Starforge

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
Basically imagine if Minecraft wasn't terrible and was set in space, you get Starforge.

Its up on early release on Steam


http://www.starforge.com/

The video does a pretty good job of showing you the scope of what they intend, some of this is in game now, and the Steam early release orders are giving them a big bump of needed funding. Looks pretty amazing to me, didn't see a thread about it, so thought I'd make one.

Description on the website is spoilered below

StarForge is a game about gathering resources, building bases, crafting anything you want, and surviving on an alien planet. Earth's star is dying and humanity transferred as much technology and resources as possible and left on a one way mission to populate another planet.

StarForge was inspired by Halo, Warcraft 3, Borderlands, Terraria, and Minecraft. It borrows elements from the RTS, FPS, RPG, Voxel Builder, Tower Defense, and Physics Sandbox genres. We are building a dark and serious universe and want the player to live out their own unique story on the procedural planet.

We plan to release Starforge for Windows and Mac (with possible Linux support after Unity 4 is released).

Procedural Weapons - Infinite weapon possibilities await. Do you fancy a 3 barreled chaingun, with a chainsaw bayonet, and a flame thrower attached for good measure? No matter how many chests you loot, you will never run into the same weapon twice. Weapons are also fully destructible, so another player can try to strategically rip off your gun barrels. Eventually we want to allow the player to build their own weapons as well.

Procedural Infinite Voxel Terrain and Space - Dig an endless tunnel, fly out to the far reaches of space, and come back again. There are no set boundaries in StarForge, and the planet will procedurally generate each time you start a new game. Hide out in endless forests or harvest them. Mine to your heart's content and discover the different biomes.

Procedural 3D Tileset - Build anything you want with our unique 3D Tilesets. You can create cities, towns, villages, bridges, forts, underground bases, trenches and much more. We are also working on making it all fully destructible, so you can shoot a rocket and blow a hole in the wall. Each material has its own defense and weight settings as well. You can also enter "Engineering Mode" and properly see the stress points on your building while your building it.

Underground/Surface/Space Gameplay - Build a tower that ascends into the clouds, through the atmosphere, then into space, and do this in realtime. Build orbital stations, launch rockets, and explore the vastness of space. Then jump down and fall back to the surface and start digging down to the core of the planet.

Physics Sandbox - We are designing every object in the world to be fully dynamic. Watch as your bridges fall when you remove a support pillar, or your buildings collapse under their own weight and stress. Snap trees in half by launching your vehicle on them. Construction, vehicles, players, ropes, objects, everything is physically simulated. Do whatever you want and enjoy what happens.

Physics Movement - Our movement model is designed closely around the real biomechanics of biped locomotion; it can simulate jumping, running, climbing, wall jumping, wall running, crawling and pretty much any other behavior all without the use of any state driven code. The result is a more human look and feel, and a character that is equipped to intelligently react to dangers far beyond what conventional movement code was designed to handle. It also features a full body IK system.

Loot, Level Up, and Survive - Before the humans landed countless weapons and armor were sent to Atlas. You will find loot chests littered throughout the land, you will need their contents to survive. We will be implementing a perm death system, so you will have to be careful. Every decision matters. As you gain experience you will level up and be able to choose and use new abilities that are unique to each Hero in the game.

Customizable Characters - We plan on allowing you to cloth and armor your character and change his or her appearance. You are unique and your character should be too.

Dynamic RPG like World - Enjoy dynamic weather patterns, a 24 day and night cycle and a real time atmosphere. Creatures will also behave in a realistic matter, scavenge for food and return to their hives at different times of day. Other refugees will gather to build villages, wars will erupt, and there will be the option to help out your fellow man in their quests.

Resources and Economy - There will be many different resources in StarForge. However, the player can only hold so much at a time. When the player can no longer hold what he mined, it will be placed on a palette. These pallets can then be put on transport trucks and shipped to your own warehouses to later be used for crafting. This will keep multiplayer games interesting as players will be forced to build road networks, warehouses, and transport trucks. Plus, they will have to protect it all from players acting as pirates or rival clans. You can also become a trader and try to find merchants to buy your goods at a high price.

Vehicles, Flight, Turrets, Furniture, Fences, ect. - We plan to support a lot of different content. So you can decorate your house, make your fort tough, or build an airstrip and fly a plane to your cloud base.

