Starbound Express: Hype Train stops for noone!

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

So yeah, posted about...close to goodly length of time ago about a curiously intriguing game by the name of Starbound. With the state 1 Beta coming up on the 4th it is time to revive the glory! ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN, TOOT TOOT!

STARBOUND HOME PAGE!

A little backstory: The lead Developer of Starbound, Tiyuri (or Tiy for short) originally worked with Redigit on Terraria as the art designer or whatever. Unsatisfied with Terraria's lackadaisical status and itchin' to take the concept further with tighter direction in pretty much every way possible he gathered up some chums to form Chucklefish and begin work on the ambitious Starbound project.

I'm just gonna touch lightly on the main Starbound things. The big juicy dribbly things.

The what's and who's of Starbound!

Races!

The Apex!

One part forced physical evolutionary regression in exchange for brilliant intellectual evolution, two parts 1984 Big Brother cult-of-personality society, a Banana or two, and you have the Apex. The Big Ape is always watching.

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The Avian!

Aztec-esque bird people. A very religious type of folk. Those who do not believe in Kluex are shunned from Avian society and referred to as The Grounded, it is assumed an Avian player is one of the Grounded. Undoubtedly the most fleshed out race in terms of lore, a lore PDF can be found in their page on the linked wiki below.

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The Floran!

Unisex sentient bipedal cannibalistic scavenger hyper-aggressive expansionist plantbased lifeforms. Born with a overwhelmingly efficient knack for reverse engineering and integrating technology into their own use. These ain't your tree hugging hippie type plant folk. Most will sooner eat your face right off...followed by the rest of you. Recently more Florans question the whole Mate, Spawn, and Die attitude that has allowed their race to flourish. Not evil, just misunderstood! Has direct and interesting ties to Avians.

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The Glitch!

A social experiment gone rogue. Originally created as a means of simulating social and technological progress of a civilization. For whatever reason out of a multitude of other successful experiments by their mysterious progenitors the Glitch stuck in Medieval Europe mode. In the rare situations that a Glitch becomes self-aware, glitches in the Glitch, they're considered insane and hunted down without remorse for breaking the status quo. It is assumed the player of a Glitch is one of those self-aware ones on the run.

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The Hylotl!

Amphibious people. Not much is really known about the Hylotl except they're inspired heavily by feudal, and modern, Japan.

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The Humans!

Your typical fleshbags of nondescript nature. Instructions for tending to your human things: Feed and keep warm for maximum efficiency. Keep entertained at all costs. Try not to poke too much.

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The Novakid!

"interstellar gas-bag people." - Some human astronomer. Wild West themed folk who have a metal symbol for a face and a very short attention span. These folk ride their space trains into the setting sun! :'D

Starbounder's race page


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THE WHATS!

So, starbound has a lot of proceduralitiness going on under the hood. Monsters are procedurally generated, unless it is a specific type of monster unique to a biome or mini-biome. Weapons and armor are also procedurally generated (outside of really rare unique equipment).

"Catch-a-gun!" - Marcus Kincaid

So yeah, there are guns. Lots. and lots of guns. The guns are procedurally generated as well. Some are automatics. Some are automatics that shoot explosive bullets. Some are shotguns. Some are shotguns that shoot bullets that go really slow THEN GO REALLY FAST! Some shoot rockets. Some shoot grenades. In short: no two guns will ever likely be the same.

For those who like to get showered in the guts and gore of their latest conquest: Melee weapons will also be given such a varied treatment!

THE PLANETS!

We went into the planet generation with one simple goal: no two planets should be the same. — Tiy

At the point of time in saying the below quote

12.667 quadrillion planets in the game currently. 422.22 quadrillion planets expected for release. — Omni

Yeah. There are a lot of planets. The planetary generation is kinda like Minecraft's world seed. But instead of generating a new world every time one wants something unique all one has to do is hop into their ship and poke around the star chart. If one player finds a planet that they want to show someone else all they have to do is go, "Hey, try hopping to these coordinates. It's pretty damn swanky!" Planets will have their own overarching biome as well as mini-biomes sprinkled throughout. Water planet, ice planet, desert planet, jungle planet, forest planet with eyeball trees, tentacle planet, brainforest planet, etc.

Click to see some planetary examples

Volcano lava planet!

Planet with metal trees and pink dirt!

ITEMS!

There are a lot of them. Awesome thing is the ability to inspect something and have their avatar talk about the item from their race's point of view. Yep. Every race will talk about the same patch of dirt in a different way. There are approximately 140,000+ words and rising describing all the shit. That even includes shit! Seriously, not joking there. You can craft, farm, find, and replicate items.

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There is an overarching story to the game, but being a sandboxy type shindig you can go at it at your own pace. Complete quests at your own pace. Pace at your own pace.

The Starbound Community Manager, Mollygos, has conveniently gathered up a multitude of recordings from the press copy released to various popular youtube and twitch personalities. So if you, dear reader, are interested in seeing the game in motion with conveniently overlaid commentary for your listening enjoyment then the below link has just what your hype doctor ordered.

Let's Plays & Streams found in here.

As you can obviously tell I am, and have been, very excited for this game. Patient..and very excited. I shall not see the light of day nor twinkle of starry night due to my attention being consumed by this glorious..glorious game when the 4th rolls around.

[Revising Ocelot]

See I'm interested in this but it's phase 1 of the beta and the website itself describes it as possibly ruinous to future experience due to lack of features and bugs out of the wazoo so I dunno.

Regardless, anyone for a 4-pack?

[MuMu]

It on Steam now, so go ahead and live the hype.

I think I'll prefer to wait.

[Loyal]

I greatly look forward to the day this is completed, but I don't see myself buying beta access.

[PyrosNine]

Pyros thinks this game is fun enough to be played for 4-7 hours in a single sitting, just because the MUUUUUSSSSIIIIC.

So prettty! I'm making a 2D platformer game, and this makes me even more aware of the fact my game sucks because I don't have a WATERFALL OF AUDIO ECSTASY while I'm hopping and bopping things!

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Moonbase Awesome!


I do intend to replace the Salvador Dali painting with something else that fits better. I wanted to get a view of the horizon as well since moon horizons are awesome. But, couldn't work it in without destroying swaths of land to do so.

A base a friend and I have been working on. As of now there's a couple more rooms added on and the farm descends into the regolith for another crop selection. The farm serves two purposes: Food as well as plant fiber for the bandage makes.

[Inbred Chocobo]

I actually really want to do a Let's Play of Starbound, but with the fact that patches will be wiping out characters over and over again I don't think that is a good idea right now. Still its lovely to see.

You know whats really odd? There are already mods out for this game. Seriously. I know of one that has a defunct Space Station you can find, and things like that. This game will be beautiful when its completed but its going to be a long time.

[Arcanum]

Did somebody say destroying swaths of land?

I regret not taking the time to rip up all the blocks in the two bases I found on other planets/moons, 'cause now I don't have enough blocks to finish my walls.

Also I initially intended to beam down into a semi-enclosed glass dome, but some awesome glitch happened and now I get beamed down to the first floor consistently. So instead of a landing pad the top bit will now be an observatory.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

moonbases are best bases. It saddens me that as of tomorrow I'll lose everything due to the beta wipe. The edge is taken off due greatly in part to the overhauled combat system. Which will be a HUGE welcome.

[phil_]

destroying swaths of land

Shouldn't you have to go up to see the horizon, not down?