Starbound: 'Spiritual' successor to Terraria

[Surf Solar]

Holy shit, that UFO. How are we supposed to kill that thing? I barely scratch its health and those faggot penguins are annoying me as well oO

 

[Metro]

Bro... they nerfed the UFO big time. Use iron bow and first tier of racial armor.

 

[asfasdf]

Buy some armor piercing 10 ranged weapon and the UFO is easy.

 

[Metro]

They removed armor penetration two patches ago.

 

[asfasdf]

Eh, I need to update then.

 

[Metro]

You need to stop pirating such a fine game.

 

[Surf Solar]

I found some molotovs, perhaps these will do the trick. Running with this Snow Trooper Armor, atleast I don't get one shotted with it. I ditched it for now anyway and began exploring other planets.
And yeah I will definitely buy the game, I really enjoy it. Just need to get of my lazy ass and buy moar credits for steam.

 

[Eyeball]

I detest Minecraft and consider it odd that any non-autistic individual would spend his time playing it.

Bearing that in mind, is there any chance I would enjoy this?

 

[Zarniwoop]

Holy shit, that UFO. How are we supposed to kill that thing? I barely scratch its health and those faggot penguins are annoying me as well oO

I blew it up with the normal wood bow. It just took a lot of shots.

 

[Metro]

I detest Minecraft and consider it odd that any non-autistic individual would spend his time playing it.

Bearing that in mind, is there any chance I would enjoy this?

Terraria and Starbound are closer to Metroidvania games than they are to Minecraft.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

 

[Jasede]

I don't think it is, the Pokemon just look so generic most heaps of pixels look like them.

 

[Drax]

I don't think it is, the Pokemon just look so generic most heaps of pixels look like them.

And there are 2857 or so pokewhatevers by now, so it's pretty difficult to make anything that doesn't resemble at least one pkmn.
Anyway, AFAIK, mobs are procedurally generated, at least to a point, no?

 

[Blaine]

http://community.playstarbound.com/...redge-custom-high-tier-dungeon-content.31346/

Hedron:

Shock Panel:

Banner:

Circuit Column:

Scanning Column:

Bed:

Cube:

Table:

Chair:

Pillar:

Floating Platform Small:

Panel:

Chest:

Floating Platform Large:

Generator:

Bookcase:

Spoiler

Spine:

Ribcage:

Spine + Ribcage:

Spinning Thing:

Throne:

Pillars:

Electric Pillar:

Block Types and Misc:

Dungeon Room Mockup 1:

ENEMIES:
#1: Sentient Weapon:

#2: Eye Sphere:

#3: Xexan Queen:

Xexan Queen Emotes:

EQUIPMENT:

Fist Weapon:

(Will charge up for a few seconds to fire a dashing punch or something cool.)
Xexan Royal Sword:

Charge Laser:

(Another charge-up weapon, but a projectile this time.)

Armor & Helmets:

 

[Turisas]

http://community.playstarbound.com/...redge-custom-high-tier-dungeon-content.31346/

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, funnily enough, I'd been planning to build a Borg cube sandbox ship using available blocks and decorations when I saw that. Now I'll either have to mod the blocks and objects into the game myself for use in building, or wait for that guy's mod, because that's some definitive Borg shit.

 

[Juggie]

I've spent 268 hours on playing Terraria - about half of it back during 1.0/1.1 and the other half with the recent 1.2 update. I have never played Minecraft, but from what I've seen I wouldn't like the game. What I liked about Terraria that was different from Minecraft was the fact that the game had an actual gameplay. It wasn't just building shit for the looks. There was an actualy power growth in the game and it was about getting better shit to get stronger to get even better shit (the usual grinding cycle).

I was cautiously optimistic about Starbound until I actually downloaded a "demo" and tried it myself. I don't think the game is a true spiritual successor to Terraria as it doesn't appear to have the same focus. It has huge environmental variety, but the gameplay doesn't seem interesting at all.

