Podcast 132: Star Atlas Weekly Review

In this episode, I recap the latest news of Star Atlas from the past week.

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Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my start list Week in review podcast. This is podcast number 132. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website@intergalacticherald.com. Just look for weekly recap, newsletter 180. So just a quick summary of things going over today.

[00:00:18] Past week in start out lists predominantly was the Star Atlas Town Hall, though on Thursday there was also a builder hour and that was it. But of course with the town hall. That’s about all you need. And then I’ll wrap up with talking about my thoughts on the state of Star Atlas and kinda my journey playing Star Atlas.

[00:00:33] But before I get to that, just wanna mention a couple things related to the Star Atlas ecosystem that I’m working on. Of course, my main one is my website, intergalactic caral.com. It’s a great. Resource website. So it’s got obviously this podcast, it’s got some beginner’s guides, got directories for Star Atlas builders and creators and guilds and things like that.

[00:00:52] Do have my recaps both in the form of a, the weekly newsletter, but also audio summary recaps of star outs, events this past week. And then my latest feature is a star Atlas Discord newsfeed, where you can set up either email and get directly sent to your email. The announcements. The community team puts in the Discord announcement channel.

[00:01:12] Additionally, I am building a starless merch store@intergalacticgear.com. It’s open for business, low product selection. I’ll admit just some mugs and a few wall arts, but some ongoing thing trying to produce. I put more products in there. Do have a merch survey, so I’d love to get any feedback you have on merch you’d be interested in purchasing.

[00:01:29] And then one of my long-term goals is to create a start atlas community accounting, a non guild, but a place for start Atlas gamers who don’t want to join guilds to hang out. And chat on a different kind of community platform than we’re used to and yeah, be able to hang out. So check that out@intergalacticcoalition.com.

[00:01:46] As I mentioned this past week was the another Star House, town hall. So this was actually part three of what was called star summer. So we had the first town hall, which was predominantly information about, e five Second Town Hall was Halim and the new zinc Solana blockchain announcement.

[00:02:05] And then we have this now town hall part three. This one was I guess more informational. And broader than the last two. So the first thing they did give some more information on Holim, predominantly talking kind of the roadmap on the next season. So again, we’re still just in season one, chapter one, which may have multiple chapters, but they are starting to give some information about season two.

[00:02:30] Oh, I should mention, if you wanna listen to the town hall in its entirety, start out with TV’s. YouTube channel has the recording, which again, I always appreciate ’cause that’s how I catch up. On things and sometime this weekend, a little behind schedule. I’ll get my I AI audio summary of the town hall out, so you can also check that out.

[00:02:47] So actually by the time you get this podcast, that should have already been released. But just for timing purposes anyway. So yeah, some more information about Hal Sim. Then they talked about some updates to Sage. It was mentioned that kind of the economy and just the gameplay is getting, quote unquote a little stagnant.

[00:03:03] They are introducing this new concept of a Phantom star based in order to help produce more lp. So that was mentioned. Then a couple of the programmers developers came on and talked about a system they’re calling Star Frame, which I. Again, not a hundred percent sure. I understand completely.

[00:03:22] But they did actually put out star Outlist did put out a medium article explaining more in depth. You can get a link to that if you go to my website and look for the news recap newsletter number 180. One sentence summary is it’s a framework for Solana to build more complex programs.

[00:03:41] Sorry, I don’t. That was about all I could get out of it. They made also at this town hall some additional announcements on UE five. They’re adding ledger support which is great. And then this is probably the I shouldn’t say biggest news, but the news that directly seemed to, to gameplay was the introducer of a new resource called Inc.

[00:04:01] Sorry beyond the Horizon, put out a video on this. So you which I have a link to also which you can go into. So a few weeks back there was discussions within the economic form about a concept called Black Goo. Apparently Black goo has been renamed ink. You could say ink is a form of a black goo.

