64 Comments:

1. *gasp*
   How terribly exciting! Downloading as I type.
   April 29th, 2011 at 9:02 pm by Memphis-Ahn

2. Downloading. Hyperventilating. CANNOT WAI — download done! Don’t have to wait anymore! WOOOOOOO…
   April 29th, 2011 at 10:06 pm by Seth

3. Awesome 😀

   I want to hear if anyone else can beat the “impossible” mission.
   April 29th, 2011 at 11:37 pm by dgbaumgart

4. Braggart! I’m not sure I should admit it, but *I* can’t do that one, and David can. Grrr.
   April 29th, 2011 at 11:44 pm by Alex

5. Hey, I don’t just draw spaceships 😉

   (And yeah, I’m going to keep rubbing it in.)
   April 29th, 2011 at 11:59 pm by dgbaumgart

6. Great to see the alpha is out! Downloading as I type.
   April 30th, 2011 at 12:17 am by Avan

7. YAAAAY!!!!! soooo happyyy!!!!!!!
   yay yay yay yay yay!!!
   (when i saw the email i started jumping and yelling “yay”)
   April 30th, 2011 at 12:42 am by Glen

8. Awesome.
   Downloading now.
   Can’t wait to try the impossible level 🙂
   April 30th, 2011 at 6:46 am by Ocid

9. grrr… i cant even beat the medium mission… (though, i did only try it once or twice)
   April 30th, 2011 at 10:12 am by Glen

10. I hear you – in retrospect, that one is a lot closer to hard than it is to medium, so don’t feel too bad about that 🙂
    April 30th, 2011 at 10:18 am by Alex

11. […] Starfarer Alpha is out. And guess who pre-ordered? This guy. […]
    April 30th, 2011 at 10:43 am by Oh Man

12. Is there a bug reporting system built into the game?
    April 30th, 2011 at 8:44 pm by Mike

13. I’m really glad you’re progressing so well on this awesome looking game. I never play mission based games so I’ll not preordering until I see some progress on the open world stuff but well done anyway! Keep up the good work!!
    April 30th, 2011 at 11:20 pm by IMakeWeirdThings

14. I managed to get a Pyrrhic Victory on the ‘Impossible’ mission. XD

    I think with a slight adjustment of my tactics, it should be possible to win with something greater than 0%.
    May 1st, 2011 at 1:44 am by Avan

15. @Mike: Nope. It’d be nice to have one, just couldn’t take time away from anything else to work that in! So for now, it’s email/twitter/etc.

    @IMakeWeirdThings: Thanks!

    @Avan: <mutter> Pretty soon I’ll be the only one around here not to have beaten it.
    May 1st, 2011 at 12:45 pm by Alex

16. I think that omni shields should be set up so that they will stay up without holding down the right mouse button like all other shields, as well as having it dismissed by a second press of the right mouse button, rather than requiring it to be held down. (The current setup causes the shields to de-activate if you enter the warroom, and it means someone used to operating fixed and full shields will not be used to the click-hold behavior.

    I also started work on my own mission.
    May 1st, 2011 at 3:45 pm by Avan

17. Ohh, great idea – going to try that out ASAP and see how it plays.

    Really looking forward to seeing what you come up with for the mission, too!
    May 1st, 2011 at 3:53 pm by Alex

18. Out of curiosity, are you planning on putting a forum up here?

    Also, I think my favorite moment so far was in testing my mission, my Conquest overloaded fighting a pair of Onslaughts (I had run out of LRMs already on the first of the four Onslaughts in the mission) and a torpedo from a nearby condor was heading straight at me, so I managed to turn so that it would go between the prongs, buying me just enough time to get my shields up mere pixels before it impacted me.
    May 1st, 2011 at 7:53 pm by Avan

19. Re: forum – seems like it might be a good to get one set up in the near future.

    I do love those torpedo near-misses myself.

    By the way, tried out the shields idea – it’s great! Back in early dev, there was another type (“directional”) that was kind of like that, but stayed in the direction you raised it in. This is like a good mix of that and the omni type – best of both.

