Fractal Softworks Forum
Other => Discussions => Topic started by: Forux on October 24, 2019, 02:49:17 AM
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Hello,
Can you please share status - when to expect the next version, final version?
What do you plan to do to speed up the process?
How we can help?
Thank you.
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Oh those are easy to answer.
When?
According to this dev time chart we are at least 1 year away from the next large update, assuming a similar scope from the previous ones.
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vREtSxz4zeUT9dPskL9IeXwnQeP6KBg6J6qXPXjF4baXjN7SLbnwdi-Po339Iik1LsJc8d7tzJm_XCT/pubchart?oid=1562552162&format=image)
Speed?
What would be the benefit to speeding up the process? We get massive and highly polished updates at a admitedly slow pace, but any mean to shortening the dev process either involves lower quality, less coherence or vastly higher costs.
I understand the impetus, but really this has been talked about for a long while already and really the end word is, this is what work best for Alex, and right now there isn't really a compelling reason to change it.
That being said, I would like a few more blogposts, even small scale ones (except if it's another economy reforging)
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Since I started following this game, there was rarely this big of a gap in blogposts. I'd appreciate anything. Speed is not really a problem for me, but not knowing what is being worked on for a large period of time is kinda annoying. Even if Alex drops by on some thread and says "hey guys i'm doing x and y currently", that would be swell. Twitter posts are nice, but most are just QoL fixes and minor features.
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You guys sound like every project manager I ever worked with.
Soon you'll want access to Alex's task tracker so you can prioritise the work items :)
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imo u should put the game on steam, it is 100% worthy, get someone to advertise it, someone with free time, someone from these forums maybe.
I'm sure it will have great success, use that publicity to raise money and finish it. trick is to have someone else do the marketing, as I understanding the dev team is 3 people?, so doing that is only gonna make u *** up in other areas.
make a sub-forum for the volunteer marketing team. find someone you trust 100% and let them handle it so it's completely and 1000% out of your hair, so u can focus only on the game.
I dunno about kickstarter and how much they charge or what their rules are. you could just post a bank acc number with a counter on your website and a funding goal. add some perks for people who give a lot, like special ship skins, stations named after them, ships named after them, major story NPC's, etc. simply cosmetic stuff which has zero impact on the game.
JUST DO IT! DON"T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS!!!!
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I've been with the game since before Hyperspace was even a thing - believe me when I say this is pretty par for the course. And being that this is likely the final update (or at least the "release") I'd say the wait is going to be even longer than usual. My money is on Fall next year, if we're lucky.
That said, I've admittedly been itching for some more info on the next update. Blog Posts are always a welcome read and are super tantalizing. Though I'd imagine most of what is being worked on right now is content-related, and I can see how it would be tough to make a Blog Post on that sort of thing interesting and spoiler-light.
My point being: if you have another game you want to play or follow, I suggest you do that for the time being. This will take a while.
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imo u should put the game on steam, it is 100% worthy, get someone to advertise it, someone with free time, someone from these forums maybe.
I'm sure it will have great success, use that publicity to raise money and finish it. trick is to have someone else do the marketing, as I understanding the dev team is 3 people?, so doing that is only gonna make u *** up in other areas.
Alex is the main dev and handles... Nearly everything. David is art and some lore. That's it.
The issue with putting the game on Steam is that you can't release it a second time. At this point, it's better for Alex to finish it and then finally take the best shot he can.
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What has changed is the lack of blog posts. Until 0.9a, there were blog posts every month or two. Now, there is almost nothing.
I would not expect the next release to be final, especially with new content to be tested and maybe broken. Maybe next release could be the first beta or the one before it.
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[snip]
It's not about money, this is just how games are made.
Look at how long Minecraft took to go from Alpha to Launch, if you want a blindly obvious example.
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Can you please share status - when to expect the next version, final version?
