PAT15 Physics Midterm

“Physics Midterm” is the name of the newest update patch for the Stars Reach pre-alpha testing phase and it’s a big one. The game has been progressing faster-than-average before, with just a little slowdown over the Christmas holidays and during the Kickstarter phase, but now things seem to be really taking off - faster than ever before.

This biggest update yet brings two huge changes (both of which would have previously been more than enough for a substantial update each in their own right) and a long list of additional improvements, fixes and tweaks on top of that. There’s a lot to dig into, so let’s jump right in.

World Physics

This is the name-giving headline topic of the patch. Stars Reach’s living planets are realised via the so-called “CASIM” - short for “Cellular Automata Simulation”. You can think of this as a worldmap divided into one meter by one meter by one meter cells, similar to voxels but with the difference that these cells are “smart”. They update themselves ten times a second based on their own state and the states of their neighbouring cells.

This allows liquids like water and lava to flow, loose materials like gravel and sand to slump (with apprporiate angle of repose), gasses, temperature and humidity to mix and propagate, neighbouring elements to undergo chemical reactions, ice to melt, water to evaporate and vice versa, and much more. It also allows plants to grow, soils to update their pH-value and water content, fire to spread, and seasonal temperatures to cause their expected changes.

If you do watch streams or videos of new players, or just read some feedback of testers playing for the first time - you will notice that this has a tendency to absolutely blow people’s minds. But after close to a year in testing it just feels completely natural to me, and I’m kinda starting to question if it isn’t getting overkill at some point? How much server cost do they want to spend on just making things behave realistically? How much of this is even needed to support all the planned gameplay? The answer seems to be a resounding: “MOAR!”.

Just to blow your mind there: Players already have built crude but working examples of heat pumps in the game. Company founder, CEO and lead designer Raph Koster (well known for previously designing Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies - pre-CU) is even joking about how testers are this close to inventing steam power. Or is he joking? I can’t tell anymore. The devs are working on a pressure system. You know… for gas pressure. Just like… steam pressure in steam engines, for example. It’s completely wild.

This current update brought two new additions to that simulation: adhesion and density. Cells now know how strongly they should stick to each other, and how far a distance they can overhang before they should break off. For players digging mining tunnels this shouldn’t be a problem, because unless they are digging into something very loose like sand or dirt, the tunnel ceiling will easily be held up by the walls. But as soon as a larger area opens up, like a cave or a cavern, there will arise the need for pillars to buttress the ceiling. Necessary amount and allowable distance being determined by the adhesion value of the material(s) above. Cave-ins are a reality now.

Cells now also know how dense and heavy their contained materials are, which means when in liquid form, they know what should sink down, and what should float up. Light materials are now able to float on water, for example. Up until this point, materials were only either “sink” or “float” - but from now on they have indivdiual densities in relation to each other. And this density is even able to change when you heat them up, so it can vary for the solid, molten or gaseous form of a material. This allows for ice (solid water) to be lighter than molten water and thus float on top.

These changes broke the existing planets. The previously used materials just could not support the spans and sized of existing caves and caverns. Pillars had to be added to the procedural generation, some used materials had to be replaced with stronger ones, and some places just had to be left to slump and form sinkholes. The famed mushroom shaped terrain structures on the salt flats of planet Pyromycis became unable to support themselves. As a result, planets had to be wiped and replaced with their new versions. Testers sadly lost all their build progress. Developers are trying to avoid such wipes as much as possible, but in this case it was a necessity.

Crafting and Skill Trees

This is the second big change for this update, and the effects on gameplay of this one go a lot deeper than the physics changes. During the last blog post on Stars Reach’s test updates (PAT14) I wrote about how character progression had been re-introduced after being pretty much entirely absent during the Kickstarter phase. This time it has been completely revamped.

Skills and skill trees have been re-arranged, pre-requisites and unlock order are now a lot different then before, XP gain has been completely rebalanced, new professions and crafting recipes have been added, existing professions saw their skills and unlocks re-arranged, and the ability to use tools and weapons has been decoupled from the ability of crafting them.

