f13.net

Pre-orders are up. I think I'll get one as soon as there's a working client. A 4 pack in fact, could guilt some friends into playing.

http://playstarbound.com/

Looks fun, I'll have to check out this out more.

I've been watching this for a while. Very, very stoked.

Just a reminder that Terraria is literally one of the best examples in gaming history of bad coding and this will likely be no different.

What was so bad about it? The only thing I noticed was that the multiplayer hated my internet connection.

I never had a single problem. So, tell me more about it being one of the best examples while Path of Exile keeps hard crashing my laptop.

You see, schild it's because...

I really wish people would quit calling this "Terraria 2" or some other variation of a sequel, since it's not. The team - barring a single artist - is completely different.

The memetic economy does not support such a high resolution.

Yeah, Terraria was pretty much flawless.  Not sure what happened to make you think it was bad coding (unless you mean you read the source code itself and hated the way he handled memory management and commenting or something  :awesome_for_real:).

I can't speak to the program as a whole, but I could never get the multiplayer in that game working, even with the other player in the same room on a LAN with me.

Inefficient, futzy, poorly planned code did not for a bad experience make.

Yeah, I have little patience for sloppily written code if I'm the one who has to maintain it, but at the end of the day, as long as it does the thing it's supposed to do, there are many many examples of worse coding out there.

A lot of that may have something to do with the platform being Gamemaker Pro.

I expect there is no shortage of games that are implemented in eye-bleedingly-bad ways.  Luckily as a gamer I can hang up my grouchy software engineering hat, and provided it's fun and doesn't crash, I'm not going to mind how godawful it is under the hood.  Terarria was plenty of fun, solo or with 8+ players on a LAN.  Can't complain. 

Terraria was great, great fun to play. I got my money's worth ten times over from that game. If it was badly coded then that's a shame because it makes it harder for modders, but it's unlikely to impact my purchase-or-not decision.

However, I've decided that I'm mostly not doing pay-to-beta any more. I've remembered that I like waiting for games, that the anticipation is part of the enjoyment, and that I also hate playing buggy shit. So I'll at least wait for it to be non-beta buggy shit . :awesome_for_real:

A) Do want Starbound. Looks like a lot of fun.

B) As much as that code is terrible, it still winds up doing it's job without much of a problem. Bitch and a half to upgrade or modify, but it's probably the least crashy/glitchy thing I've played in forever.

Oh bollocks, broke my own rule already, this looks too awesome. Plumped for the basic $15 pre-order.

I'm waiting for someone to get together on one of the 4 packs or something. Also, I'm in no rush, who knows when this will be playable.

I'm down for a four pack.  Loved the first one.

I loved a lot about Terraria and definitely got my money's worth, but I did remember how much I dislike side-scrolling games. So cautiously on the sidelines. Less game in Terraria and more building and it would've suited me I think.

Really just ready for the next minecraft...

Yeah, the perspective basically ruined it for me. I think I lasted about an hour before I said fuck it and went back to Minecraft.

Oddly, the perspective is what sold my local gaming group.  We had all played minecraft and did not have as much multiplayer fun as Terraria offered.  This is already our own server and 8 purchases.

I'm all over a four pack.

I got something over 40 hours, so as I said, no complaints, really. When I started hitting a few of the boss mobs it went south quick, though because it really underscored that side-scroller gameplay.

I will likely run an f13 server for this btw. Actually, for sure. I fucking loved Terraria. I'll buy it when I have money. Should do an f13 kickstarter for $2k to put an f13 statue in the game (of HST, obv). Bat country, whatnot.

How many players per server?

over 9000

:oh_i_see:

Thought this was worthy of dredging the thread back up: a lengthy gameplay video from some event or another.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/30/the-next-hour-is-starbound-hour/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTqsIwd4EFU#t=856

Thanks, I almost missed this thread. I'm super excited. I played the shit out of Terraria.

Watching that video has confirmed all the hope that I've been holding out for this game.