Hi - as far as timeframes, I'm afraid it's just "soon(tm)/when it's ready", as always. As far as blog posts, yeah, it's been a bit, though the most recent one is from July 8th:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/2019/07/08/skills-and-story-points/
Basically August has been a bit of a wash just due to *a lot* of extra acitivy, support requests, and so on, resulting from Sseth's video - not that I'm complaining! After that, I made a detour into adding 4k support - not something I was planning and not blog post worthy, but it took a little bit. After that, I've been going through and adding more story point uses to the campaign, along with making a large number of QoL improvements and various bug fixes as a result of the recently-increased feedback and bug reports. Also did a fair amount of playtesting with the new skills at some point along the way.
Still have a number of story-point/skill system related things to add; after that it's on to new stuff! Deciding between one of two things at this point; this'll get a blog post once it's a ways into implementation, so unfortunately, it'll be a bit. On the bright side: a lack of a blog post does not mean a lack of progress.
Some of this is, I think, just part of working on content-type things - they're not very interesting to write about much of the time, and it spoils them besides. So that's not something I'm super clear on how to handle; will hopefully figure something out.
How we can help?
Thank you for asking that! The main thing that helps - and that I really appreciate - is everyone's patience. I can't really do this any faster, regardless, so if I was getting bombarded with "when" type questions (present thread excluded!), all that would do is increase my stress levels and probably slow things down a bit. So, I really appreciate that this is not happening, and in fact am actively grateful for it. Also, helping out new players on the forum, answering questions, helping resolve technical issues (especially in the modding subforum) really helps, since it takes some of that off my plate, and I appreciate it a lot.
According to this dev time chart we are at least 1 year away from the next large update, assuming a similar scope from the previous ones.
Oh, good, thank you for putting together the chart! Saves me the trouble of figuring out when to make the next release :)
Alex is the main dev and handles... Nearly everything. David is art and some lore. That's it.
(Just wanted to say that David does more than "some" of the writing! Most of the writing you see in the campaign is his.)
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Hi.
I'm surprised about the way you sell this game.
->at the moment, you buy the game one time, at a fair price on top of that, then you have updates for free... but at very slow rate, and not "major" updates from my point of view... So people may loose interest over time.
I was expecting something more like "Stellaris". You buy a game with limited but "ok" content, then, every 3-6 monthes or so, you can buy a minor (story pack, ship pack) or major expansion to the game (reworked advanced diplomacy or trade system).
I've no problem with one or another way... Just, the second one is more profitable, so it allow for a larger dev team and a little bit more ambitious project... I think Starsector could deserve it.
The first way... well, it doesn't pay enough to hire people... so you're alone (almost).
My 2 cents.
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Starsector began as a one-man, part-time hobby game. There was no guarantee it would ever take off well enough to support one person working on it full-time or more than minimal commissioned art, let alone multiple full-time devs.
At this point in the dev cycle, adding more people would slow down development unless those people were already very familiar with the engine and APIs, and even then, onboarding and managing those new people would suck up development time. Alex has discussed, in a vague way, doing an expansion for the game later, but profit was never the point of the game in the first place; it's more profitable to write non-game software for a regular wage, so arguments that X or Y would be more profitable will probably fall on deaf ears.
If people lose interest over time, that's just more evidence that you only get one launch, so you might as well launch when your game is actually ready, as opposed to trying to sustain interest after an Early Access/beta launch. It's better to get to 1.0 and see how the game does as it is, before committing to any new hires or other expenses.
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Why not be like Paradox?
You can't just become a soulless DLC factory overnight, it takes years of effort and dedication.
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Why not be like Paradox?
You can't just become a soulless DLC factory overnight, it takes years of effort and dedication.
So be like Paradox ? "Make every new game simpler than older one , make 999 dlc for everything from font to pants color of your army/hero/whatever, and dont listen to community. Yeah, great advise. Mayby go full bonker and be like Electronic Arts if you want to ruin Starsector.
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According to this dev time chart we are at least 1 year away from the next large update, assuming a similar scope from the previous ones.
Oh, good, thank you for putting together the chart! Saves me the trouble of figuring out when to make the next release :)
The wait for 0.9 was long, so long... Too much time to waste twiddling my thumbs, making charts and watching that las bar slowly grow. (I still hope the next one won't be that long though).
