Welcome to our 88th 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.
Compared to the past few weeks, last week was pretty quiet. But it’s the tempest before the storm, as we expect a torrent of news coming this week! So, we’ll use this opportunity to look ahead at what we can expect over the next few days!
Buckled up? Then let’s dive in!
Photography Career Contest
Last week the team officially kicked off the Photography Career Contest! Everyone in the community will be able to participate by taking pictures in UE5 Showroom and submitting them to the #photography channel on the official Star Atlas Discord server.
This contest will consist of 3 competitions, each lasting about 5 weeks. Each such competition will be focused on a different theme. Screenshots submitted should include this theme to qualify for the competition.
- First competition: July 14 – August 17
- Second competition: August 18 – September 21
- Third competition: September 22 – October 19
Every competition will start with a tweet on Star Atlas Twitter and a message on the Discord announcement channel. This message will contain the theme that has been chosen for that competition. From then on, everyone will have 4 weeks to submit their perfect shot(s).
In the 5th week, four finalists will be selected from the available submissions. You are allowed, even encouraged, to send multiple entries.
From then on, both the community and a panel of judges will be able to vote on the 4 finalist’s submissions. The community’s vote will count for 50%, and the panel of judges from the team (ATMTA) will account for the remaining 50%. The panel of judges will judge entries based on their determination of the following:
- creativity
- originality
- ability to inspire
- photo composition
Prizes
The Winner of each Themed Photography competition will receive their winning Entry as a poster minted by Star Atlas. This means that in total, there will be three unique 1-of-1 posters awarded during this contest.
Round 1
The very first 5-week competition started this past Friday, July 14th. The theme for the next 4 weeks of picture-taking is Ships!
PlayGG
The PlayGG will kick off in San Diego, USA, in just a few days. The Star Atlas team will have a presence at this Solana-organized event and will run demos during both days: July 18th & 19th.
This event is a successor of sorts to the Solana Games Day that was organized last year in November, just a day before the Breakpoint conference started. There will be many games present, and the entrance is free! If you are in the neighborhood, it looks like this is well worth a visit!
Star Atlas
The team is expected to demonstrate multiplayer Ground Racing at the event, using a special early build of the upcoming Showroom R2.2 release. This version will already have the new networking setup implemented, so if all goes well, visitors should be able to experience this new game mode live!
The team will also give a presentation during the event on July 19th at 1:15 PM PDT (20:15 UTC). Unfortunately, there won’t be an official stream available. No doubt someone from the team will record it, though!
Besides going into the upcoming Ground Racing mode, the team will also officially announce their upcoming Mobile Companion application during that presentation. Note that Michael mentioned a few weeks back that he did not expect to announce a launch date yet. Regardless, we will finally learn what this application is really all about! So far, all we know is that it will be focused on crew, allows you to train your crew, and that it ties into the Racing career.
Atlas Brew Meet – San Diego
During the PlayGG event, there will be a community meetup on July 19th, hosted in a brewery and starting at 6:30 PDT. A few members of the team will be there, including Michael (CEO) & Dominic (Community Manager).
Yet another good reason to head to San Diego this week!
CORE – Season 2
On the second day of PlayGG, a day before Comic-Con starts, the team will kick off their CORE Graphic Novel’s second season (6 episodes).
On July 19th, the first issue of Act 2 will be available on the Galactic Marketplace and on Magic Eden. As always, both of these marketplaces will offer their own limited-time cover.
Of course, you will still be able to read all these for free as well, both online and through Apple Books!
If you missed out on CORE, be sure to check the Star Atlas website or Apple Books. All issues are freely available there!
Never Alone
Last week Mission 1 of Never Alone came to an end. The team shared some news regarding the next mission and more details on the Memories we were collecting.
Mission 1
The first Never Alone Mission, Scraps and Spoils, has come to a close last Tuesday. However, you can still complete missions and earn memories for a while longer. Last week, Dominic (Community Manager) shared that Mission 1 quests will remain available until the official end of Mission 2. A similar approach will also be taken for Mission 2 and 3; they will remain open until the end of Mission 3 and 4, respectively.
Do note that time-limited quests and Escape Velocity quests won’t be available (much longer).
Mission 1 – Memory Airdrops
The team shared more information on when we can expect our first Memories to arrive. An XP snapshot will be made on July 18th, after which the memories will be dropped (from all tiers) the day after.
Because the quests remain available, a second snapshot will be made when Mission 2 officially ends on September 12th. Meanwhile, those that accumulated more XP and unlocked (new) Memories can expect to see these in their wallets on September 13th.
Mission 2
Mission 2 will kick off on July 18th and run until September 12th. This means it will run for exactly 8 weeks or 56 days.
The above image shows that the second snapshot for Mission 1 will also be the first snapshot for Mission 2. So on September 13th, you can expect any late-earned Memories from Mission 1 and newly-earned Memories from Mission 2!
Escape Velocity
Now that Escape Velocity has wound down, the team ran their final numbers and published the below statistics:
The last loot distribution was sent out by the team as well. As expected, this caused a dip in R4 pricing. It turned out to be a very temporary and small dip, however:
Helio partners with Star Atlas
Helio, a crypto payment solutions provider, announced they have implemented payment support in ATLAS. This opens up another avenue for builders to implement ATLAS-payment support for their community projects. This is especially of interest to projects that fall under the official IP Licensing deal, as ATLAS payments should be made available if reasonably possible.
Tidbits
Two interesting tidbits to share this week:
- XCode (Project Manager – Portal Team) shared that they expect to release the DAC (MVP) platform in August! This means that soon we will be able to register guilds (DACs), and people will finally be able to sign up with one officially!
- On Twitter, Michael (CEO) teased the following message: “Star Atlas is going to be running one hell of a promo soon. Get those ships ready.”
Later on, on Discord, he added: “It’s not discounts. It’s on the income side. Without inflation. But how?”. When someone suggested the promo would start any day, he responded, “It will be a few weeks.”
Sneak Peaks
And lastly, do check out this video of the Armstrong IMP capital mining ship! It’s being shown in Blender (a 3D modeling tool) and in UE5 (not Showroom, just the standard downloadable UE5 – most likely done by the modeler).
That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading!