Though on a personal level it was painful to watch at times.
I was telling a friend things that were about to happen and laughing when I was right just because they play like a bunch of my friends.
This is not a compliment  :uhrr:

Going to be so much fun  :drill:

They've been talking about beta phases and a dedication to releasing phase 1 in 2013, along with one of the better 'development delays are good' posts I've seen. Not sure if they're planning on bumping up the price after beta opens, something to think aboot.

http://playstarbound.com/how-the-beta-is-going-to-work/

Beta arrives on Wednesday, Dec 4.

http://playstarbound.com/december-4th/ (http://playstarbound.com/december-4th/)


FAQ on beta

This may be petty, but can the title of this thread be changed?  Redigit has announced Terraria 2, and this isn't it. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/03/terraria-2-announced/)

It was just added to Steam Early Access. Activated my Humble pre-order Steam key and it's downloading now.  :awesome_for_real:

Can't find a plant fiber to make a bow!

Tree roots.

Yeah, I had tried that and it was taking forever.

I like this so far, we'll see how long before they annoy me with teh platforming, I think it was the guys who could fire through walls or the ones who could move behind walls that got me in Terraria.

I'm on some world with eyeball trees. First chest gave me a fire spear, which is pretty nifty. Found a schematic for an eye table, which seems world specific. Also found a fortress but going to need some armor to deal with that. Killed a couple dudes with my spear but one guy almost one-shot me.

So... Darkout, Starbound, Edge of Space... Any opinions on what does what best?

Cannot customize controls in Starbound.  =( =( 

Hmm, really liking this so far.  Probably going to give it to a few people for Christmas if the devs can get some of the jank out.

My cool little robot knight guy is having an ungodly difficult time finding coal, though.  Need coal for torches, need torches to light up areas to look for coal...

Do monsters not drop meat unless they're killed with the bow?  They all rush me, so I'd prefer the sword, but they never seem to leave anything unless I use the bow.

Yeah, it's a 'hunting bow' not a regular weapon. You can whittle mobs down with your weapon and finish them with a bow and they'll drop meat. Or just plant some veg instead.

I used my first batch of torches to mine the nearest rock tunnel that had some ores in it, plenty of coal in there as well.

It's basically an improved Terraria. As far as no key bindings, it's been in beta less than a day :| I do want to remap inventory to E so badly, though. Minecraft reflexes.

Hunger Meter =(

And custom controls may not be a big deal for most, but I cannot play with wasd.  At all. 

Moar waiting! 

Love the racial-based flavor text. I'm playing Apex and inspecting bananas of course revels in the greatness of bananas. Inspect wheat and it says something like 'terrible but can be used to make banana bread!'

Uh so, yeah, if you're following the tutorial quests, you might want to hold off on the distress beacon one. Or at least, hold off using it for a while...

It does warn you to wait until you're ready.

I see some complaints about difficulty, and I don't really have a problem with it, though I hope the better armors are...better. Copper is basically the same as the starter clothes.

My main gripe is that you lose pixels when death is pretty quick, and pixel gain is pretty slow. I was doing ok for a while but once I got decent enough gear to start exploring the massive dungeon near my starter pad, I'm broke. Kind of seems backward to explore the dungeon and lose money!

I saw the warning, figured being geared up crafted iron armour/weapon meant I stood a chance at whatever came. I mean, it was a simple tutorial quest, and that Iron gear took me a while to get :P

Apparently I had crap luck at finding random loot though, only chest I found had a golden flashlight in it with some iron bars.

It's fun, will start over as some other race this time.

Someone mentioned starving to death.  Is that really a thing?

I think it's possible, I died once to something that was either starvation or some kind of incredibly sudden fog bank obscuring everything which I haven't seen since.

It's rare for me to see it, though, compared to, say, being torn limb from limb by monsters.  Plus, every time you die your hunger meter gets reset to full.  It just means you need to bring a lunch if you're making a really deep mining trip.

I am finding a ton of loose gravel/sand in this game, it's making things kind of interesting.  Got to be really careful where you walk, or you can cause a cave in.

Edit: is there a way to grow trees?  I'm running low on wood...

All of this is making me reconsider my "don't buy betas" stance.

Thanks.  Appreciate it.   :awesome_for_real:

The screen getting foggy is related to a light meter you have. If you're not in/around light for however long, your screen goes foggy and you die. I guess it's a sanity or solar related thing? I don't really know, but you can fill it up by any light source really, standing next to torches being the slowest I believe.

