Evening everyone!

Posting an update tonight since I haven’t in a few days, and then I’m gonna try condensing things into weekly Friday updates. Some of you are probably happy about this and others undoubtedly aren’t, but hey! We’re doing a lot of the same kind of thing day after day recently, and it’s difficult to post a substantial update every night without getting repetitive or just showing off lots of spoiler-y content.

Over the past few days we’ve done a lot more of the same beta-prep stuff– monsters are being balanced and NPC behaviors added, and swords have been rebalanced as well. I’ve been adding objects that are meant for a dungeon, and Armagon has populated the Glitch castle dungeon with everything from guards to lancers to humble servants. And more NPC dialogue has been added! Woo.

A big thing we’ve started doing is fixing up our random namegen. No longer will we enter the game with randomly generated characters named Beefjim or Baconjeff. RIP, Beefjim and Baconjeff, you served us well. :’(

Today I randomly rolled a human character named Donament, which I think is arguably a better name than Beefjim. Witness here the Very Brief Adventures of Donament the Randomly Generated Human.



Donament the Randomly Generated Human landed on a snowy planet near sunset and was immediately attacked by a horrific rabbit dinosaur. She kicked its rabbit butt, naturally. She also noted that that tree looks as if it’s being supported by a couple of springy plants, which is probably an odd result of the newer terrain gen but still happens to look pretty neat.



Then she stumbled across a bridge and into a mean-looking and questionably hostile Glitch guard…but it was getting dark and Donament was pretty famished and it smelled like something tasty was cooking inside, so she risked it and ran into the castle anyway.



As it turns out, Donament the Randomly Generated Human was never very good at making important life decisions. RIP, Donament. :(

Aaand that’s what I’ve got for tonight. Look for a new update Friday night!

Good evening guys!

We’ve done lots of work on random encounters this week and it’s getting pretty exciting running across all these little anomalies in the universe– a group of bandits, a lonely house in the woods, cultists, people wearing silly hats. :O There’s sort of an…Elder Scrolls feel to random encounters. Here’s a few screenshots from one I stumbled across earlier this evening.



Sapfinger the Randomly Generated Floran had just landed on Alpha R CRB 249 II (catchy name) and was searching for new and exciting things to stab when she came upon exactly what she was looking for. A cultist! And an ape that looked a little bit like that guy from that one David Lynch film! Today was truly her lucky day.



”Death to heathens!” The cultist cried out as Sapfinger approached, which Sapfinger found pretty rude considering they’d only just met. Sapfinger sighed, mildly annoyed with the state of the universe. “You know, we’re living in a society here!” she was sorely tempted to respond, but instead she just stabbed, and the cultist was no more.

We also managed to quickly implement fire. Y’know, the actual burny, destructive sort of fire. Look at it go!



And, AND…remember this guy?



Well, he’s finally actually in-game, too, as you might’ve noticed from one of Tiy’s tweets on Tuesday.

All in all great progress this week. :D Goodnight!

EDIT: Whooops, almost forgot this bonus screenshot. Avians are funny.

All 6 of the new ship designs! :3

Hey, it’s Friday! Happy Friday!

We’ve gotten a lot of satisfying work done this week! Some simple tweaks, some not-so-simple tweaks, and some additions were made as we get the game ready (I feel like Ned Stark at this point but OH MAN IT’S COMIN’ HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS. We do have a few more problems to solve, though). I’ll list the more prominent changes in bullet-point form:

Changed some recipes to make for a hopefully more balanced early game experience!
The scariest monsters only come out at night now. >:D
As you might’ve noticed, we’ve finished changing up the player ships. Gotta say, Floran is my favorite. :’)
Some leveling bugs were fixed, especially on weapons and monsters.
Meat is earned through the use of hunting bows. It’s a pretty good food source, so start practicing your archery.
More bosses have been configured. :’)
More monsters have been configured, too!
You can’t interact with doors when they’re wired. Gotta unlock ‘em! Some networking bugs with wired objects were also fixed.
Object health was configured, making it just a bit harder to accidentally break things when you go around haphazardly swinging your pickaxe (you shouldn’t do that anyway, you’ll put an eye out).
A lot more awesome weapon types have been configured, two of which I’ll show you now…



The party UI is in! But still needs a biiiit of time before it’s ready.
A good handful more random encounters were added, which I’ll show you below from the point of view of Big Banana the Randomly Generated Apex (best not to ask how he got his name)


Big Banana was wandering around with his trusty flamethrower and a strong desire to set things aflame when, in the very near distance, he spied a big stone tower with a treasure chest guarded by some rather rude-looking Sentrybots. He downed a whole bowl of Ape Grapes for luck and set off to find out how well Sentrybots held up against 1000°C.

Luckily, they didn’t hold up very well. Big Banana claimed his treasure!



With pockets full of money and explosives and heavy metal bars, Big Banana walked away from the tower confident that he could take on just about anything!



