thainatos

Spacebase!

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Damn, I think I'm giving up building a large base until the next alpha. Currently it's just impossible to get anything built inside (but builders are so eager to build/demolish structures whenever there's an order for that). Even oxygen generators will not get built/demolished before everyone is panicking.

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I seem to be having issues now where if people do any work outside the base, they won't come back in, and eventually die from oxygen deprivation. Naturally this generates a sadness spiral, and so before I can even get it off the ground my base is doomed...

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I just happened to see two crew-members discussing "hipsters". I think they came to the conclusion that they liked them. That gave me a chuckle.

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The 50 percent off Flash sale finally got me to bite on Spacebase.  As much as I love DF, I was hesitant to early back a third game when the first two I've bought into are still in development. 

 

So is it worth digging into now, or is it better off to wait a bit longer for more features to be added and bugs to be fixed?   Reading through this thread, the endless sadness loop and people suiciding in space both sound super frustrating. 

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I haven't checked it out yet, but I've heard good things about the alpha v.3 build. Maybe worth checking out (and report back here because I'm curious!)

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If you already bought it, I would go ahead and play it. I don't remember being frustrated with bugs. You'll run into them, just don't go in expecting to only build a base once and to do so exactly the way you intend to. When I play, it's just something to do while I'm winding down. Discovering the current amount of features won't take you more than a few hours, but it diesn't ruin the experience to exhaust them.

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I'm not sure which things I'm supposed to just shrug off because it's an alpha, or are just me not knowing how to play, but:

  • My frame rate is abysmal unless I disable post effects. That gets me a decent frame rate but also seems to stop me from being able to see the text in people's speech/thought bubbles. Sometimes walls and floors seem to turn black for no apparent reason, also.
  • On my first attempt at making a base, I followed the tutorial and built a life support zone and an airlock, with all the objects that were supposed to go in each, but my dudes refused to go inside the base. They just huddled up in the airlock, but the airlock never filled up with oxygen (I guess?), so they never took off their space suits and eventually asphyxiated. This didn't happen on my next attempt, but I don't know what I did differently.
  • I gave the order to demolish the seed pod and started constructing a room around where it was, but it never got demolished for whatever reason. Now I can't get rid of it or even undo the order to demolish it, so I guess it's just going to permanently take up space in a room. Maybe I'll turn it into some sort of monument to remind my dudes of the base's humble beginnings.

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Thanks for the additional thoughts shammack.  I think I'll just wait for another update or two before digging into it.  It's not like I don't have a bunch of other stuff to play thanks to the sale. 

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I wish there was a way to tilt the camera to overhead view. Sometimes the isometric perspective makes it hard to build precisely. There were a couple times where I had misplaced a wall in a building process, demolished it, and tried to build a new one in the right place only to later find I missed again and that chamber never pressurized.

 

Also, do miners have to go through an airlock to reach the refinery (or said another way, can a refinery be in an oxygen-free room that miners actually enter)? I built a separate airlock to hopefully decrease the traffic through my other, intended-general-use airlock but the miners are fairly dumb and just use both despite the inefficiency of one person going in depressurizing, while another decides to run to the other door, which is pressurized because someone is still taking off their suit, etc.

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Well... I guess I know when I'm finally going to try Spacebase. Sad to see it "released" like this, though.

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That goes against expectations, yes, and it's disappointing. More was suggested. But since I got the game for free I'm happy with what I got. ;)

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Hmm, I haven't tried it since a few weeks after it was first available for purchase, but I was under the impression it had a long way to go before it was fun. I guess I'll wait for 1.0 and see what there is to see.

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I'm not too surprised. I haven't actually played it, but I did follow its development, waiting for a good time to jump in. Seems to have been pretty... stagnant for a while.

 

Super disappointed, but then it's not like I bought it yet, so I guess I played it smart. Was really hoping for them to just keep doing more stuff, like Prison Architect is. Wonder if the (pre-)sales were just too low to justify continued development? Mmh.