No clue on the trees regrowing.

Hosted a server for my friends last night and having more people in the game adds a fun dimension to the game early on.

When you have more people on the one server you can form groups.
You can teleport to the ships of anyone in your group and then beam down to their planet, so you can explore places before you can fuel your own ship.
You can also beam to their ship from anywhere, including places that are too deep to get to your own ship.

Each race starts out with seeds for different plants, so I've swapped with my friends and now I'm growing around 6 different plants.
This is a handy way of being able to make things that are more than just bread.

Scan seeds into your 3D Printer on your ship, it's free and only costs 1 pixel to make another.

Upgrade your bow as soon as possible.
The iron bow will kill most creatures early on in 1 hit, which makes getting meat so much easier.

Sadly, I haven't found a way to get more trees.
But each planet has lots of them and if you join a multiplayer server your starting planet isn't the same as your single player planet, unless you're hosting because it uses your universe.

Has anyone found a use for leather?

I thought that was a heat meter.

Yeah, that's a 'warmth' meter. The devs are pretty active on the subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/) and are redesigning it in the next update coming tonight:

(http://i.imgur.com/O2IYd6k.png)

Amongst other things. http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/1s620n/some_of_the_changes_coming_tonight/

I was reading about people running into bugs on the 34th tier of metals. Silver ore is tier 4. This game has a massive amount of unique art content.

Some races are solar powered.
At least the robots and plants are, others may be too.
They also get a light bar that when it gets low causes the fog and death.

Not sure if there are similar things for other races.

Ah okay, that makes more sense. I was playing an apex and figured he was scared of the dark or something.

On another note, I'm in love with the game's music.

Great tip on the 3d printer, I'm not getting extra banana seeds from plants but I'm getting quite the wheat farm going...more bananas means banana bread. Deep fried bananas is pretty good health regen buff but doesn't seem to count as food.

One thing about the iron bow, though it's nice for popping stuff at a distance, as I was saying earlier, it's a tool not a weapon per se. So you'll get meat drops instead of pixels, which can get kind of brutal when combined with pixel loss on death.

Tree planting - not in yet?

Nice set of patch tweaks though.

I was off a ways exploring my home/starter planet and clear cutting trees and figured...let's see how space travel works. Only cost me 1 fuel (=1 log) to go to the other moon orbiting the gas giant, but it was so dark my poor monkey got askeered. So I quickly poked around, planted enough torches so he could last 20 seconds or so, and looked at my astrogation chart.

My system is empty, but the next over has tons of planets, so I hone in on a level 1 planet and fly over....burning most of my fuel. I had enough logs to get home, but I'd be low on them for building because I've chopped so many down at home. Luckily, the new planet has a (very) few really large trees, so I should come out ok. Also some cool tech bases so I nabbed a bunch of sci fi lamps, doors and chests that will look funny back home.

On some planets, I think Arid - whatever ones have Bones near the surface, if you go deep enough there are cave weeds (for a lack of a better term) that drop wood.

The spikey things that injure you and you can't kill with weapons - those things will drop wood on some world.

I'm constantly at 200/200 wood/ore from whacking those guys and clearcutting.

I have a couple guitars, a harmonica and a banjo. Looking at the music interface, looks like it's set up for a multiplayer band.

Trying not to spoiler the exploration parts too much, but I've already found a bunch of cool stuff.

I've found a set of drums, an ocarina, harmonica and a mic. Oh and we looted a piano.

Finally got around to trying the UFO, you'll definitely want something with 10 armor piercing. My crafted sword was still the fastest and best for general usage but could barely dent it. I decided to try because I had just looted a decent high damage 10 AP 2h sword, common but hit like a truck. It was good enough to whittle the UFO down.

And bam, unlocked the next tier of stuff. Now to decide whether to farm some level 10 planets for loot or set up a level 11 base in beta sector...Wish bosses were a bit more easier to find, coded into bases or something.

I wonder if they'll be nerfing the new not-Rebel_Hoth_soldier armor they patched in last night...13 is good armor for tier 1 and makes the push for the tier 2 15 armor look like a slog.

