As Stars Reach lumbers on through its Kickstarter phase, Playable Worlds is continuing to patch up the test behind the scenes, which means that testers this week have a big drop to look forward to as they begin testing what the studio is calling Seasons Part 1.
“Getting our worlds to have active seasons turned out to be a thornier problem than we thought it might be, but the first part is done now, so we’re rolling it out,” Raph Koster’s team says. “This initial part is purely visual. It’s also highly accelerated in time so that you can see the passing of the seasons in each playtest. Later on, we’ll make the timeline much more realistic and customize it per planet.”
During this phase, the devs are temporarily running all four seasons once every 24 minutes, meaning a year lasts 96 minutes – that’s just for testing, though. Expect to see trees and grass cycle through changes as these abbreviated seasons take hold, in addition to the new skies, fog, celestial bodies, and meteor storms. The patch also includes the very beginning of the public event system (which now controls boss spawning) and the first of the planetary health events, specifically reforestation events, which trigger when players have overharvested a world. We spy tons of bug fixes and small additions too, like the title system, drone lights, and “feline friends.”
Part 2 will apparently include temperature responses (like water freezing in winter), rain, snow, planetary deviation, and improved foliage.
We count 10 separate tests running this week, ending with a lengthy one on Saturday afternoon starting at 1 p.m. EDT, so if you have access, you can jump in – and look up.
