1. Starground
  2. News

Starground News

Starground v0.8.0.1 Hotfix

This quick hotfix addresses some minor issues that were identified from the launch into early access.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]
  • Fixed a crash when trying to type into the speaker text edit box
  • Fixed an issue where clients couldn't open the UI for refiners
  • Fixed an issue where clients couldn't open the UI for electric furnaces

[h3]Changes[/h3]
  • Changed the version numbering to v0.8.0.1

Starground is Now in Early Access!

Starground initially started last year in December when I (Jesse) was messing around with multiplayer. I just wanted to see if it was possible in Godot, and maybe make a little fun game to play with friends. However I can now happily say that 8 months later, Starground has become something much more, and is now available in Early Access!

Version 0.8.0.0


With this Early Access launch also comes a lot of brand new features and content to work through. Check out all of the new awesome stuff:

[h2]New Dungeon Content[/h2]


The first dungeon in Starground has always been a bit basic, so a lot of time has been put in for new stuff! The overall visuals of everything has seen a nice upgrade, with new visual decorations. Hazardous obstacles also make their debut, with the spike trap and poison capsule. These are a danger to you (the Stargrounder) but also to enemies! Use them to your advantage for a huge boost.

The slime enemy also makes an entrance. Unlike the automatons or moonshrooms, slimes aren't able to directly hurt you. Instead they act as a debuff, slowing you down significantly whenever you get stuck in their slime. You can kill them for a nice coin boost as well!

Dreadcap has also seen some love in this update, and now has brand new animations and attacks!

[h2]Refreshed Space Hub[/h2]


The Space Hub has also seen some well deserved love. In addition to a whole bunch of new decorations, there's now two more buildings you can use and interact with. The first is the fountain, which acts as a sort of gatcha machine. Put in coins, and hope you get something good back out! A vending machine also has a spot, which allows you to buy food for dungeons.

[h2]Infinite Research[/h2]


Automation is kind of pointless if you don't have anywhere to put your resources into, so infinite research helps alleviate that problem. This allows you to continually dump your resources into high level researches for powerful end-game bonuses to your factory. Early Access comes with 2 - mining laser speed, and collector efficiency. More to come soon!

[h2]Full Controller Support[/h2]


Controller support is always something that I wanted to add to the game, and it's finally arrived! You can now play through the game with your controller of choice. This also sets us up for verified Steam Deck support sometime soon.

[h3]And Thank you![/h3]
To everyone that's helped me along the way (Big Boy Games team, the community, our publisher Graeme, our translators, content creators, and playtesters). It's been super fun working on this game, and I can't wait to keep adding new stuff for you all!

Ad Astra

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Languages[/h3]
Every available language is available through the hard work of dedicated Starground fans! Please join the official Discord if you'd like to contribute or report any errors in existing translations. Thank you!
  • Added support for Danish (massive thanks to Doublado!)
  • Added Turkish language support (massive thanks toYiğit!)

[h3]Additions[/h3]
  • Added full controller support
  • Added particles and a purchase sound to shop menus
  • Added rain
  • Added percentages to translation buttons to see how much is translated
  • Added a new slam attack to Dreadcap
  • Added new animations to Dreadcap
  • Added Doublado and liberodark to the translator credits
  • Added infinite research
  • Added mining laser power research
  • Added categories for research type in the research menu
  • Added a fountain to the space hub
  • Added a tooltip that appears when you first pickup food
  • Added an Ok button to the tool bench (doesn't actually do anything, but is only psychological)
  • Added slime enemies
  • Added poison capsule decorations
  • Added spike traps
  • Added the collector efficiency infinite research
  • Added a vending machine to the space hub
  • Added an option to mine the first hit resource instead of where your mouse is

[h3]Changes[/h3]
  • Made it so Bissala and the Snail have different greetings and goodbyes
  • Removed the satisfactory language
  • Made it so Dreadcap drops coins
  • Removed Dreadcap's crescent projectile attack
  • Made it so Dreadcap is smarter about how and when he attacks players
  • Made it so Dreadcap's minions will die when he dies
  • Increased Dreadcap's attack range
  • Increased the power output of solar panels to 10
  • Made it so some enemies can move through doors
  • Changed infinite research to show the percentage increased
  • Improved the appearance of the space hub
  • Made it so mover behavior is more defined and reliable with all types of buildings
  • Removed the guide from the pause menu
  • Made it so movers will take items out of researchers more intelligently to allow for better research automation