[00:04:19] Okay, cool. But I’m speculating it’s much more on the naming convention for the zinc blockchain and going with the ink thing, but. Rider. Who knows? But it’s, anyways, a new resource. But it is the new resource that now allows you to take gameplay and experience earned in the UE five shooter and race modes to directly be able to transfer through an airdrop into a resource that you have on your, in your crypto wallet, which now has ability to be deposited into these phantom star bases to gain lp, which I’ve.

[00:04:55] I think then can be redeemed for Atlas. Now I don’t play a lot of the I don’t, I have a specific thing I play in Sage, so I’m a little vague on the star bases and LP loyalty points and redemptions and all that. And also haven’t started playing the UE five shooters. So again this will probably apply to other people.

[00:05:15] But the most important takeaway from this announcement is there is now a direct inter action inter. Creation between actions in the UE five game and actions in the sage economy game. There’s a announcement of a double experience points. Again, I’m not sure how experience points range to Inc. But again, all together.

[00:05:34] And then the last announcement, the town hall and I can’t remember if it took up half or maybe definitely a third, was a new information about a Sage C four editor. I’m calling it a simulator ’cause. Anyways, it is a, it’s a direct access to the same development tool that the Star Atlas team is using to build out C four.

[00:05:53] Definitely that’s a video watch. I admit I was listening to it and didn’t realize how much of it was a video demo showing how things work. So I may have to go back to that just to watch it to see how things were done. But is again, the first. I’m not yeah. I’ll say first access to it, directly to a development tool that is in production right now.

[00:06:13] Anyway, so yeah, that was the summary of the town hall again full video recording@startb.com. Afia produced a kind of in. A real time report that came out right after the meeting, links to that. And again by the time you hear this, hopefully I’ll have my AI summary out that you can look at too.

[00:06:30] So a lot of ways to catch up on that. And then the last thing on Thursday was the monthly builders hour, which was again, a community event. Focused on Starless builders. This one was actually slightly different than the past ones that the majority was taken up by the two programmers who talked about star frame and were actually doing some live coding in it.

[00:06:50] So if you’re into the programming and you understand the Solana programs and Rust and Anchor and other things that are way over my head it was a great way to see the. See them program in real time. And unfortunately you don’t get the interactive part of asking questions. But again it was really interesting look behind the scenes on what programmers actually do.

[00:07:10] So anyway, so yeah, that was pretty much the the update what happened this last week and start out. So I’ll move on to thinking my thoughts on the thinking of the state of Star Atlas. I, I. Read to this Phantom Star base? I, sorry, I’m not really sure I understand it. And again, that’s just because I’m not involved in those kind of game plays.

[00:07:29] But, yeah. So I think there’s a lot more actually wait, I do more, sorry. I wrote this when I listened to it yesterday, but there was some mentions and we can share what’s in the foundation room. There was some posts in the foundation room. I think I know a long one from Chris on economics and because I don’t play kind kinda went over my head, but my kind of.

[00:07:48] Some or what little I could glean from skimming it is some of these things are necessary to keep some of the parts of the economy going because upgrading star bases is maxed out and apparently this phantom star base will never level up. So it can totally be, things can be redeemed there.

[00:08:05] But there was also talk about things need to be changed and things aren’t working right. So it sounds like we’re in one of those periods again, this is me. I don’t think this was actually stated. The economy needs some rebalancing and so this is one method to do that. So in the sense that stuff’s happening, that’s good.

[00:08:20] I just. Again, I’ve said it before, I try to listen to the economy forms and sometimes they register and sometimes I just, again, I’m glad there’s an economy, but I just wanna go play my game. So anyways definitely Inc. I think is incredibly cool. Glad it’s there. They have been telegraphing that something this, the black goo codename was coming and.

[00:08:44] I think the binding of the two games is a really great thing. ’cause I think it finally incentivizes people who beyond just wanna play the shoot or whatever. There’s a purpose to play. There’s a re reason to reengage and ink is your result or your, the thing you get for playing and people like incentives.

[00:09:03] Incentivizing. Yes. It’s incentivizing place. So I think all that’s really great. The ledger support was actually, something I was happy to hear ’cause I couldn’t figure out what people were doing to get their character or crew into UE five. So this kinda does it, but there was an announcement on one of the Discord things, which again, if you subscribe to my star Alice Discord newsfeed, email loser, you would’ve actually got an email for that had some gotchas.

