Development Status and Updates — Starmourn's Forums

Major Nexus Update Coming

Jumpy — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 23:51:43 +0000

We're finally ready to give a sneak peek at our next project. Our team has spent the last year rewriting Nexus from the ground up. The new version will include several exciting features. Read on and learn what to expect and check out a few screenshots to see how things are progressing.

Here is the shortlist of the new features:

Mobile, stand-alone versions of the client for Android and iOS.
A stand-alone desktop version. No need to play in your browser.
Edit settings while not logged into your character.
Add characters to the client to easily manage them.
Auto-login options. Especially handy on mobile.
Add and play third-party games to the client. Yes, you will be able to play almost any MUD from the Nexus client.
Settings save on the cloud across all clients. Edit your settings on the desktop version and use them in the mobile app.
All IRE games can be played in a single client.
The client is faster and more responsive.
Settings from your current characters are automatically ported to the new client. They are stored separately, so don't worry about corrupting your setups in the current version of Nexus.

Here is a link to a few screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/FulHaT3

We will be releasing the browser, desktop, and android versions within the next few weeks for you to start experimenting with. The iOS version is about ready as well, we just have to finish jumping through the hoops to get it listed.

Hello from your friendly neighborhood coder

zersiax — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 20:59:08 +0000

Hello everyone,

For those who don't know me yet, I go by Zersiax, and I am Starmourn's coder as of this year's August.
Over the last month or so, I've been running around Starmourn, figuring out where we're at and where we're going. I've been making changes, fixes and alterations to various things already, and I intend to make Starmourn the absolute best it can be going forward.
Classleads are currently on their way, we're working hard on making captaincy experience gaining more fun and fair, there's supercool new content coming, pretty much every system in the game has improvements planned. There couldn't be a better time to jump back in if you've been away for a while.
Blatant foreshadowing and tooting horns aside, I want people here on the form to know that I'm around as of today, I'm intending to take feedback we receive on the forums seriously and , together with the discord, bug system and ideas system, it will be taken into account when deciding on what to work on next. Let's make Starmourn the best thing since kithblade-sliced bread.

-Zersiax

Sneak Peak of Planetary Exploration!

Eukelade — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 18:59:27 +0000

Hey space travellers. It's been a minute since we let you all know where we were with the economy update, so today I thought I'd show everyone a sneak peak of the upcoming PLANETARY EXPLORATION feature. This new feature will allow people who prefer doing their exploration on foot to obtain commodities from the land by triangulating the location of resources on various planets.

So without further ado, here's a log of the current system in action.

--------------------------------------------------------------

We open in the desert of Anemoi, on the planet Delphi.

In the searing desert.

Rocky sand lies all around, formed in gentle ripples by the wind, which brings little relief as it sweeps over the sandscape. Hot and arid, the surroundings are oppressive despite the open expanse.

Like a dark shadow, a caliginous eagle rests upon the sand. Watching with keen eyes is a hungry looking cania.

A tall cactus stands here, covered in fragrant blossoms. A broken engine from a hover vehicle lies on the dusty ground.

You can EXPLORE WILDERNESS from here.

[n] -> A trackless expanse of sand

[nw] -> In the searing desert

>explore wilderness

You enter the wilderness.

Crossing a trackless desert.

Nobody seems to have set foot in this part of Delphi for some time, and the dunes and sand flats stretch away in every direction that you can see. The only evidence of life is that of the native fauna, which is plentiful in this undisturbed region. The air is hot and dry.

A ferocious, brown-scaled tigrid slinks around.

You can LEAVE WILDERNESS from here.

[n] -> Wilderness

[e] -> Wilderness

[se] -> Wilderness

>east

You walk to the east.

Crossing a trackless desert.

Graceful and skittish, a spiral-horned kegri prances here.

This is a control point.

[ne] -> Wilderness

[e] -> Wilderness

[se] -> Wilderness

[s] -> Wilderness

[w] -> Wilderness

(It looks like our intrepid explorer has found one of the control points for this area of the wilderness. Of course, before she starts triangulating, she needs to stop and scan the pokem...the animal.)