[h3]Fixes[/h3]
  • Fixed an issue where you could pick buildings while in a menu
  • Fixed an issue where planet descriptions and names were not translated
  • Fixed multiple translation issues in the building menu
  • Fixed an issue where power indicators were incorrect sometimes
  • Fixed an issue where disconnected batteries would not display a no connection icon on load
  • Fixed an issue where placing or destroying an underground conveyor did not cause nearby conveyors to recalculate their curve
  • Fixed an issue where weapon reach had too many decimals
  • Fixed an issue where the snail trader had the same hitbox as Bissala (the weapons trader)
  • Fixed an issue where music delay was not loaded
  • Fixed a crash in multiplayer that happened whenever a client entered another room
  • Fixed an issue where thumpers were not visible on clients
  • Fixed an issue where underground conveyors did not insert into other underground conveyors
  • Fixed an issue where placing underground conveyors sometimes linked to the wrong conveyor
  • Fixed a crash related to a mover taking an item directly from an underground conveyor
  • Fixed an issue where another tooltip activating while the initial tutorial was still active would break everything
  • Fixed an issue where you could try and activate an item in your hotbar that did not have any function
  • Fixed an issue where rain did not sync for clients
  • Fixed an issue where attack boxes were not big enough
  • Fixed an issue where the player death animation would not play
  • Fixed an issue related to hovering over a chest and the label not becoming visible

[h3]Optimizations[/h3]
  • Increased the performance of all resource nodes
  • Increased performance of rocks

[h3]MORE ONLINE CO-OP FUN?[/h3]
Do you have a group who love to play online co-op games? Add to your party night by checking out the demo for the upcoming 17.waves TD. Think Overcooked, but instead of cooking meals, you're building and maintaining towers to fend off waves of buggish aliens.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2369760/17waves_TD/

Also published by 2 Left Thumbs, the full release is due for late 2024.
Be sure to add 17.waves to your Wishlist so you don't miss out!

NEW Early Access Release Date & Publisher!

[h3]NEW LAUNCH DATE[/h3]
Hi everyone. Today (the 31st of July) was originally set as our Early Access launch date. Our apologies that this date could not be met! A new launch has now been set for August 19th!

This was done largely to accommodate some exciting new developments. We're now working with a publisher, 2 Left Thumbs. This should help with outreach and marketing the game, building up a strong player base for launch. A publishing partnership also alleviates the costs associated with our unsuccessful Kickstarter.

Thankfully this delay also affords us a bit of extra time to polish up the launch update!

[h3]Coming Soon[/h3]
While I initially planned on just finishing up some last minute things and fixing a few bugs, the delayed Early Access date means that I get to work on some fun new things that will be coming for the Early Access release on August 19th.


I always wanted some kind of weather system in Starground since a lot of games never take advantage of their capability to both make the game more visually interesting and immersive, but also to open up interesting gameplay mechanics. While the new addition of rain in Starground as of right now is purely a visual enhancement, I could definitely see creating mechanics for automation centered around this.


The dungeons have also been getting some nice updates that should have been in the game awhile ago. While I don't want to reveal all of my plans and additions with the dungeon, above is a teaser for some of the new Dreadcap animations!

[h3]Demo[/h3]
As the games develop post-launch, it will quickly become too difficult to maintain two builds. With the transition to Early Access, we need to draw a line with the demo. While bug fixes and polish may be applied to both, new content will be exclusive to the paid version of Starground. Content will only come to the demo if it represents a new an important part of the base game that needs to be reflected in the demo.

The demo will remain public for the foreseeable future, and we'll be sure to give due warning if we ever do decide to take it down.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2793380/Starground/

[h3]PUBLISHER[/h3]
Hello everyone!