[00:09:27] So I, I need to look into that. But it was, settings you have to do on your ledger and which version to run. But again just more of informational. Yeah, so check that out if you want to try your ledger support and then hopefully it’s intuitive what you do with trying to get your crew in or something like that.

[00:09:40] But overall, I have to admit with the UE five stuff and the halim and some stuff about Halim was mentioned town hall, and definitely on the discord is definitely feeling that both Halim and UE five are. Truly beta products. Not that the team has ever stated otherwise, but I don’t know, I guess I was expecting at this point a little more polish and a little more stability.

[00:10:03] And again there was a whole talk about changing some of the stuff in Hall Sim, RRPC versus other stuff. And again I’m happy to hear all the technical stuff. I, it just. I guess I would prefer some non-technical translation sometimes, but, it’s okay. Just like star frame, it’s a good thing, but I don’t understand. But this was, I guess if there was any sort of observations as an independent observer, now I admit I was listening to town hall in different chunks at different parts of the day just to try to keep up. So I’d be done before Friday night.

[00:10:38] So I was listening at different times and like I said, the whole thing on the SAGE editor, I didn’t even realize it was a video. But when that Sage Editor stuff started, and again, I was only listening on audio, i, after the star frame and little more on Hall Sim and not understanding the Phantom Star base.

[00:10:55] I, I admit my attention was starting to okay, cool. Another tool that great. You’re showing what you do to develop the game. And again, I don’t take anything away from the presentation. Danny, the co-founder, you could actually tell hi. His enthusiasm was coming out, his knowledge was coming out his.

[00:11:13] I’m gonna say superhuman ability to design this entire metaverse ecosystem, cyber nation, whatever we’re calling it. He’s the right guy in the right position, that’s for sure. But that wasn’t translating, and again, I wasn’t watching the video, so this could have just all been on my part bad. But I think what.

[00:11:33] The part that I didn’t realize ’cause they were saving it to the end, was this tool is now accessible to us. So I was thinking, you’re showing me behind the scenes, which is interesting, but I didn’t realize you’re also allowing us access to it. Again, I’m not sure if it’s read only access or they talked a little bit, I think at the builder, our next, that like whatever you do doesn’t get saved, which is cool and.

[00:11:57] GitHub and, again, programmer talk that again, I just don’t have that background. But once I realized one, they were releasing it to us, I realized in hindsight that this editor is basically all the details, at least, with the caveat that they say, Hey, we’re, it’s a work in progress, so things can change from time to time.

[00:12:19] But I was always curious, Hey, what buildings are we gonna get and what. I don’t think they’d published a list of materials. And again, I want to take a look at this now ’cause of course anybody can look at it. And there’s a URL Oh, and if you want that URL, please go to my website for this weekly recap number, 180 and the link’s there.

[00:12:36] That all, that’s discoverable now. It’s all there. I would, again, there was combat simulators. There was the claims stake simulators, the crafting hub simulators. Again, everything they’re using to. I dunno if I’m saying this right. Balance the gameplay. ’cause on the town hall they mentioned you’d have, I don’t know, 30 or 40 air bikes trying to go combat with a Titan and 0.03% of the time they win, which.

[00:13:02] Should never happen. That you should be slaughtered in a true combat situation, I think, right? But anyways, that’s what it is. It’s simulator. So they can figure out some of these things and then that informs the game logic. So that kind of totally changed my perception as, hey, this was a really tech heavy one, which it was, but going forward, which is.

[00:13:29] It is C four and again, I speculated last week that, I thought this would be the perfect time to have a C four demo and of course. But at first I thought we didn’t get it, we didn’t learn anything. And then it dawned on me we didn’t learn anything ’cause it wasn’t forced fed to us. It was like, hey, go discover it all for yourself.

[00:13:48] And then I cool. Yeah, definitely wanna explore more again, ’cause some of the things about claims stakes have been the thing personally most interested going forward in. The fact of how C four will be change the gameplay of sage. So anyways so anyway, so that’s kinda my thoughts on the town hall.

