Hey Space Travelers!
Firstly, today is the day we have all been waiting for: Stardeus Releases in Early Access! The demo on Steam will remain active so that anyone can try the game before they buy, ensuring that they’re happy with the quality and performance of Stardeus on their system before purchase!
With this release, a major feature has been added to the game that will see expansion and growth with future updates, as well as being available to modders. I will also take a moment to talk about how future releases will be handled and their frequency because the most important thing is that Stardeus remains regularly updated and as stable as it has been throughout the development and Kickstarter Alpha phase.
On the topic of Kickstarter, the main backer rewards - Steam keys for Stardeus and additional content - have been dispatched, please check your inboxes (including the spam folder) for an email from [email protected]
Now let’s take a look at what was added within the last month of development. As always, there were a bunch of bug fixes, balance changes, and small UI/UX improvements. While there is only one noteworthy feature, it is a big one!
A common and valid piece of feedback I receive from new players is that after the tutorial ends, people feel a little lost. With overwhelming amounts of research options and paths to choose from, it can be difficult to set the right priorities. The new big Quest System will offer some guidance in that regard.
The Quest System
At this point the Quest System is still a bit rudimentary and it has just a handful of quests, not nearly enough to fill the gap between the first steps and the end-game. But the system is flexible enough and offers a solid framework for implementing any kind of quest you can imagine. I will be actively working on adding many more quests in the near future.
Just like anything else, quests can be added through mods, and there is a video tutorial available for it already, which is part of a YouTube series called “Stardeus Modding” that I started recently. There aren’t many videos there yet, but if you’re interested in modding Stardeus, definitely keep an eye on those series.
In addition to standard quests, I have plans to work on procedurally generated quests, with tasks and rewards that would be different every time.
This is how quests work right now:
Core quests are unlocked automatically in a progression, complete quests to unlock more.
The Event Panel in the top right corner will show the active quest, which you can hover any time to get a tooltip with next steps, and a reminder about the reward.
If you have more than one quest, you can switch between active quests by using the Quest overlay’s Active tab.
Game Update Frequency & Experimental Branch
Stardeus is developed using an “always be shipping” mantra, which means that new builds with small incremental changes are released almost every day. However, I will be more careful with updates after the game is live on Steam, especially in the first couple of weeks. There will still be daily builds, which should continue to be fairly stable, but in order to get them you will have to switch over to the “experimental” branch in Betas. This also applies to the demo.
If you stay on the main branch, the updates will be synchronized with the experimental branch less frequently, depending on how confident I am with the build. Of course, any critical or game-breaking bugs will be fixed in the main branch ASAP.
Reporting Bugs, Sharing Ideas, Making Suggestions
Please use the “Report a Bug” button in the bottom right if you encounter a bug or want to make a suggestion. This type of report will include a screenshot and your save file along with the internal state of the game, which is very useful for reproducing bugs.
That’s it for now, see you in the next update!
Follow the Development
- Official Website: https://stardeusgame.com
- Join Stardeus Discord
- /r/stardeus on Reddit
- @StardeusGame on Twitter
- @dev_spajus on Twitter
- dev_spajus on Twitch (live development streams)