Star Atlas Event Recap 57: LIVE-Atlas Brew #187

In this episode, hear an AI summary of the latest Star Atlas community event.  Full video recordings can be found on the YouTube channel of Star Atlas TV at https://www.youtube.com/@staratlastv.

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Star Atlas Event Summary

Hi, this isn’t Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. I am an AI. Welcome to a Star Atlas Recap of the latest Atlas Brew from the Star Atlas Community Team. The following summary of the Atlas Brew was AI generated so no guarantee it is 100% accurate because I am an AI after all. If you want to listen to the entire recording, please check out the YouTube channel of Star Atlas TV. Enjoy the summary. This week’s Atlas Brew had a bittersweet start, kicking off with both a heartfelt farewell and a monumental introduction, all while giving the community the deepest technical look yet into the impending C4 Public Test Realm. First, the emotional news: the Atlas Brew team said goodbye to our dear brother, Santi. While he is stepping away from day-to-day operations to pursue his own entrepreneurial dream, fans need not fret completely—Santi will remain connected to Star Atlas as an advisor, ensuring the community spirit he helped build persists. But the metaverse waits for no one, and the show must go on! Filling that key technical gap is our new permanent co-host, Jim Carter, Star Atlas’s Visual GC and Web Director. Jim is officially the community’s direct bridge to the development team, promising to share insights, collect feedback, and explain the complex journey of building the Star Atlas metaverse. And Jim did not hold back. The main event was a deep dive into the C4 Public Test Realm (PTR). This isn’t just a “test release”; it’s a full Public Test Realm, designed primarily for stress testing, finding exploits, and ensuring the economic loops—and the fun factor—hold up against thousands of concurrent players. The goal is to launch the PTR with all four of C4’s core pillars available from day one: Combat, Crafting, Claim Stakes, and Council Rank (Character Progression). Jim revealed that the development team is currently testing all four systems integrated and working smoothly in their internal environment, built entirely on their custom Star Atlas Virtual Machine—the Zinc network. This move to their own chain will be game-changing, reducing transaction fees and making Star Atlas truly accessible, meaning even a player with a single airbike can enjoy the gameplay loops and generate value. The deep dive continued as Jim tackled the complex technical foundation, explaining that C4 has taken time because the team had to essentially rebuild the engine. They moved away from older frameworks like Anchor to build Starframe, a revolutionary custom framework necessary to support the complex state and composability required for a massive, living game economy. This innovation was so impressive, in fact, that Solana Labs even poached Starframe’s lead developer! Furthermore, the team has successfully optimized Starcom Version 3—the system responsible for handling massive fleet data—to avoid the frustrating lag issues that plagued earlier releases. This new version is already powering the Zinc network successfully and will include an integrated RPC toggle, ensuring players can keep playing even if there are unexpected bumps in the road. Jim also addressed the huge successes of Hollow Sim, confirming that the fun, non-economic features are being roadmapped for C4 integration. This includes elements like the popular Faction Chat for coordination, potential PVE additions, and a system for earning ZXP (Zinc experience points) rewards through C4 quests, boosting engagement outside of immediate financial returns. Finally, while no dates were leaked (Santi may be gone, but the threat of a scolding remains!), Jim confirmed the team is fully focused on finalizing the front-end user interface—which uses a more performant technology stack called SolidJS but will retain the familiar Sage Labs look—and optimizing Starcom to handle the huge fleet volume that C4 will require. The community excitement was palpable, with tons of specific technical questions flooding the chat. We got a special shout-out to community members and legends like Katier, RS, and Tangle. That’s a wrap for this week’s momentous Atlas Brew! We’re thrilled to have Jim on board, and if you liked this technical deep dive, join us next week when the Atlas Brew will be focusing squarely on the future of the Zinc network. In the meantime, make sure you check out the Lore Keepers meeting tomorrow for more updates. Galia persists, Star Atlas thrives!

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Star Atlas Event Transcript

It’s just me now. Jim, can you guys hear me now? >> can.

Can you hear me? >> Yes.

Yes. Jim, welcome my friend. Hi, everyone.

Man, Discord is so big bugged. The person who starts the stage is automatically muted and can’t speak.

So, need to leave the stage and come back to be able to talk. Uh, this is so crazy. How is everyone doing?

see few legends. Katier, RS, Tangle, Mike Stick VB Ammon Neo Tango Mike Bob Shark Bait, Flares, Shadow Moon, Zift Blade, Vool, Tom, Lead.

Welcome everyone.

We have very very very special episode for today’s bro. >> Hopefully can live up to that. >> you mean Jim we are still suffering from something leaving us as you guys can imagine.

>> My heart is broken >> of punk >> said he wanted child.

Yeah, Santi. know what it is. >> Please don’t kill Santi.

We still love him. >> Please don’t very much love for the Santi. >> Yeah, mean Santi is my brother.

Like we have been together here in Status Trenches since pretty much the beginning of Status. Uh the chat is that chat’s so funny. [ __ ] >> Oh, you gota love it.

So distracting. Like like when I’m talking might not actually have the chat open, guys. Like squirrel, man.

see that stuff coming. I’m like, what? What?

What? >> So, >> yeah.

Yeah. I don’t worry, Jim. I’ll take the I’ll take care of the chat for us.

But we wanted to start this brew by talking little bit about Canti. mean, our boy has decided to start his own enterprise and he’s creating new business with childhood friend, chasing chasing his dreams. And even though I’m sad, really sad because I’ll miss him in the daily operations.

Sanchez is not completely gone from Star Atlas. is still here as an advisor, but he’ll be mostly out of the day-to-day operations.

