PAT6 Space Zone

The sixth big Pre-Alpha Test for Stars Reach took place on Saturday, Nov 2. There were a few repeats of PAT5 between that and this sixth large test, so I’m not entirely sure if “6” is the correct number here. Those in-between tests did repeat the focus on surveying out that densely forested planet.

PAT6 had surveying enabled as well - but also some mining, some harvesting, a tiny bit of crafting, more combat options, and less traversal tools as players started the game without gravmesh or grapple (but could craft those themselves during the test). The most special thing about this test though, was the ability to leave the planet and go into space. Since there are no spaceships yet, there was a portal that just teleported you to a space base. As usual everything in the test was to be considered work-in-progress, preliminary and subject to change.

One of the developer’s main goals for this test, was to get detailed metrics about how everything performed at different load-levels. And for that purpose they tried to let in players in waves. By opening and closing the login-server they tried to get only a certain number of players in, and then let everything run for a while at that level, before adding more. All while recording all sorts of data of course. This resulted in people getting stuck at the login screen for extended periods of time - who (needless to say) were not too happy about that.

I myself was there and ready to go approximately 15 minutes before the test started - sitting in the voice channel of the testers discord and talking with some other testers. When the flood gates then were first opened, roughly 10 minutes ahead of schedule, I managed to squeeze right in.

Character creation is still very early and incomplete… enter a name, pick a species - done. There’s no customisation yet. Also you have to create a new character every test, as they do get wiped. I try to cycle through all the different species and genders while testing - so I went with a female Elioni for this time:

Character Creation

Since my slow internet takes a little longer to load into the game, there were already quite a few people in the game, when I arrived:

Arrival

First thing I did, was to take a quick look at the skill trees that were available to testers in this test.

All the skill trees are still incomplete work-in-progress, and can change quite a lot from one test to the next. Also, XP-gain is massively boosted, so that you are actually able to completely max out what is there, within a two hour long test-session.

Skill Trees

Meanwhile night had fallen in the game - the day/night cycle still operates on an accelerated schedule during these tests, so both dusk and dawn are very short.

Not far from the starting point, I saw a glowing thing in the distance, that I had never seen during any previous tests - so I assumed that’s probably the portal to space:

Portal

I went towards the portal straight away - but did stop to pick up a few mushrooms along the way:

Mushroom Collecting

My first attempt to enter the portal made the game crash - a known issue that couldn’t be solved in time for this test.

Portal up close

I restarted the game to log back in - and I was lucky enough to get back in just in time before the login got locked down. I just barely made it.

Then the login got locked down, and I tried to go through the portal again - only to find out, that with the login locked down, I was also unable to go from one region/zone to another. It was apparently the same code to let in players - regardless of whether they were freshly logging in, or going through the portal.

I told the devs about that in the voice channel, and their response was picard_facepalm.gif

And with that I was locked out of the game for a while. The game is not yet able to gracefully recover from an error like that, so I had to restart it, and then I was among those testers sitting at the login-screen, locked out of the game.

Doors closed

Luckily, just a few minutes later the doors got opened for a short while again - allowing me to sneak back in.

I loaded in right in front of the portal. As I never successfully made it into space, the game considered that to be my last known location.

I did not attempt to go through the portal again - I figured the risk of getting locked out of the test for a longer time was too big, and I should try space at a later time. So instead I turned my attention to surveying and combat.

Weirdly enough, during that phase of the game, my reticule was missing - a bug that made things a bit harder (like for example, clicking the survey points, or aiming at enemies).

Combat

More Combat

More-er Combat

More-est Combat

I did not get to see much of combat during PAT5 - because combat made me crash. Therefore I do consider this my first real taste of fighting in the game - and it feels pretty good to me.

I should probably add, that I am not a fan at all of that typical tab-target combat, where you just stand there in front of an enemy, watch your cool-downs tick down, and click on icons on a huge grid of hot-bar icons.

