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[zenstrata]

Congratulations on reaching 2021 everybody!

I'm happy to have been along for the ride.  I've always enjoyed Starsector, even back before it was called Starsector  
Thanks to Alex!  Who put years of his life into this project!  I hope it continues to move forward and when it gets released on the various stores I know I'll be out there supporting it.
Lets raise a glass in memory of TotalBiscuit, the epic game reviewer who helped put this game on my (and many others) radar. 
(It might be nice to include his memory in the game somehow, maybe a character who looks like him and wears a top hat?)
Congratulations to everyone for living through 2020!  Lets hope that 2021 fares well, and if it doesn't, keep soldiering on!
And to everyone else involved with the project, your input and assistance over the years has helped make Starsector what it has become!  Thank you!

=)

[IonDragonX]

Lets raise a glass in memory of TotalBiscuit, the epic game reviewer who helped put this game on my (and many others) radar.

God Bless TotalBiscuit! Taken from us too soon. 

[sector_terror]

Do I have to raise my glass to Seth? Cus him and the merchants guild were my gateway

[David]

FWIW I'll tell my TotalBiscuit story here. Content warning for obnoxious name-dropping.

Gaslamp Games set up a Dungeons of Dredmor booth for Pax 2012. Here's me hanging out before opening.

At some point - I think a little before the public opening of the event - TotalBiscuit cruised on through the indie games section with a couple folks who worked with him. He'd covered Dredmor and put it on the map just like he had Starsector, so I had to go up and say hi. I just had to make a crack about how he called all the portraits in Starsector ugly in his review, and he actually got all apologetic, saying he meant like oh it's post-apocalyptic so it fits - I said no no, I'm just having some fun with you. (And TBF the first run if portraits was a bit rough.) It was all good and extremely British.

It's interesting how there was quite bit of a difference between his media persona, which certainly could be brash, and meeting him in person. But I think that's probably true for everyone who does this sort of thing. Also funny how small and naive a world indie games and YouTubers seemed back in 2012 compared to now.

(Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade stopped by, he was very cool and specifically gave us props for making videogames more inviting for women. God, who else- all sorts of indies of that era, who I won't go on at length about. But: Brendon Chung of Blendo Games was in the booth next to us, and he was just the nicest guy in the entire universe. I will also forever lament that I missed Ron Gilbert's visit to our booth; that's what I get for sleeping in on my off-shift.)

[kazi]

Oh man, has it really been 10 years? That makes this at least the 5 year anniversary of the removal of "When is Starsector coming out? ... When it is ready. We are not Blizzard though, so this doesn’t mean 5+ years." from the FAQs 

I'll see you all in 2030 when 1.0 gets released. (Kidding, I hope it's soon though.) Congrats to everyone involved for a great game in the meantime.

[SonnaBanana]

I'll see you all in 2030 when 1.0 gets released. (Kidding, I hope it's soon though.) Congrats to everyone involved for a great game in the meantime.

No need to wait that long, it only around '24-'25

[cicobuff]

The danger of dragging too long a development timeline is that the underlying technologies and platforms become obsolete and requires major porting!

[xenoargh]

When I first found this game (through word of mouth) my favorite not-so-little-person was, 9.  He's, uh... 17 now, lol.  When I bought the game, it had, er... some "missions" and, uh... a very empty, barren Corvus System, with a few fleets of Pirates and the Hegemony Defense Fleet.

It was one of those games where I wanted to mod it immediately (this happens a lot), and he was very excited about being able to make spaceships, so I taught him how to draw mirrored images with a straight-edge line on paper, scan them and get them colored and all that, in my office.  He really enjoyed the idea of making spaceships and made dozens of drawings, most of which are now lost to time.  I'd never done anything serious with 2D spaceship art (or 2D art in general) since I made a couple of spacecraft on an ancient Macintosh for Escape Velocity... so trying to figure out what David was doing, exactly, was entertaining.

I eventually got around to semi-formally learning Java, because he kept coming up with game ideas and people were doing all sorts of crazy things, like making fleets move around each other, or altering fundamental game-rules. That's when it went from being a minor thing to a major time-sink, from time to time.  I've definitely pushed the 1000-hour mark trying out crazy ideas. Meanwhile, the rest of my life has happened, and I've been super-busy, so I kind of flit in here when I can, see if anybody's said anything interesting, then dip back out for days, weeks, sometimes months.

I've sold the game to a lot of my friends over the years, bought it for kids and so forth.  Most of them are awaiting 1.0 before trying it out again, after getting into long, nerdy discussions about how to properly structure difficulty ramps, the role of RNG in game design, theories of combat balance in a game like this (at one point I had a four-way mini-panel involving a little too much beer, and Starships Forever as a test-bed), the history of pixel-art... and so forth.

We're all hoping that the final result, "doesn't suck" but I certainly have gotten my ten bucks-worth, lol.

[Jonlissla]

Do I have to raise my glass to Seth? Cus him and the merchants guild were my gateway

Well, his video has currently over four million views. Pretty sure he deserves a fair bit of recognition.

Personally I heard about the game from TB like many others, and ever since I've been returning to the game and its modding scene every now and then. To see a project like this evolve over the years have been a fascinating ride to say the least.

[Sayak]

Do I have to raise my glass to Seth? Cus him and the merchants guild were my gateway

I have found this game thanks to Seth as well, even bought few copies for friends.
This game is so much fun.
Cant wait to bite into 0.95a

[Squigzilla]

I started at TotalBiscuit's recommendation when the game was just a series of missions with non-customizeable ships. And look at how far things have come! Keep up the great work Alex and David!

[FooF]

I can't even recall how I found out about Starsector. I vaguely remember somebody telling me "there's a top-down spaceship game I think you'd like." I don't know who said it or where I heard it from. It definitely wasn't "Starfarer" though: I think the name changed not long before I heard of it. Anyways, long story short, it was word-of-mouth.

To think back to what it was when I started to where it is now...it's impressive. And yes, I've definitely got more than $10 of enjoyment out of it!

[Lcfc2]

I'm here beacuse of TB WFT is... Starfarer video back in 2012 and what a long way it's come!

[CrashToDesktop]

I registered on this forum January 25th, 2012, after I got a look at the game from TotalBiscuit.  Looking at the numbers, apparently I was the 536th user to register on this forum - there's now more than 12,700.  In fact, this was so long ago that I had to ask my parents to buy the game for me.

I'm well past that age now, but this game has been a constant companion to me for nine years now.  I was here in time to witness both the mission-only days as well as the birth of the campaign, and the fuzzball of planets and factions that got added to the Corvus system through mods.  TB even did a second video on it not too long after for the campaign update, which was incredibly rare for him and no doubt an early indicator of the love and effort that goes into the development of Starsector to this day.

The updates might come in a little on the slow side, but each update has never failed to fascinate me.  I hope to be kept fascinated by Starsector's art, gameplay, and soon-to-be writing and story telling for many more years to come.

[daggertx]

TotalBiscuit got me as well