>probe kegri

-- a spiral-horned kegri (#36241) ---------------------------------------------

Race: Animal Gender: Genderless

Affiliation: Unknown Status: Healthy

Description: This animal has a narrow-waisted body and four long, slender

legs that end in something not dissimilar to W'hoorn paws. Two spiraling horns

jut from its forehead. Its face is long and slender, and it has a white-tufted

tail that lashes at the back of its legs.

Strength: You estimate that it is laughably weak.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>xenozoo scan kegri

You aim your bioscanner at a spiral-horned kegri and activate the device, and a beam of blue light plays out across your target.

You shift slightly to keep a spiral-horned kegri in your sights, careful not to let anything break the beam.

A wireframe holographic model of a spiral-horned kegri rotates slowly on your bioscanner's display as you collect more information about the creature.

There is a low hum that builds in your device, and the bright beam of blue light intensifies briefly.

With a quick snap, your bioscanner's information gathering laser flickers off, and information about a spiral-horned kegri begins to scroll across the holographic display.

Studying this creature has taught you a few things. You have gained 2 lessons!

(Research done with. Moving on!)

>i

You are wielding in your hands:

a kickass Eukebuster 9000 in your right.

You have:

a triangulation device.

You are wearing:

a white T-shirt for Haxley's Casino, a compact jetpack, really comfortable pants, a pair of self-lacing sneakers, and LUCENT Soundwavez.

>probe device

-- A triangulation device (#51790) ---------------------------------------------

Owner: Unknown Usable life: 60 mo.

Mass: Small Resetting: No

Description: This device is used to take readings of nearby surroundings, with

the purpose of detecting mineral or gas deposits. A shining paristeel sphere

makes up the body of the object, a few dials and knobs fitted on its surface

allowing for precise calibration. A small screen gives out readings of its

analysis and the device can be fixed to most terrain types with the metal tripod

that stands attached to the paristeel head.
Usage Syntax: WILDERNESS TRIANGULATE

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>wilderness

WILDERNESS LEAVE Leave the wilderness.

WILDERNESS TRIANGULATE Set up triangulation gear.

WILDERNESS DESIGNATE Let someone pick up your newfound resources.

>wilderness triangulate

You hit a button on the top of a triangulation device, and a low clicking begins to repetitively sound from within the sphere.

Three legs telescope automatically from the bottom of the triangulation device, and you release the sphere to allow them to find equilibrium on the uneven terrain.

After a few mincing steps, the triangulation device's legs plant themselves solidly, sending paristeel spikes deep into the earth.

The metal sphere of the device opens with a whirr, and blue light begins to scatter and play across the surrounding area.

A status light on the top of the tripod begins to blink an erratic amber, indicating that the device is still in the process of getting a solid reading on the area.

There is a low humming sound just on the edge of your hearing, subsonic frequencies pulsing through the tripod's spikes and into the ground beneath your feet.

Holographic screens blink to life, flickering in the air around the device in the form of ghostly charts, graphs, and sonic readouts as various environmental data collection subroutines are activated.

The status indicator on the top of the tripod flickers from blinking amber to steady green, and the readouts stabilize, a topographical map of the area projected above it.

You have successfully set up the triangulation gear at this location.

Your efforts are successful, and you discover 6 units worth of raw Iriil! You can use SHIP PICKUP IRIIL to pick it up, or WILDERNESS DESIGNATE to let another player do so.

>west

>leave wilderness

You leave the wilderness.

(Upon successfully exploring the wilderness, Eukelade, our intrepid explorer, returns to her ship, currently in orbit around Delphi.)

The bridge of The Mantis.

A fish tank bubbles quietly nearby, the creature within swimming happily about.

[s] -> The upper deck

>ship deploy scoops

The ship prepares to deploy its scoops.

The scoops round the ship are now deployed.

>ship pickup iriil

The ship scoops up 6 units worth of raw Iriil from the surface of Delphi.