    Now, to teach the AI to use it right… I swear, every gameplay improvement yanks the rug right out from under it.
    May 1st, 2011 at 8:38 pm by Alex

20. This is what I wanted Gratuitous Space Battles to be! Love the game so far, glad I pre-ordered. Like the particle effects and general style.

    As suggested by Avan please change the holding down the mouse button on the omni shield to a toggle.
    May 2nd, 2011 at 4:49 am by Tubs

21. Adding weapons to the ship tooltips, would really help in figuring out what they are up to.

    Awesome epic game so far, surpassed expectations.
    May 2nd, 2011 at 8:02 am by aaaa

22. Will we be able to eventually change the weapon groupings?

    I see there is an option to reconfigure your flagship in the mission selection screen, but its always greyed out, and how could you re-assign them on a different ship in-combat?
    May 2nd, 2011 at 11:07 am by Avan

23. Hello,

    I wanted to say this game sounds great. I was wondering do you have any plans on bringing this game out on the 360 as a XBLA game or as a PSN game for the PS3 or NGP?
    May 2nd, 2011 at 1:09 pm by Cool

24. @Tubs: Done in dev version.

    @aaaa: I’ll see if I can add that w/o making it a huge wall of text. It’s been on the todo list for a while 🙂

    @Avan: You’ll be able to change weapon groupings as part of outfitting the ship, not in combat. That “Refit” button is greyed out because the feature isn’t implemented yet – but it’s high on the list.

    @Cool: Thanks! Probably not, and definitely not in the near future.
    May 2nd, 2011 at 2:41 pm by Alex

25. This is fantastic, Alex. I played for at least six hours over the weekend, and I’ve beaten every mission except the impossible one. If you manage to turn out a sandbox game mode of the same quality as what we’ve seen in this amazingly-polished early build, this will easily earn a spot in my list of favorite games. No pressure 😉
    May 2nd, 2011 at 4:59 pm by Will

26. Awesome game so far. It’s really hard! I’m struggling with the first mission. 🙂

    Love to see the modding support right off the bat as well. I’ll certainly be playing around with that.

    Also, is there any particular place we should report crash or bug reports (not that I’ve had problems yet)? Just in case.
    May 2nd, 2011 at 7:09 pm by Magicked

27. I can guess it on the todo, but being able to change the keys (WASD) would be realy great (non us keyboard user here)
    So far, i feel like playing Tyrian-eve online-Aiwars, which is a major win
    May 3rd, 2011 at 3:59 am by Rompom

28. @Will: Thanks! No pressure, huh? Whew, dodged one there.

    @Magicked: Email via “Contact Us” link on the right, for now.

    @Rompom: Indeed, it’s on the TODO list. Hopefully next version, at least in text file form.
    May 3rd, 2011 at 9:17 am by Alex

29. In testing out mission modding, I discovered that the trident will automatically retreat the moment it is deployed. Is this some kind of AI bug?
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:43 am by Avan

30. Is the Trident wing heavily outnumbered? If so, the enemy admiral is simply thinking better of fighting and is calling it a day early.
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:57 am by Alex

31. It happened even when I deployed them from my fleet to test it out, and we were about evenly matched.
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:24 pm by Avan

32. Ah, is it possible that the group they were deployed to had been given the retreat order before, then?

    Hmm, actually, I think I know what happened – as you deploy more ships, they deploy further off the map, but for fighters that results in automatic retreats past a certain point. The offset goes down with time, but you’d probably had a couple of deployments in very short order, and so that kicked in. I’ll see if I can fix that up – even if that’s not the case for you, it’s still a bug 🙂
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:26 pm by Alex

33. This game is AWESOME!

    Even the Alpha is a better game, than many games I have played over the last few years.