So, for example, Santi won’t be coming more to the Bruce. Maybe he’ll join once in while.

But yeah, he’s chasing his dreams, building his new company, and the only thing that we can do is wish him luck because he’s an extraordinary human being, great friend, great brother, and I’m sure he’ll be successful in whatever endeavor he he wants to go.

That’s for sure.

But for us here in Star Atlas, it is business as usual. The metaverse waits for no one. And we have something big here that we are building.

And have found new partners, new members to be part of the brew family. And one of them is here on stage with us today. want you guys to welcome Jin Carter, Visual GC, web director of Star Atlas.

And he’ll be recurrent member of the Atlas Brew now because mean we always dreamed it to have direct bridge with the Star Atlas development team.

Now we got the guy who oversees it all. We got the guy who is building zinc, who’s building C4, and he’ll be here with us talking about Statatlas, collecting feedback directly from you guys, explaining the processes, explaining the development, everything that we have been building so far. And now we have someone actually technical that can bridge us between my total lack of knowledge on development and having the the vision of the community, the passion of the community, the feedback that you guys always provide us.

think it will be super fruitful.

It’s going to be extremely engaging. Jim will be able to explain every aspect of every product, every barrier, every bump in the road. >> No pressure, Jim.

But >> no pressure at all.

Yeah, >> exactly.

But we are happy to have you here. >> Dom’s on vacation. just saw that fly through.

So Don Don’s on vacation right now Dom. >> Yeah, Dominic Bay is on vacations. He’ll be back with us, think, next week.

So you guys will be able to to bother him. Real life, don’t worry, he’s coming back.

But meanwhile, the show must go on. And for today’s show, decided that we were all little bit too sad to see Santi go little bit needing little bit of a shake, you know, like some energy. wanted us to have fun and discuss something that we are looking forward.

And today we are going to talk about C4.

We are going to talk about the PTR and some of the most groundbreaking stuff that Automata is bringing on stage this year.

So without further ado, I’ll start this brew by asking my friend here, Jim. Jim, what is the PTR and what’s coming with C4 PTR? >> Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, great question. Um, PTR, mean, it’s really easy to think of it like public test release, but it’s it’s it’s not. And it’s it’s ultimately this concept that came out of Blizzard called public test realm with the idea that you that as development team, as game development team, we’re going to put features kind of new features in test environment that the public can access.

um excuse me that the public can access so that we can we can get feedback, we can test new systems uh and and and before they become you know you know codified in the in the game itself uh we have spot for people to test them and to play them and and um you know one of the things that’s really important with Star Atlas you know as much as we would love to we just can’t replicate what happens when we’ve got 5,000 people using it and when we five, six, 700 concurrent players going on it. Um, and and we we need that, you know, we need that ability to put something out there and to stress test stuff. Um, and to see what happens, you know, when we we think we develop the greatest, you know, gameplay economic loop and then people get in and they figure out how to exploit it.

Um, right, that we just didn’t see. And so that’s really kind of the and I’m gonna am gonna close the chat because just cannot just cannot stop looking at it. Um >> not to worry.

>> Yeah.

So that’s it. Public test realm. The idea that that there’s going to be this version of C4 that’s that’s still in test.

It’s still being built.

It’s not going to be bug free. Um it’s even going to be somewhat, you know, uh pre-alpha, but it’s going to be there and people are going to be able to play it. Um and and hopefully lot of people do play it so that we can do that kind of stress testing.

um and that kind of game loop testing.

So >> awesome. And what kind of gameplay loops can players expect in the PTR gym? >> Yeah, absolutely.

So So ultimately like C4 is kind of four main things. And and again, forgive me if I’m little unprepared for this, but I’m I’m winging it today, guys. Um >> don’t worry.

Don’t worry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But >> there use it. There use it. >> Exactly.

Yeah.

So had no polished speaker anyway.

So um so you know combat uh you know crafting um uh and then the what are the other the other two C’s are about like uh >> claim stakes right claim sticks. Yep.

And then and then the character progression right the council rank think is what is what it is called.

But yeah, so so you know, obviously for those that have played Hollow Sim, you got real preview of combat um and and the added gameplay dynamics that that combat adds to to the game. Um and how much mean to me how much more fun uh in another opportunity for fun where it’s not just spreadsheet game about about uh you know creating supply chains and and mining and and and that kind of stuff.

Now there’s about, you know, actually taking territory and trying to win and trying to to take other star bases and the and the the joy of getting your team together and and you getting your faction together and going uh, you know, at one point in Hollow Sim, right? Like Mud was on the the verge of absolute collapse because, you know, the other two had ganged up and had taken, you know, 80% of their territory or whatnot, right?

So that kind of fun gameplay uh is, you know, what combat provides. Um, and then the the other pieces of it, the crafting habs, the crafting, uh, and the the council ranked kind of the character progression, you know, like as we were talking about kind of in prep for this, as someone who’s been in the games industry for 30 years, working in games, games are about choice, right? And what what makes games fun is is choices and how many choices you can make and what are the, you know, what are the consequences of those choices and figuring those things out.

So, the other ones really take the the kind of supply chain empire management functionality of Starless and just expand it uh incredibly um and and just add so much more um to to the things you can do instead of just, you know, building fleet that’s, you know, do got some pierces and I’ve got, you know, it’s got some airbikes and I’ve got some tanker [ __ ] you know, I’m just kind of throwing stuff out there because I’m doing this by the seat of my pants.

Now you can get recipes and those recipes allow you build components and components are going to let you augment your ships. And so you know you can minmax fleet that’s got uh and again you’re probably not going to be able to just have fleet that’s just uh mining ships now because there’s combat.