So, it looks like I was completely wrong about the solar power thing, it was warmth.
Since everything that gives off light, gives off heat, it was a sun icon and it only ever came up at night, it made a lot more sense to be a solar powered robot than one that worries about being cold at night.

Also the 3D printing of seeds seems to have been taken out, though you can still scan them in, I no longer know where to make them.
Some things that you can in are destroyed and now end up in your crafting menus.

Finding large forest worlds will keep you in wood for a long time.
I raided a friend's world and after an hour of chopping I had over 5,000 and still hadn't made it all the way around.

Yes, you can circumnavigate planets.

Next patch will have a character wipe and revamp the entire armour and penetration system.

Hold shift to place or mine single blocks.
Repair the pick by holding an ore and right clicking the pick.

I hope printing seeds goes back in, I have a couple singles I'd like to quickly develop (sugar!).

Arg, you people are making me want this now.  Any other people want to chip in to get a 4 pack together?

Unless of course there is a chance of it being on sale during the winter break, but I doubt it.

Bought this for myself and the GF. So good, and the server works too unlike Terraria.

According to steam, I've got 16 hours in this. I believe the first of the character wipes is set to happen tomorrow. I'm going to probably stay away till they go feature complete. Its very cool. If your on the fence, I'd recommend waiting till winter break - some of the more glaring bugs should be fixed, more content should be in, and combat after the alpha sector will no longer be hit first or die.

Allegedly, it was slated to be nerfed for the next patch, but now the next patch is an entire overhaul of the level/damage system.  So who knows how anything will be balanced now.

I do find it interesting being part of a beta that's actually a beta, where they're not hesitating to revamp the entire progression scheme and wipe everyone's characters to test something.  It definitely feels way more alive and fluid than the marketing exercise that describes most MMO betas I've been in.  I do think the system needs a revamp, I'm one shotting everything that doesn't one shot me, seems like.

I have to admit, with seeds gone, I'm not sure about the point of the 3D printer.  All the stuff you'd want to be able to throw together a bunch of copies of (ore, seeds, blocks, food, maybe armor) seem to be un-scannable.  The only scannable stuff seems to be things like cosmetic furniture, which I don't see the point of, since you don't need much of it and it's not like it wears out.

I have found some interesting stuff in the Beta sector, though, including my new nemesis, poisonous lakes.

My nemesis is 1-block jump puzzles surrounded by tesla coils. I used to win 'Operation' by not playing.

My impression has been mostly good so far, but I'm having some serious issues with framerates. No idea what it is either, since the hardware is more than enough to run the game.

allright, I lied and played more this afternoon. Beat the beta and delta bosses, made it to gamma sector. Bought a bunch of guns. Nothing I've found is actually better then quick daggers that shoot a projectile. The way to kill anything in the game currently is

I've been hosting the server for friends, so I have no idea how much I've actually played but it has been many hours.
Steam says I'm up to 82 hours played.

The 3D printer is still useful for making chests, since I like storing things on my ship.
You can print out the 16 slot 2x2 chests which is better than I can craft so far.

I kind of miss that there was a point to decorating in Terraria.
There I had to make rooms with certain things to accommodate the NPCs.
Now I'm just doing it because I'm a space thief who likes shiny things.

Sure, if you want to cheese the game. The only mobs I struggle with are those damned sniper rifles.

And I'm not on some high horse, my cheese of choice is jumping puzzles, because fuck those. Actually, as with Terraria, the platforming parts are what bring down an excellent exploration/building game.

Hit them with your pick? Build around them?

Monsters need to start digging ASAP. You can just block in everything at the moment, including the robot boss, and beat them senseless through the wall.

I'd be in for one copy if you're still trying to get a 4-pack together.

I'm still down for it, if we can find two other people.

The "balance" patch hit tonight.  Say goodbye to your characters!

http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/1siuu6/1292013_changelog_v_annoyed_koala/

Exciting.  I need to incapacitate my family somehow, so I can play.

This game is killing my painting time. My fan club is about to lynch the developer.

