Welcome to our 62nd newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter is published by Aephia Industries and focuses entirely on Star Atlas. Here we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits that were dropped by the team throughout the past week.
While the team is busy finalizing this year’s roadmap, they did manage to release some exciting updates! We got a first glimpse into what VR might look like further down the line, and the team shared the latest progress report in their special issue of the Atlas Star (issue 14)! The reason it’s special is because it provides an in-depth overview of 2022, including some fun statistics.
Let’s dive right in!
2-Year Anniversary
The past weekend, on January 14th, to be exact, the team celebrated its 2-year anniversary! Though the co-founders started concepting Star Atlas around Q2 of 2020, they launched publicly on January 14th, 2021, with the release of their White Paper!
To celebrate their anniversary, they tweeted a video that shows the state of development from the very beginning until today.
Virtual Reality
As a special surprise by the team to commemorate their anniversary, they released a tech demo on Saturday, showing off how one of their gameplay engineers (Brad Warren) is flying through space, the showroom, and various other UE5 environments made by the team, using a Valve Index Virtual Reality HUD.
Note that there are no plans to add VR support to the public version of the Showroom any time soon. It is good to see, though, that the VR potential of the Showroom can be unlocked with relatively little effort!
Showroom: Progress Update
Let’s start with the most important news: The next release, patch 2.1, is currently targeted to go live in early Q2.
As always, the latest Atlas Star issue provided a comprehensive progress report of the various teams inside ATMTA, and we filtered the most newsworthy bits from this for you here!
The art department updated both the level and props for the Railway station and Energy fence gates and is presently doing the same for the Ground race track. Additionally, they decorated the road to the exit of the racetrack.
The UI/UX team has been working on the Marketplace integration into the UE5 engine. Meanwhile, the Vehicles team had the following to report on the various ships:
- VZUS solos: updated
- Calico Scud: exterior updated
- Pearce C11: grey-box updated
- Fimbul BYOS Pack Lite: props in progress, Kitchen Interior updated
- VZUS opod: interior and exterior updated
- Pearce R6: grey-box updated
- Pearce F4: updated
- Fimbul ECOS Unibomba: updated BP
- Lowbie upgraded
- ECOS Greenader: paneling in progress
- Pearce X4: interior and exterior updated
The Engineering department has updated the Unreal Engine (to 5.1) and the Epic Online Services (EOS). They are currently busy converting Volant Station to World Partition. This will allow them to stream the map to the clients, allowing for much bigger maps!
Furthermore, they are busy implementing both Marketplace functionality & Faction Fleet (SCORE) into the Showroom. Lastly, they are converting Ship Blue Prints to C++, fixing Multiplayer, and integrating the Colyseus Plugin for text chat.
Upcoming Activities
The Sound department plans to work on the thruster & boost sounds for the Floyd Liner, and weapon, engine & shield sounds for the Pearce ships. They will also work on laser impact sounds for different surfaces. Meanwhile, the Animation team will work on enabling characters to sit on all chairs and benches.
The Engineering department, when done with all of the above, seeks to work on implementing Proximity Voice Chat & Group Chat, extending gamepad support (incl PS5), implementing DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) 3.0 for both the Pearce X4 & Floyd Liner, updating the Flight Controls to reduce mouse dragging and finally bring back freelook with HOLD Z while flying.
SAGE: Progress Update
In the absence of a fully working UI for SAGE, the Blockchain team has started work on integrating their programs into a simplified text-based client to test their programs, while the UI department is fleshing out the full PlayCanvas client.
Regarding PlayCanvas, the screens for landing at a station/starbase have been updated, and the team is currently working on Item and Ship Inventory UI.
Meanwhile, the Web team has been busy establishing the end-to-end communication pipeline between the blockchain and front-end for movement. Additionally, they reached a major milestone by generating Galaxy entities from Blockchain data (as opposed to from a static JSON file). Lastly, they reported work has started on the mining UI layer.
The Game Economics department has kept itself busy by finalizing the LP to ATLAS emissions. They are also designing the algorithm for Star Base R4 consumption.
CORE: Issue 3
On January 11th, the 3rd issue of the CORE Graphic Novel went on sale. You can buy it for 20 USDC on the Galactic Marketplace or for 1.2 SOL on Magic Eden (which represented roughly 20 USDC on the day the sale went live).
Don’t wait to long, this sale will end on January 25th, 7PM UTC!
Newsletter Migration
As we mentioned in earlier editions, our newsletter service provider (Revue) is winding down. That means this will be the last issue you’ll receive (or view online) via their service. Fortunately, it is relatively straightforward to migrate to another service in this day and age, so that is precisely what we’ll be doing.
You don’t have to take any action on your side, but know that our newsletter will look a little different next week!
2022 Rewind
To wrap up this newsletter, here are two Twitter threads by the team that mention various highlights of the last year:
As we begin the flight through 2023, we’re thrown into memories of where we were 1 year ago.💫
2022 was huge for Star Atlas and its community, so let’s revisit some of the biggest moments of last year!🎉
Here’s Star Atlas 2022 Rewind Part 1/2: Products ☄️ A thread 🧵👇 https://t.co/En3bUTy6sD
We hold so much pride in the products released in 2022, but none of that would have been possible without the support from our incredible community and partners!
Check out our Star Atlas 2022 Rewind Part 2/2: Partnerships & Events✨ A thread 🧵👇 https://t.co/zxWsvrJ9Dq