[00:14:04] But maybe stepping back for a second reflecting on how has this start a summer been. You’ve been following on my podcast, you know this, and of course you’ve been follow on and start a summer, you know this, but it was pretty much a month. Plus starting with the community Week one Town hall, two weeks later, town Hall number two, and then two weeks later, town, no hall number three.

[00:14:24] And looking back at them as a co single entity. Some of the highlights really the highlights that stand out to me are really the, that the UE five is great in the sense that we now have persistent servers. And that had been the thing missing too for a while. Also, the fact that progression exists and then by the end of star of summer, adding the ink as the actual glue that now puts that thing together.

[00:14:52] So I think as far as a release of a next concept. Spot on. Nailed it. Persistent servers progression. And now this unique resource that only can be found within UE five. On the other hand it’s starting to sound like that the people that are really using it are people who are experts. But we can also say, to be honest, Sage has always been about the whales and the experts too.

[00:15:14] Again, and that may be just, that’s where we’re at right now. And I think I may have mentioned many podcasts back. I’ve heard lots of games have match playing or skill play based things where you can go into the showroom or into the the entry point and, get into a game with a whole bunch of other newbies, but we’ll see.

[00:15:30] And again it’s early, so you wouldn’t expect that, that, that’s another whole concept, but probably the biggest one that if there is some where we are at now in the development of UE five is. Bluntly, whereas spaceships again, shooter mode and I know they focused on the shooter mode and the eSports tournaments and things like this.

[00:15:49] This has been great. They told us they were de-emphasizing the racing mode, so I get that. But again, one of our spaceships gonna get some love. We haven’t heard about, new ships in the showroom for a long time. Again, everything that has been focused on the shooter and that makes sense. It feels if nothing else, that they are trying to reach certain milestones and then they can pivot to other, back to other things.

[00:16:12] So again you want to reach something in persistent servers with progression. Those feel like things within the UE five client that you can, work on and just maintain and then get back to other things. So it’d be interesting to see where we go. And of course, I’m just a fan. I want my spaceships.

[00:16:27] And I actually was just starting before recording this an interview Michael Wagner gave with a YouTube content creator, and it was mentioned gall the the mode inside the UE five is more about the spaceships and exploration, things like that. So I think, again, and I’ll admit total personal.

[00:16:44] Bias, but hey, this is what I’m here for Star Atlas. You may be here for some other part of it, and that’s perfectly fine. That’s the thing I’m like, interested in spaceships, exploration, going to planets, things like that. Any, it was mentioned that, they’re starting to flesh out that initial kind of single player campaign driven thing that is more of that thing.

[00:17:02] So again, but. I just looking for some spaceship love Hollowell Sim and again Michael Wagner. We’re starting to talk about that in this video. I’m halfway through, or partially through, which will again be on next week’s review that Hollowell Sim to me is an awesome concept and is showing the great potential for a great experience to come into the Star Atlas metaverse play something.

[00:17:26] Don’t have to worry about crypto, don’t have to put any money into it and have fun and lots of, during the beta, people who were on like that was brew. Were like, this is just cool. And a lot of people I hear on Twitter are liking it. Unfortunately the rollout has been a lot of bugs and they mention at the town hall where they’re getting changing over to RPCs from something, again, technical.

[00:17:46] I, sorry, I don’t understand that. If it gets it better, more reliable. Awesome. So again, maybe a little rocky rollout, but. Again, we’ll see where it is in the next few weeks. The other big thing about STAR ATS summer is zinc the new proposed blockchain to run Star Atlas and other potential things that would address both performance issues and cost of So Solana fees want more details for sure.

[00:18:12] But again, that’s to be expected. It was an announcement of this thing. There’s projections on dates, website and I think the next thing was a white papers coming. Want more details. But this, I think is this is the biggest it’s the biggest non-gaming takeaway to me from the town hall.