You have shittons of biomes, blocks and monsters, but the only real difference between them are the looks. Most monsters are melee and they just run into you. The ones with ranged attack keep their distance and spam shit at you. This means there are basically 2 types of monsters with some variations. Terraria's monsters felt much more varied. The specific combinations of their AI, damage, health, armor, speed, movement patterns, size, shape, collision, abilities, etc. created unique feel of many monsters, unlike the generic feel of pretty much every monster in Starbound. Also Starbound's monsters all drop the same shit pixels (money) or leather/meat (when killed by bow), this makes killing them even more of a chore.

The biomes in Terraria defined the types of monsters and vegetation that could be found in the area, while Starbound's biomes feel only cosmetic.

I've read rumors about Starbound's crafting system being superior to Terraria's, but I fail to see anything superior about it. It's the same thing, with a slightly different interface. It also seems to suffer from a poor item design.

This leads me to the next point - the items. Starbound has plethora of items, but the vast majority seems to be cosmetic crap. At the beginning of the game you craft a campfire, crafting table, bed, smelter, anvil and spinning yarn and that's it -- these are all the starting furniture items with some puprose. They allow you to craft one type of axe, couple of tiers of pickaxes 3 sets of armor, 2 bows and that's it. Plus the leather armor is superior to both of the armors made from metal so you're better of grinding dozens of generic monsters than doing what was the core Terraria - digging.

The weapons in Terraria were simple and had only 4 stats listed on them - damage, speed, knockback and mana cost, but there were couple of other stats at play like the size of the weapons, projectile speed, light emitted by the weapon/projectiles, etc. But the most important thing was the actual behavior of the weapon or projectiles and there were many different types of this behavior: swords, daggers, polearms, bows, boomerangs, chakrams, harpoons, firearms, flails, scythe, etc. And those were just weapons and you had like 20 spells each with slightly different behavior. The weapons I found in Starbound were all either swords swinging in arc, polearms thrusting in line (which couldn't be aimed) or ranged weapons. The "epic" melee weapons had some special effect, but that's about it.

I realize the game is still in beta and they will probably add some more content, but I'd say the focus of the game is quite obvious from the ratio of cosmetic shit to useful shit present in the current version of the game. This is not a real Terraria spiritual successor, it's going in the Minecraft direction.

I couldn't find a single feature that was introduced in Starbound and felt like a real improvement over Terraria. The spaceship and multiple planets? Meh, you could have any number of worlds in Terraria. The special skills? Only found one so far and it didn't seem to add much to the game. The spaceship and unlimited planets? You could have any number of worlds in Terraria. Improved liquid physics? Yea... no! (Water keeps disappearing in current versions). The NPCs scattered around the world? Well the NPCs in Terraria were super simple, but these aren't any more complex, just more inconvenient to find when you need one. Also there are supposed to be quests in Starbound, but I haven't found any besides the tutorial ones.

I think I'll skip this one and wait for Terraria 2.

 

[Metro]

Fair criticism and I agree with most of it. That said, I can't really judge the game this early in beta. My assumption is there is still a lot more to be added.

 

[Blaine]

I've spent 268 hours on playing Terraria - about half of it back during 1.0/1.1 and the other half with the recent 1.2 update.

I've put a similar amount of time into Terraria, and in similar fashion. I do wonder if you remember how barebones Terraria 1.0 actually was, and I also wonder how Terraria would have played in its 0.5a, which is essentially where Starbound is now.

You have shittons of biomes, blocks and monsters, but the only real difference between them are the looks. Most monsters are melee and they just run into you. The ones with ranged attack keep their distance and spam shit at you. This means there are basically 2 types of monsters with some variations. Terraria's monsters felt much more varied. The specific combinations of their AI, damage, health, armor, speed, movement patterns, size, shape, collision, abilities, etc. created unique feel of many monsters, unlike the generic feel of pretty much every monster in Starbound. Also Starbound's monsters all drop the same shit pixels (money) or leather/meat (when killed by bow), this makes killing them even more of a chore.

