"Sticks & Starships": an upcoming voxel game with some links to FTB / Tekkit

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Dvarvaro1

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hi Everyone!

This is Dvarvaro, one of the creators of "Sticks & Starships".

Sticks & Starships is an voxel game currently in development in C++ which we feel addresses some of what we feel is the previously unrealized potential of this powerful medium. The game offers a tech tree and story of baroque complexity. The player will take control of a primitive tribal race from a first person perspective, and follow them through many stages of varied technological development. The player will experience the classical age, where they will practice metallurgy, alchemy, masonry, millwork, and several other crafts, as they explore a vast world mapped to a globe 16 kilometers across the equator, and over a kilometer in depth. They will cultivate a vast industrial culture, with needs such as power generation, transmission, and storage, materials refinement, materials acquisition, and transportation. This industrial culture will further develop into a space-faring race, as the player manufactures vast interplanetary missions, and mines and transports resources across many worlds. Finally, the player will join the galaxy full of warp-capable interstellar species, as they sail out in vast starships!
Some of our influences are Kerbal Space Program, Terraria, Star Trek, and the FTB and Tekkit family of mods. We felt that the concepts of the latter in particular were strong enough that they ought to be developed in refinement in an engine dedicated to them. We seek to capture the spirit of those great mods, while offering an entirely new experience!

Currently, we have been in development for around 8 months, and we are approaching our first public demo in 3-4 months; our funding session will follow shortly after the demo. The work you will see presented was produced using the Unity Engine as a design tool. Our demo and alpha will be presented through our in-house engine.

You can check out our current progress at our homepage here:

http://www.aloftstudios.net/

Our forums, which recently opened for discussion, are:

http://forum.aloftstudios.net/index.php


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ThatOneSlowking

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Jul 29, 2019
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This... Sunds both intresting and promising
This is probably on the website (I have not checked) but will the game be avilable throug Steam, the website itself,vor other means?
 
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Dvarvaro1

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Jul 29, 2019
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Hmmmm
@Dvarvaro1 are you planning on doing something like Minecraft did where users can try it out in alpha/beta?

Very similar. Once we have around half of the first module done (classical-age technology and the full core and interface), we will start publishing our builds for our players. Somewhere between modules 1 and 2, we intend to have server support up.
 

ThatOneSlowking

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Jul 29, 2019
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Very similar. Once we have around half of the first module done (classical-age technology and the full core and interface), we will start publishing our builds for our players. Somewhere between modules 1 and 2, we intend to have server support up.
Sounds like i need to get this game :p
 

JoeDolca

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Jul 29, 2019
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Unreal amounts of hype and tons of promises. If this gets big it could potentially even surpass Starbound in hype measures. I am very wary, big promises have a bigger chance of not delivering, or delivering either poorly or infuriatingly. You are promising us the moon and the stars (Almost literally), I hope this plays out fine. It can very well be the apex of voxel sanbox games.
 
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Dvarvaro1

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Jul 29, 2019
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Unreal amounts of hype and tons of promises. If this gets big it could potentially even surpass Starbound in hype measures. I am very wary, big promises have a bigger chance of not delivering, or delivering either poorly or infuriatingly. You are promising us the moon and the stars (Almost literally), I hope this plays out fine. It can very well be the apex of voxel sanbox games.

One of the things that was mildly surprising when we started showing our media to public sites (we expected some of it, but not on the scale we experienced), was the degree of suspicion which we were met with. In order to properly address some of the doubts people had, we decided that we would be sure to release the demo in advance of accepting any form of funding. We wanted to awe people with great game play mechanics which we knew were possible and reasonable, but an unfortunate side effect was that people were also emoting disbelief. We hope in the next few months our demo and future media can make our work a bit more concrete in people's minds.
 

Staxed

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm throwing my money at the monitor but nothing is happening!

I tried to slide my credit card between the row of keys...having the same issue :([DOUBLEPOST=1397496563][/DOUBLEPOST]
One of the things that was mildly surprising when we started showing our media to public sites (we expected some of it, but not on the scale we experienced), was the degree of suspicion which we were met with. In order to properly address some of the doubts people had, we decided that we would be sure to release the demo in advance of accepting any form of funding. We wanted to awe people with great game play mechanics which we knew were possible and reasonable, but an unfortunate side effect was that people were also emoting disbelief. We hope in the next few months our demo and future media can make our work a bit more concrete in people's minds.

Keep up this level of concern...and make sure you are actively involved devs (nothing can generate more publiclicaty and a loyal customer/fan base than devs that actually participate on their own forums and LISTEN to their customers wants)...and good things will happen.

I'm ready to throw money at you right now just by looking at the picutures :).
 

Dvarvaro1

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Jul 29, 2019
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Are you planning a modding API?
Regardless, I would love to get my hands on some EA stuff as you go.

Yes, from the very start.

We plan to have our modding API out around the time of the 4th module (interstellar game-play elements) being released. That is about the time when the game will have its feature skeleton in place. People are of course free to mod the game earlier, but a lot of the mods being released up till then may end up being things that are fleshing out areas that will be added shortly in the future, whereas if we release the API later in the development cycle, people will begin taking the near-feature-complete game in their own directions, when it is most appropriate to do so. Like a lot of teams in this field, we think we can continue adding content as long as the community demands it, but it will be on an existing structure that will slowly take form.
 
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Dylan4ever

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Jul 29, 2019
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This. I like this. I want this. I need this.

It looks really good. I am heavily looking forward to everything you add, and I think this could easily outclass Minecraft, quite honestly. Proper modding API + involved devs + this amount of insane looks = brew of success.

Yay.
 
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MajPayne21

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Jul 29, 2019
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A lot of gamers are inherently suspicious because 'Early Access' or 'Proof-of-concept' became 'pay me now for a hamburger on Tuesday', and a lot of the early access games had a fantastic proposed feature set, but when they were released, they had a very barebones feature set.

There's also been a lot of vaporware out there.

I think the concept looks awesome and I would love to give the game a try. Keep up the good work and learn from the mistakes of indie devs before you about over promising and under delivering. Don't feel pressured to release if you know the game isn't ready.

I hope you guys are able to make a great product!

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk
 

namiasdf

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Jul 29, 2019
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I dont' know if you've explained this, but how would we be guiding this race? Through example, or would we be given explicit control over them.

If so, how would the control be delegated and at what level? i.e. Priority-class system like dwarf fortress.