So, you got to have fleets that got, you know, are going to minmax what fighters are there and how they’re supporting um, you know, how they’re supporting uh, the mining ships that are on there and and you’re going to have all of these different things that you can do that are just going to make the game so much more fun. Um, in my opinion, um, and and and it’s not just opinion. Again, like said, we, you know, we’ve we’ve added lot of this kind of stuff to Hollow Sim.

You know, we gave players more choices in Hollow Sim because we’re not focused on the economic loops. We just all we got was feedback in Hollow Sim about how much fun that game was. Um, and and we want to kind of continue to expand on that.

Yeah, that’s actually very interesting topic at gem because so far people have been experiencing or thinking that uh holosene is one thing and C4 is another. They don’t communicate at all. Uh do you foresee or do you expect us to have features that comes from holos scene happening in C4?

>> Yeah. Um think that’s great point and you know think one of the things that that you guys in the community know Xcode um you know as as kind of the director of hollow sim and then myself in my role you know he and meet every week and we are absolutely putting roadmap to bring you know that was kind of some of the point of hollow sim is is to be able to test these these ideas where it doesn’t have huge financial impact uh on people and it’s not necessarily economic driven.

It’s it’s fun driven, right? Um and so yeah, we we absolutely meet every week and we’re putting road map uh of what things that Hollow Sim is doing. And don’t don’t want to don’t want to spoil spoil the fun of what’s going to happen with chapter 2.

So I’m not going to don’t I’m not really going to say too much, but we’re going to bring lot of those things into C4. Uh you know, maybe not day one, but they’re definitely on the road map uh for C4 down the road. Um, again, you know, in prep of talking about this, you know, one of the things that think um, added lot of just kind of weirdly added lot of value to Hollow Sim was the faction chat, right?

Um, and so, you know, having that faction chat kind of built directly into the game where, you know, faction members can can coordinate, where people can get help, and they’re not worried about getting DM that’s, you know, don’t know if any of you are on the Zinc channel, right? that every two hours we’re blasting the Zinc discord with don’t take DM because you’re going to get somebody trying to to uh to steal you you you know to scam you, right?

So like having this kind of safe place in the game to communicate and to coordinate and it just um you know wish like could have Jindo up here, right? Because know Jindo played lot of Hollow Sim.

also played lot of Hollow Sim. Um, just thought that was really fun social feature. And so, again, without getting too deep into some of the other things that Hollow Sim is doing.

Um but but but bringing that you know into into C4 into the next you know real version of Sage so that combat can be coordinated and blockades can be coordinated and people could do stuff fun stuff like create an alt character that’s in the different factions so they could try to get faction information and like just all the things all the social gameplay that came out of that.

Something that we that we were discussing before we joined the stage was another aspect of holos scene that might make its way to C4. And you actually brought something really cool concept to me that feel we should share with the community today about how quests could be implemented on C4 uh and maybe even at the PTR to start testing it. Can you talk little bit about the ideas that you were discussing about how Quest will make to C4?

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so again like thought one of the really powerful things that drove, you know, and can only speak in an American accent. You guys don’t want to hear my British accent or any other kind of accent. It’ll be maybe good comedy or whatever.

But um you know one of the things that um again looking at kind of the the way lot of games are measured is what they call 7-day and 30-day retention, right? How how many people started the game and are still playing it seven or 30 days later. Um, and you know, looking at the data, there was massive correlation about the people that made it to those milestone milestones, excuse me, being involved in the quests and being involved in the dailies, right?

Um, and so there’s been again discussion, maybe Wagner’s going to get mad at me as I’m, you know, pulling back the veil on some of the internal discussions here around, you know, well, what if we had quests in C4, but they weren’t they didn’t directly lead to Atlas, they instead led to ZXP emissions in zinc.

So, if you complete quests in in in C4 uh for for kind of the fun of it, if you will, and for the the the engagement of it, and then your reward is in zinc, is exp right. Um and uh so those are some of the things that again you know we’re we’ve been discussing internally and don’t don’t have deadline on when that would happen or if that would even or even if it would happen but those are the kinds of conversations that we’re having like you know just um not to segue into completely different topic but this is something that we talked about um you know what what drives economy in games right and you know one of the things that being longtime poker player um one of the things think drives economy is is fun and you know the more we can make these games fun the hopefully the more people casual players will want to play them and the more casual players want to play them you know the the the idea of rising tide rises all ships the the more the value of the starless economy will be and it won’t just all necessarily be tokens right and emissions and ROI. Um, you know that, you know, there’s reason in my opinion that the global poker market is $60 billion year.

And it’s not just because everybody’s making money playing poker.

It’s because there’s fun and there’s an enjoyment in playing poker that’s driving that $60 billion year market worldwide.

Right. And not not to say that Star Atlas is going to be gambling. don’t mean that, you I’m just but but if there you know if our game is more fun then hopefully more players play it and the economy rises.

That’s kind of the the gist of what was getting at.

So >> yeah exactly and another very important thing that’s going to happen at the same time right Jim is that we are no longer uh creating this massive uh building let’s say this new universe on Solana.

We are building it on our own blockchain where transaction costs will be lot smaller. Uh the the barriers to start playing Statatlas investment wise even on Sage even on C4 level are going to be mean lot smaller than they currently are. Like you can you’ll be able to make money or at least break even even with single airbike.

And this is something that’s also gamechanging for lot of players, especially people coming from uh third world countries like myself. mean, when you have an airbike costing just few bucks and you can just buy the basic resources for few cents, you can actually have fun and enjoy the game without having to make like $500 investment, etc.