But hey, I'm sure that when the game is a huge release success and the forum is flooded with people complaining that one month between fixes is too long, we'll be able to wear it like a badge of honor. "You think THIS is too long? Let me tell you kid, I was here for Oh Nine and even before that, back then we learned patience the hard way..."
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*Remember time , when Starsector was in one system and stroke his beard.*
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Oh man, back then I was a younger man :-[
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"Remember Uomoz Sector?"
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https://twitter.com/amosolov
Check here for updates
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"Remember Uomoz Sector?"
I really underestimated just how long I've been following this game. I was in high school when I started. I've gone to college, learned 2 instruments, and started an office job in that time. This thread is making me feel existential.
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Starsector began as a one-man, part-time hobby game. There was no guarantee it would ever take off well enough to support one person working on it full-time or more than minimal commissioned art, let alone multiple full-time devs.
At this point in the dev cycle, adding more people would slow down development unless those people were already very familiar with the engine and APIs, and even then, onboarding and managing those new people would suck up development time. Alex has discussed, in a vague way, doing an expansion for the game later, but profit was never the point of the game in the first place; it's more profitable to write non-game software for a regular wage, so arguments that X or Y would be more profitable will probably fall on deaf ears.
If people lose interest over time, that's just more evidence that you only get one launch, so you might as well launch when your game is actually ready, as opposed to trying to sustain interest after an Early Access/beta launch. It's better to get to 1.0 and see how the game does as it is, before committing to any new hires or other expenses.
The Stellaris was not the best example, i guess.
Your point of view make sense, though, i'm not working in the gaming industry.
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Front page now has buttons moved around, with big blue "Buy Starsector" button at the right.
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One big advantage of the long time between very substantial updates is that mods have time to be developed and mature instead of being constantly outdated.
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Extensive play testing by the community is a good idea before going total 1.0.
Don't want to be the next Bethesda.
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Extensive play testing by the community is a good idea before going total 1.0.
Don't want to be the next Bethesda.
Well as I remember, Alex said he's planning to do a 0.9.5 release before 1.0. Obviously to see how the new skill system will work and to test additional features. After that I assume only content related things shall come, which shouldn't cause gamebreaking issues, only slight rebalances if necessary. Also I don't remember any release being a mess so far, there's really nothing to be afraid of in those terms.
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I think the new skill system will 100% work, atm I see no reason to EVER put points in the industry tree. even though 90% of my first games were 0 combat and a lot of industry/science.
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Industry is a whole lot of nice money saving boosts.
But frankly only the science tree is, currently in my opinion, almost essential as it contains so many very powerful boosts.
Combat boosts only boost you, and if you are more of an admiral then a captain like me that isn't all too appealing outside of 'for fun' purposes. Leadership skills are also nice, but not when compared to giving every ship more OP or decreasing all enemy range for free per ships deployed.
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Industry is great for fleet maintenance.
Erratic Fuel Injector is now my favourite hullmod, offering 20% recovery and maintaince discount for just a 25% increase in fuel usage.
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atm I see no reason to EVER put points in the industry tree. even though 90% of my first games were 0 combat and a lot of industry/science.
My favorite Industry skills are Colony Management and Industrial Planning because if I did not use cores, I want to have a large self-sufficient empire with many planets and lots of income. Unfortunately, alpha cores have all colony skills for free (and Pather bug eliminates the only meaningful penalty of cores - terrorist attacks), making colony skills on the player character midgame crutch skills. Also, cores are effectively unlimited once player acquires an Ordo farmer fleet, then player can colonize many more planets than possible without cores. By endgame, I have buyer's remorse if I got those skills.
The other Industry skills are not a big deal by endgame when player can just build more pristine ships and still have income to spare.
If I play another game before next release, I should ignore Industry altogether and abuse cores left and right.
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Well as I remember, Alex said he's planning to do a 0.9.5 release before 1.0.
Aw man, I was pumped that it would be feature-complete for the next update...
Oh well. I'm along for the ride either way.