2 Left Thumbs is a publishing label started by one person (Hi! I'm Graeme!) with a mission of finding and supporting the most exciting new indie titles. I found Starground through it's Kickstarter campaign, and quickly went deep down an automation and dungeon rabbit hole!

I'm relatively new to this community, but I immediately fell in love with Starground, and new it's potential was enormous! I am looking forward to marketing the game in the coming weeks to anyone or anything who will listen - and hopefully together we can really super charge out launch!

Starground Alpha v7.1.1 Hotfix

This build fixes some minor issues with conveyors, and an issue that made it so items could not be taken into or out of hotbar slots.

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Fixed an issue where conveyor belts were out of sync in underground conveyors and splitters
  • Fixed an issue where splitters could take items from underground belts in weird ways
  • Fixed an issue where the hotbar was inaccessible

Starground v7.1.0 Released

v7.1.0 of Starground is finally out! This update includes a wide variety of changes and fixes.

The main new features are more decorations (plants and the godot plush), a weapons shopkeeper in the space hub, nuclear bombs, and more weapon components,

Combat mechanics have been reworked to allow for combo chains when attacking (instead of the old Minecraft style combat). This should be a bit more fun to play with, and allow us to easily add new weapon attack animations.

This update also includes the Thumper, which is a new building that spawns resources.

In addition to a bunch of changes and fixes, game performance has been heavily optimized, with conveyors running x10 faster now.

As per usual, let me know on Discord if any issues arise!

Thanks!

[h2]Additions[/h2]
  • Added a weapons shopkeeper to the space hub
  • Added buttons to select Russian and Korean as a language (my apologies for not including those before!)
  • Added Japanese translations (thanks Matthew Armstrong!)
  • Added a button to hide player names (this is your doing yochic)
  • Added an icon that is displayed when the day/night cycle has been disabled with f1
  • Added nuclear bombs
  • Added the rubber mallet weapon component
  • Added the Dragonslayer weapon component
  • Added the Godot plush building
  • Added the thumper machine
  • Added the Advanced Collection research
  • Added 3 decorative plants
  • Added a language change button to the pause menu
  • Added a player list
  • Added combo attacks
  • Added a cooldown effect to slots when used
  • Added a spawn animation to moonshrooms (thanks Z3NN3!)
  • Added an option to set a delay for playing music in Veridian


[h2]Changes[/h2]
  • Made it so pressing escape when sending a message now unfocuses the text box instead of opening the pause menu
  • Made it so picking up items with your mining laser no longer has a delay
  • Made it so the tree of wisdom will not repeat quotes until all of them have appeared
  • Drastically decreased the game's file size by swapping wav songs with ogg songs (around 400 MB to 142 MB)
  • Made it so indicator overlays are no longer activated when placing down a building
  • Made it so weapon slash sound pitch is linked to the weapon speed
  • Made it so weapon reach in the tool bench reflects total weapon length
  • Increased the minimum cooldown time to 0.2 seconds


[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Fixed an issue where player chat boxes were invisible
  • Fixed an issue where the laser particles would start in the wrong position
  • Fixed an issue where players would technically be in the dungeon in the automation zone
  • Fixed an issue where items would be deleted when near the edge of the world
  • Fixed an issue where oil rigs don't mine oil deposits that already existed before placing
  • Fixed an issue where rotating an object would cause oblong buildings like the refiner to be offset incorrectly
  • Fixed an issue where the refiner and electric furnace don't appear on clients
  • Fixed an issue where hiding the UI on multiplayer would break
  • Fixed an issue where clients could not hide the day/night cycle
  • Fixed an issue where underground conveyor belts were flipped incorrectly
  • Potentially fixed an issue where opening the saves folder on Linux didn't work
  • Fixed an issue with terrain generation where terrain did not match the map preview
  • Fixed an issue where plant sway offsets were not set properly on spawn
  • Fixed an issue where you had to click left click before you could interact when starting the game


[h2]Optimizations[/h2]
  • Made conveyors run 10x faster (2.0ms frame time to 0.19ms)
  • Made movers run 3.6x faster (2.2ms frame time to 0.6ms)
  • Increased the performance of all objects