So if the game is fun and the conditions to join the game are also enabling for lot of people, think this is good recipe for for success overall right? >> Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Absolutely. 100%.

Um yeah, you know, again to to maybe beat the dead horse with the poker analogy, like if you had to get into poker and you had to you had to buy in for $10,000, no new players would do it. And you know um you know the fact that you can go and and play you know small you know 10-centent 20 cent game um allows people to get in and and explore it and learn the fun and we we want to have that same experience you know again hence hollow sim as you know absolute you know zero cost um option to get in and and to learn and to play Star Atlas. Um yeah, absolutely.

And and and the other thing too, you know, with with zinc, um like you said, being able to control to be able to control the costs better, right? That that you know, the last thing, you know, and it was kind of horrible timing for Sage in sense, but the last thing, you know, we want pumpf fund run, right? and and all of sudden Salana tokens are going through the roof and transaction fees and there’s priority fees and all of sudden, you know, it makes our game we’re competing for all those other resources on the Salana network.

And so being able to run this in in an SVM fork where, you know, we have more control uh just will allow for better game experience and and like you said, more economical game experience as well. Jim, uh, going little bit back to the PTR experience overall, do you feel we’ll be able to start experimenting or experiencing the PTR already on the zinc network? What are the current plans >> at this stage?

>> Yeah.

So, so the current plan, so you know, in terms of where we actually are in C4, so we don’t say like, you know, I’m air quoting, don’t have my video on. don’t know if you wanted video or not, but um you know instead of saying Sunnis, you know, ultimately you know the full the full C4 uh Oh, you turned on your camera. >> Yeah, we can do we can do >> we can can pump my Star Atlas gear, you know.

>> Yeah.

Yeah. >> Um so, and you guys can see my epic beard though. Um joke there.

>> Everyone has epic ears now. >> Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so, um, you know, all all of the C4 functionalities, you know combat crafting habs council rank, they’re all they’re all happening.

So, so all of the blockchain programs, um, which, and we talked about Starframe bit, our prepped here, which you haven’t talked there, but they’re all running, um, with our development tooling, meaning, you know, we’re actually able to craft recipes. is we’re able to take those recipes and add them to as components and we’re able to add those components to ships and creating new new composite ship, you know, and then we’re able to actually put that into combat. We’re able to do all of those things and we’re doing them all on our internal zinc uh you know, our zinc devets and our our local Zinc development environment which we internally call universe.

Um the we’re all doing that right now inside of the zinc world from from from soup to nuts, right? um obviously, you know, working through bugs and stuff. Um and so, you know, the next phase that we’re working on, you know, now that we’ve got all of those systems working soup to nuts, we’re taking um you know, the the Sage client um and we’re refactoring the Sage client to now be connecting to those systems and now be using those uh those systems.

And there’s obviously new UIs that need to be developed. And um you know fortunately you talk about sharing for example you know the the lead UX designer of hollow sim who came in little bit later to hollow sim uh you know is also working with the C4 team to say okay this is how you know we solved this information we solved this work UX workflow in hollow sim this didn’t work really great in the beginning but we changed it to do this instead so let’s start from here and let’s build that right um so um >> that’s It touches on one question from the community gym. Uh asked, “Is the C4 web interface something similar to Sage or something very different?

Like will players notice different interface? What can you leak to us here today? ” >> Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um it’s actually built on on on I I’ll get somewhat technical for people. apologize.

It’s built on different UI uh uh stack. We we instead of using React um which is what the original Sage Labs and C4 and then even HollowSim was built on um we built it on top of SolidJS and and we did that because we were we had just noticed that some of the performance bottlenecks that we had to get over was based on some of the performance of of how React was built with this virtual DOM. Uh and obviously React 19’s bit faster than that.

But anyways, we went with SolidJS. the the the actual UX itself is still based on again kind of on that original Sage uh you know so it’ll feel familiar um it will feel familiar but it is different technology stack and there’s just lot more now so there’s going to be lot more screens um and again also with having you know Jeff the UX designer there’s been there’s being more focus on making it making the information more intuitive right how how do you get to something where when you click on something what happens right and we’ve you know think we’ve also learned lot um in hollow sim and in the original sage don’t know this is one of my complaints about holisim and maybe the community feels the same but sometimes when there’s lot of ships over star base in hollow sim you couldn’t actually click on the star base because there’s ships and you couldn’t get through the ships and you had to zoom and zoom and zoom right like so we’re trying to solve some of those other some of that kind of stuff in both hollow sim and if4 and we’re solving them in the same way. Um, so, so the short answer to that is it will be very familiar.

The goal is to make it more performant and to have better, more intuitive experience. Um, but still kind of follow that same familiar feel, right? Where you know the star atlas is triangle and you got the different regions and you got the different star bases and ships are moving.

It’ll look that same way, but it will hopefully perform better and and be more intuitive um on how you how you get to stuff, right? >> Awesome. >> Yeah.

>> No, no, that’s that’s really cool. Uh Jim, one thing that people have always been wondering is why creating C4 takes so long, you know, like it’s huge project. We we had many things happening and one of those is the is the as we were discussing be before this this brew is the necessity of us building the framework where we could have the things that we wanted right because stage was built using the anchor framework and now we created something entirely new which called starframe that’s able to support the grand vision or the systems that we we need to deploy something as big as C4.

Can you talk little bit about this? Explain to the audience what what’s starframe, what’s anchor and what what they do and why they are necessary etc. >> Yeah.

Yeah.

