Starforge was the name. Though it had a lot of joke names because, before it was on Steam, the devs were overly insistant on having an ambigramic title.
The ambigram title ended up reading less as Starforge and more as one of the following:
SoapZorge
SoapZcrge
StapZcrgc
It finally got changed when the game popped up on Greenlight because of an influx of people asking what the hell that blob of letters was saying.
Personally I'm a fan of StadZcrgs.
Note: I'm typing this on iPhone and can clean this up and go into more detail later.
For those of us who have worked with Unity in the past, it was clear the project was doomed to begin with... It was essentially a bunch of different Unity prefabs cobble together. When players added blocks it spawned a new resource-consuming GameObject, and when buldings got destroyed they turned into physics props. The world was made with unity's terrain system and when you dug it made special deformations. The demo video looked buggy and was certainly done under optimal conditions. The developers said "oh it's early alpha we're still getting this stuff figured out" but they never showed they had the ability to program any of the engine stuff they needed to. Minecraft gets a lot of flak for being "low tech" but Notch actually did the work to make the engine functional and high performance before choosing which features to put in. Compare this to SF's laughable goals page (http://www.starforge.com/goals) which promises to deliver "Procedural Horror" and gaming's first liquid physics system.
The whole thing was snake oil but the hype grew literally overnight and it was too late... A similar thing happened with Yogaventures. People want a competent Minecraft clone so badly they'll put their trust in anything.
Starforge looks interesting so far, kinda like if Halo and Minecraft got drunk and had a baby.
Also of "home base" building interest: Rodina and 0x10^c.
Finally, the Homeworld games may also interest you. Your mother ship can be upgraded and your fleet constantly added to.
Oh, and games from The X Universe too. The entire thing is about building up your base, the economy, and your weapons/shields/engines/potato-farmers/etc.
That was a mistype, sorry. I meant to say procedural weapons; basically the devs originally planned to make weapons infinitely customizable and make insane combinations (think machineguns with rocketlaunchers and flamethrowers attached to them), but was dropped, along with infinite worlds and space travel. There was an old trailer that showed an example; I can try to dig it up.
edit: video here.
It still mentions these things on the website here, despite Code}{atch removing the features from the game: http://www.starforge.com/gameplay.html
As for the graphics, I guess I meant more that it was impressive for that time in development.
> does it seem like it'll actually make it?
If they fix the jumping/collision animations and some of the physics, then characters should be okay. Other than that I can't see why the game can't make it.
> Also, is there anywhere we can buy it now and join the alpha?
Yeah there are two versions available on their website. http://www.starforge.com
Free version and you can pay to support development and gain access to the "bigger" version, but it's still an early build.
> I found something called indiegogo but it looked like a sketchy-er kickstarter and wasn't sure if it immediately gave alpha access.
IndieGoGo is legit, it just looks like a cheaper version of Kickstarter. A lot of indie games on Desura use IndieGoGo since it's more of a game-centric crowd-funding site. Kickstarter just has more of a brand name and wider recognition. Not sure why they went with IndieGoGo instead of Kickstarter.
A few highlighters:
You can build any and everywhere so long as you have the resources
Characters have procedural physics-based animations so they move based on how they're moved, so it takes some getting used to.
Physics are top notch for the environment and destruction
Has some cool special effects on the highest settings and doesn't break your GPU
Enemies are really hard to kill but the blueprint + turret defense mechanic is pretty cool
I'm excited to see a more polished version of the game and can't wait to see what they accomplish in the next public build.
Hmm. The interface, crafting, and other systems are all directly re-skinned from Minecraft's functional underpinnings. The graphics are swapped out but this is nothing but a Minecraft Mod designed to make a few bucks.. there is no end game or real content. You build in it, and now you can shoot orbs at things.
Try http://www.starforge.com/index.php Starforge shares the CONCEPT, but it's not just a re-skinned game.
You don't see ANY similarities? from the load menu to the gameplay and physics and concept of building.. the exact same dimensions of blocks as MineCraft... cmon
Remember when Luke gets in his X-Wing and flies directly into space? That's all I want from this game. There's only one other game I can think of that's made a seamless transition to space and it kind of sucked last time I tried playing it.
Hey Everyone,
I wanted to show you guys StarForge. It's a game currently being developed by Code}{atch (CodeHatch) who are located in Edmonton, Alberta. Although in the video I mentioned that the game was in Alpha, it is actually in Beta.
You are able to dig underground, build based, defend against waves of monsters, and tower up to the stars. This game does have multiplayer and mentioned that there will be different types of game modes.
Developer/Publisher: CodeHatch
Games Site: http://www.starforge.com/
Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/227680
I completely agree with this. Like most crowdfunded projects, StarForge didn't exactly deliver on the hype that surrounded it when it was being featured on Reddit and IndieGoGo. Almost nothing has been accomplished since its funding was successful back in November 2012. Code::Hatch is probably working diligently on their game, but just looking at their stretch goals makes it obvious that the developers were thinking way too far ahead.
As far as playing it goes, the game is arguably worse/more difficult to play than the first versions released, and only a fraction of the gameplay featured in the preview videos over a year later is present.
Could you please host the download on a better server? Tracert shows the hop to be a 554 ms wait.
Edit: I found the torrent link from your forum.