Welcome to our 148th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed [mainly by the team] throughout the past week.
The IMPACT Summit is a wrap! The Breakpoint side conference, organized by ATMTA, is over, and many team members and most community members have been making their way back home or are about to. The event was well executed, without any delay, and mostly without technical issues.
But that is not all that happened—despite perhaps feeling that way when you are present in this bubble for a full week. The Naabathon winners were announced on stage during IMPACT, and so were the 12 DAO Council candidates who made it to the final voting round.
Star Atlas – IMPACT – A group picture at the end of the day with the team and remaining community members.
IMPACT Summit
The Breakpoint side conference, organized by ATMTA, was a success! Besides the Surge tournament stream, everything went super smooth! The first IMPACT Summit had a great turnout of over 1200 people visiting (some may have been return visitors—walking out and back in).
Plenty of Breakpoint attendees dropped by to find out what the hell was going on over there, but there were also many community members and other Solana projects dropping by to look for potential collaborations and partnerships.
IMPACT Schedule
Below, we’ll cover the Keynote, but the team did post a full 7-hour video covering all of the sessions listed in the image above.
Project Galia
Brad’s presentation (Lead Gameplay Engineer) is especially interesting, as it showcases the latest Project Galia developments. He starts by showing a lengthy video of gameplay we can expect to see in Season 0. It’s a must-watch!
IMPACT — Keynote
Michael kicked off his keynote with an overview of what happened this past year while also mentioning that the Crew cards (including presales) resulted in revenue for the team of just over 1.5 million.
Before getting the real stuff, he did mention that the Star Atlas Mobile “Companion” App would not be coming anytime soon (as expected). The team still hopes to release it in 2025, though.
Going briefly over Season 0, he shared that this will introduce the first story-based campaign starring on the ustur homeworld of Ioki. The release will also mark the official beta launch of Star Atlas.
First, though, we will be getting more Pre-season content. It will have a major emphasis on multiplayer and will come with the following gameplay:
- Competitive and team-based shooter modes like Surge
- Deep-space exploration
- Social centers at the CSS’s
- Combat Racing
- Strategically command entire fleets
- Curated economic loops intersecting all of the different aspects of the game
These individual pieces are all subsystems of the wider MMO, it’s not the team’s intent to just build mini-games. They are all designed to give every player a chance to go from zero to hero. The team is also planning consistent multiplayer events at a regular cadence.
Star Atlas – IMPACT – Fleet Command
Fleet Command
Michael showed off a new video showing Fleet Command’s progress. Besides being a 3D port of Starbased, this game will allow you to go from macro to micro with the press of a button. You can manage entire fleets, RTS style, or seamlessly enter the cockpit of a single ship and get into space battles in first-person shooter mode.
Star Atlas – IMPACT – Simplified Onboarding
Simplified Onboarding
Micheal shared that the team is simplifying onboarding through various means:
- Pixel streaming through dedicated Web3 Gaming services, such as Shaga, YOM, and Aethir
- Wallet Abstraction – Pushing the requirement for creating/hooking up a wallet further down the path, allowing people to get in-game immediately [Michael mentioned this was a sensitive subject for him – He likely was not the one pushing this].
- Non-economic, Free-to-play access to the game, using the team’s own Solana network, dubbed Apollo (previously known as AtlasNet)–This is meant to allow people to experiment with the game.
Star Atlas – IMPACT – Financial Inclusion
Econ Loops / Lending / ATLAS Locker
Michael announced that a fleet rental system is coming (soon?), created by the GG Collective, with help from SLY Groove and SLY Anhonyra.
Besides straightforward rental, the team is adding pay-over-time options as well, allowing people to pay for a ship over time, using (for example) their earnings from that ship.
Additionally, the team is working on:
- adding a deeper focus on specialization to current Starbased activities (after Fleet Command, of course)
- moving beyond their LP system
- adding fixed earning opportunities
- more robust peer-2-peer trading opportunities
- additional crafting options.
The team is also reducing the transaction count by adding randomization to the outcome of certain actions. This should allow smaller players to earn higher proportional awards while they play.
The team is also adding benefits to their ATLAS Locker, such as:
- Fleet rental fee discounts
- Recipe unlocks
- Discounted crafting fees
Star Atlas – IMPACT – Golden Carnival Returns
Golden Carnival Returns
The Golden Carnival is returning roughly one year after the last one started! It will run for four months, and the team plans to distribute assets worth $4 million in VWAP value.
This means that soon, players will be able to craft Golden Tickets again, which they can then enter into a weekly raffle to have a chance at winning some of the weekly prices!
Cinematic Trailer
Michael announced a new cinematic trilogy on stage during his keynote. The trilogy follows “some of our main heroes,” Joni and Mendoza (known from the first official cinematic), as they complete a mission to prepare a racer and compete in the Volant Station race.
The team showed off the first of these during the event. Below is a scene-by-scene description of what is taking place:
Scene-by-scene
We see an Opal Rayfam with Mendoza scanning asteroids, triggering a Tufa ship’s sensors, awakening them.