Yes, I have a fan club  :why_so_serious:

Ugh cannot play until they enable hotkeys and it looks so fun.....

hm

Might need to set up an f13 server. Which means a second copy on the laptop >_>

This game is fun, and it scratches that Terraria itch really well. There's a few small flaws that are a bit irritating (inventory management involves to much clicking and dragging, it should be more intuitive; there is a dire shortage of explanations for some things, like item durability; the monster animations are a bit goofy, they look worse than Terraria imo), but these aren't enough to stop my enjoyment of the game.

Is there a way to bank pixels? Or do I have to resign myself to losing a chunk every time I die, which I do with distressing regularity.

Because death penalties make games more fun!  I don't know why they can't just make all games permadeath, wipe your save game securely from disk. If you die ten times, it deletes the game.

Don't forget your boot.ini! 

They're adding a banking feature (pixels -> voxels which are carried in inventory), but at *40%* cost which seems a bit silly to me.

I don't mind death having some sting, but I feel like it's a bit much at the moment -- especially in conjunction with combat balance being kinda out of whack.  Luckily the game is crazy-modable, so adjusting those costs downwards or disabling them entirely should not be difficult.

No joke, holy shit.  Hold on to your starter weapon, it's the best you'll find until after you defeat the UFO Boss.

Did they give new starter weapons? Because the lvl 5 craftable was better, and I did find a really nice level 10 purple that shot 5 poisonous bones in an arc.

If the one you know about is the shitty two-handed sword, then no change.

I can't think about pixels at the moment, I don't really know how to make a house and decided to build a campfire on a spaceship.  What can go wrong?

I set up the metalworking forge from the UFO drop on the ship. Made it easier once I moved into the beta tier, rather than having to either move all my crops and rebuild or cart all my metal back to alpha to build stuff.

I've seen enough ship pimping to think they might need to expand on that part of the game a bit.

Hmm, my starting sword has 10 DPS, and all my Iron craftable stuff ranges from 6 to 9 DPS.  I did find an 11 DPS spear in a chest though, so yeah, I guess you can find better weapons, I'm just wondering what the point of the iron weapons is now.

On the up side, the UFO boss is less of a grind, now.  Still deals a ton of damage, but killing it with an iron bow only took a few minutes this time.  That, at least, felt way better rebalanced.

Coal is going to be a problem for me, again, I think, since it looks like wood doesn't work for fuel now, and you still need tons of coal for torches and steel.

They nerfed my 80 DPS iron hammer down to 8 DPS :(

I guess one-shotting everything was a little OP

Cheer up K9, you know what they say... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRnqs_N6kn0&list=UU7kDTowSbVi-9sgyM8SvOTQ)

That's bloody awesome

In other news, I'm stuck on a planet made out of flesh, digging through it has proved to be unrewarding.

You can turn 10 wood into a piece of coal in the furnace now if you find yourself desperately short.

For money saving measures, once you down the UFO you can build a Refinery device which converts ore and bars into pixels. Silver ore and gold ore convert into 15 and 25 pixels respectively, so I hold onto those and convert them when I need the cash.

Having a blast with this at the moment, I think even more so after the wipe and balance changes.

I haven't much time to play since the combat changes, but I have been dying more :p Getting my first meat was a bit brutal (and I'm ok with a tough start). My started sword as an apex was only a 5, btw.

I'm in; not sure when I'll play it but the price is right.

We have a 4th, I've invited Rnedakor and Teleku on steam to figure out the details of it

If anybody is interested, I've got a dedicated server running to play with my friends but ya'll are welcome to it as well.

IP: 173.199.66.107
password: breezey

Joined your server last night Logain, ended up on some really nice planet with loads of easy kill aliens, I need pixels for a refinery so this was handy. The aliens on my single player world are fairly tough.

Think there's an option to create/join parties not sure how to use it though.

You click the plus under your portrait and type in the name of the player you want to invite. Use caution though cuz once partied they can visit your ship and loot all your stuff.

I'm on now if anyone's playing.

just wanted to mention that due to some griefing the pw has changed to "brigyoudork"

Maybe you should share the PW with people on here via PM and they provide their IGNs?

Yar, I popped on yesterday (Cute-Eraser) and would enjoy playing on the server again.

Tried to log in with the "brigyoudork" password and it wouldn't let me in, I assume it's been changed again?

If anyone goes to the snow planet the starter planet is orbiting, well, you'll be in for a surprise!