Combat here feels a TON more active and involved than that. You are actually running around, dodge-rolling, kiting enemies. Your weapon has a standard attack on left mouse button, and special attacks on Q and E (although those had to be unlocked through the skill tree first in this test). You could also hold down the left mouse button to charge up your shot, and then release it for massive damage.

It was overall a lot more engaging and exciting, than just taking turns whacking each other with auto-fight, while managing numbers.

And thanks to the homing abilities of the shots of the Omni-Blaster the combat worked pretty well, and remained fully playable even when my internet was being laggy and enemies were rubber-banding around a bit.

But after about 10 to 15 minutes of fighting, I decided to head back to the portal, to be ready to go to space as soon as the doors were re-opened to let in the next wave of players.

Returning to Portal

And this time I got right in - no crashes, no getting locked out - this time I went straight to space with zero issues or hick-ups:

I believe I can fly

Walking on the moon

Space balcony

Now the thing about space is… there is no defined “up”. Yes, you do start inside a building, on a reLife station, and you can walk around on the floor…

But if you slowly walk over the edge, you can just turn upside down and continue walking on the underside of it.

If you fly to a spherical asteroid, you can simply walk all the way around it. “Up” has no meaning in space - it depends on your own orientation.

That being said, while “landing” on anything solid causes your character to automatically re-orient itself to be able to plant those feet on the ground - there are currently no controls to roll. You can’t re-orient your character and change which direction currently is up while floating about. Something that multiple testers pointed out is needed - and that devs said is planned to get added.

Now, while the space backgrounds were beautiful and had a very nice glow to them, that doesn’t really come across as well in these screenshots (imho looks a lot more impressive in-game) - the space environment itself consisted of just those plain grey floating, spherical rocks… which imho weren’t that visually amazing. But then again, grey rocks seems kinda fitting for asteroids in space. I think I would have liked harder contrasts - brighter lights and darker shadows (as compared to the planets), to really sell this as a space environment.

While there were some flying enemies circling around the asteroids as well, my personal main objective for the asteroids was to do some mining. In order to do that, I had to equip the Terraformer tool, which was only given to my in my inventory. So, I had to setup a camp on an asteroid to be able to change my loadout (as you can’t just equip or unequip tools when not in a camp).

I also found a way inside the interior of a hollow asteroid - filled with a core of indestructible bedrock.

Space portal from a distance

Mining montage

I spent quite a while in space. Mining is one of those activities that you can just loose yourself in, while becoming completely unaware of the passage of time.

You just dig away, while the ground deforms, and the materials keep flying in - and it feels just satisfying in a way. You do get interrupted by having to regularly empty out your terraformers hopper though. It basically fills up with all the other crap you aren’t mining, which you have to then re-deposit somewhere else. You are not completely destroying/removing matter, more like just moving it around, while sieving out the useful stuff.

I went back to my camp to spend some XP on upgrades (like for example increasing the hopper size) - and to try some crafting. But I didn’t have all the needed materials to make the recipes I had unlocked through the skill tree.

My camp

Skilling up

Tried my hand at some fighting in space as well - but just a tiny bit:

Space combat

More space combat

I then discovered this weird thing… I could not get close to it, or interact with it in any way, but it seemingly had some sort of gravity on it’s own - and had pulled in some of the power-ups those Skysharks had dropped.

As to what it is, that remained a mystery - I never figured that out. Maybe a bug? My camera definitely started to behave erratically as I got close… and then I had some real trouble getting away from it again.

Weird thing

But finally, I deemed it time to return to the planet - when a re-opening of the doors was announced in voice chat, I got back to the portal, to wait for the right time to go through.

Back on the planet, I filed some bug reports - then several testers (including me) crashed out at the same time.

Bug reporting

Icy mountain top

After the mass crash, people were let back in, so I had no issue rejoining the game - for what should be the final 15 minutes of the test, but turned out to be 30, since the servers were left open until roughly 15 minutes past the designated end time.

I do not recommend walking backwards off a cliff while fighting sky-sharks (although I did manage to cling onto it, and climb back up, instead of dropping down).

Oops…

I did little bit more surveying, and reported a few more bugs, until the servers finally got shut down - concluding this test.

Surveying