    A few thoughts after playing 4-5 missions:

    1. Why not change the Pause button to the SPACE bar. It is used for this in many games and it´s very convenient to use it coupled with WASD

    2. Somehow the TAB and F button mechanic feels unintuitively to me. I play on a Mobile Computer with a touchpad, so I play the game less like a shooter and more like an RTS. It confuses me every time to press TAB to check on the action and unwillingly find myself at the helm of my flagship.
    May 3rd, 2011 at 1:20 pm by Maxim

34. ah ok, thanks! that does seem to be the cause for the problem!
    May 3rd, 2011 at 2:28 pm by Avan

35. This is a fantastic piece of work already, even if so far I can only beat the easiest mission. >.>

    It seems like some weapons fire continuously when you hold the mouse button down, and others fire on releasing the mouse button. This was a problem in one mission, because one of my weapon groups included weapons of both types.

    I’d probably prefer if all weapons just fired as fast as possible when I hold the mouse button down, unless I’ve got them set to what MechWarrior calls chain fire. <.<
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:00 am by Jay

36. Your game looks really promising and you might want to look into releasing a playable version of the alpha to grab some more interest and convince those who are undecided.
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:51 am by Jackson

37. I have problems with starting it on linux, it says:
    …
    Exception in thread
    AWT-EventQueue-0″ java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
    at javax.swing.AbstractButton.fireActionPerformed(Unknown Source)
    …
    What should I do?
    May 4th, 2011 at 9:32 am by Ace

38. @Jay: Looking at this is on our todo list. For groups that are mixed like that, though, it’s best to just use them in autofire mode. They probably wouldn’t do well in manual mode regardless of how the firing worked.

    @Jackson: Thanks! We definitely will, further down the line.

    @Ace: Sorry to hear that! Sent you an email.
    May 4th, 2011 at 9:41 am by Alex

39. Just bought your game. I love it but am getting easily destroyed on the 2nd mission. There definitely needs to be some sort of “fly in formation” or “guard” order. My flagship gets swarmed with bombers / heavy fighters and there’s no one to shoot them down :'(
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:32 am by Blips

40. Also, it’s somewhat disheartening to see allied ships fly into my (stationary) ship when the shields are up and explode.
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:37 am by Blips

41. A guard order would be great, mostly to order my fighters to cover for my capships automatically.

    For the second mission, you shouldn’t send your flag ship in right away, you need to send in stuff capable of securing objectives & taking out the bombers (Small light ships & the like)

    So far I have made a ‘medium’ mission that involves a 1 on 1 Onslaught battle, and a ‘hard’ mission that involves a big fleet battle The best score I have gotten on the hard one is 86% – I think its almost impossible to get 100%.
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:48 am by Avan

42. Putting fighters in the same group as larger ships makes them guard them, though they tend to stray a fair bit. Often, they *need* to – for example, to stop enemy bombers, interceptors need to meet them well away from the bombers’ intended target.
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:16 pm by Alex

43. Feels pretty polished so far. The camera is a tad disorienting at first (when the ship is facing the bottom of the screen, left is right and right is left) – any plans to experiment with either a rotating camera, or perhaps a mouse only waypoint based control scheme? (waypoint based schemes might feel more true to the helm-of-a-giant-ship experience)
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:30 pm by Brian

44. […] Molotov z niezale?nego studia Fractal Softworks og?osi? udost?pnienie wersji alpha gry Starfarer, kosmicznej strzelanki 2D z elementami RPG i strategii […]
    May 4th, 2011 at 1:14 pm by TuxPlay – Linux Games » Starfarer wydany w wersji Alpha 0.33a

45. looks good although i hope for the full game missions will not be this hard or have an diffculty option could only beat 2 and 1 was luck the big ship got stuck between wrecks and killed its self :)waiting for full game now ty for a look at it
    May 4th, 2011 at 2:26 pm by Stonehand

46. Thanks for your advice Avan. Playing the game more like an RTS, and focusing on controlling the various relays definitely seems to be of a high priority.

    Now onto the hard mission.
    May 4th, 2011 at 3:54 pm by Blips

47. @Brian: We actually tried a rotating camera for kicks during early development, and… let’s just say it didn’t turn out very well.

