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31

Discussions / Re: Dwarf Fortress sold 300k units in 6 days on steam

« on: December 22, 2022, 09:17:08 AM »

There's been a lot of people saying 'Well.. Steam won't generate any more of a player-base than it already has'
I personally think that is grossly wrong, Steam will generate not just plenty of revenue for Alex, but also fresh enthusiasm and a whole extra community of players and content creators.

32

General Discussion / Re: Dead Game?

« on: December 22, 2022, 09:14:11 AM »

It would of been nice to have something to chew on over the x-mas hols.
Problem with waiting till next year is there's some pretty massive titles next year that will be distracting a lot of PC gamers.

It's been a pretty quiet year so would of been nice to have something, but alas..

33

General Discussion / Re: Next Update?

« on: December 21, 2022, 09:59:12 AM »

It sure would be nice to have a juicy new version to play with over the x-mas hols.

34

General Discussion / Re: Why isn't this game on steam early access?

« on: December 19, 2022, 12:04:32 PM »

I disagree with the idea of this game's launch on Steam being its big time in the limelight.  IMO, this game has simply been in development for too long, had way too much attention put towards it, and had way too much polish put in it for the majority of people that would play this game to think of it as an exciting new release.  At this point, this game's launch on Steam would be much more like Cosmoteer's or Dwarf Fortress's launches, where many people just went "awesome, this game is on Steam now."  TotalBiscuit's video on this game a decade ago already sort of broke it out of the realm of pure obscurity, but SsethTzeentach's video 3 years ago sealed it and made this game a well-known title among games with similar audiences like RimWorld, Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress, or Factorio.  Practically, this game released years ago and people perceive new major updates more like Terraria's free major content updates than the game taking forever to finish.  Alex and the other developers have simply built a game that, after years of polish and development, doesn't need Steam to have a degree of success--only the developers can say whether or not this game is successful--and have an audience.  Releasing this game on Steam would just be a nicety at this point.

So in terms of answering "Why isn't the game on Steam yet" - What exactly are you saying, in regards to the OP question?
In layman's terms and (in your opinion) why hasn't Alex released via Steam?

My suggestion was simply him just wanting it to be finished before the wider steam community got their hands on it. I'd suggest that's a fairly reasonable assumption, but only Alex can confirm either way.

35

General Discussion / Re: Why isn't this game on steam early access?

« on: December 19, 2022, 08:53:32 AM »

Still wondering why this game not on steam... would have gifted it to so many people. A lot of people I recommended this game to didn't want to try it because of the weird launcher and website to download and get it, even if it was for free! Most people are used to game ecosystems such as Steam or Epic games stores.

It could be partly that Alex wants the main masses to experience the product in a finished state, giving the highest impact.
I'd imagine once the application reaches 1.0 'finished' - Alex will release on steam eventually then kick back and take a break.

I've no idea what comes after 1.0, but I'm not aware of any planned DLC sort of phase.
There may be periods of bug fixing / support for a while I'd imagine, but only one person knows what the plan is.

Only Alex can really put us out of our misery in terms of answers, if your lucky he will see these messages and might give a response for you.

In terms of smaller incremental releases, I think that ship has passed a long time ago, they just need to do whatever works best for them right now to get this game fully over the line.

36

General Discussion / Re: Is there a point to colonies?

« on: December 12, 2022, 01:04:26 PM »

The short answer to the OP would be: 'Yes'

It's a pretty core feature of the game and a lot of fun.

37

General Discussion / Re: What is the "goal" of officers affecting deployment point pool?

« on: December 08, 2022, 10:11:47 AM »

In terms of limiting battle sizes, is the main argument one purely of FPS / performance?

I've never liked the fact that two massive fleets can fly into each other, yet maybe half the ships actually go into battle while the other half waits patiently. 

On modern day rigs, I assume it's been tested to throw every ship in a max capacity fleet into battle?
I assume it kills the game or is unplayable? Otherwise why not, I'd prefer to just simplify the whole thing and have two fleets battle it out, as they would in reality.

38

General Discussion / Re: Can My Laptop Run This Game?

« on: December 07, 2022, 08:31:04 AM »

GPU specs? I'd imagine you can unless your PC is super old.

I think it used to be demo based, then you purchased a CD key to 'unlock' the game.
Not sure that's the case anymore and if you want to try it you have to buy it.

It's worth buying to support the dev, you'd definitely enjoy it if you like Space Sandbox RPG's.
If your PC doesn't somehow manage to give you good FPS's, then the game's good enough to warrant buying a decent rig, but I'd imagine you'd be fine.

I'm using a gaming laptop and it runs fine.

--------
If you want to share your machine specs easily (and you are on windows)
1) press the start key
2) type 'dxdiag'
3) run the direct x diagnostic program.
4) Look at the spec information, click on display 1/2 to check your internal graphics card and integrated memory, VRAM size etc. 

39

General Discussion / Re: Next Update?

« on: December 06, 2022, 12:40:31 PM »

<shakes cane> There's an actual RSS feed right here:

https://fractalsoftworks.com/feed/

Now your here Alex, any comment on the next update being a blog post or version change? 

