Podcast 140: Star Atlas Weekly Review

---

Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with Intergalactic Harald. Welcome to my Star Atlas Week in Review podcast. This is podcast number 140. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website@intergalacticherald.com. Just look for weekly recap newsletter 188. So just a quick summary of things to go over today.

[00:00:17] Pretty much the past week in Star Atlas had the community team doing. A Atlas Brew. This one was actually an interview. Yeah, it was more of an interview with Jacob, one of the co-founders and CTO Star Atlas. So we’ll talk about that. And yeah, that was it. I, there was one thing from the foundation room.

[00:00:35] I’ll pass along. So anyways, before I get to that first. Okay, that was perfect timing. Still recovering from a cold not a cold, actually, COVID if you wish to, my last podcast, which was delayed. So this one should come out on my regular schedule. But I do apologize in advance for any coughs or my sound on my voice.

[00:00:53] Yeah, definitely still recovering, but at least functional. Functional, but not a hundred percent. Anyways before I get into that content and pass that a little news update on me, I do wanna mention my other star Atlas projects and things. So again, my website, inter galactic carroll.com.

[00:01:11] Great. Star Atlas resource website. Excuse me. Have some beginner guides. Other guides sage guides hold a lot of links to other resources. Do have many star out directories from other star out content creators. Builders guilds do have the weekly recap newsletter. Do have AI summary recaps of the community teams events.

[00:01:32] And finally do have a star Atlas Discord newsfeed you can sign up for, to get news announcements sent to your email from the Star Atlas Discord. Also do have a Star Atlas merch store called intergalactic gear.com. Not a ton of selection. Yeah, other things, and anyways some it’s a future project.

[00:01:50] I guess I’d just be blunt now there’s just, there’s not enough people at. Star Atlas community to really justify a merch store. If, how are you looking at this? And you wanna start Atlas Mug, they’re still available for shipping in the United States, so please check that out@intergalacticgear.com.

[00:02:07] My other project is a star Atlas community for gamers who don’t wanna join guilds again. Not a lot of new people. If you’re interested intergalactic coalition.com, but again, there’s not a lot of us left. So anyways, but moving on to the content of Star Atlas this past week I mentioned the Star Atlas Brew.

[00:02:25] So normally I can I think about it? Star Atlas Brew is a very free flow topic other than usually having news at the beginning. But this one was I guess a little both. Out the ordinary in the sense that they don’t typically do interviews or I wouldn’t consider ’em interviews.

[00:02:39] They may have guests on who were talking about their thing. But this was definitely much more of an interview type theme. And the other in not typical was one of the other co-founders of Star Atlas Jacob Lloyd was on there. He’s the CTO chief Technical Officer, I think. I’m assuming it’s.

[00:02:56] Technical brother to Danny Floyd, who’s the Chief Product Officer, and both of them, plus Michael Wagner are the co-founders. I think, to be honest, I’ve only heard him speak, I think at their conference they had at Solana Breakpoint last year. And, when was the last time there and then I think I remember him being at the town hall when they had this staff reduction.

[00:03:22] Haven’t heard much from him. Not definitely he’s not as on the Starless discord as his brother and def neither of ’em though are on as much as Michael Wagner. But again I think they all have their roles and they all have their things they’re interested in. Don’t have a problem with that at all.

[00:03:37] But it was nice to hear from him talk about some of the technology. But before I go over that there were some news items that were mentioned. It’s too late by the time you hear this. But this weekend was a double XP weekend for the UE five. They did say the dashboard testing of zinc has been going good and they have started to reach out and officially brand certain content.

[00:03:59] Influencers as star US ambassadors. I think you’ve seen some links on Twitter for that. So anyway, so that was pretty much the news. Yeah. Again, like I said, it was a the Atlas Brew was an interview format for Jacob, the CTO. If you wanna hear the whole interview, obviously please listen to the Star Atlas TV’s YouTube, who had the recording.

[00:04:19] Always nice, or, not nice. It’s, boy. Yeah, if we didn’t get those recordings, I just wouldn’t know anything about going OnStar hours. So anyways, you can listen to the whole recording there. I do publish a couple minute AI summary audio part to my podcast. So if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably already got that in your feed, but if you’re new you can get that by signing up for my feed podcast wherever you find your podcast.

[00:04:43] I’ll just go over some things in things that are interesting me. So this is a combination with sort of the state of star Atlas, but these are just again, the things that are interesting me. So if you wanna listen to the whole thing, please do. Otherwise, here are my takes. So one thing that I.

[00:04:58] Now that I think about this before I say it all the three co-founders have actually, obviously have the same philosophy or probably won’t work as a business. But anyways about shipping quickly. As a Chief Technical Officer, he’s in charge of the technology and we, yeah, that comes out quickly.

[00:05:14] So does the product, so does the economy, and on. But he mentioned something that I hadn’t heard. Mentioned before, and I have a construction background, so I don’t know if they do also, but he said it’s like hanging out at a construction site. That’s how he described how the game development and shipping quickly and things like that, and.