Eukelade says to a fishtank with a single fish inside, "I'm rich!".

--------------------------------------------------------------

And that is, essentially, how you use the planetary exploration feature - though unlike what you saw in my log, you'll need to triangulate three different control points before gaining access to the resources of the area. It's especially handy if you don't love space, but have a friend or employer who does - you can spend your time roaming the unexplored reaches of various planets for someone willing to collect the fruits of your labors - and hopefully split the profit. Keep in mind this feature is still in development, but we want to get it into your hands soon.

We are always interested in feedback, so let us know what you think!! Thanks for reading!

What we're working on - Faction Engagement Missions

Ilyos — Wed, 15 May 2019 14:25:30 +0000

May is halfway done and we've been hard at work with the systems we promised during our Development Update and in the Roadmap. We've completed the Modding overhaul, released shopfront improvements, done some tweaking to Cosmpiercers (still more to go there, that will be a lengthy process), a new event is unfolding around the Bushraki of Oldtown and more.

Now let's talk a bit about one of the systems currently under development: Daily Faction Tasks.

The revamped station missions are now working in a way that is a lot closer to our vision and bring about a sense that your actions help the community (faction, in this case) that you are a part of. But we believe we can do more with this concept. Our Faction tasks system will allow you to participate in a wider range of activities that will bring about global bonuses for your faction for the remainder of the IG month. You will be able to choose a task from a set of general categories, fulfill that task and obtain a "reward point". That "reward point" will then be spent to give everyone in your faction a certain bonus.

I am avoiding to give concrete names to the "devices" and "reward points" since we have not 100% settled upon their names, but let us look at some of the possible task categories you will have access to (more will be added down the line) :

- Kill quests (you will be tasked to kill and retrieve samples from certain lifeforms in the Sector. This is aimed at high level players)

- Economy tasks (fulfill a certain number of market orders)

- Commodity tasks

- Space Incursion participation

So what can you do with your reward points? Well you can spend them on giving your faction bonuses to experience gains (normal, hacking or captaincy), damage while hunting, stats, etc. While an individual bonus isn't huge, they will certainly add up if everyone pitches in to perform these tasks.

More details and samples will be given as the system gets built, so stay tuned!

Oh...we're also working on some awesome updates to our promotion and promo systems and putting in some of the things you all have requested (trading, to be more exact)! This is all quite exciting!

Starmourn has locked on to a new Lead Producer

Jumpy — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 17:32:10 +0000

Starmourn has officially hired our new producer, Ioan Sima!

Ioan has been an avid player of IRE games for 11 years. He has enthusiastically played Starmourn since release, and even helped build some of the game before it launched. He boasts a high level of familiarity with both the world and the game systems in Starmourn, which made him a standout candidate, and one which all of us have been happy to welcome as the new lead producer. He will work alongside Eukelade, Garryn, and our team of Storytellers to guide the direction of the game. In fact, in our discussions with him it became very apparent how intimate he was with existing systems and how much his ideas of improvement aligned with our own.

Ioan has worked professionally as a Unity3D game programmer. His engineering background helped to make him the perfect man to jump into the Starmourn code and come in guns blazing. Ioan lives in Romania.
We will be posting more news later this week, detailing the development roadmap, what you can expect in each of those updates, and a basic timeline leading the game out of beta.

If you have any questions you can email Ioan at ioan@starmourn.com or message Ilyos in the game.

Development Updates - February 20, 2019

Tecton — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 19:27:45 +0000

Firstly, I have to apologize for things being been a bit slower for the past two weeks, due to my needing to head back to Australia, and having very little in the way of internet access. As I'm sure you're all aware, I'm back now, and it's time to give you some updates on what's happening in terms of Starmourn development.

Current projects we're working on are:
1) Ships - we're updating and improving the entire ship system, making it a lot more user friendly and intuitive. Some highlights of the first phase of this are:
- Making a harder differentiation on ship classes, and dividing the components up in to shipclass-specific options, so fitting out your ship won't just be bigger = better, you'll want to make meaningful decisions as to what you want to prioritize on your vessel.
- Separating power flow and thrust on ships, to make kitting them out a bit easier.
- Weapon ammo and shield/bypass mechanics changes to make these more usable and less frustrating.