I partly agree with this. No matter how many different randomly-chosen visual traits and animations exist for creatures, after a fairly short period of time they all start to feel same-y, and they never drop anything except pixels, meat and leather (if using a hunting weapon), and, in later tiers, Cell Materia and Hardened Monster Plate (used for crafting some things). While there are five creature "configurations"—flying monsters, baby monsters, squat adult monsters, tall adult monsters, and long adult monsters—flying monsters all share exactly one type of AI, while the other four configurations share the same fairly limited range of AI between them all. There are also aquatic fish creatures, but none are aggressive or drop any loot at this point in time. Creatures' attack strength, health range (some have a bit more, some a bit less), movement speed, and other stats are always pretty much identical on a given planet, as is the amount of pixels they drop on average. There also aren't enough creature "voices"—there seem to be between a dozen and two dozen of them, which isn't nearly enough. Terraria's monsters (much more so in 1.2 than in 1.0) do feel far more unique and varied due to their hand-chosen appearances, movement speeds and types, specific AI, modes of attack, health, variant sizes, sounds, loot, which biome(s) they're tied to, etc.

That said, there are notable differences in the attack and movement patterns of ground creatures in Starbound, though not so much for flying creatures; the only way in which flying creatures ever differ mechanically is in which special abilities they'll hang back and spam at you. Some ground monsters will charge headlong at you, either without pause, or with well-timed pauses to "rev up" and charge or leap even more quickly. Some will perform a leaping charge and attempt to land behind you, then immediately scramble into you from behind, an effective and aggravating move. Others will charge back and forth willy-nilly, like a raging boar. Some ground monsters do have special attacks and will use them quite effectively, often annoyingly so, and frequently hang back instead of charging directly to their deaths.

Note too that there are unique monsters in Starbound in specific dungeon types—giant flies, spider mechs, poop monsters, and baby poop monsters in sewer dungeons; several different kinds of robots in bunker dungeons; zombie monkeys and brain monkeys in laboratory dungeons; skeletal birds in Avian tombs; and probably another example or two I'm forgetting. Additionally, and unlike in Terraria (except for the pirate and goblin invasions), humanoid races also serve as enemies, and there's some decent variance between them: cultists with daggers, bandit camps, temple guards, mounted Glitch knights, Apex or humans armed with pulse rifles, and so on. I think that dungeons and other locations will be the true "focus" as far as unique monsters and such go, whereas surface creatures are simply fauna.

Finally, you can also capture "baby" monsters in Starbound (they can even fight and level up as of the latest patch), and this is where the possibilities of randomly-chosen visual traits really become apparent. You could capture fifty little monsters that catch your eye and ignore those that don't, and all fifty of your captures would look quite distinct. After dozens of hours of playing, I still find combinations that are fairly unique and that I've never really seen before.

The biomes in Terraria defined the types of monsters and vegetation that could be found in the area, while Starbound's biomes feel only cosmetic.

Again, I can only partly agree. Starbound's biomes do seem to suffer from a bit of samey-ness other than cosmetic and sometimes musical differences, and the creatures don't seem to be dictated by biome in any way, but there are differences. For example, in jungle biomes there's thick ground vegetation you can machete for fibers and distinct varieties of jungle trees; in snow and tundra there are ice crystals and bubbles you can smash for ice blocks (used to craft some furniture items and structures) and some pretty wild ice sphere trees, as well as the occasional igloo (since the latest patch); arid planets can feature bone and/or tar mini-biomes, with boneboo plants growing on them and bone clusters to smash for bones; magma and volcanic planets have thick, hard crusts and lava pools; some planets might have something wacky like a slime core with cellular growths you can smash for special materials; etc. There are also over a dozen mini-biomes, such as flesh nodules, rainbow wood oases (on some desert planets), metallic trees, sandstone deposits, etc.