No, absolutely. And um mean just from from high level and again there’s probably others out there that are Rust developers and Salana developers like saw saw Donovan on here T. Donovan who’s one of our develop one of our Starframe developers uh that I’m going to I’m going to be really high level and some of that high level may have somewhat in inaccuracies but it’s there to get the point across right um and um so so ultimately anchor is framework to build programs on Salana on an SVM on the Salana virtual machine right and um you know there used don’t know for people who have been around in Salana for long time they used say hey it’s like chewing glass right it’s difficult it’s difficult uh SVM, it’s difficult virtual machine to program for.

So Anker kind of built as this kind of industry standard framework to build programs on there. Um, and this is not knock on the Ankor team at all. think they they did really good job, but they were trying to solve different domain.

Um, and as someone who’s worked in the games industry for 30 years, but have also worked in kind of traditional business web apps, that kind of stuff, iOS development, games are lot more complex in their state and they’re also lot more complex in their relationships, right? Um, and so, um, the only thing can think like that is retail is actually very similar to that, you think?

But anyways, I’ll digress and stop that.

But but so ultimately our our use cases, our game stuff needed lot more com the ability to represent complex states in an easier, more straightforward fashion, right? Um and again, this isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s kind of give the ex to give it the help to get the point. If you’ve got an air bike, right, and you want to add an upgrade to it so that it’s its laser is more powerful, it’s its attack is more powerful, but it also going to make it little bit slower.

For example, with Ankor, we may now have to create whole new NFT and then burn that burn the own NFT. And again, if you have 5,000 different ship components that you can add to ships, think about how many NFT possibilities that that is, right? And we’d have to mint >> for every single one of those combinations and that tree just becomes huge right?

um with with being able to build with composability instead, which was what Starframe was designed from the beginning to do.

You know, the idea is that that can be an airbike and then you can add your components to it very easily and we’re not having to have this huge combination and you can actually play and mix and match how you want to mix and match better, right?

So, so by to to do that, it just it really wasn’t feasible with Ankor to do that. Um uh and and because it was designed for DeFi, it was designed for locking. It was designed for it wasn’t designed for games and and and and for the the complex relationships that games make.

Um and so we had to we had to build that and and and launch that. And I think there’s probably people in the community who have, you know, that it’s open source and have been part of it. Um, again to maybe peel back some of the some of the the the curtain, the lead developer of Starframe, uh, was actually poached by Salana Labs.

They loved it so much, right?

So, um, and and you know, he’s we had to do some stuff so that he could work with Starframe and he could work on Ankor 2. 0, right? Because they looked at what we did and they said, “Wow, there’s lot of great stuff there.

” Um, and so, uh, we had to do that kind of long story short, which which just created lot of um lot of work to do, right? Um, so that that’s one reason think, you know, C4 has been delayed is kind of starting from scr up. I mentioned, you know, SolidJS and and rebuilding the UI um, from ground up to be more performant.

Um and and also you know the the kind of thorn in our side maybe even dirty word you know the starcom right and and how do we you know how do we keep up with all the transactions that are and all the instructions that are happening um in in way that’s that you know to kind of peel back little bit of the curtain in sense like you know when we did the first galactic marketplace launch right mean like Jacob and myself and Michael Lou we were like literally contacting RPC providers and at one point we had 96 different RPC servers running just to handle the galactic marketplace volume right because RPC ultimately again it’s built for its right solutions for what it’s it’s built for but it’s it’s not really built for this long-term realtime gameplay mechanic right and so when we were trying to do those with Galactic marketplace we really realize that hey and RPC’s come long way since then the websocket stuff is better but it’s still not to that point you know that we that so so We obviously built Starcom, right? And we did first version of Starcom and then we did second version of Starcom and you know think unfortunately think the second version of Starcom was somewhat of disaster, right? Um you know I’ll I’ll admit that and you know the buck lies with me in sense there.

So I think it was disaster. And so Starcom version 3 um which by the way is what’s powering all the Zinc interactions for people who have interacted with me in zinc. um you know we we’ve we’re learning from those lessons and we’ve also had to build Starcom version 3 and we didn’t want to launch C4 with Starcom version 3 that was >> like we had did with Starcom version 2 when we launched it and it was super buggy and things were super bad and and you know unfortunately like said I’m I’ll take full responsibility in sense that people had to use Sly to go to RPC to use Sage to play Sage right that’s that’s bad that’s bad experience And that’s that’s embarrassing for us as development team.

Um, so we wanted to build some systems and build some things and take more time to be able to really really test these things, right? And again, I’m hoping people are enjoying some of this behind the scenes curtain, right?

But like with with zinc interaction, right?

So people who aren’t familiar with zinc when you when you do things most of you there is bug right now blocking some people but when you do things in Sage um we get every instruction that was from the blockchain that that happened in Sage um and then we take those those those transa those those instructions from the transaction blocks and we we basically push them to Zinc and we give people ZXP rewards for that right um and you know during the alpha season of zinc um at one point because of our code. There was more than million instruction backlog at one point and it was because some of the code we had written that we thought would multi-thread didn’t multi-thread correctly, right? Um, and by by doing that alpha season in Zinc and seeing that we were able to fix that.

And now Zinc uh you know uh and again Donovan uh Tanner maybe will talk more about it if he was around. don’t know if he still is, but we haven’t seen more than 10 instruction backlog now for weeks. Those are the kind of Yeah, those are the kind of things that that just again that’s why we need PTR.

