Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #171

Welcome to our 171st newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed [mainly by the team] throughout the past week.

This week, we’ve got details about the upcoming UE5 patch, including fresh gameplay modes, maps, and even a sneak peek at an experimental mining mini-game. Plus, important news on the Council Elections—Now’s your chance to nominate yourself and help the Star Atlas DAO grow! Lastly, we’ll explore Star Atlas’s new strategic partnership with Shaga!

Let’s jump right in!

UE5 – March Patch

During the Atlas Brew this past week, it was revealed that a new UE5 patch would go live this Wednesday, March 19. The team seems to strive to release one more or less every month, and it will be interesting to see if they can maintain that pace throughout 2025.

This patch will bring a couple of new gameplay features:

• Mining Test (see below)
• Two new Gunplay modes:
  • Gun Game—You start with the best gun available (Gatling gun) and then get the next best gun with every kill until you end up with the worst one.
  • Zones—The more zones your team captured, the higher the score per kill for that team
• New map: Set on the first level of a temple on Ioki, the Ustur homeworld, that is of vital importance to the Ustur. It’s in a grey box state so far, as the team is still iterating on its layout before sending it off to the art team.
• New ship: Busan Pulse
• Paizul’s Arena (map) has been extended a bit.
• Jetpack boosting will allow you to ram someone and damage them. If you boost yourself into a wall, it will damage you, however.

There are a few surprises left to discover, but this looks like a pretty solid patch already!

Mining Test

During the Brew, Brad (aka MagicPuncher – Gameplay Engineer) showed off the prototype for an asteroid-mining mini-game he added as an experiment. He showed how asteroids receive one or more bullseye marks after a scan, depicting where ships should target it with their weapons to break it up into smaller pieces and/or claim the resources held within.

At this point, this feature is purely experimental and not connected to the blockchain. The resources gathered can not be used for anything and are lost when exiting the game.

Council Elections

PIP-10 was approved this past Thursday with an astounding 98.8% in favor. This means that the Council will get a second term and that the terms thereafter have been secured as well!

The team wrote an article detailing the timeline from here on out, and below, we’re summarizing the key points:

• Nominations—Open right now! Closes this Thursday end-of-day (UTC).
• Elections—Opens March 24th and will remain open for 2 weeks until April 6th.

If you are nominating yourself, then it’s important to realize that now is the time to start campaigning and getting your name out there!

If you are heavily involved in Star Atlas and want to help mature the DAO and streamline its processes, then consider joining the Council! Nominate yourself today!

Shaga Investment

The team published a Medium post announcing a Strategic Equity Investment in Shaga, an up-and-coming decentralized cloud gaming platform. This cashless investment includes Star Atlas game assets, the $ATLAS token, and marketing support.

In short, this partnership aims to attract a broader audience to Web3 gaming, ensure seamless access to Star Atlas’s blockchain-based assets, and build a global, inclusive player community.

What exactly is Shaga offering?

Shaga provides advanced decentralized streaming technology and infrastructure, enabling Star Atlas to deliver high-quality gaming to a broader, global audience without hardware constraints. In a nutshell, Shaga offers:

• Decentralized Cloud Gaming: Shaga turns regular gaming computers into mini cloud gaming servers (called “Shaga Nodes”). Instead of relying on big data centers located far away, players use nearby computers. This makes games smoother, faster, and cheaper for everyone.
• Economic Opportunities: It also lets people earn rewards by sharing their own gaming computers when they’re not using them.

What does Star Atlas hope to gain?

By integrating Shaga’s advanced streaming technology, Star Atlas aims to expand its reach across platforms, reduce hardware barriers, and invite a broader audience into its Web3 gaming universe. Specifically, the article calls out:

• Expanded Accessibility: By partnering with Shaga, Star Atlas can offer high-quality gameplay streaming, reducing hardware barriers and making the game accessible to players worldwide, especially in regions like Southeast Asia and Latin America.
• Broader Audience: Integrating Shaga’s technology allows Star Atlas to reach users without powerful hardware, expanding its global user base and enhancing inclusivity.
• Stronger Community Growth: The investment includes marketing support, contributing to user growth, and promoting a unified, engaged global community.

News Bits

To wrap up this week’s issue, here as some smaller bits of news:

• Dedicated Servers—The team has been internally playtesting UE5 Gunplay modes on dedicated servers. At GDC (taking place this week) they will be using these for their gameplay demos.
• Fleet Rentals—Fleet Rentals had some issues which have since all been fixed. Fleet Rentals was even offline for a few days, so the team could fix these. Meanwhile, the feature is available again.

You’ve reached the end of this issue! Come back next week for more!