Multiplayer & SinglePlayer - We will have both modes playable in the game. Enjoy emergant gameplay where you land on the planet, meet other players and NPC survivors, build villages and go to war. Play whatever role you want, become a Solidier, Pirate, Thief, Architect, Miner, Trader, or just hideaway as a hermit. It's your world and you can do whatever you want in it.

Fort Wars & Fort Defense - If your the competitive type, you'll feel at home in Fort Wars, a game mode where two teams duke it out in their quest to destroy the opposing team's "vat". If you're feeling friendlier, you can co-op with your friends in Fort Defense, where you protect your vat from wave after wave of ravenous alien creatures.

*Note: Not all the above features are in the current alpha release yet but are at various stages of development.

I played for about ten minutes today and was pretty well blown away.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
No, you don't appear to be reading it right at all bro.

From the spoiler

StarForge is a game about gathering resources, building bases, crafting anything you want, and surviving on an alien planet.
Procedural Weapons - Infinite weapon possibilities await. Do you fancy a 3 barreled chaingun, with a chainsaw bayonet, and a flame thrower attached for good measure? No matter how many chests you loot, you will never run into the same weapon twice.Weapons are also fully destructible, so another player can try to strategically rip off your gun barrels. Eventually we want to allow the player to build their own weapons as well.
 

Azziane_sl

shitlord
541
1
I watched a couple gameplay vids but that's it so maybe I missed something. But by gathering resources I mean mining & harvesting. The game seems to have procedurally generated resources chests (some full of wood, metals, or guns). Right now the gathering is more like borderlands than minecraft. You loot chests that spawn randomly, you don't dig down hoping to strike iron and gold. And like your quote says you cannot craft weapons - yet anyway.

I hope someone writes us a review soon. But so far it feels more like a simple FPS with some building features thrown in than the super cool and high tech minecraft I first thought it would shape up to be.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
Dude, not only does the video directly show them harvesting trees and mining spots underground, but it also says that in the description I copied from their webpage.

You are completely misinterpreting the entire thing. Seriously. Like, the crates are ONE PLACE to get resources, but it specifically states multiple times in the description collecting resources from elsewhere as well.

I'm really not sure how you've had this misunderstanding, but you've gone hyper negative nancy and are now on a tangent based on a complete inability to read on your part.

Procedural Infinite Voxel Terrain and Space - Dig an endless tunnel, fly out to the far reaches of space, and come back again. There are no set boundaries in StarForge, and the planet will procedurally generate each time you start a new game.Hide out in endless forests or harvest them. Mine to your heart's content and discover the different biomes.
It appears for all intents and purposes to, in fact, be the super high tech minecraft clone we're all looking for. Which is why I figure Valve has it up on early access. It looks pretty much like exactly what we all wish Minecraft was.

For them mining, start around 2:30 and watch while they go underground. That shiny shit they're pulling down inside is a mining node.
 

Azziane_sl

shitlord
541
1
Not trying to be negative. Not even a little. You obviously take this very seriously. I'm excited about the game too, it's cool, bro. That video is not the same as the first video on steam, which I assumed it was. Thanks for clearing all that out though.

Eventually we will create transport trucks and trains. This will keep multiplayer games interesting as players will be forced to build road & rail networks to their base. Plus, they will have to protect it all from players acting as pirates or rival clans.
Another thing I did not read and that sounds really cool. Is the mining, for example, a part of the fort defense mode or just the regular mode? Again I just watched a couple vids, but it seemed like waves of attacks happened every minute or so, not leaving you any time to mine or explore.
 

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
14,570
10,064
how far along would you rate it?
Scale of 1-100
if 100 is release. 60 is beta, 30 is playable alpha.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
I dunno man, probably on the lower end of that scale, 30% or so. But again, its already been accepted onto Steam's Early Access games, so I doubt its going to end up half finished while the game developers run off to get married and throw their mother's birthday parties on cruise ships.

Not trying to be negative. Not even a little. You obviously take this very seriously. I'm excited about the game too, it's cool, bro. That video is not the same as the first video on steam, which I assumed it was. Thanks for clearing all that out though.

Another thing I did not read and that sounds really cool. Is the mining, for example, a part of the fort defense mode or just the regular mode? Again I just watched a couple vids, but it seemed like waves of attacks happened every minute or so, not leaving you any time to mine or explore.
No, no, don't get me wrong. I just literally found out about this this morning while perusing the early access game section on Steam. I just saw it and immediately recognized that if it gets funding that it will almost certainly be the minecraft + game people have been dying for. Most everything that's up on Steam's early access had successful kickstarters, this game was one of those I believe as well, so its probably not something to be all hyper skeptical about is all.

