When Playable Worlds first revealed Stars Reach at the end of June, the reveal came with a trailer and screenshots to accompany the announcement and introduce the overall style and content. In a new devblog, Raph Koster talks about those earlier visuals, feedback, the work the team continues to do, and offers up some fresh looks at improvements already made.
Because visual improvements were planned for later in development, including in September when pre-alpha testing began, when they made the trailer they put together visual content and imagery that they had available at the time to give everyone a peek into the game, the concept, and the general style that Playable Worlds is going for.
Koster notes that they had a choice to make. Since they are building a game that involves a lot of player choices and input, including early feedback from playtesters, they went ahead and produced a trailer to introduce us all to Stars reach instead of waiting.
As he notes, “Waiting for near-final visuals would have meant player input coming too late in the process to help us scale the servers and improve the game,” and not only did they push ahead with the trailer, they've since made lots of progress on the visuals.
There is a video to show and compare some of the improvements of how the game looks now, as those first playtests have begun. Some of the criticism that was received also went into the new visuals that they've been working on for the past couple of months.
All In all, they did a general pass on many objects in the game, built a new day/night cycle for everything, adjusted things like contrast, shaders, and even added additional visuals to some of the objects in the world. Of particular note are visuals that show how actions affect the world.
Related:
Interview: Stars Reach Is Playable Worlds' Upcoming MMO, Set In A Fully Simulated Sandbox Galaxy
“You may already know that our simulated world has temperature and humidity for every cubic meter, and that the grass reacts. Well, now the grass actually stays burned and trees blacken, when set on fire. They also ice over. So do the rocks, the bushes… everything.” These are not the only visual touches that you might not necessarily even notice on a first look. things like reactions between chemicals, details like sand is always sliding down or dirt without roots being more susceptible to giving way.
The Stars Reach team is working on something stylized, yet, but also a simulated world. The full devblog goes into more detail, including the impact of those pre-alpha tests on these changes.
