Welcome to our 74th 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.
First off, we hope you had a great Easter weekend! It feels like a lot has happened in a relatively short amount of time. So, sit back, relax, and let’s dive in!
The past week came with plenty of newsworthy tidbits, including some major news just this weekend that shocked many: One of the co-founders, Pablo Quiroga (CRO), has left the company!
Pablo Quiroga leaves ATMTA
This past Friday, Pablo Quiroga (aka StarSapa on Twitter and Discord) -co-founder of, and Chief Revenue Officer at ATMTA- seems to have officially left the company. The Hologram News Network (HNN) broke the story the following day, citing anonymous sources. Thanks to the comments of some team members, it has been confirmed that Pablo is no longer part of the team.
ATMTA has yet to release an official statement regarding Pablo’s departure, and it is currently unclear when such a statement might be forthcoming. However, with the Easter weekend behind us (in the US, that is), some sort of acknowledgment from the team will no doubt follow shortly.
Faction Claims
XCode (Product Manager) on Saturday confirmed that the Claim Stake program “for SCORE” is live on Solana mainnet. This implies that the program is done, and the audit has come back clean!
Of course, this only represents one part of the equation (though a very important one). The UI also has to be finalized before this new feature can go live. The team seems to be making good progress however, and it looks like this feature will go live sooner, rather than later!
Ship Skins
Thanks to Danny (CPO), we have a considerable update regarding ship skins!
Ship skins will be assets that can be applied to ships in both SAGE and UE5. It’s unclear when skins will become available in SAGE exactly, but for UE5, the first iteration is expected to go live later this year! Applying a skin to a ship is an on-chain endeavor, so this will involve a transaction. Skins applied in UE5 should be(come) visible in SAGE as well, and vice-versa.
Crafting
The first iteration of skins to go live (this year) are skins that can be bought from the team through the Galactic Marketplace (GM). A later iteration will introduce skin recipes, which will allow everyone to craft certain skins, provided they have the required input materials.
It’s interesting to note that, eventually, such skins can be deconstructed as well. This will break them down into their initial input resources. These can then be used for other projects, or be sold on the GM instead.
Note that, once crafting goes live, it won’t yet be possible to introduce completely new (player-created) designs into the game. The designs will come exclusively from the team until a formal approval system for custom designs has been put into place. Such a process will likely involve both the team and the Star Atlas DAO.
Consumables
The standard skins will be consumables, meaning that when you apply such skin to a ship, it’s gone for good. You can not get these skins back afterward. However, there will also be smart versions that can be safely removed (and re-applied). This kind of skin will require a special ingredient to create.
From the above follows that every skin can only be applied to a single ship.
Cosmetics
There is more to it than just applying colors some colors. Skins can have numerous effects, including changing the actual model of the ships. Skins can be divided into 6 different tiers (not final):
0: primary color, lights, material param shift
1: primary and secondary color/material shift
2: primary, secondary, tertiary color/material shift, + patterns
3: all of the above, + advanced coats, advanced patterns
4: all of the above, + animated patterns
5: all of the above, + additional mesh changes and VFX
Finally
The team is not planning on restricting skins to just ships. They are eyeing every other in-game asset for similar treatment, though this will come -of course- further down the line.
Solana Games Day
The world-famous San Diego Comic-Con will be held this year from July 20th until July 23rd. Immediately before that, on July 18th & 19th, the Solana Foundation’s Game Team will be hosting an event in the very same city, focused on Solana Games, dubbed Play Good Games (PlayGG).
Similar to last year at Breakpoint, this event will be open (and free of charge) to all. There will be many different game developers showcasing their games, and plenty of opportunities for visitors to try them out. This time, the event is lasting two full days, and like last year, Star Atlas will be present!
In fact, this is the event Michael (CEO) referred to when they pushed back the Ground Racing module from 2.1 to a later release (which now looks to be 2.1.5). This means the team will reveal Ground Racing on that date, and visitors will be among the first to experience the new release!
CORE
For those of you eagerly awaiting the 6th episode of the Star Atlas graphic novel, CORE, you will have to wait a little longer than usual. Instead of being released on the first Wednesday of the month, like the previous issues, episode 6 will be published on April 19th instead.
The good news is that episode 6 will be a longer episode, numbering 25 pages! It will also wrap up the first Act, of the three acts that make up the CORE graphic novel.
Act 2, which will kick off with episode 7, will be released at/during Comic-Con (see above) in the second half of July. The team is planning something special, which they clearly hint at in a short video teaser.
This does mean that, after episode 6’s release, everyone will have to wait 3 months before the next act kicks off, and we can jump back into the story. But there will be other releases to keep us busy!
Breakpoint
Not only did The Solana Foundation announce their Game event in July, they also announced this year’s Breakpoint! The 2023 edition will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, starting Monday, October 30th and ending on Friday, November 3rd.
Last year the team had a slick video, an eye-popping demo at demo day, and a great presentation during Breakpoint, which was then held in Lisbon, Portugal. It was also here that the very first international community meetup took place!
This year the team plans to be back, and they hope to reveal (and possibly release) Showroom R3, which marks the end of the pre-season releases. In addition to this, there will be another community meetup! Given the early announcement (though an exact date has not yet been determined), this will hopefully result in even more community members making the trip to Amsterdam!
News Tidbits
Besides those found earlier in this newsletter, there have been no further visuals shared with us this time around. We did get these final tidbits to wrap up this week’s issue:
- The POLIS share of the team has dropped below 50%. No explanation was given, though some suspect this may be a temporary gesture towards the community, as it leads to higher staking rewards for everyone else. With governance not being live yet, there does not seem to be a downside for the team really.
- The team enjoyed an internal, quarterly review day last Friday. This is a special occasion where most internal teams show off what they have been working on, and how far they have come. Though obviously part of ATMTA, Santi and Dom reacted very enthusiastically on Discord about what they had seen:
“Look, I was expecting incredible stuff in there, but this just goes one step further. NEEEEEEEXT LEVEL” – Santi (Community Director)