[00:18:32] And again, a lot other things are related to gaming, but, again, zinc feels like one of those things. I know a couple weeks ago I mentioned, yeah, at some point let’s stop playing or building more technology. Let’s build something on top of it. But as has been explained, this has never been something they just pivot to.

[00:18:47] They’ve always been working on this as far as their development platform. And then parts of it sound like it’s what’s running Hal Sim and, yeah. And. I the idea that zinc will be earned through airdrops by playing star US products is an incredible incentive to get lots of people in. The question is whether or not they stay, but that’s not the point.

[00:19:10] The point is to develop an audience, get the word out give people a reason to spend their time. Again, it’s very well thought out. It feels. Feels good. It’s, yeah, just ready for more details. But again, this is one that we already have enough and we even have sort of a roadmap. Again, a lot of the technical details were interesting.

[00:19:30] They feel credential to the game, and I know that’s not true. They’re fundamental to the game. But again, I dunno it and again, this is being way too external. Critiquing. Traditionally town hall’s been about announcements. A lot of this feels like it could have been handled in an Atlas brew or like the con form does, hey have a monthly technology update or development update or I don’t know, whatever.

[00:19:56] But, star frame could be an awesome thing. I just, it’s just not me. Again, nothing wrong with putting those in. In the town halls. I don’t know. I’m wonder, again, this is totally easy to do in hindsight, but it’s if the zinc had been the last announcement and the middle one was all the technical stuff even the sage four maybe that could have built a little more.

[00:20:19] And, but again. That’s really nitpicking. They’re all great and now that it’s over, it doesn’t really matter the order of operations. So anyways, yeah. So to just summarize I actually have to admit and this actually came to me the next day after writing a lot of this stuff down that I think a lot of what I just said was maybe a little too, not negative, but just a little too like.

[00:20:40] Deflating. And again, this is I think the problem with town halls and announcements of announcements that it, we built up this expectation that everything has to be a home run. And not to use too many baseball analogies, but if you can get on base a single, you’re highly likely to score a run. And, on base percentages matter in the end.

[00:20:59] So does consistent hitting not home runs. That if we look at what we’ve seen up until definitely the town the start of summer, but the whole year, the development of UE five constantly this whole year has been great. Steady progress. But there was no home run though. Progression’s close.

[00:21:18] No, it’s not. It’s again, steady progress. Hal Sim. It steady progress. And again, all these things are gonna have a little hiccups from time to time. Zinc, of course, that’s the home run. That’s something totally outta the blue and it fits perfectly into things. The technical stuff all necessary, all completely required to move the game forward.

[00:21:39] So anyways, I where this all kind of trying to come into a wrap up here is it dawned on me, this is how you build in public. So pick any other video game you’ve ever heard of or even a software package. You never see the making of it. And so again, seeing the tool used to make C four, you would never see that, let alone have access to it, but we get access to it.

[00:22:07] If you’re in the community now, in two years, nobody will care. But what did you do for me today? You gave me access. I’m not interested. That’s fine. But some people will and that’s awesome. That this is basically how you build in public. Also, when you build in public and you release fast, things won’t work, and we get upset and post, Hey, why this there?

[00:22:28] Yeah, but again, next week. So you could spend all this time making it perfect and release. Those are two different strategies. They have their pros and cons, but you can pick either strategy, that’s a valid business decision. So yeah, nothing’s really gonna be ever fully polish. It’s never gonna be ready for prime time.

[00:22:46] But that’s the strategy the Starless team is taking and they’re building in public and they’re sharing all the behind the scenes stuff from tools to frameworks, to whatever. That’s what we get. You can say pro or con, but that’s what we’re getting. So that’s fair. Personally, I still wanna play something and I wish it was done and I wish it was fun, but it’s coming and it’s still a ways out and I think at this point.

[00:23:13] That’s what we have to accept and bluntly complain about. It’s not gonna change anything. This is how the team’s gonna run their development and look at the positives. We get access to tools, we get lots of insight. If you have access to the foundation room, you can post a question, everybody can read all the answers.