Also, the planets (if any) and star that appear in a biome's sky correspond to the same ones appearing in its planetary system. Hopefully in future, variant gravity, non-breathable atmospheres, varying temperature conditions including hot in addition to cold, and more weather will be added (more weather has been programmed, just not implemented yet, other than rain/thunderstorms).

There's a ton of potential for growth and improvement.

I've read rumors about Starbound's crafting system being superior to Terraria's, but I fail to see anything superior about it. It's the same thing, with a slightly different interface. It also seems to suffer from a poor item design.

Mechanically, there's very little difference between them. However, the crafting interface in Starbound is much more fleshed out, and the UI is superior, presenting more information—including a list of known recipes at each station, toggle-able category filters, and a keyword search field to find recipes quickly. Terraria has nothing like this. If you're not holding all the ingredients for a recipe in your inventory, it won't show up, and you'll have to go give one of the required items to the Guide or check a wiki.

This leads me to the next point - the items. Starbound has plethora of items, but the vast majority seems to be cosmetic crap. At the beginning of the game you craft a campfire, crafting table, bed, smelter, anvil and spinning yarn and that's it -- these are all the starting furniture items with some puprose. They allow you to craft one type of axe, couple of tiers of pickaxes 3 sets of armor, 2 bows and that's it. Plus the leather armor is superior to both of the armors made from metal so you're better of grinding dozens of generic monsters than doing what was the core Terraria - digging.

Once again, only partially agree. You're clearly early in the game yet. There are hundreds more food and drink blueprints, furniture and container blueprints, racial weapon and armor blueprints, numerous additional crafting stations/crafting station upgrades, and so on to be discovered. In Terraria, you couldn't "discover" recipes via blueprints. There are ten tiers of functional armor, including not only the generic four or five you seem to know about (the leather armor was added hastily, it's not balanced yet, and yes, it's better than the other basic armors), but also six more armors apiece for each of the six races, in addition to a few other miscellaneous sets. You do indeed have to dig out special ores for all of these. In future, racial armor will offer unique benefits such as faster mining speed, more inventory space, water breathing, gliding, and so on. There are numerous armors in the game files that have yet to be implemented—one of which I personally modded in a recipe for, crafted, and am now using, as seen here:

And that brings me to another point, and an absolutely enormous advantage Starbound has over Terraria: Not only is it extremely moddable, it's extremely easy TO mod. The file structure is incredibly organized and logical, simple and easy-to-work-with text/config files, PNGs, and MP3s are used whenever possible, and a guy who simply reads a guide for ten to fifteen minutes (me) can implement a custom recipe with custom descriptions and materials (and output) easily and quickly, at the crafting station of my choosing, with prerequisites (if any) of my choosing. I've also changed the attributes of some tools and weapons in their relevant config files. All you really need to mod in whatever your heart desires are art assets, if it's something completely new you want to add.

The weapons in Terraria were simple and had only 4 stats listed on them - damage, speed, knockback and mana cost, but there were couple of other stats at play like the size of the weapons, projectile speed, light emitted by the weapon/projectiles, etc. But the most important thing was the actual behavior of the weapon or projectiles and there were many different types of this behavior: swords, daggers, polearms, bows, boomerangs, chakrams, harpoons, firearms, flails, scythe, etc. And those were just weapons and you had like 20 spells each with slightly different behavior. The weapons I found in Starbound were all either swords swinging in arc, polearms thrusting in line (which couldn't be aimed) or ranged weapons. The "epic" melee weapons had some special effect, but that's about it.

The weapons fucking suck my cock at the moment, end of story. Completely agree here, especially when it comes to balance and variety. No reason to ever use anything but a hammer mechanically in terms of melee weapons, and the variety is cosmetic at best. That said, they're working on improving the melee weapons and also making them aimable. By "working on it" I mean one of the developers is specifically dedicated to improving melee weapons at this moment. Having said that, the legendary melee weapons with special effects have some really neat mechanics, such as the bubble sword that sends out a spray of damaging bubbles, the bone mace that causes a shockwave and blasts out some bones from the shockwave, a "flesh" sword that creates three damaging red clouds with each swing, and the orion sword that sends out a red, white, and blue nova AoE shockwave (MURICA). These effects remind me of the SNES-era Mega Man games in both visual design and how they work, which is sexy as fuck. However, they need to be balanced and implemented properly.