[00:05:33] We’ve heard phrases like, eat your own dog food. Yeah, it’s pre-alpha and all that. But I have to admit, the construction site analogy resonated with me because it sure feels like you’re looking at it from all perspectives, but you’re in the dirt and you’re seeing what’s being built, but you’re seeing how it’s being built and sometimes it’s not finished.

[00:05:55] And it, I don’t know, it was just. It was a really great analogy and it really spoke to me. He did talk more about C four and definitely they wanted to scale up the game systems from currently on Sage. So it makes sense and things we’ve seen on the design side. It makes sense also that they’re working on the technology side.

[00:06:12] Kenny didn’t put this together when they announced the unique framework they called Star frame, but ob it made sense. To put, connecting the dots at Star Frame is what C four is being built on. But one thing they had noted, and I don’t know if that’s today or in the future, but it was again, a statistic that stood out that when they do ship configuration changes, it’s over a hundred thousand transactions.

[00:06:36] And I was thinking how much lot of fees is that? But again, I don’t know. Again, it was just fascinating to hear again, the even changing something on a ship is. Oh, sorry. Changing the game related to ship configurations is a hundred thousand transactions. Yeah. Right or wrong, putting a video game on a blockchain yeah there’s a lot of effort that goes in to some what to me would seem like a simple change, but nevertheless is his major, and I think that’s he also mentioned that’s where, when they do make changes, it takes a while because they have to get ’em all to commit just like any of us. Because it’s all on Solana. So anyways, that was kinda interesting. He mentioned some things about Starcom. I, it started interesting because it. Thought we can get a history lesson.

[00:07:24] ’cause it mentioned it started back in 2021 and it’s on the third version or something. But then it got, again, I’m not faulting, I wouldn’t expect the technology guy not to be all about tech, but RPCs and not pulling enough data and I kind. Lost that part of the quest answer there. But what the two points that did come out about the newer one or the one coming up?

[00:07:48] It’s definitely part of C four. It’s really gonna improve the what I wrote this down middle level. Back to client, middle level. Oh yeah. That, that Starcom is the middle level middle part that goes from the client to Starcom, and Starcom goes to the blockchain. So it’s really the thing that works in the middle.

[00:08:06] Otherwise everything, you need this middle level and they’ve needed it from the beginning. So as much as I think some of the, communities like this is the bottleneck. It sounds like without this it’s really not even possible. But they did mention, he did mention in this new version that the UI performance improvements are definitely gonna be there.

[00:08:24] I couldn’t understand if it was saying that’s like how Halim is working or will work, but it, this felt like this is the thing that’ll make. Performance issues disappear in the user interface. Yeah, that’s good. Nice to hear all this stuff. See how everything, not exactly fits together, but definitely get better sense of all the pieces coming together.

[00:08:49] And then la the next big or last big topic he mentioned was zinc. And again, this is where I love getting the different perspectives. ’cause he immediately got into some of the technology and that, players are paying their own compute and storage fees. And I gathered, ’cause I very limited knowledge on cloud computing and you have to.

[00:09:10] Buy, compute, you gotta buy storage, you gotta buy bandwidth. This is just how it works. But what I think he was referring to in this is that in order to play the game and you want to do something, you have to compute it. And then that result has to be stored. And so this is where the fees come into play.

[00:09:28] And then this is where I think he was referring to the blockchain. And this is where having zinc will make those. And he used an interesting term, he said that. Star Atlas by using zinc. Even if zinc is almost a hundred percent copy of, Solana will have more influence over it. ’cause the Solana blockchain has to treat all participants as equal.

[00:09:48] But and you use the term that Star Atlas will be a first class citizen on zinc, unlike Solana. So obviously. If something in Star Atlas needs to be improved, zinc, the blockchain will be improved related to that. Yeah, so again, that was a tech heavy presentation of zinc, but when we haven’t really heard yet, so I think it was great.

[00:10:12] Oh, and then the last thing he mentioned was the other thing he was really excited about on zinc is this on chain avatar and the social aspects that come from it, because everything’s there. Again, starting to just. Get a little more a little more, but probably things we already heard about when Zinc came out.

[00:10:26] And then there was a few minutes left over and a couple community questions were taken. One was about fog of war and whether or not that’s possible and from a technical standpoint, it sounded like. Not really. ’cause that’s how a blockchain, but it was also mentioned that’s not really how the world works and I wasn’t sure I understood, but this he mentioned this term zero knowledge and and I guess the way he used it or the analogy he described as even if you’re like cam having combat and you can’t see the other two, two.

[00:10:59] People or two forces, you can’t see the forces. They know where everybody is on their side. And I guess this is like where the spy stuff comes in. And if somebody is a spy and tells the other side, then they all know anyway. So what’s the big deal? And anyways, I don’t know. I thought that was a kind of interesting way to say yeah, it’s just.