[00:23:32] That’s the way they’re doing it. Pro or con doesn’t really matter. Yeah. I, I’m feeling. And I think I’ve said this on podcasts years ago, I’m a I shouldn’t say I’m a pragmatist. Pragmatic. That’s not my lifestyle. Parts nevermind. Rated to start, Alice. I think we have to be very pragmatic.

[00:23:52] They’re building in public, they’re leasing as soon as it’s functional and they’re constantly iterating and moving forward. That’s Star Atlas. If that’s not what you’re interested in, then this isn’t the project for you. But if that is interesting to you, you potentially see some upside on your yourself.

[00:24:09] You’re looking forward to playing a fun game, ready to sci-fi in space and economy and supply chains and shooters and everything else. That’s on the multiple year or multiple season roadmap. This could be a great experience for you, unfortunately could go away tomorrow, but this is what we got. So again not a high, not a low kind of just.

[00:24:30] Par for the course. Let’s keep moving forward. So anyways, that’s my 2 cents. Take it or leave it. I, that’s what I think. So anyways, wrapping this up real quick on kinda my journey playing Star Atlas. So again, I’m predominantly focused on the sage gameplay right now, working toward putting a bunch of resources together to hopefully craft a MABA X, which may not exist anymore.

[00:24:50] But now I’m just crafting because those resources should though I. Apparently could probably go pick this apart inside the sage editor Sage C four editor, and see where all these resources might turn into buildings or different things within the crafting HAPS, but buildings within the claim stakes.

[00:25:08] Yeah, so I’m still just mining Luminate. I’d actually just to be honest, I was too busy to. I even want to care about re-calibrating my big fleet to figure out if it should be mining more hydrogen or moving something or whatever. So I was just like, I’m just gonna stop ’cause mining is one concept and I can figure out how to keep my little minor guy going with food and fuel.

[00:25:29] ’cause it’s doesn’t need any amel. So it’s been. Chugging along mining and making progress on the gold to mine up illuminate. Oh, and another thing I guess not in full transparency, but just all my thinking the reason I stopped the big fleet was, it continues to use soul to do all those things.

[00:25:44] And of course there’s a lot more transactions with the bigger fleet than the single ship, and I’m wondering if better to wait till the zinc profiles go live and so that our experiences are directly relating to that airdrop. So I’ll admit I. Kind of holding off, trying to game what the next thing might be.

[00:26:03] Again, they had talked about September was hoping for a little more announcements, but again not shocked that maybe they didn’t have a follow up sink thing at the final town hall. So that was another kind of thing. They slowing down. ‘Cause again, I’m just. Using up Solana with the idea that if I’m gonna use it, at least maybe I’m gaining toward the zinc airdrop if I’m understanding all that correctly.

[00:26:26] And so more information would be there. So yeah, so that’s pretty much what I’m doing there. And that kind of wraps it up. Start out summer is, in the past it’s labor Day weekend for us here in the United States, which is the traditional end of summer. So it all seems to fall into place when my kids is back in school.

[00:26:40] Yeah it’s actually gray today. Not sunny, but. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the time of the year, just a random occurrence. So anyways, yeah. Thanks for listening to all of that. Again anybody interested to come on the podcast and be a guest? Totally in open to people talk about the week in review.

[00:26:56] Love to chat with any star, ask careers or builders, talk about their projects. And again, if any team member wants to come on and chat about beginner topics and Star Alice, totally happy to be a forum for that. Again, please check out my website and Aaron go to Carroll. Great resource for. Bunch of things on star os for beginner’s guides directories of content creators and tools and things like that.

[00:27:15] My recaps and my star os discord newsfeed, you can sign up for. Also, if you want to get a Star OS mug, please go to inter active gear.com or, and while you’re there, fill out my merch survey. And again, if you’re a starless gamer, looking for a different experience in joining Guild, trying to get together a community, a non Guild guild@intergalacticcoalition.com where we can hang out and chat and work on a community platform that’s a little more non-real time.

[00:27:39] So less chat, more conversations and email alerts. Please go to Intergalactic coalition for that. Other than that, thanks very much for listening. That was the weekend review of Star Atlas. This is Matt with Intergalactic Hero. Have a great week ahead.