it?

This game has a lot of potential, but there's a lot of work to be done.
shot2bits
Zombie
Zombie
Posts: 2082
Joined: February 7th, 2005, 17:40
Location: england

Re: Starbound

Post by shot2bits »

spoodie wrote:Character wipe for small update in the end, big update pulled
isn't this exactly what they said they where working on over the last few days? seems fairly hefty in terms of system overhauls, and looking at the update page on steam there looks to be a fair bit of new content too.
spoodie
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 9246
Joined: February 6th, 2005, 16:49
Location: Essex, UK

Re: Starbound

Post by spoodie »

They must have sorted the problem with the large update and put it out. It was called "Annoyed Koala" the last time I checked, "annoyed" because of a major bug. Now simply "Frustrated Koala".

Time for new character in a new land.
tandino
Ninja Pirate
Ninja Pirate
Posts: 1580
Joined: March 23rd, 2005, 15:20
Location: Liverpool UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by tandino »

I've put a good few hours into this over the past week or so and have really enjoyed it. On my starter planet I found a load of abandoned techy looking sheds with sentry robots in (and one with nothing but bloody graffiti on the walls and a cool handprint scanner to get in). Further on and with Mrs Tandini's help I came across a HUGE buried avian tomb thing, full of treasures. I looted it good, found many treasures. Then the wipe happened. I think I might give it a wide birth for now though, til it's more complete. Unless multispaz happens in which case count me in!
Dog Pants
Site Moderator
Site Moderator
Posts: 21653
Joined: April 29th, 2005, 13:39
Location: Surrey, UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by Dog Pants »

I was thinking about multispaz and running local servers. If all of us (or all of us who want to) run our games as MP servers and stick a post up in the Waugh with our IPs then we can just jump in and out of each others' games if we like.
tandino
Ninja Pirate
Ninja Pirate
Posts: 1580
Joined: March 23rd, 2005, 15:20
Location: Liverpool UK
Contact:

Re: Starbound

Post by tandino »

Dog Pants wrote:I was thinking about multispaz and running local servers. If all of us (or all of us who want to) run our games as MP servers and stick a post up in the Waugh with our IPs then we can just jump in and out of each others' games if we like.
That's a good idea actually. I will endeavour to do this in future. Grimmie and I managed a short game last Friday I think after some 1:30 server fiddling.
Post Reply