40

General Discussion / Re: Next Update?

« on: December 06, 2022, 05:12:08 AM »

If you want to be notified, there's actually an honest to god old fashioned mailing list!

https://fractalsoftworks.com/lists/?p=subscribe

I feel like I should insert a meme of an old man shaking his cane at writing a .net app to scrape! Back in myyyy daaaaayyyy we had companies mail us when something happened, not have to do it ourselves like you crazy wippersnappers...

Haha, yeah unfortunately some companies (competitors) don't want you to know they have released new products/features on their website or tell you that they updated their prices.

So we used to have a web scraper that ran a bunch of URL's out of a config file, then it would dynamically scrape each paginated list of products. It would grab the HTML from source then use RegEx to just pull out the product code & price tags information. That would then get stored in a database for up-to-date competitor information.

We had a separate app that would load those prices for there products and then compare our equivalent prices for our SKU's.
Lots of product codes are the same even on different e-commerce sites, due to the code being set by the manufacturer, rather than the retailer.

The code wasn't particularly complex but it had quite a few assemblies and wasn't written particularly cleanly, so it could be tricky to work on, especially with using convoluted RegEx's. This was back in 2011, but I think that app still exists where I worked.

In terms of star sector it wouldn't even be 10% as complicated it would probably be about 10-15 lines of code.
But yeah an email is a lot easier! If not less fun 


Side Note:
Be careful with web scrapers because we noticed if we scraped too much, it creates an obvious increase in traffic and they just block your I.P address. So we ended up running the scraper from an O2 dongle that used dynamic I.P ranges.. Sneaky, not sure if it was entirely legal but we didn't care at the time.

41

General Discussion / Re: Next Update?

« on: December 05, 2022, 03:50:36 PM »

There's constant minor fixes throughout the update cycle, it just so happens some issues are easier to solve together when a problem is evident. Which actually happened now, some content creator started playing the game and Alex saw things that could be improved.

There is sh*tload of minor fixes in any software. However, in current internet age, users are  expecting regular updates. Best as planed seasons, one update per   (month, quarter,  half  year ) depends the dev team  workflow.
Irregular or too  long updates (yearly) are wrong sale strategy.

Your double spaces are causing my OCD to freak out 

In terms of regular releases, it's not really an expectation. It depends on the project and the size of the team and complexity of the game. Starsector is pretty complex and the quality has always been fairly high, so I have no problem with things taking time. Most people have been waiting 12 years for the final 1.0.

The issue I had was more in just knowing (roughly) when a binary version is going to change and a new downloadable .exe (might) be arising. It just saves checking the homepage every day. It's not an argument of 'can you please speed up' it's just one of potentially slightly more forward communication. Especially since myself and others have purchased multiple copies of the game on different PC's over the years. In the last 12 years I've probably had at least 6 different gaming rigs and laptops, all having copies of SS.

To be honest I should just build a little .net app that scrapes the <li> element on the homepage and fires out an RSS update if it detects a new element added.. Or twitter if that get's earlier warnings over the homepage? I normally just open the homepage every day and see if a new link appears.

In the past it did usually equate to a new .exe but lately it's almost been an expectation to be a blog post.

42

General Discussion / Re: The problem with the Radiant

« on: December 05, 2022, 03:36:18 PM »

Yeah please don't turn this into another RTS, we have enough of them in the industry as it is.

The Nexerelin mod can be used if you want a 4x game. I tried it and didn't like it, much prefer the vanilla.

In terms of issuing commands, I rarely bother using it, just wait near the bottom and let them come to me and the A.I is generally smart enough to look after themselves.

Oh and in terms of the Radiant, go capture one, it's a lot of fun to fight alongside one. Fight fire with fire and all that..

43

General Discussion / Next Update?

« on: December 04, 2022, 01:13:56 AM »

Do we know if the next update is going to be a version release with content, or another blog article update?

44

General Discussion / Re: No autosave? Seriously?

« on: November 11, 2022, 07:10:33 AM »

The OP seems like the kind of person who walks into a resteraunt wearing a leather waistcoat and a monacle, only to complain that the end of his fork is greasy. (immediately condemning the whole establishment)

Dude just press f5 like everyone else, it's not a difficult task.

You appear to come from the hyper modern millennial era of gaming where every 'checkpoint' you reach in your call of duty game is automatically saved.

Games didn't even have auto save back in the day, if you think it's hard hitting f5, try writing down a 30 character password, back in the Amiga days once you reached a new level.

Try looking up pages in manuals and copy protection wheels before your even allowed to start the game (fun) back from the late eighty's.

It's not an essential feature, you are butt hurt because you forgot to press a single key, like I said not a hard habit to get into.

F5 is a universal quicksave feature on so many games.

45

General Discussion / Re: New Let's Play as a Pirate Captain with Nexerelin - Part 10 up today

« on: October 23, 2022, 08:27:18 AM »

I find Star Sector is just one of those games I prefer to play, than watch. Thanks for sharing though