We need hundreds of people playing this, right? We need to see this this this scale because when you do it in less scale, it’s very easy and it works great, you know, but as it mores laws, as it expands, you start to see some of these these challenges. Um, and so those are some of the reasons, you know, hate to say it that that that C4 has has taken more time than we would have really liked, but to me it’s about learning learning from our mistakes and trying to do to do better job.

>> No, that’s that’s all we can do at the end of the day, right? We learn with our mistakes, we move forward, we build better products, and as long as we have this mindset, think things works out in the end. Uh Jim, now I’m going to ask uh more PTR experience at focused question.

I’m not sure if you’ll be able to answer this question at this point, but something that always people always asks me is when the PTR starts, are we be are is everyone going to start from zero or we are going to get like the fleets that we currently have on Sage to start testing the PTR?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, my understanding and again um the lead developer of of of of C4 was DMing me before this like don’t give away the secrets like um don’t don’t say something right. Um my understanding is that the PTR is going to be start from scratch. Um and that we’re we’re going to believe we’re going to be doing airdrops to to people and they’re going to have this starting thing and we’re going to let let things people build up.

Um that’s my understanding. similar to holos scene then something similar to holene similar similar to hollowimum. Exactly.

Yep. Yep. and and and even be doing like maybe the somewhat similar hollowimum is doing in these kind of resets these kind of like okay we’ve gotten we’ve seen the economy to this point but you know we really want to test what happens in economic gameplay loops for new members for dur so kind of early game right and every MMO kind of has this problem right for people who played World of Warcraft or old school guys like me with EverQuest like what’s the experience for people who have come into the game two years later when most people are at the endame experience right right they’re at the endame experience when we’re at the you know so how do we kind of test those gameplay mechanics so that’s my understanding again I could be wrong and it’s subject to change right so >> no don’t worry don’t worry >> don’t hunt me down like Santi and and >> uh another question that people ask uh before Jim is about the content of the PTR so for example will all the C’s ease of C4 via be available at day one or we are going to test for example first the combat features and then claim stakes.

Do you have any ideas on how do you want things to play out? >> Yeah. Um the the goal this goal and I personally feel that we’re well along that goal is that all the features are out.

So, so, so Danny and and Chris and and Chip and the people that were involved in the game design, think did really great job of building interconnected system, right? Um, and as Hollow Sim showed, we could do combat kind of outside of the other systems, right? We could do just combat with fleets and territory.

Um, but combat becomes even more interesting when you can when when you get all these combat components and all these combat recipes that that So, the the goal, our goal is to launch with all of the fours. Um, excuse me, all of the fours available from from day one. Like said, to kind of curl back kick back the curtain of where we are like like our development team right now is testing all fours in universe in uh in you know kind of the Atlas Net environment.

Um so it’s it’s not like one of them hasn’t even been developed yet, right? They’re they’re all in development and testing right now. >> Ah this is super cool.

Uh Jim, one of our community members suggested that what about at the start of the PTR season, you give us big sum of fake Zatlas and let us buy assets in the PTR and then you have huge variety of different operations because everyone will try to do something different. >> think that’s cool idea. >> love that idea.

We should not we should Yeah, we should absolutely write that down and and go pitch it. I agree. agree 100%.

>> Guys, see people asking for the code. I’ll drop it in the chat right now. Give me second here.

Code for today C4 PTR. Uh, another thing that Kmen is asking now, Jim, will C4 include automation functions like Hollow Sing and Sly offers. >> Boy, don’t know if can give away some of this stuff.

Um, so, um, so everybody that played Hollow Sim saw that we started building an automation manager. Um, and this is probably not community.

This is probably not huge secret. Van Xcode’s gonna he might be mad at me after hearing this, but we’ve actually in hollow sim we started partnering with Sly to build Sly into Hollowim uh directly. Um and yeah and um and and that’s again that’s where we want to be part of the community, right?

mean, we love what they did and um and so I think the short answer with that is is yes, that there, you know, that that there’s this really interesting balance of of automation. Uh you know, we’ve seen that the community really loves automation.

Nobody wants to be doing the, you know, again, games are about choices, but nobody wants to do an accounting simulator where they spend eight hours being real accountant, right? They want to they want to speed things up and and be able to take the the the grind part that they don’t like and and and automate it, right? And supply chains and things like that are are tools that can be automated.

So, we we think it’s hu think it’s huge value to have those stuff. love that people that teams like Sly and and Adam and other went out there and and did things that we weren’t able to do. And um so think that the the short answer I’ve rambled bit.

I’m sorry. trying not trying to figure out what to give away and what not to give away.

But yes, think there will be automation. Maybe not from the get-go in C4. Like the PTR may not have it right out the gate.

Um, but again, like I’ve said in this, everything that Hollow Sim is doing and Hollow Sim is testing, we’re learning from and we want to bring into the to the to the, you know, the actual Sage game.

So >> man, uh what’s the feature gem from everything that’s coming on C4 that you are most excited about personally? >> Yeah.

Yeah. I like combat the most. Um just because think combat is the most interesting and the most fun.

And I’m uh as much as love to be kind of like an empire builder that like builds my supply chains and sets up my fleets and ras in money, I’m like said, I’m poker player. love love risk as well. And love, you know, the concept of, you know, us as faction getting together and we’re going to go, you know, try to break through the the the barricade and take, you know, this this MRZ’s star base and we’re going to try to and we know that it’s going to [ __ ] that and we’re we’re chatting to mean, like, you know, for guys like me who played EverQuest, like, you know, sometimes sometimes getting the whole guild together to go do the boss raid was just as much fun as the boss raid itself, right?

Um, and so, you know, think that we’ve seen that in Hollow Sim. we’ve seen that kind of uh that kind of fun social collaboration happen.

