Welcome to our 27th newsletter on Star Atlas! This is a weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, that is focused entirely on Star Atlas . Here we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits that were dropped by the team throughout the past week.
Roadmap
Another week, another roadmap report! In this 6th edition, lieutenant Wenn’s adventure continues into Punaab (one of the ONI races) territory. If you like to explore the Star Atlas lore, then these story snippets are definitely worth a read!
Events
FTX Off The Grid - Miami
The biggest news this past week no doubt came from Miami, where FTX was hosting a big event, dubbed “FTX Off The Grid” to celebrate the Formula 1 race (they are a sponsor of the Mercedes team). Star Atlas had a big presence on the festival’s terrain, where people could come to learn about Star Atlas and play games on various arcade machines. Additionally, the team sold special merchandise, and Michael Wagner (CEO) and Pablo Quiroga (CRO) were present to talk and network. Ashley Harris (Metaverse Media Host) and the team hosted a semi-live show on Friday and Saturday, showing viewers all that was going on over at this event.
A few highlights from this show were:
- a panel discussion about Web3 & games that included Michael Wager)
- viewers could sign up to receive an exclusive (and as of yet, undisclosed) NFT
- a short interview with Michael, Pablo, and a surprise guest: Cagyjan
Arguably the biggest highlight, however, was the new behind-the-scenes, pre-alpha footage that was shown at the event. It was also shown on-stream and of course and we’ve made sure to include a recording of it in this newsletter, a little further down.
Sandbox competition
Until May 15th, everybody is still able to submit their VoxEdit creations in order to participate in the competition set up jointly by Star Atlas & Sandbox. When the deadline has closed, both teams will judge the entries and determine who will take home the grand prize of 20,000 SAND and an Opal Bitboat. But even if you don’t win the big one, the prizes for the runner-ups are nothing to sneeze at either!
We’re looking forward to what else this partnership might bring in the future!
Tufa Attack - Tournament
The community-made Tufa Attack fan game is now officially available. You can download it and start practicing right away! Do note that the Opera GX browser is required to play the game. Full instructions can be found in the Star Atlas Discord.
The Star Atlas team has set up a tournament for this game, that will kick off on May 11th! They are offering prizes as well, with the first prize being an Ogrika Mik, plus 2 Tufa Feist ships. The team made a bunch of ships available for the next 9 runner-ups as well!
Progress Report
Galactic Marketplace
The big news on the Galactic Marketplace this week, is that the team took the decision to postpone the ATLAS staking module, in order to be able to launch the new marketplace sooner. The staking module is now targeted to come a few weeks after the marketplace’s initial launch.
In other related news, the team finished analyzing the feedback of the testers and is working to address it in their designs. Meanwhile (or perhaps in relation to this feedback), the front-end is being extended to include a “my orders” and “bookmarks” page.
POLIS DAO
In a move similar to the Galactic Marketplace, the team also decided to postpone several big features for the POLIS DAO to a later date, in order to bring POLIS staking to you as soon as possible. Everything related to governance is now scheduled to be released a few weeks after POLIS staking has gone live.
Other Progress
There was nothing new to report on the Showroom and SCREAM modules this past week. The latter is still being prototyped and the Showroom is still being polished.
Pre-Alpha Footage
As mentioned above, at the FTX Off The Grid event visitors could watch an exclusive video, which showed a variety of pre-alpha footage of the Showroom, various characters, and the white-boxed versions of some ships.
This was a major reveal, and definitely worth some of your time to watch. The video also made an appearance during the semi-live stream last Saturday. For those who’ve missed it, or want to watch it again the SA team stated that the video would be released on their socials this week. However, there is no need to wait for that as the Spanish guild “Quimera” managed to capture it!
Ships
Last week, the team released a new ship, the Pearce X6. The X6 is the first dedicated repair ship being released by the team and it is the only small repair ship to become available this year (GAO Wave 2).
Final Words
Finally, to wrap this week’s newsletter up, the team announced they will be hosting their next Community Townhall on Friday, May 13th.
Until next week! Fly safe!