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Well as I remember, Alex said he's planning to do a 0.9.5 release before 1.0.
Aw man, I was pumped that it would be feature-complete for the next update...
Oh well. I'm along for the ride either way.
INB4 a 0.10.0 after 0.9.5
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INB4 a 0.10.0 after 0.9.5
You're probably joking but I see every other person make this mistake. Adding more zeroes after the decimal point doesn't change the number. So for example 1.5 and 1.5000000 is the same thing. Sorry if I seem nitpicky but I've had teachers who thought wrong and spread false information.
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*checks twitter*
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You're probably joking but I see every other person make this mistake. Adding more zeroes after the decimal point doesn't change the number. So for example 1.5 and 1.5000000 is the same thing. Sorry if I seem nitpicky but I've had teachers who thought wrong and spread false information.
A software version isn't a decimal number, it's a tuple of 3 integers (https://semver.org/ (https://semver.org/)). You increment your major version when it makes sense not because you "ran out" of minor version numbers. Though sometimes the minor version is used as a decimal fraction to indicate progress towards completion.
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You're probably joking but I see every other person make this mistake. Adding more zeroes after the decimal point doesn't change the number. So for example 1.5 and 1.5000000 is the same thing. Sorry if I seem nitpicky but I've had teachers who thought wrong and spread false information.
A software version isn't a decimal number, it's a tuple of 3 integers (https://semver.org/ (https://semver.org/)). You increment your major version when it makes sense not because you "ran out" of minor version numbers. Though sometimes the minor version is used as a decimal fraction to indicate progress towards completion.
Huh, didn't know that. Well if I ever witness something going to 0.10.0 after 0.9.something, now I'll understand the weirdness.
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INB4 a 0.10.0 after 0.9.5
You're probably joking but I see every other person make this mistake. Adding more zeroes after the decimal point doesn't change the number. So for example 1.5 and 1.5000000 is the same thing. Sorry if I seem nitpicky but I've had teachers who thought wrong and spread false information.
To further nitpick, those two numbers are different.
1.5 can be anywhere from 1.45 to 1.55.
1.5000000 can only be from 1.49999995 to 1.50000005.
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INB4 a 0.10.0 after 0.9.5
You're probably joking but I see every other person make this mistake. Adding more zeroes after the decimal point doesn't change the number. So for example 1.5 and 1.5000000 is the same thing. Sorry if I seem nitpicky but I've had teachers who thought wrong and spread false information.
To further nitpick, those two numbers are different.
1.5 can be anywhere from 1.45 to 1.55.
1.5000000 can only be from 1.49999995 to 1.50000005.
I don't get the joke.
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INB4 a 0.10.0 after 0.9.5
You're probably joking but I see every other person make this mistake. Adding more zeroes after the decimal point doesn't change the number. So for example 1.5 and 1.5000000 is the same thing. Sorry if I seem nitpicky but I've had teachers who thought wrong and spread false information.
To further nitpick, those two numbers are different.
1.5 can be anywhere from 1.45 to 1.55.
1.5000000 can only be from 1.49999995 to 1.50000005.
I don't get the joke.
There isn't one, it's just an important mathematical distinction when talking about margins of error.
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That's only true if there's uncertainty. Sometimes decimal places are used to represent the uncertainty in a measurement (i.e. the smallest value that's distinguishable by the measurement technique). However, if the number is deterministic then 1.5=1.5000 and there is no reason to have the zeros in the first place.
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I despise significant figures and that style of error reporting. If an experiment gives a value of 1.673 [unit] with a gaussian error of .439 [unit], then that is what you report! Rounding to the nearest (usually decimal rounded!) multiple of the error is introducing a random bias to the mean on the order of the error. Rounding the error itself is introducing a random bias to the variance! And then what happens when you collect the results of those experiments to produce aggregate data? The statistics on the mean and variance are off.
Pretty much the only time I'll accept the decimal style error reporting is if its a direct readout from a digital measurement device. Even then, the device usually has a rated error which is larger than its minimum readout resolution, and that should be used instead of the readout decimal place.