Orion sword animation:

There's much more variety in ranged weapons, far more than I suspect you realize—grenade launchers, flamethrowers, sniper rifles, shotguns, plasma pistols and rifles, assault rifles, and also different projectile/ammo types for each: glowing plasma that lights up a room, very fast projectiles, gyrojet ammo, shotgun pellets that stick after firing and explode after a delay, etc. However the guns are poorly balanced at the moment (shitty damage, too much energy usage, not properly implemented in loot/crafting tables) and need improvement.

I couldn't find a single feature that was introduced in Starbound and felt like a real improvement over Terraria.

Then you're either blind, or one dumb motherfucker. One obvious improvement (among many, such as being very easily moddable rather than a hopeless mess of tangled code as Terraria was and is) is a much more elaborate character design system spanning six distinct races (soon to be seven with Novakids), each with their own architectural style, clothing, food recipes, weapons, dialog, and back story—which, whether you think all of that "matters" or not, allows for a great deal of customization. There are many other improvements as well.

I'm not sure you actually do realize that this is a (very) early beta. There's a lot to be done before 1.0, and after that there'll be expansions and additions, and mods. Once Starbound is released and two years old, I fully expect it to surpass Terraria 1.2 in most ways, including mechanics, progression, and variety.

 

[Metro]

Ranged weapons are particularly shitty now with sniper rifles being the only ones worth using. I did recently find a rare grenade launcher but stopped playing as I got to Sector X, the last available sector in the current build. Also monsters one shot me and melee weapons are worthless.

 

[Surf Solar]

Where do you guys find these firearms? I have been on numerous planets, sometimes threat level 10 even. I have yet to find a firearm somewhere :/

 

[Blaine]

Where do you guys find these firearms? I have been on numerous planets, sometimes threat level 10 even. I have yet to find a firearm somewhere :/

In chests all across the surface of planets. I've found over a dozen of them. Are you using the latest update?

 

[Surf Solar]

Yep, using the "offended Koala" update. Will have to recheck this, so far I found lots of "legendary" weapons in chests, just not any firearms. :D

And that UFO finally went down. Turns out that throwing daggers are pretty lethal.

 

[Juggie]

Blaine, Thanks for the detailed reply. It's quite obvious you've put a lot of time into the beta, which I haven't. I played it for about 10 (?) hours and found there's not much to do and most features are only in a very skeletal form. I know the trend nowadays is to release what's called beta versions as soon as the game appears playable (hell, they rush even final releases), but I expected the game to be near feature complete when it's beta. I'm more used to Blizzard style beta testing where instead of giving you half empty version of the full game you're given a nearly complete part of the game to see how all the systems interact.

As for Starbound I think it's near impossible to see how the final game will look. I know they promised a lot of things and you seem to be quite positive about it, but I'm a little skeptical. Anyway I hope it all works out well.

And about this:

Then you're either blind, or one dumb motherfucker. One obvious improvement (among many, such as being very easily moddable rather than a hopeless mess of tangled code as Terraria was and is) is a much more elaborate character design system spanning six distinct races (soon to be seven with Novakids), each with their own architectural style, clothing, food recipes, weapons, dialog, and back story—which, whether you think all of that "matters" or not, allows for a great deal of customization. There are many other improvements as well.

Modding support is nice, but there must be someone to make good mods for the game (and it won't be me, because every time I start making mods I realize I'd need to change the core gameplay mechanics to fit my vision). Also I still can't see any single feature they added that would stand out and really feel like a major improvement.

 

[Metro]

Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut. I can forgive a team of a dozen developers if they push something out that might not be quite 'beta.' There's full disclosure on their website about how much the game is lacking.