AFAIK the starter planet is randomly picked, you'd have to give the coordinates for them to find it.

In case anyone hasn't seen it, the general (non-exhaustive) flist of features the dev team is working on was posted a few days ago to their blog: (http://playstarbound.com/the-future-of-starbound/)

The password has actually since been removed. Just leave account and password blank and you'll be able to connect.

ehh double post.

I think the starter planet for each server is the same, since the one I started on already had quite a lot of work done to it. Anyway, the co-ordinates are x49808943 y4850948 Alpha Glados Minoris I, I've just been stashing singleplayer bank overflow here, everyone is welcome to take what they need/add their own!

The starter planet for each server is not the same.

The starter planet for each PATCH is the same.

Ah, I see.   Sorry, my bad.

I have a question: what are the biggest differences between this and Terraria?

Thematically, Starbound is more sci-fi than Terraria.  It's about aliens and space ships and blasters and stuff.  There are multiple alien races to play as, you're flying around space, guns are more common, etc.

Gameplay wise, the biggest difference is probably that in Starbound, you're hopping from planet to planet while in Terraria you're (basically) confined to one world.  This means that in Terraria, you really develop the hell out of your game world, while in Starbound, you just grab whatever you want and move on to the next planet when you feel like it.  There's less incentive to build a really complex and well mapped mine in Starbound, but there's more wandering around exploring new places and finding weird dungeons and stuff.  In Terraria, you build a village to get NPC merchants to move in, while in Starbound, currently, there's no real reason to build a village (most players I know of keep all their gear on their ship rather than building anything planetside).

In the proposed final features list, there are more differences, like ship-to-ship combat and a quest system and so on, but most of that's not in the game yet, so take it as tentative.  In the present, Terraria feels more fleshed out and content complete, while Starbound is still developing and has tons of holes.

At least, that's how I see it.

Anyone else finding the lack of futuristic core features vs. "because Terraria did it this way" worrying?

I get that it's effectively alpha right now and a lot of the systems may still be in flux, but I'd have though the early mechanics would have been pinned down by now -- little things like the picks & the axe existing when they could have been upgrades for the matter manipulator (currently a nice concept but has zero usefulness as a tool after the first five minutes) and ranged weapons not being given equal footing to melee.

I figured the picks and such were tier one -- you're stranded and you're bootstrapping yourself back to fancier technologies.  I haven't really played a single game long enough to see where things go, but I certainly hope by the time that they're done that you won't be using bows and pickaxes the entire game.  I believe there are already drills (fancier mining) and upgrades for the matter manipulator in the tech tree somewhere, no?

Drills are in, they upgrade just like the picks, but I've not found any upgrades to the matter manipulator. And like everyone else, haven't used it since the first 5 minutes except as a more precision furniture remover.

In previous versions there were multiple tiers of picks and drills, possibly even some kind of mining laser.   There's quite a nice mod that does tiered matter manips, but it's third party.

Latest patch looks promising, I'm curious how they're planning to approach outer space & air supply.  Also turrets!

In the latest patch moon and asteroid field biomes have no air, so you get an air gauge that ticks down in addition to the temperature.

I assume there must be space suits or the like that you can craft or obtain?  I haven't gotten very far into the tech tree yet.

Just use the shift key with a pick to target a single block. The matter manipulator seems truly useless after you have an axe and pick.

Unless you are very stingy. :oh_i_see:

I don't mind starting with stone axes and stuff, I really like the idea of the tech tree starting with nothing (basically) and building up to the super high tech stuff.  It makes it feel more impressive, somehow.

I do agree that the content that falls under "super high tech stuff" is a bit thin at the moment, but I assume the higher tier stuff is incomplete.  Currently, there's nothing to do with bronze/silver/gold after you've made the armor, and nothing to do with platinum at all, except make the one pick and the one drill of each material you'll need.  But you keep finding the stuff all the way to the endgame.  Plus, stuff like uranium and solarium can be smelted in to rods, which currently have no use.  I assume they have plans for this stuff, I dunno.

They did just introduce more stuff to do with the wiring tool in this latest patch, maybe that will help, I haven't checked yet.