He wasn’t paying much attention, though, and fell down a cliff into a valley full of monsters and died. Oops.

RIP Big Banana.

Hey! I'm making a separate thread here to address December 4th beta concerns.
Keep in mind that the version of the game being released is the Progenitor stage of the beta, so expect frequent updates, bugs and incomplete features as outlined in this post.

How will I download the game?​
Steam keys will be sent out to all pre-order backers via e-mail! We promise a direct download version of the game will be provided as soon as we're able to efficiently provide it.​
But I no longer have access to the e-mail I pre-ordered with!
That's no good! E-mail support@chucklefish.org with details of the purchase. We'll definitely need to know what your old e-mail address was, but other really helpful information includes any receipt info you can obtain from your payment provider, date of purchase, or a transaction ID. We'll get it figured out. :)​
Will I still be able to purchase the game after the beta is released?​
Yes! You'll be able to purchase the game through Steam Early Access and we'll still have the $15 Pixel Tier and 4-pack up in our store.​
Will the beta be available for PC, Mac and Linux?​
Yes! Yes they will.​
Will [insert feature here] be in at beta launch?​
Expect a good chunk of things to be missing or incomplete! It's a beta, after all. We're still working at our usual pace to get everything in and working smoothly.​
Yeah but will MECHS be in at beta launch?​
We've got a couple mechs in. :)​
Novakids?
Not yet. :(​
Am I allowed to post or stream footage of the beta to Youtube/Twitch/etc, even if I'm making money off of it?​
Absolutely!​
Is multiplayer in for beta?​
Yes!
​
Got more questions? Post them here and we'll try to get to as many as we can! If that's not a whole lot then I'll keep answering them in the morning!

So here is a non exhaustive list of additions coming to the game. We have a lot more than this in store (not yet discussed), but Xealaz over at reddit compiled such a nice list of the stuff we HAVE discussed that I wanted to share it with you. As always, things are not set in stone.

On with the list!



NPC Spawners & Building Logic: NPCs will scan the structures you build around them and the contents of chests; they will have improved inventories/behaviors depending on how valuable their surroundings are.
Macro Terrain Changes: Affect an entire planet’s terrain and weather
More Planet Scanner Data: See details in the planet scanner like planet occupants/dungeons
Underground: More secrets will spawn below the surface
Space Combat: Way in the future, expect space combat and the ability to board other ships.
Spaceship Dungeons: Very large, size of a planet.
Biome Hazards: Sandstorms, icestorms, meteor showers, toxic planets, airless planets.
Ore & Difficulty: Higher difficulty planets will have improved ore distribution
Story Missions: Eventually each tier will end with a story mission that ends with the bosses you see now.
Ship Navigator Changes: Still not set in stone; but the new idea is to give a local map with fog of war. Instead of sector buttons you have to fly out of a sector and into the next one by uncovering more of the star map. The final sector would be infinite.
Smoother Difficulty Curve: Better indication of the difficulty of an area. Difficulty will change within tiers as well as between tiers. There will be fractional difficulty (for example, Difficulty 1.12 in tier 1 would be easier than Difficulty 1.52, while still in T1)
Monster Generation: Right now, monster parts just have stat boosts, but eventually rolled monster parts will affect their behavior and abilities. For example, monsters with spider legs can climb walls; fiery monsters inflict burning. You might get a burning spider dropping on you from the ceiling. Projectiles may be tied to specifically generated heads. Biome may influence monster part generation.
Mini-Map: Rotating circular map showing highlights only such as the location of friendly players, spawn points–but no major details. For the details you’d use a mapping item to create a map as you travel.
Teleporters: Stargates between planets and eventually between servers.
Dramatic Planet Modification: Not going to be implemented any time soon. Ability for players to modify huge chunks of planets through things like orbital bombardment; removing the entire first layer of a planet and leave behind a lifeless surface.
Tech Priority: Eventually all techs can be active at once, but a categorization system is in the works to assign priority to conflicting techs, preventing issues. A hotkey to switch the active tech will be added as a temporary workaround until the priority system is completed.
Server Commands: More server commands and control for chat and port listening.
Villager AI: Villagers will aggro when you steal from them and follow you more aggressively.
World Storage: Improve world storage and organize *.pak files to improve modding. Add launcher integration.
Spawn Points: Change spawn points on individual planets.
Controls: Reconfigure controls; keybinding.
Ship Size: Upgrade ship/increase size.
Racial Armor: Racial abilities will not be inherent but will be tied to racial armor. For example, Avian armor can glide downward.
Capture Pods & Mercenaries: May be able to capture NPCs with pods. Summon NPC Mercenaries by using the pod as a beacon.
Reduced Wipes: Working on a system to patch without requiring as many character wipes in the future. This will require one more wipe and that’s it.
Other Changes: Colorblind Mode & Engine Optimization. FTL animation being revamped to reduce memory strain.