/rant
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Yes well, Maths has some stupid rules. For instance 0/0!=1, even though if you graph anything that requires it (Y=X/X, or Y=X^2 for example) it clearly does.
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Usualy in report i would accept error rounded to the higher decimal, not the nearest. Slightly higher error bar are usually safer.
And this is not math, this is more the field of experimental science.
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Yes well, Maths has some stupid rules. For instance 0/0!=1, even though if you graph anything that requires it (Y=X/X, or Y=X^2 for example) it clearly does.
I think you're mixing some things up. 0! = 1 so 0/0! is 0/1 = 0 but that has nothing to do with the functions you wrote as far as I can tell.
Perhaps you were referring to 0/0 (no factorial) which is indeterminate. In the context of the function y = x/x, the limit as x-->0 is 1, but that's only true for that specific function.
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Yes well, Maths has some stupid rules. For instance 0/0!=1, even though if you graph anything that requires it (Y=X/X, or Y=X^2 for example) it clearly does.
I think you're mixing some things up. 0! = 1 so 0/0! is 0/1 = 0 but that has nothing to do with the functions you wrote as far as I can tell.
Perhaps you were referring to 0/0 (no factorial) which is indeterminate. In the context of the function y = x/x, the limit as x-->0 is 1, but that's only true for that specific function.
Apologies, autocorrect messing up the spacing. 0/0 != 1 is what I was trying to write.
Which completely destroys the whole basis of an equation: that an equal change on both sides doesn't alter the equation.
It's a stupid exception not for why it's needed, but for which part of the problem was chosen to be the exception.
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Yes well, Maths has some stupid rules. For instance 0/0!=1, even though if you graph anything that requires it (Y=X/X, or Y=X^2 for example) it clearly does.
I think you're mixing some things up. 0! = 1 so 0/0! is 0/1 = 0 but that has nothing to do with the functions you wrote as far as I can tell.
Perhaps you were referring to 0/0 (no factorial) which is indeterminate. In the context of the function y = x/x, the limit as x-->0 is 1, but that's only true for that specific function.
Apologies, autocorrect messing up the spacing. 0/0 != 1 is what I was trying to write.
Which completely destroys the whole basis of an equation: that an equal change on both sides doesn't alter the equation.
It's a stupid exception not for why it's needed, but for which part of the problem was chosen to be the exception.
lim x-->0 (x/x) = 1 is still true. The equation isn't violated as x-->0.
Where does doing the same thing to both sides of an equation cause the equation to be false? Also, where is an exception being chosen? The reason 0/0 is indeterminate is because you are dividing by 0, that's not a choice.
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Yes well, Maths has some stupid rules. For instance 0/0!=1, even though if you graph anything that requires it (Y=X/X, or Y=X^2 for example) it clearly does.
I think you're mixing some things up. 0! = 1 so 0/0! is 0/1 = 0 but that has nothing to do with the functions you wrote as far as I can tell.
Perhaps you were referring to 0/0 (no factorial) which is indeterminate. In the context of the function y = x/x, the limit as x-->0 is 1, but that's only true for that specific function.
Apologies, autocorrect messing up the spacing. 0/0 != 1 is what I was trying to write.
Which completely destroys the whole basis of an equation: that an equal change on both sides doesn't alter the equation.
It's a stupid exception not for why it's needed, but for which part of the problem was chosen to be the exception.
lim x-->0 (x/x) = 1 is still true. The equation isn't violated as x-->0.
Where does doing the same thing to both sides of an equation cause the equation to be false? Also, where is an exception being chosen? The reason 0/0 is indeterminate is because you are dividing by 0, that's not a choice.
Yes, except the only reason 0/0 is the exception to X/X=1 is because we say it is. If lim 0 is 1 from both sides, why not just acknowledge it's 1?
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But for y = (2x^2 - x -1)/(4x^3 - 4), for x = 1, y = 0/0, but the limit approaches 1/4. So now 0/0 = 1/4 as well as 1. You can easily construct an example like this for any value of the limit and any value of x, so now 0/0 is equal to all numbers at once, which obviously can't be true. So instead we say that 0/0 is undefined, which is essentially saying that a function being 0/0 is not enough information to determine what the value of the function is. You have to take limits.
