{"id":2546,"date":"2024-10-16T12:25:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T19:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/?p=2546"},"modified":"2025-01-28T15:58:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T23:58:37","slug":"scouting-alien-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/pt\/scouting-alien-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOUTING ALIEN WORLDS"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span>
Exploring the deep dark deadly woods\u2026<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

If you read <\/span>our last blog post, you heard about the features we plan to test<\/span><\/a> this weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n

To date, we have been unlocking only specific features in each test, and trying them out in isolation, rather than letting testers play with all the systems we have done work on. Probably most notably, testers have had combat used <\/span>on<\/span><\/i> them, but they haven\u2019t been able to really fight back with weapons yet.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s because until now, we have been doing mostly scalability and stability testing. Testing features in isolation lets us measure their performance more accurately, and reduces the number of variables as we isolate issues. This lets us iterate on them as quickly as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

But now that we have a good sense of what to tackle on the performance side, we\u2019re ready to start letting players try out gameplay features! This time around, we are going to have more than one game system turned on, so that we can start to test out how they interlock.<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Stars Reach<\/span><\/i>, each gameplay system is dependent on others in various ways, so we have to plan carefully what we turn on at each test.<\/span><\/p>\n

As one example of that, crafting was mostly not available in the earlier tests, but we did give players the Paver tool. Normally, that would have required skills from the Civil Engineering profession. To enable the test of world manipulation without dragging in all of crafting, we just made it so that you didn\u2019t need to actually craft paving stones or pavement, and instead just spawned the pavement directly in the world. The paving also all came from just one material, even though in the actual game you\u2019d need to harvest the right materials to make a given pavement type.<\/span><\/p>\n

This time, testers are going to try out a pretty important pair of systems, one oriented around <\/span>exploration<\/span><\/i>, and the other, excitingly, <\/span>combat<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BEING A RANGER<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Remember, <\/span>Stars Reach<\/span><\/i> does not have classes. Instead, you can start learning any given skill tree, which we call a profession. Sometimes, one profession unlocks another. This means changing our mindset a little bit when we design special abilities. <\/span><\/p>\n

As developers, we might have a natural inclination to say \u201clearning knives plays well with stealth abilities, so I\u2019m going to put some stealth powers in the knives skill tree.\u201d In a system like ours, it\u2019s better to think of stealth as a profession in its own right, that might pair up with knives, but also might pair up with mining, botany, or xenobiology because players want to avoid combat while hunting for rare samples.<\/span><\/p>\n

We end up grouping together these \u201cways to play\u201d into the professions, and testers are going to get to try out two parts of the overall Ranger tree in the test this weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rangering is big! It\u2019s actually made up of five separate professions arranged like this diagram. Each of these bubbles specializes into different activities.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/span>
Ranger Figure 1.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

The base skill to start out as a Ranger offers up just one ability: marking waypoints. This is a basic navigation aid that helps you navigate the world. You have a datapad where you can collect these waypoints, and eventually trade them with others.<\/span><\/p>\n

From that basic ability, you then branch out.<\/span><\/p>\n