So, I’m that that’s what I’m also the the most excited for personally. >> Awesome.

Yeah.

No, this is extremely exciting. Like mean, and com this brings up another question. The combat that we’ll see in C4, it’s actually an improvement from the combat we have in Hollowos right now.

Right Jim? We’ll see new things coming on C4 combat. Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s Yes.

Yes.

There’s there’s there’s still UX design that’s going, but yeah, the team that built the combat and hollow sim, the team then that refined the combat and hollow sim um is ultimately that same team that’s working on it in in C4.

Yeah.

So, it it should be very similar. Um and and again, yes, maybe even be uh an improvement. Although will say that think some of the things that are happening in Hollowos sim combat for for chapter is it chapter two right?

Chapter two. >> Um some of that stuff is really cool.

So yeah it’ll be similar or better is >> yeah awesome.

That’s super cool. Uh another thing Jim and this is on me.

You can talk about this if you want. If if we get scalded by leaking this something like this, you tell Michael they were saying Zanti would stop you from giving alpha.

So know two of us we might have an emergency call with with Wagner later today.

So this is my last one.

You know why? >> Yeah. >> But something that really love about the new season that’s coming Holene is the PVE element.

the NPCs, things like that. >> Yes. >> Can we expect PVE elements coming in C4 as well?

>> hate to give you the same answer. I’ve got like think everything that’s going on in Hollow Sim should come to C4, right? I I think that, right?

You know what mean? Um, now I’m not I’m not the economics team that has to balance the economy of that, you know, but think think and again don’t know what’s been leaked in Hollow Sim about the the PVE. Um, but think the stuff that we did see in in in in Hollow Sims chapter 1 where you know Xcode was creating fleets to go hunt down people that were that found exploits and were unbalancing the game, right?

instead instead of this concept of VO would just ban somebody, this idea of being able to use AI and to use internal tools to to build policing fe fleets that just thought that was really cool immersive experience. Obviously, if you were someone who found banhammer and got, you know, got all suddenly got attacked by massive fleet, probably wasn’t as fun. Um, but from our standpoint, thought it was pretty cool, right?

So, um, so yeah.

Yeah.

You know, and again, you know, I’m not I’m not Danny. I’m not the game designer. I’m not Chris.

I’m not in charge of the economy. Um, all can say is kind of the things that I’m fighting for internally at Starless is ultimately game’s value to me comes down to its entertainment, right?

You know the >> and and the more entertaining we can make game, the more valuable the economy is. Um, and you know, this this kind of illusion of being able to print value out of nowhere with token uh really existed because the exuberance of crypto in 2020 and 2022 and 23, right? And and now we need to make that really in my opinion, again, this is just my opinion, not the position of Star Atlas, we need to transition this into game that truly is fun for players, even if they’re not making ton of money, right?

even if they’re not, but they’re there and having fun. And the ones who really want to be in there deeply and really want to invest the time, they’re the ones probably making the most profit, but everybody else is having fun, right? >> Exactly.

Exactly. Uh it’s just like Anthony is saying, fun and ownership is key. like making money is everyone likes making money of course but the fun factor mean you can’t put one ahead of the other fun comes fun exists then value is generated as you were saying like and once value is generated people start creating markets and then token prices start following that value generated >> right >> it you can’t put one ahead of the other like it’s trying to inverse logic it won’t work like that and that’s what we are currently doing right as you you said something else uh when we were talking before this bro that really like it is that by creating hollowosim we learned that we could make very fun onchain game now with C4 we are going to make very fun game with real economy working right think that’s the plan for C4 right >> yeah and think it’s it’s yeah super exciting exciting for me.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, um, absolutely. think it’s great. >> Yeah, we are super excited.

Guys, do you have questions for Jim? He is here with you now. He can talk about C4.

He can talk about the zinc integration. Anything you guys want to ask, now is the time.

We have few minutes to spare before this bruise end. Use it wisely. Boom.

love that.

That’s great gift. >> Uh, >> see people asking about fleet command. Jim, I’m not sure if this is something that you can talk about or if it’s another person expertise.

>> Yeah.

you know my my my role it’s can know basically you know other than I’m I’m happen to be in some conversations because of my role but but in the end no my my kind of domain is what what we’re doing on the web you know what we’re doing with the Starcom world you know Sage Hollowosim um and uh and Starcom system uh you know the Unreal side uh and what’s going on there. would just give people false information because don’t don’t really know. >> Okay.

>> Okay.

Yeah.

No, that’s fine.

We have We are all very busy.

We can’t all everyone be on top of everything. And Katir is asking we will be able to redistribute consu rank perks gym on the the system works on the PTR C4 and if he has what’s the cost? think the cost part might be something more for Chris Katier.

But it is on the design of C4 that when you advance console uh XP ranks, you get points and you’ll be able to allocate those points in different perks.

Right Jim and >> yes >> from what have heard >> it will be possible to reset those points and reallocate them paying fee. Is this still on the current plans how things will play out? >> Yeah.

So I think there’s some balancing going on in that and some just you know again when we have game design document and then we get it into PTR and we see what it really feels like there there may be changes right so some of those really defined details I’ I’ve been been told to kind of avoid little bit because we want to get these things out and again we want to do >> think learning from our mistakes we want to get these things into this PTR we want to see how they react want to see how people enjoy them if they add to game value if add economic value and then and then tweak, right? Um uh so think we could probably answer that question closer to the PTR than can right now. >> Sure, that’s totally okay.

>> Yeah. >> Uh let me see. Can you change factions from Sage to C4?

committee member is asking.