In the following scene, we see Joni talking and delivering the audio we’re listening to while Mendoza appears to try to fix a Fimbul Airbike. He appears to be unsuccessful.
Next, we see the two of them sitting around the Star Atlas (Universe map – which does look a lot like Fleet Command), zoomed in on one of the star systems. Joni moves an Armstrong IMP Tip from one of the planets to an asteroid, where it starts to mine.
Star Atlas Cinematic [New] – Part 1
Then, a Pearce X6 shows up with an unknown male MUD captain (appearing friendly with Joni and Mendizo—he was briefly visible in the previous scene), who detects the three Tufa ships.
We see the human guy and Joni delivering the same line, “Hey guys, I got something,” simultaneously. Joni, as we soon learn, unearthed something interesting while mining, while the human, of course, meant the Tufas that are now on his tail.
The Tufa ships start their pursuit of the human, which results in an intense dogfight.
Next, we see Joni sitting inside the IMP Tip she just moved, exulting in joy as she uncovers a rare deposit. As she cheers, combat between the X6 and the three Tufa ships continues in the background. At one point, as Joni starts filling up her storage, the MUD captain damages a single Tufa, spinning out of control and colliding directly with the asteroid on which Joni’s IMP was mining. Her ship is damaged and thrown off the asteroid. Joni closes her eyes as the impact hits her, and debris starts flying around within her ship’s cockpit.
Transcript
Here is a transcript of the lines Joni is delivering during the video:
No one tells you the secrets of the galaxy. The galaxy provides, but you have to find it yourself. I had everything—wealth, power, purpose, beliefs—all gone. But sometimes, to evolve, you need to burn everything down. Sometimes, you need to learn new things.
Hey guys, I got something!
It is true though, the galaxy has danger, that comes looking for you when you least expect it. It’s hard to know who your friends are.
But my father always said: “No danger, no deal”. He also said that sometimes you need to take what is yours—that you need to make them see the real you. Let them know the truth!
That was before he pulled at the strings of reality. That was before he broke the Star Atlas.
Star Atlas Cinematic [New] – Part 2
Part 2
Michael showed a small clip from Part 2 at the end of his keynote. Here, we see a giant Tufa Titan ship (much larger than the other Titan ships–as it dwarves the ONI CSS) take out the ONI CSS with one shot.
Star Atlas Governance – Council Election Results – Round 1
Governance – Council Elections
On the same day IMPACT took place, the first round of the Council elections wrapped up. From the 22 candidates, the following candidates were chosen by POLIS holders to continue to the next round (in order of STV rank):
- Bryan
- Funcracker
- Krigs
- Bodhi
- Emperor
- Ajota.lrnr
- Notcatz
- JP
- Jith Blade
- DrumCarlo5
- Dmark
- xAlexus
The next round will likely start next week when the team has returned home and settled back into the groove of working hard to bring Star Atlas to new heights over Q4 and next year. During this second round, the final 5 Council members will be chosen. This first Council will then get to work for 6 months to help bring Governance to the next level!
During his IMPACT keynote, Michael shared that voting participation for PIPs so far has averaged 35%, which is practically unheard of (in a good way) in DAOs of this size. This first round of Council candidate voting ended up with close to a 32% PVP participation rate.
Star Atlas Foundation Director: Glenn Kennedy
Foundation Director
For the first time ever, the community met Glenn Kennedy, the Director of the Star Atlas Foundation. José (Community Penguin) interviewed him on stage during the DAO/Governance panel.
We learned he is a lawyer based in the Caymans doing this work for many DAOs. A good few of those have a Council of sorts, and he shared offline that he is used to sitting in on Council meetings to answer any questions that come up.
Naabathon
The first-ever Star Atlas Hackathon winners were announced at the tail-end of the IMPACT Summit.
The judges were:
- Santi (Community Director)
- Francesca (Head of Marketing)
- Michael Cain (Principal Engineer)
- Bryan (Head of Blockchain)
- Chris (Head of Game Economy)
Michael Cain (Executive Director) was on stage to announce the first winners of the annual Naabathon hackathon. Interestingly, this is the first time we’ve heard that this hackathon is supposed to be annually returning.
- Galactic Marketplace Award: ATLAS Link
AI chatbot, indexing all of the off-chain metadata & on-chain program state. - DeFi Award: Squads.io – Uses Squads multi-sig to interact with the ATLAS and POLIS Lockers
- Data Award: Crew Dashboard – Flipside dashboard that gives tremendous insight into the Crew collection
- Resource Award: Star Atlas Dispatcher – Automation tool for SAGE. It is not very polished, but you can automate almost everything in SAGE.
- Game Award: Warfront
- SAGE Award: Eveeye Ship Comparison – Compare any two assets visually & statistically with an easy-to-use UI
The Best Project award went to ATOM – Drag & Drop UI Automation for SAGE.
That was it for this week! Thanks for reading!