This is the first of a couple of batches, with subsequent ones tweaking Captaincy, gathering mechanics, weapons, etc.

2) Economy - Continued work on this, adding more non-space sinks for cargo/refined goods, giving captains easier access to player-created ship supplies, reworking our algorithms for how asteroids and gas clouds spawn, and rejigging things in terms of fees/taxes that you pay in the varying parts of the economical systems.

3) Classleads - As you're all likely aware, classlead reports are open for submission this week. Submissions will close on Sunday, and then you'll be able to comment on the submitted reports with any pertinent input. Once things are all finalized, we'll start coding up the approved reports and getting the class changes into your hot little hands.

4) Building - More hacking content will be coming your way shortly! Our building team is putting the final touches on a new system that combines hacking and questing in a new and exciting way!

My Availability

Tecton — Sat, 09 Feb 2019 21:29:59 +0000

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the lack of updates this week, as most of you know I had to travel back to Australia for some family medical issues. Thankfully after a very long surgery and a few days in ICU, my mother is on the mend. As anyone who lives in/has been to Australia before can tell you, there's not an abundance of available wifi, so my internet access has been pretty spotty. But just a quick note to let you know that I should be back States-side on Thursday night/Friday morning and look forward to getting back into things!

Development Updates - January 22 2019

Tecton — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 20:23:35 +0000

We've been rolling along at a breakneck pace for the past couple of weeks, polishing systems, balancing classes, and improving life in Starmourn! If you've not been keeping up-to-date with the Updates board in-game, here's some of the highlights:

Numerous updates to the economy system have been put in! From gathering gasses and asteroids to refining and manufacturing these raw resources into salable goods on the open market - we've improved everything.
Area polishing and playability improvements everywhere, with the team doing a pass on all of the level 50 - 75 areas! New dangerous creatures, expanded areas, and general QOL updates to make the higher level experience even better!
The most recent class balancing pass is underway, with BEASTS, Scoundrels, and Nanoseers receiving updates and tweaks, and Engineers and Fury being released in the coming days! Naturally, class balancing and improving is never "finished", but the classes are really lining up, numbers-wise!

What's coming next, you may ask?

As mentioned above, Engineers and Furies will be getting their balancing passes, with adjusted abilities, fixes, and general improvements.
The economy still serves as a primary focus, we're going to add some new non-ship elements that work with, and rely on, the economy and production system.
A new bounty hunter system has been designed, and coding begins on this new feature! Players become mercenaries and carry out hits out on other players (as revenge for PK deaths). Some really cool thematic and mechanical systems in play here that will shake things up!
We're starting on phase 2 designs for Cosmpiercers, adding in a bunch of new elements that will bring your faction's combined skillsets (including hacking, piloting, PVE and PVP) together when liberating these ancient artifacts for your side.

Development Updates - January 3, 2019

Tecton — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 03:28:39 +0000

2019 is here, and it's time for an update on what's happening, development-wise, in Starmourn!

Since the last update, the entire team has been working tireless to ensure that things are running smoothly for you guys. Here's some highlights:

Hundreds of bug fixes across every area of the game
Classes all had a pass - fixing bugs, improving systems that were not fun or practical, and doing some minor balancing.
Cloning was updated with cheaper cloning, the window for free cloning increased, and the debt system being implemented
Lots of tweaks and changes to tradeskills, including reduced costs for design submissions.
Quest rewards were increased, bringing quests up as a great way to earn experience
INRs were changed, giving the owners more of a chance to recover their lost experience and driving more conflict between players.
Many sub-50 areas were tweaked in terms of NPC density, attack types, respawn rates.