Matter manipulator can be nice when modded (or made vastly overpowered, not that I'd do such a thing when faced with an impending wipe) but vanilla its only real use is to scan around your current location to discover ore in the darkness or to act as a backup tool in case all else has worn out.

Re: Space suits, there's an unfinished item that appears when you search for "air" that looks a bit like an astronauts EVA pack - silver with a little comms dish on top.  Haven't tried it yet as it needs durasteel and I'm an unlock or two away from that and presents needed wrapping!

When they are done doing wipes, I think I'm gonna setup my Alienware laptop as an f13 server unless someone has an actual box sitting somewhere not being used.

Last wipe comes with the next patch. Yay!

Cool, time to pick this up soon then.

So, finally pulled the trigger and awaiting the final wipe now.  :awesome_for_real:

It's funny, I didn't mind playing with impending wipes, but now that we know it's the final wipe I have no urge to play until after that.

Not sure if it's the case for upcoming wipe, but on the last one I didn't lose anything in my inventory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ5rbPlsdHw

*tumbleweed rolls past*

So, if you haven't been intently following the game, you might not know that they just pushed an update to their unstable build.  Which is their first non-nightly update in... shit, ten months?  Something like that.  But, on the bright side, it looks to be kind of a big patch, with a lot of changes and new content.  You do have to opt in to the unstable build to check it out, though.  Should be rolling out to stable in January, allegedly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sz2zr3pZEo

Did this ever reach "finished", or is it still in a pre-released state?

Still pre-release.  The unstable branch especially is for working the kinks out of the systems (and there are already a fair number of glitches/incomplete content flags), but even barring that I don't think this is supposed to be their 1.0 release.

I haven't had much chance to play around with it so far, so I can't comment on how complete this version specifically is, but I suspect it's still got a long way to go.  It's one of those slow burn sandbox games, so I'm not begrudging them the long dev time but YMMV (though hopefully we won't have to wait until October 2015 for the next patch).

Also:

Necro!

Another new patch hits stable today, this time adding the colony system.  You can build buildings and rent them out to tenants for cash, apparently.  Sounds like Terraria, but without the specific vendors and things.  There's also some other minor stuff with weapon generation and another full combat rebalance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6db4718sRY

I have this (someone gifted it to me) but I can't seem to stick with it.  It has some neat ideas.  Some (many?) of which immediately made it into Terraria.  So, from that perspective, I'm glad for its existence.

They've announced a release date for 1.0: goes live in two weeks, on July 22.

http://playstarbound.com/starbound-release-announcement/ (http://playstarbound.com/starbound-release-announcement/)

Man I'm trying this, and it is reasonably fun, but the platformer first boss is annoying as fuck.

The platformer combat is what kills both this and Terraria for me. Love both games otherwise.

I don't mind the combat so much in the wandering around bit of Starbound.  It's not super great, but it isn't bad enough to be offensive or anything and it gives some direction to the crafting.

What I don't like is the combat missions they've shoehorned in to the game where your matter manipulator is disabled so you can't cheese the jumping puzzles or build barricades or whatever and they're these MASSIVE maps with no checkpoints and no health pickups so the map is just a tedious slog as you HOPE you can get to the end before you use up all your health consumables because if you die you respawn back at the beginning and spend seriously no joke about five minutes walking through the empty hallways you already cleared to get back to where you were.  And hey, sometimes there's some massively bullshit boss who can kill you in three hits but takes maybe two hundred hits to kill if you're using the best weapons available.  And the crafting is gated behind those bosses so you can't overgear yourself and come back and stomp them, you HAVE to kill them to progress.  The devs have claimed that they're adding alternate progression so the combat isn't required but unless there's been a patch I missed it isn't in yet, and I'm worried about them revamping the entire progression system in two weeks.

I mean, I don't mind the combat, but I don't think it's particularly engaging, either, and seeing so much emphasis on it (as opposed to building and crafting) is kind of worrying.  But I guess we'll see in a few weeks.

Totally agree, Kail.  Maybe the patch in two weeks will fix that.  I guess we'll see.

Wonder how much further along it's come since I last played it about 9 months ago. So slow to implement stuff, and they loved to totally revamp entire game systems for seemingly little reason. Last I played I blew through two major stable updates worth of content in under a week of just-above-casual play.