    The current control scheme is familiar to a lot of people that have played the old classics (from Asteroids to Star Control), and I think one gets used to it fairly quickly – though of course that varies from person to person.

    Interesting idea about capital ships controlling differently. For now, though, I think we’ll stick to one control scheme to avoid extra complexity.

    @Stonehand: There’ll be an overall difficulty setting that affects how much damage your ships take. “Normal” will be 100%, with easier settings for when you want a more forgiving experience.
    May 4th, 2011 at 4:39 pm by Alex

48. We’ve got a forum set up!
    May 4th, 2011 at 4:40 pm by Alex

49. Saw Dominic’s video. Really well made game guys, keep the awesome, detailed work up!

    This game could already be a hit with the current features, I believe; but are you planning to include ship designing? It’d blew my mind with highly customizable module & weapon options!

    All the bests,
    Xenoph
    May 10th, 2011 at 12:41 pm by Xenoph

50. Thanks! Yeah, for sure – ship designing is coming fairly soon (at least, in the form of being able to outfit your flagship for each mission).
    May 10th, 2011 at 1:48 pm by Alex

51. Greetings!

    I pre-ordered it and i love the game so far, cant wait to see more updates to it 😀

    Also i have a gaming channel if you guys want to check it out, Im testing a lot of different kind of game right now 2 but im a 4 day old channel. I have a lot of game mainly from Indie devs! Check me out and sub if you want to see more Indie game!
    May 10th, 2011 at 5:38 pm by Jocan2003

52. @Xenoph: we’ve already managed to get custom ship in-game by hand. down the line there will be an editor that can streamline the process, but for now, you can check out our experimentation documented here: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22.0
    May 11th, 2011 at 9:13 am by Avan

53. Wow, that’s some seriously awesome work you all did there, Avan.

    Love that you could add weapons and shields right off the bat, didn’t expect the game to be such moddable. And of course, +1 for tools. Keep this line guys!
    May 11th, 2011 at 1:55 pm by Xenoph

54. HELP

    I preordered the game and downloaded the alpha but the game runs too fast. I mean it’s like trying to play an old dos game that hasn’t been optimised to work with a new system. The ships are just a blur and the fps counter says 1500+. Why isn’t this happening to anyone else!? What do I do?
    May 11th, 2011 at 7:19 pm by bertle

55. My apologies for the trouble. Your video card has vsync forced off – if you turn it back on, the game will run normally.

    We’ve already fixed this for the next release – but for now, just turn vsync on in your system’s graphics settings.
    May 11th, 2011 at 8:07 pm by Alex

56. […] that the alpha has been out for a couple of weeks, you might be wondering what new features and changes are coming in the near […]
    May 17th, 2011 at 7:28 pm by Starfarer » Starfarer Roadmap – What’s Next?

57. hi,I need serial number to play alpha???
    May 29th, 2011 at 2:54 pm by John

58. Yeah – you get access to the alpha (and all subsequent builds, up to and including the full version) by preordering.
    May 29th, 2011 at 2:59 pm by Alex

59. so i need to buy alpha(demo)???
    May 29th, 2011 at 3:22 pm by John

60. It’s not a demo. If you’re interested in finding out more, do take a look at the preorder page.

    In particular, by preordering, you get the game at a discount from the full price.
    May 29th, 2011 at 5:08 pm by Alex

61. Any eta on 0.34a? I’m kinda eager 😉
    June 9th, 2011 at 12:49 pm by PyckenZot

62. Very soon 🙂 Perhaps as early as Friday night.
    June 9th, 2011 at 12:54 pm by Alex

63. Hello –
    Congratulations on the progress of this game! I am downloading linux version now, and look forward to trying it out & preordering.

    You may consider removing or updating the download links on this post, since they are now out of date.
    June 12th, 2011 at 1:30 pm by gare

64. Thanks!

    Good call, updated the link. Rather, changed it to point to the preorder page (that has the updated download links) instead.
    June 12th, 2011 at 1:39 pm by Alex