In addition to the weekly round-up, Tiy's just posted on our new company blog outlining what we need to do to finish Starbound 1.0. You can find that post here.
27th August - Still at it!
Evening folks!
For the past couple of days I’ve been chiefly focusing on the armor balancing that I mentioned last week, as it’s proven surprisingly difficult. I’m beginning to understand the pains that other developers must go through when painstakingly balancing their games, especially the competitive multiplayer ones! Our armor balance is getting to a better place, but it’s looking like there are a number of earlier armors that are going to need to be rebalanced as well to suit our progression changes.
I’ve also been doing little bits of work on the lunar base here and there. I’ve turned it into a floating dungeon type while await the completion of Omni’s work on the skies so I can configure the parallax layers to my liking. I still wish to keep most elements of the mission a surprise, so I’m reluctant to share any further media relating to it and its unique enemies.
The efforts of the rest of the team seems to be stuff that’s mostly under the hood, like the biome threat level changes that Metadept talked about yesterday. He’s continued his efforts on that front but has also been working on the enemies I’ve been trying to stay so elusive about. He’s also fixed a few long-withstanding bugs with the humanoid NPCs that have been present in the nightly build for some time (such as their inability to properly switch between their melee and ranged weapons appropriately).
George on the other hand has been busily devising our other missions, with some seriously cool ideas being laid out. Once I’m done with the lunar base, I’ll be moving right along to start building one of those.
In any case, it’s about time for me to hit the hay. Good night everybody!
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28th August - Alright, one more lunar base teaser!
Since it seems nobody else has anything particularly new to report as we’ve all continued working on the same things for the most part, I’ll cave a little and give you one more glimpse of what you can expect on your mission to the moon. This is the only lunar base media you’re getting out of me for a while, so enjoy it while you can!
Keep your eyes peeled, and you might just see something. ;)
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29th August - Kindergarten
Continuing work on biomes, I’ve been configuring a new primary biome type for starter worlds that we’re calling Garden. It’s a sparsely forested biome with gentle, rolling hills that should be easy to navigate for players just starting the game. It’s got quite a pleasant atmosphere:
I’m also working on surface terrain generation for all biomes. Higher tier planets will be a bit craggier (in general) since players will be likely to have some movement abilities and grappling hooks, but mainly I’m just aiming for interesting variety. I’ll post some screenshots of other terrain types in a future update. Have a good weekend!
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1st September - WIPs
Not much exciting to post about today. Kyren’s been working on nitty gritty technical stuff, addressing some threading issues we’re running into with C++11 pointers. Armagon and the artists are continuing work on missions that I’m not allowed to post about yet.
I’m still playing with the terrain generation, seeing what its capabilities and limitations are. Here’s a screenshot of some WIP desert canyons (click for big):
The terrain generator works by combining multiple layers of Perlin noise. In this shot, I’m using one source to define the primary surface terrain (low dunes), another source to define the rough bottom of the canyons, and a third to mix between them, with bias toward the primary source to make canyons less frequent. There are several problems with the current configuration, however. The most obvious problems are the sharp corners at the canyon edge where the mix shifts from 100% primary surface and rapidly begins switching to the lower canyon terrain. These can be addressed with some smoothing in the mixer (which needs engine changes to implement). Another issue without an obvious solution is what to do with the background. Because of the dimensionality and limited number of layers, it’s difficult to visually distinguish an open valley from a long, narrow canyon from a deep hole. I’ll have to experiment further to find a satisfactory solution.
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2nd September - New Mission Prep
Hey y’all!
I spent my day helping George by setting up a dungeon file and key for the mission he’s about to start working on. He had already knocked up a detailed plan of the mission’s structure and layout, so he spent most of today roughing it out visually in-game while I worked on getting a functional setup together. George seems keen to tell a story with the environment, so he’s been creating a bunch of cool new objects as he’s progressed.
It looks for the most part like he has everything necessary to get started turning it into a functional location, so most likely he’ll be spending the next week focusing on this mission. I’ll probably get called in from time to time to help him with the finer points of the dungeon system, but I’m really looking forward to seeing how he does with it, since his mockups are generally very good and having someone else to work on this stuff with me will be most welcome.
Sorry I don’t have anything fancy to show off, it’s just been that kind of work lately and we’d like to keep at least a few surprises, if possible.
Good night!