 

Hopefully something good will come out of open-sourcing it, but I was just hoping for a DoubleFine take on this genre. Oh welllll.

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I was so excited for this but haven't heard much about it. I guess it never really caught on? But then again, they didn't seem to promote it that much either.

 

I had a similar situation with Nom Nom Galaxy, PixelJunks "terraria" thing, they seem to keep updating it, but it doesn't really feel like a team is moving forward working on it either. 

 

Releasing the source code is cool as long as it is semi easy to understand, I know I really wanted to work on Spacebase, so maybe there will be an intrepid programmer out there willing to do some cool stuff with it. I wouldn't mind trying to mess around with it, but I doubt I'd get anywhere with source.

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I think both this and Hack n Slash have been kind of disappointing and not up to the level of quality I associate with Double Fine games. Making games is hard, and I'm learning the hard way that promising looking prototypes don't necessarily translate into well realized, fleshed out games. If I were Tim I would also maybe rethink the whole open Amnesia Fortnight up to the public thing.

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Man, JP LeBreton is getting hammered in some forums for making a statement about a month ago about how they wouldn't just be silently pulling the plug.  I feel bad for the guy, I'm sure when he said it, he believed that and this can't have been a decision that was within his control.  That post makes it sound like the small team working on it anticipated continuing to work for many months to come. 

 

Double Fine is not a random fly-by-night indie dev and we are not going to silently pull the plug on Spacebase or any other in-development project. Doing so would be disastrous for our reputation and it would kill us emotionally ;____;

 

Sure, I'm frustrated that this isn't going to end up in the state I thought it would when I bought it.  It was the first ever Early Access game I bought, and I doubt I buy into another one from DF if they go that route again. But blaming JP for this ain't right.

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I think both this and Hack n Slash have been kind of disappointing and not up to the level of quality I associate with Double Fine games. Making games is hard, and I'm learning the hard way that promising looking prototypes don't necessarily translate into well realized, fleshed out games. If I were Tim I would also maybe rethink the whole open Amnesia Fortnight up to the public thing.

I think the open Amnesia Fortnight thing is still fine, but maybe they just shouldn't do early access anymore? I suspect it's only working for Broken Age because that's a game with very concrete goals, and they're doing it the vertical slice style, such that it's actually episodic and not early access.

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I mean at least they didn't "silently" pull the plug. If it's doomed* at least they told us.

 

*I haven't even played it in months, so I don't know if it's doomed or not.

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It seems like it would be difficult (and you could argue impossible) to do things like Early Access if it had to come with guarantees about the final version of the game. It's a risk you have to be willing to take if you buy Early Access games or fund games on Kickstarter - some will totally deliver on their theoretical potential and others might just sadly fizzle out despite all the best efforts. 

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True, but that's a little harder to accept when the company in question is large enough to have several irons in the fire and they have explicitly decided the one that you're interested in isn't their priority.

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I bought this as soon as it was in Early Access. I have to say, with any other company I'd be kind of pissed. As it stands, I'm at least comforted that my dollars went to a good home, but it's still pretty disappointing. On my last attempt the game was barely playable in any way approaching "fun." 

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It's extremely disappointing. I understand that "early release" means customers/supporters/backers have to be tolerant of kinks and issues along the way, but I also feel it's reasonable to anticipate a finished product being released.

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It seems like it would be difficult (and you could argue impossible) to do things like Early Access if it had to come with guarantees about the final version of the game. It's a risk you have to be willing to take if you buy Early Access games or fund games on Kickstarter - some will totally deliver on their theoretical potential and others might just sadly fizzle out despite all the best efforts. 

 

I totally agree with that, but I also think it's fair for buyers to express some disappointment and frustration that it didn't pan out (as long as they aren't being dumb and hyperbolic about it...oh, wait, right, gamers).

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