[00:11:19] That, that doesn’t exist in real life Anyway, so yeah, some games have it. We won’t, or he didn’t say we won’t have it. Yeah, they were talking about different technologies and things like that too. But anyways, it was just first time I heard that answer from a, technical point of view.

[00:11:33] And then the last question somebody was talking or asked about UA five interacting more with the blockchain. And he mentioned, again, this is coming and things there, but the real key is fleet command. Fleet command will be sage in UE five with all the features. And so in other words, everything you can do right now in the web browser version, you’ll be able to do in UE five in fleet command.

[00:11:54] So in that sense, it’s totally will be integrated. With the blockchain and yeah, that was first kind. Again, guess in hindsight I remember being told that. But again, that was a a direct answer and things like that. So anyways, yeah. So overall yeah, it was a great interview. Nice to get some more perspective, especially from another co-founder who is again, working on one of the, I don’t know if there’s just three pillars.

[00:12:18] I was about ready to say there’s technology, product, and economy. But it feels that way. Anyways, there’s, I’m sure there’s more to Star Atlas than just those three, but it does align with the founders. Anyway, so anyway, so that was a great thing and that was, again, the main kind of community event.

[00:12:33] But to wrap up the kind of the content section, I did want to point out one post that was on the foundation room. Michael Wagner again, CEO of Star Atlas was responding to a question, and it again, as I do, I don’t. Really record the whole answer or question ’cause it was asked by a person.

[00:12:51] But yeah, a team member replies, I consider their words completely permissible to quote. But if I remember correctly, it was how zinc and star Atlas or the company how they are linked together. And anyways, excuse me. I’ll just read Michael Wagner’s reply and then make comments at that point.

[00:13:11] Again, everything is quoting his reply, so a little bit complicated because it depends on a few different scenarios. In its simplest form, which is the case right now, the zinc brand and IP are fully owned by at TMA the company’s name, sorry, just totally spaced on it. Blaming, being on.

[00:13:30] Pain medication, sorry. All revenues flows to ATM, med T. That includes premium subscription fees, validator inflation income, validator fee capture. And we’ll include other platform revenues like Dot Inc. On chain domain sales and any other marketing railroad can produce airdrop platform. Should we take on any investment directly into zinc?

[00:13:52] It would be structured as a fully owned subsidiary of ATM and T, which with share sold into that entity. In that case, a custom rev sharing agreement would need to be structured between the entities, or it’s possible depending on the investment. That no revenue passes directly to A-A-T-M-T. However, ATM owns those shares.

[00:14:13] And in this scenario, we would want to sell shares directly, revenue up rather than issuing new shares, ity. And third scenario, an investor invest directly into the main company and would, which would have identical result as the first scenario. Okay, anyways. Hi. I wanted to pass this along because it had some answers, but now as I’m rereading it days later, I, it’s hypotheticals.

[00:14:37] But I think the key point was how does zinc and it relate to star Atlas and in this case it’s more about corporate structure and ownership and shares and investors and things like that. At the present point, it’s wholly owned and there is no outside investors. So I guess that’s the biggest takeaway from that.

[00:14:58] Or take away whatever you want from the quote. So anyways. Okay. So that’s basically the content about Star Atlas this past week. Typically I do two final sections, but they’ll be brief. One is the state of Star Atlas. Past week I was sick, so I didn’t even check Discord, so I’m just gonna say it’s the same, but, there wasn’t any other news other than the Star Atlas or the Atlas Pro. Do think it was great. As I mentioned here from one of the other co-founders. And so in that sense community team continues to do exit job of having a weekly event, bringing interesting facts and. Information out to the community.

[00:15:31] So always think that’s great. And on my journey playing Star Atlas again, if even if I wasn’t sick, I’m not playing anymore. Computer’s been off nothing in Sage. And basically I’m still waiting for the sync rollout, which again, they’re testing. So hopefully we’ll know something in the next few weeks.

[00:15:51] So that’s pretty much it again. If you are interested in being a guest on the podcast, I’d love to chat with you. Could be a community team sorry. Could be a community member who wants to talk about the weekend review. Could be other star out west, content creators or builders who wanna talk about the thing open to anybody else in the broader ecosystem.

[00:16:09] And of course, anybody on the, development team. I love to chat. Most of my interest is in beginning stuff, so I’m not looking for any breaking news or anything like that. Please check out intergalactic carroll.com and go to the contact page if you’re interested. Also, while you’re there on the website again, you could check out my guides directories.

[00:16:26] Recaps the Discord newsfeed. Again, that’s intergalactic caral.com. Do have a start out with mech store. Not a lot of selection, but it’s available@uhintergalacticgear.com and. Long term plan. I’d love to get a bunch of Star Atlas gamers together who aren’t looking to join guilds but still want to hang out.

[00:16:42] Please check out intergalactic coalition.com and fill out the edge of survey. Other than that, thanks for listening to the weekend review of Star Atlas. I am met with the Intergalactic Herald. Hope you have a much better week ahead than I am, but hopefully I’m the, on the road to recovery for my illness.

[00:16:58] So take care.