That’s good question. >> That’s great question. Um wish knew the answer to that.

that’s getting little bit more specific than I’ve gotten into with the C4 um the C4 world. Um you know, don’t don’t don’t know. have to say I’m sorry.

don’t really know that that specific detail. >> Um and again, that would be something that we could we could begin to play with if not um and and see how that works, right? mean know you know there is some speciesbased rules around C4 in sense but you know why couldn’t why couldn’t you know an join the mud right even though they are you know the robot Android you know what mean like why not you know what mean why couldn’t people switch between them um don’t see why not just don’t don’t know if that it’s that it’s been granularly down that deep into the design document so >> Jin know you can’t give us dates know you can’t give details but community is asking what else is needed for C4 at least the PTR to be released.

Is there anything you can tell us on what is spending like are we really close now? What can you give us in terms of impressions? Like >> and know know it’s hard.

know it’s hard but >> Yeah.

Yeah. let your heart know what what you feel. Share your feelings with us, >> right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And hopefully hopefully not be my last ever discussion with the community. Um mean can tell you exactly where we are and the great work that our development team like Eves and and and uh um Don Tanner I’m sorry just see his name TT Donovan.

I’ve done like Tanner and others.

So basically and this was something very similar that we did with actually Sage itself is we built we built this set of web tools that allow us to right now to reach out through an RPC execute onchain programs get back the data through RPC and we’re able to do that through this web view. If you kind of think of it like like a, you know, like menu, like if you’re going to play this game completely through menu system, you can get recipes, you can craft components, you can craft ships, you can do combat, you can move through the council rank. All of that, all of that that development is done and in testing phase.

Like it’s in the polish phase of that.

So the next step that we’re actually working on right now, we’re we’re working on basically on two steps. We’re taking that solid JS and we’re making it instead of in this kind of menu command debug view kind of thing where it’s piecing showing every piece of information that the RPC gets back so we can look at every piece and make sure every everything is working perfectly.

Now we’re putting it inside of the map view and we’re putting it you know in the map view and and you know beginning to put you know where where you know and for people that have used um that have played hollow like that player utility bar right so the player utility bar that can drive all kinds of how players interact with their inventory and with their fleets and with their components. They’re all doing that you know through that player.

So that’s the step we’re working on right now from kind of front-end game comm mechanic is taking everything we did in that what we call internally the debug view and we’re getting it into the web view uh the actual game view. The other piece that we’re working on right now is the optimizations in the starcom layer to allow the map view to to to to drive to allow for 10,000 and 20,000 fleets. Um so uh and the other thing that we’re also doing just kind of for everybody’s uh edification guess understanding is that we’re completely supporting RPC in all of in in our in our web client.

So if there’s bug with Starcom if there’s an issue with Starcom, it’ll be toggle. Click toggle, you go to RPC and you can play the game through RPC, right? Um but but so like in Starcom, we built this basically what they call uh it’s kind of like an OC tree.

It’s it’s D tree that databases and there we’re using specific databases that are already optimized for those to be able to do spatial queries to be able to kind of optimize how we get data down to C3 um so that we don’t have an issue like we did last time where you have to basically disable sewing all fleets right out the gate so all of that stuff is optimized and and better.

So those are that’s actually what we’re working on. Um I’m not going to give date on when when those things uh are hoping to be PTR ready. um because then think my development team might find me and kill me.

So um so but those that’s where we are actually at. want to give people not to soonish. want people to know exactly where we are at.

Um >> no that’s awesome.

Yeah.

No, that’s actually very helpful Jim.

Guys, any last questions before we close today’s brew? >> Oh, thanks Bohemian. appreciate that.

>> Yeah.

Yeah, guys, double’s in the chat for Jim. He he came here last minute. told him, “Jim, need help.

Let’s talk C4. ” He jumped right in. He offered to be here with us on the brews from now on.

So doubles in the chat for him. He’s Chad and he’ll be here with us every brew talking about Star Atlas, talking about the products and Jim, maybe next week we can talk about zinc, right? Maybe have brew focus on on zinc, where we are, the futures that are coming.

think it’s going to be super cool, pretty interesting for community. >> Absolutely. And and and you know, one of the things just want to say too, you know, for the community, and appreciate these very specific uh these very specific questions, you know, ultimately one of the things I’m trying to help provide for the development team, and people who are in sync will will notice this, trying to allow the developers to actually be the ones down in their building and I’m trying to do kind of some of that more.

So I’m sometimes I’m not as close to the code and very specific feature sets. And so if you get if you get an answer like don’t know doesn’t mean that EEves doesn’t know or Jerry doesn’t know or or other developers who are working on Gareth they they may know those specific answers just don’t happen to have them as the >> don’t know it makes me feel like I’m boss when I’m really you know just I’m here to support web director right like that’s what I’m putting the plans together and enabling the development team to do the best job it can so >> and you are doing great job Jim thank you very much man and thank you all for being here with us today.

We will keep our traditions of hosting the Atlas Brew Weekly. Uh even though our dear Santi won’t be here with us, he’ll be with us in spirit. He’ll be joining eventually and the show must go on.

Galia persists, Status Trives, and we’re going to have lot of fun with C4 and everything’s coming this year. Thank you guys very much for being with us here. >> Yeah, thank you so much.

appreciate the the throw show of gratitude. Absolutely. Thank you guys.

>> No, we love you, Jim.

Everyone have nice week and I’ll see you guys tomorrow in the lore keepers. Make sure to join because I’ll be sharing some of the backlog of things that have been working on. All right, see you everyone.

Have great week. Take care. Bye-bye.