Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #244

Welcome to our 244th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.

Last week shed more light on how SAGE C4 is expected to evolve through its next phases. Phase 3 will put progression and onboarding front and center with a smaller starter package and single-player campaign, while wallet-based onboarding with players’ own assets is expected to return later. Phase 3 itself will take a little longer than initially hoped, however. Beyond C4, new z.ink developer tools are in the works, and our own Cataclysm: Battle for Iris has finally entered public beta!

Let’s dive in!

SAGE C4

Phase 3 will replace the broad PTR package with a smaller, more deliberate starter bundle. Players will still receive a variety of items, but they will need to progress through Council Rank again before they can use the more advanced ones. Phase 2 had already removed God mode and sped up Council Rank progression; Phase 3 will put that progression at the center of the onboarding experience.

The single-player campaign should help players find their feet. John (Product Manager) explained during Atlas Brew #218 that Danny (CPO) has been building short cinematics to introduce both the lore and the game’s mechanics before players begin the next phase.

The arrival of Phase 3 and the subsequent reset that will come with it will take a little longer than planned. Michael (CEO) said the team needs more time to improve the product and game balance first. Phase 2’s existing zXP benefits will continue until it concludes, allowing players to earn beyond the originally announced 500,000 zXP ceiling. No new Phase 3 date was provided.

The current option to take a snapshot of mainnet assets and import them through the premium starter bundle is only a test. It will be removed for Phase 3 while the team focuses on onboarding and progression with the smaller package. John expects wallet-based onboarding to return in Phase 4, when players may be able to bring in their mainnet assets and choose a starting path such as mining or combat. That remains an expectation rather than a firm commitment.

Lastly, the UI/UX has been an ongoing topic since the C4 PTR was launched, and this past weekend Danny had the following to say on that:

[..] The current live system is basically straight from programmer art with a quick ui polish on it and some tightening up but it’s not a proper pass. It just was way worse before. However, with the single player campaign it forces us to go through all the systems in a clear linear/journey like way so as I’m doing that things are getting even more simplified and cleared up. I have the best resource, I basically just have to make sure my wife, who is a non-gamer, can play through it then that will cover everyone else in the world, guaranteed. Anyway, it’s working and polish is coming along nicely. Definitely will be porting some of this stuff to main game.

z.ink

John is adding a z.ink chapter to the public Star Atlas Cookbook. The planned recipes cover wallet connections, program deployment, and reading or writing blockchain data. They should work on both Solana and z.ink.

The C4 examples will let developers retrieve star systems, fleets, faction ownership, NPC locations, and NPC statistics directly in code. PTR participants can also use their airdropped testnet tokens to experiment with deploying programs. The chapter was still being written when the Brew was recorded, so it is not live yet.

DAO Updates

As we reported last week, only three community members had nominated themselves for the 4th Star Atlas DAO Council term before the original window closed. The Council would prefer five members, so during what would otherwise be the campaign period, self-nominations have now been reopened for the two-week campaign period.

Anyone who still wants to serve on the next Council can apply here. The existing candidates are also tentatively expected to appear during the next Atlas Brew, although the format has not yet been decided.

Cataclysm: Battle for Iris

Our community-built 1v1 card game, Cataclysm: Battle for Iris, entered its first open beta last week. Valkynen has been developing the Gwent-inspired game in his spare time for several years, and we announced last month that it would finally open to the public during August.

Players can now practice against the AI or arrange multiplayer matches. To join, visit the project’s website and follow the instructions there. Note that the current Windows build is unsigned, so Windows will display a security warning during installation.

This first open beta will close September 6th, meaning there are two more weeks to join the fray and try the game!

News Bits

To wrap up the week, here is a single news bit before you go:

The Iris’ Blessing raffle, which was delayed from August 14th, took place on Monday, August 17th. If you won anything, then you should have been tagged in the #monthly-drawing channel on the Star Atlas Discord.

That is it for this week! Thanks for reading, and see you next week!