Star's Reach, new game by Raph Koster

[Ungnome]

Well, I got myself into the pre-alpha testing of Raph's new game Stars Reach. It's an upcoming sandbox MMO with similarities, mechanics wise, to the pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies but with a complex world-simulation running under the hood and deformable terrain. Went through my first test last night and while definitely rough(it IS pre-alpha) there's a lot of potential to be had. Movement systems seem on point and the world simulation parts are rather interesting, even in this early state. For example a group of players hollowed out a hill to the point where the remaining material could no longer withstand the load and the cavern they had created collapsed, killing a good chunk of them. Surprisingly the NDA is EXTREMELY permissive at this point. I can freely discuss things I've seen and done, the only restriction is no video footage. I myself build a little hut out of slate between crashes. And while there was some definite lag issues, it was quite fun.

Not sure if the hut survived the end of test event, what with all the mobs and the meteor storm.(fighting mobs using terrain manipulation tools instead of proper weapons was interesting. Had to use the agitator(tool to heat up or cool down terrain) to do damage.

This test was mostly trying to break the world similation by having everyone messing with terrain and building things, so most of the other systems were not enabled, though the wound system from the original SWG is already implemented(yes I died and yes, my max health was lowered when I respawned) and someone figured out how to dance to heal other player's wounds.

Looking forward to the next test.

 

[Ungnome]

Looks like there's another test scheduled a week from now. Testing some of the scout and surveyor related skill trees and progression. Having us set up camp(scout skill) on and map out(surveying skill) a hostile forest world full of skysharks, ballhogs and deer with nothing but a starter weapon to defend ourselves(well that and they flamethrower mode on the ranger tool, but given the nature of the game, that could backfire) . No terrain tools this time, though. Hopefully I can get better screenshots on this one.

 

[Ungnome]

5th test(2nd I've been a part of) just finished. Lots of crashes, which they think they've figured out what was triggering it and my framerate was a bit too low for combat to be effective (my GPU is getting a little long in the tooth and the game hasn't been optimized yet). The surveying system seems interesting, though the full potential of it hasn't been shown yet. We can set waypoints and collect survey data, but there's some potential there, and it gives purpose to exploration. A couple of the survey points spawned over lava, so we had to use the freeze mode of the ranger tool to make a temporary bridge over the lava lake to get to them. The plan is that once you collect all the survey points you can craft maps with them that you can sell to other players.

The camping system allows you to set temporary respawn points and you get Ranger XP by other players using a camp you set up as well as provided some crafting stations(all we could craft currently were a few food items)

Combat is different from any MMO I've played, even though my framerate tanked during combat. It has some shmup style mechanics that make it feel rather different. Mobs would also drop temporary powerups that would trigger on pickup when they were killed in addition to meat and other items.