There's no emotional investment from me here, it was just frustrating that it seemed like you didn't read it very well, I mean, think about it from my perspective, the first post you made asked if it had three things: building your own guns, crafting and resource gathering. Literally TWO of those three things are directly mentioned in the first line of the quoted game description, and the other is pretty much just three paragraphs down into the description, is all.

It looks to me like the fort defense mode will have every single thing that survival mode has except maybe monsters. I could be wrong. I don't really know the answer to all that. I was just putting this up here to inform people, cause I know that for me, the disappointment with minecraft is in what it could have been, had Notch not been an awful coder and a lazy human being, is all. I know people would be interested in this thing, especially since its up on steam and appears to have done some pretty interesting stuff already, and to have sufficient funding to continue into the future.

And yes, it did have a successful kickstarter

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/st...name=starforge

Made twice what they were asking for. So they've already got like 150 grand into the game and now they're selling alpha copies on Steam. I'd say its pretty likely to make it to the finish line.

Added: One more thing, my daughter's sitting here playing it while I was doing homework and making food and it looks like she's built herself a base with the lights on it, with storage with supplies in it, etc. all in creative mode, so it looks like at least a solid foundation is here for them to continue going forward. Not sure the ground digging is in yet, but they obviously have it working in the videos.

I didn't make this thread to convince people to rush out and buy the game. Just to inform people who liked minecraft that it existed, in case they were interested.
 

atalakas

Golden Knight of the Realm
100
16
Fort defense is kinda interesting, but at this point since its still missing a lot of things, its a play and look for bugs report set it down and come back one ever few weeks. What I am waiting for is digging to be added back into the game.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
Maybe the mistake I made was in not putting in the title that it is in alpha stage right now.

Sorry if that's the problem here. Its definitely not finished, its in Alpha, not beta, its basically in the same state early alpha Minecraft was in, aka creative mode, survival, but at one point Minecraft didn't have digging in early alpha either. And Minecraft has come a long way. This one is more ambitious. But it looks to be developer supported, its up on Steam, it just doesn't seem like a project that's going nowhere, and they've got a bunch of this stuff running in development clearly by the videos so yeah.

Just be aware it exists is all. It could be the next big thing(tm)
 

Azziane_sl

shitlord
541
1
Fort defense is kinda interesting, but at this point since its still missing a lot of things, its a play and look for bugs report set it down and come back one ever few weeks. What I am waiting for is digging to be added back into the game.
Just saw on their forums that mining was in but scrapped for now for being too buggy. Is multiplayer in right now? One of their news says that "the big multiplayer update" has been delayed.

Maybe the mistake I made was in not putting in the title that it is in alpha stage right now.

Sorry if that's the problem here. Its definitely not finished, its in Alpha, not beta, its basically in the same state early alpha Minecraft was in, aka creative mode, survival, but at one point Minecraft didn't have digging in early alpha either. And Minecraft has come a long way. This one is more ambitious. But it looks to be developer supported, its up on Steam, it just doesn't seem like a project that's going nowhere, and they've got a bunch of this stuff running in development clearly by the videos so yeah.

Just be aware it exists is all. It could be the next big thing(tm)
I think at this point people are just trying to decide if it's worth paying $20 and playing it right now. Alpha can mean a lot of things. There were MC alpha builds that were very enjoyable with most features playable. That big update they delayed sounds like it will add a ton of cool stuff and might be the tipping point for me.
 

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
<Silver Donator>
31,672
18,377
Hell I don't care, buy it or wait or don't, heh. Its your money. I have zero connection to it and certainly ain't trying to shill the thing. Just looked cool the few minutes I got with it and with the threads on minecraft and gnomoria I figured something like this might be of interest to those around here.

The word potential is always a little scary in video game development though, and probably one of the scariest words in the MMO world, so I can understand the trepidation.
 

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
Looks cool but I'm gonna wait a bit before shelling out for this game. The state of the game is in too much flux at the moment for me to want to support it. This isn't like Terraria or something where i instantly went "Yup spending money on this" without even thinking. Definitely gonna keep following it, though.
 

atalakas

Golden Knight of the Realm
100
16
oh don't get me wrong, I bought it before it went to steam, i wanted to support a company who was trying something different, ya the no mining kinda sucks but... its still early alpha and i accept that.
 

Friday

Lord Nagafen Raider
870
104
I thought I would bump this thread. Starforge is 50% off right now on steam and has introduced several new features.