Phew, that's a lot! But we don't plan on slowing down either, here's what we've got on the books for the coming days:

Economy tweaks: Adjustments to MARKET, refineries, autofactories etc. to really get the player-run economy off the ground and running on all cylinders.
Ship Incursions: Making improvements here in terms of availability of incursions, rewards, numbers of enemies per incursion, and many more.
Class balancing: Now that the most egregious issues are fixed, we're going to really get down to tweaking numbers and getting the classes more evenly balanced.
Area tweaks to our level 50 - 75 areas, in terms of NPC density, attack types, respawn rates, rewards.
Design work on a "champion" system, allowing players to contract another player to carry out revenge on their behalf (similar to the Mark system on Achaea), for unjust deaths.

Development Updates - December 22, 2018

Tecton — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 20:32:35 +0000

Welcome to the first of what I hope to be weekly or biweekly updates just to let you guys know what's happening and what we're focusing on at the moment!

Naturally, we're only a week old, so a massive portion of our time is being spent triaging problems from the initial influx of players. We're powering through them at the highest possible speed, with most of the team putting in 14+ hours a day every day this week to try to make sure that everyone is fixed up at earliest opportunity! Many thanks go our to the team for working so tirelessly!

Alongside triaging bugs and the usual stuff, the development team will be focusing on the following items this week:

PvP costs and effects balancing - making changes on PvP-based rewards and penalties (be it time spent in regeneration, as well as things like cloning fees and xp loss/gains stemming from PVP).
Class balancing and bugfixing - ensuring that the oddities with your skills and abilities are all worked out.
Adding/adjusting area accessibility - travel to racial homeworlds and some non-factional areas is partially hindered as a result of factional enemying, so this may involve things like additional transports to/from voidgate irises to these non-factional areas of the game.
Factional governance issues and problems - we want to make sure that each faction has a functioning system, so we'll be polishing up a number of the core systems here to make that possible with a minimum of fuss.
Captaincy, economy, and other things - we're going to tweak some things in Captaincy, like lowering the level requirement for space mining and/or gas gathering, as well as add Captaincy gains to other areas of the space system so you have more options for raising Captaincy XP.
An optional profanity filtering system - I've had a lot of feedback from players that they'd like a way to filter out the more flavorful language in the game, so we'll be working on a system there that will give them the option to
Quests - continuing to smooth out the main storyline, adding more side quests and hacking challenges, and improving quest rewards.

Since it is Christmas this week, I just wanted to wish you guys a great holiday season, however you celebrate it, and wanted to say thanks for being part of the Starmourn world!

Launch Day

Tecton — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 07:31:29 +0000

After 18+ hours straight, I've gotta call it quits for the day. I thought I'd put a few notes up on things before I sleep for a few hours.

1) Wow - what a turnout! You guys came out in droves to play, and for that we're eternally grateful! I know things were not as smooth as anyone wanted (especially us), but such is the way with beta launches and almost 500 people on at once. As a MUD game in 2018, that's awesome to see.

2) As I just touched on, there were some definitely rough patches, and we'll continue to improve on those with every waking hour. I do apologise if getting stuck or another bug did leave a sour taste in your mouth. We hope that you'll stick with us in the coming days, months, years as Starmourn evolves and grows!

3) Things that we're prioritizing very highly at the moment:

Learning - one-at-a-time learning was supposed to only be for players, but somehow it didn't work like that and it's a bit of a bear to fix. Will spend a couple of hours tomorrow getting this fixed up so there's no waiting in line to learn things.
Quests - A few quests, especially the slave quest on Gallen, just aren't ideal for the volume of people we had on, we'll be fixing these up to be less tedious.
Intro sticking points - We've nabbed a bunch of these tonight, but I'm sure there's more that you guys will find, we'll be improving these
Accessibility issues - We'll be adding some new accessibility options for our screenreader users to make things like completely gagging the prompt easier.

Of course, alongside this, all of the regular balancing, bugfixing and general polish, but I wanted to make light of these ones especially, as they've been the glaring issues of evening #1 for Starmourn.

Again, thank you for your patience and understanding as we iron these things out. And I'll see you in-game in a few hours!