The main effect this has, is that there is now more a lot more skill progression for crafting overall, and it’s also branching out into more… well… branches. All the recipe unlocks are now part of the new crafting skill tree and it’s subtrees, and players not interested in crafting are now able to just use all the tools, weapons and shields (and unlock additional abilities for them) - without having to learn to craft them. A newly added secure trade window (which only executes the trade after both parties have agreed) allows for sales and trades of items and materials. This is limited to barter trade for now, as there is no money or currency in the game yet.

All crafting starts with cooking now - at least preliminarily. You need to cook two consmable items to unlock the “Artisan Crafting” tree, but that is not implemented quite yet - so it does not do anything for now. Artisan crafting is going to be a variant of crafting, where the stats and quality of the resulting item are determined by the crafters’ skill bonuses, the used materials’ attributes, and potentially random crafting events and player choices as well. This is gonna allow for some experimentation, and will be used to craft higher qality items with specific, desirable statistics.

All materials come with four different attributes (Potential, Quality, Resilience, Versatility) which will affect different result statistics, depending on what item you are crafting. On weapons this could be things like damage and fire rate, on tools it could be things like increased yield and mining/harvesting speed, on shields things like damage absorption and recharge speed. It is not the case yet - but in the future the values for these material attributes will be different from planet to planet.

To players of Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) this will feel quite familiar, as materials in that game had similar attributes with similar crafting effects as well. The big difference being, that in Stars Reach, new materials with new attributes are not going to spawn in on regular intervals. Instead, planets will only receive their resources once - when they are being generated - and in order to find new materials, new planets have to be discovered. That’s at least how it works for non-renewable materials like ores and minerals. Trees and plants on the other hand, can be farmed and regrown. Unlike ores and minerals those will not inevitably run out - although players can theoretically cause their extinction through over-harvesting.

But for now Artisan Crafting is not in the game yet, and material attributes still are the same accross all the currently available planets. (And there’s no way to discover new planets yet.) But it is likely we will see Artisan Crafting being added to the game with the next patch in two or three weeks. And if not, then most likely in the next patch after that. It’s coming. Right now though, the only thing you can do in the Artisan Crafting tree is to unlock further crafting subtrees like Weaponsmith, Toolmaker, Refining, Civil Engineering and Architect. For now, all these share the same generic “crafting XP” as Chef (the cooking skill tree you start from). But this is only temporary and will change - with each crafting profession getting it’s own individual XP in the future.

Refining is interesting in that (for now) it’s the only profession or skill tree that takes raw materials and turns them into intermediate products like alloys, oil, plastic or simply other raw materials, or even the same raw materials just with improved stats (at a loss of quantity). All the other professions create final, usable end-products - using either raw materials, or refined stuff. I’m wondering if “Refining” is actually gonna stay it’s own profession, or whether it will be turned into a sub-tree of mining or get subsumed into multiple other professions. I wonder if there will be other professions that create only intermediate products as well, and I do wonder if professions which currently only create end-products might in the future also create intermediate components that need to be supplied to other professions for crafting their own items. Anyone need some freshly crafted nuts and bolts?

With changes this extensive it comes as no surprise that character progression had to be wiped as well. We’ve only seen total wipes so far, but supposedly it might be possible to just wipe planets without touching the characters, and maybe even the other way around? Not sure, I am (happy May the 4th by the way). Since it’s likely that the introduction of Artisan Crafting and the required changes going along with that might require another character wipe - it sure would be interesting to know, if that would mandate a planet and building wipe as well.

Conclusion

The new update is a big step forward for crafting, interdependency and the economy in the game. If you want to read my thoughts on that topic, I wrote a blog post on interdependency just recently.

I’m quite excited about these changes, as the SWG-style crafting and the player-driven economy are among the biggest draws this game has on me.

For most of the pre-alpha testing phase so far, the game has felt more like a survival game - as none of the more advanced game features were included yet. You could only run around, collect stuff, fight creatures, build a shelter and cook some consumables.

But now we are seeing the first changes and additions that start tilting the scale towards becoming an MMORPG. More precisely, a social sandbox MMORPG with a fully player-driven economy.

Finally! I just can’t wait to see more of that!