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But for y = (2x^2 - x -1)/(4x^3 - 4), for x = 1, y = 0/0, but the limit approaches 1/4. So now 0/0 = 1/4 as well as 1. You can easily construct an example like this for any value of the limit and any value of x, so now 0/0 is equal to all numbers at once, which obviously can't be true. So instead we say that 0/0 is undefined, which is essentially saying that a function being 0/0 is not enough information to determine what the value of the function is. You have to take limits.
Yes, but why not have those limits be tailored to the exception, rather than the easier-but-worse option? X/X = 1, but XY/X is undefined if XY=0? Nothing breaks, and it removed a major inconsistency.
Or better yet, X/X=1, but 0Y/0=Y
Edit: I think what I'm trying to say is the current "fix" is a hack job which is much easier solved by adding "algebraic simplification" to the front of BODMAS.
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Yes, but why not have those limits be tailored to the exception, rather than the easier-but-worse option? X/X = 1, but XY/X is undefined if XY=0? Nothing breaks, and it removed a major inconsistency.
Or better yet, X/X=1, but 0Y/0=Y
Edit: I think what I'm trying to say is the current "fix" is a hack job which is much easier solved by adding "algebraic simplification" to the front of BODMAS.
z = xy/x is undefined at x = 0 because you are dividing by zero. It's not arbitrary. yx = 0 does not mean the function is undefined: when y=0 and x != 0, xy = 0 and the function is still defined.
There's no choice of definition, things are undefined when there is division by zero (for smooth functions).
You can say that x/x = 1 though because lim(x/x) x-->b = 1 for all b. That's what allows you to cancel stuff in the numerator and denominator algebraically. For something like y = sin(x)/x, you can't do simple algebra to get rid of the the x in the denominator, but the limit still exists lim(y) x-->0 = 1.
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Being new here, this information is informative. I'll probably finish college by the time the next update arrives. :P
But at least it allows mods to develop and spend less time adjusting to the new version.
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The long wait times are sad, but it does have a bunch of upsides... Less time on Alex's side doing the prep work for releases means more time adding more things. Interconnected systems dropping as whole packages instead of trickling in helps because we see them in a (somewhat) final form right away (usually balance tweaks in the hotfix, but not major new features). Long update times lets the modding community release really good stuff in a stable environment.
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"Remember Uomoz Sector?"
Christ that takes me back lol. I'm glad for the long wait times too, and it's funny to see that this forum never changes in which cyclical questions come up (why such long wait time, when will the game be on steam etc)
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the game has changed so much since it was a single sector, i cant believe it, if this were deveopled by one of the big giants we would have payed for it by atleast triplicate by now, every version would be a new game.
Starfarer
Starfarer: expanded DLC
Starfarer: Survival DLC
Starfarer: Into the sectors
Starsector: Into the universe
Starsector: 0.95 DLC
Starsector: 1.0 DLC
Dont forget to sprinkle a few failed MMO and some loot boxe attempts LOL.
The only reason I wouldve liked this game on steam is to now how many hours ive sunk into it, but in reality i prefer it here because that means no one else had their grubby fingers in this pie to steal profits.
In the end this game is amazing and way waaaaaay under priced I dont even remember how much i paid for it, and every update i have to struggle to find my activation code, which again i cant find while typing this lol.
EDIT: found the receipt from 11/AUG/2012 WOW! 10USD!
EDIT2: I just realized i necroed the *** out of this thread lol.
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BTW, it has been 112 days since last blogpost and 302 days since last update.
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BTW, it has been 112 days since last blogpost and 302 days since last update.
SS is a game for the strong in spirit.
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Last tease on Twitter: 9 days ago.
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BTW, it has been 112 days since last blogpost and 302 days since last update.
Have faith dear brother, our captain shall not lead us astray or leave us behind.
https://twitter.com/amosolov (https://twitter.com/amosolov)