Welcome to our 149th 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.
After the whirlwind that was IMPACT, the dust slowly settled again. Most team members are back home, and everyone is eager to release cool stuff over the coming months.
Logically, news has been slow this past week, but we picked some tidbits for you! The biggest item is no doubt that Round 2 of the Council Elections has started! Furthermore, we now have the official list of Naabathon winners and some additional notes on the IMPACT Summit itself. Lastly, there was some back-and-forth between concerned community members and Danny (CPO), which we included at the end as Danny’s answers are insightful and worth sharing.
Let’s dive in!
DAO Council Elections
This past Friday, the team launched Round 2 of the Council elections! Everyone is highly encouraged to vote for the final five community members who will take place in the inaugural Star Atlas DAO Council! Voting is open for exactly two weeks, meaning you have until October 11th, 16:00 UTC (18:00 CET / 12:00 PM EST) to cast your vote.
As before, you can always change your vote right up until the deadline, so definitely consider voting early, lest you forget and miss the deadline!
Star Atlas DAO – Council Voting Round 2 Ranking (as per the date of publication)
Both the community and the team are planning interviews/debates/discussions during this time, most of which are likely to take place next week.
The final 12 candidates are (in order of appearance in PIP-7):
- ROME | Emperor
- Jith Blade
- DRUMCARL05
- Notcatz
- Krigs*
- Dmark
- JP
- Bodhi [TREE]
- xAlexus
- King Bryan
- Funcracker
- AJOTA.lrnr
Shortly before publication, Dominic (Sr. Community Manager) shared the following regarding Krigs’ participation:
Krigs will no longer be running for council, please adjust your votes accordingly. It’s not possible to remove him from the voting process at this point, so this requires your manual attention.
Krigs, so far, has not commented on this, and we have no further information to share.
Star Atlas – Naabathon #1 Sizzle Reel
Naabathon Winners
The team provided a little more information on the winners of their first hackathon. Though we are still lacking most links, we did now get the discord names of the people who developed these products and services:
- Best Project Award: Atom
Developer: meta_arion
Prizes: 10,000 USDC, 3,000,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Sunpaa! - Galactic Marketplace Award: Atlas Link
Developers: harshh.16 and sidh1999
Prizes: 2,500 USDC, 1,500,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Tursic - Defi Award: Squads.io StarAtlasLocker
Developer: .solwalker
Prizes: 2,500 USDC, 1,500,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Tursic - Data Award: Star Atlas Crew Dashboard
Developer: Aephia Viktor
Prizes: 2,500 USDC, 1,500,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Tursic - Resources Award: Star Atlas Dispatcher
Developer: Teykarat
Prizes: 2,500 USDC, 1,500,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Tursic - Game Award: Warfront Invasion
Developer: visualjc
Prizes: 2,500 USDC, 1,500,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Tursic - Star Atlas: Golden Era Award: Eveeye Ship Comparison and Viewer
Prizes: 2,500 USDC, 1,500,000 ATLAS, and an Ogrika Tursic
Pearce F4 Trailer
During IMPACT, Michael showed off the cinematic trailer created for the Pearce F4. Contrary to earlier such productions for other ships, this one does not contain beauty shots and panning cameras but actually shows the Pearce F4 in action!
The team has now released this video on their YouTube channel.
IMPACT Teasers & Trailers
For those who missed the eye candy the team shared during IMPACT, we are rounding out this issue with a short list of all the videos shown (except for the Pearce F4) and direct links to the 7-hour recording, including the correct timestamp:
- Cinematic Trailer Part 1 of 3
- Cinematic Teaser Part 2 of 3
- Project Galia – Vertical Slice (Start of Season 0)
Though the team has not yet uploaded the Fleet Command video to their YouTube account, we did:
Concerns Answered
Over in the Foundation Room (on the Star Atlas Discord), Mandalorian (community member) decided to ask some of the hard questions he had recently picked up on that no one else was asking. Danny (CPO) provided insightful responses, so we (with permission from all parties) decided to print the whole conversation here. Icy (community member) joined the conversation as well.
Q (Mandalorian): How confident are you in the current development pipeline, and where is the team focusing its efforts? There appears to be sentiment within the community and internal teams suggesting a lack of focus, with the project seemingly drifting away from its original vision. Could you clarify this?
A (Danny): We have all critical roles in place. Fleet command and Gunplay modes are the primary focus for releases this year and next on the unreal side. This is something we discuss at length, but I think from an outside perspective when there is a lot being accomplished then it seems like a lack of focus. But internally when we run out of tasks on a certain area of focus we don’t just send people packing we put them on new tasks on future items. From outside that looks like we’re spreading focus but is actually an indicator that we’re completing work in our area of focus and moving onto the next thing. For example, I have people who can no longer work on fleet command or surge, so I have to assign them to future items like galia or racing. The issue is that we are open with development so everyone gets to see that, whereas closed development and people moving from gta 5 to gta 6 wouldn’t be exposed and no accusations of “lack of focus on gta 5”. But everything is part of the full vision anyway, you guys are just seeing behind the curtain of what would normally be closed. The people actually working on these specific items (not everyone on the team) don’t feel that way, it’s very clear they can’t do anything more and moving to the next set of tasks is boringly logical.
Q (Mandolorian): I understand that different team members have varied strengths, but it seems the community feels the focus has shifted multiple times. For instance, projects like Fleet Viewer seemed to receive significant attention before being shelved, especially with everything transitioning to UE5. It raises concerns about resource allocation. Is my understanding incorrect?
Additionally, I noticed the mobile app was also a priority at one point but was later set aside. With so many shifts in focus—like Rose Garden and others—many in the community wonder if it would be more effective to have a dedicated team refining core features like UE5 combat or PvP. Is staffing a challenge that requires these reallocations, or are there other factors at play?
A (Danny): There are many things at play, it’s a constant evaluation of the most important items to work on. Which is my main job description. That involves having many discussions with people across the team to gain varied insights. But not everyone has the entire picture so it’s an assembly of all these relevant points to take into consideration as well as stuff like marketing forces [..]. All that goes into the strategy. Fleet Viewer, you mean the WebGL hangar? PlayCanvas was universally loathed and when a viable alternative was discovered we shifted away from it.
The mobile app was done by an outside team, so it didn’t shift focus away from the core teams. Rosegarden is still in development with team members who aren’t able to fit on the priority items. There is a dedicated team on ue5 combat and pvp. But even some of them had to move focus because it’s at a state where nothing more can be done until other contributors in the pipeline now finish their portion of it.
I know there’s probably a general sentiment around things, but speaking broadly won’t get the correct picture. Every movement had a reason for it or there is additional nuance needed to fully understand it. If you want to continue to asking specific questions that is the best way to have this type of discussion. These broad sentiments are pretty typical right before everything starts to click in place. Wouldn’t it make sense to get everything working and feeling good for the release items up to a certain quality level before diving in and bringing everything to full polish? That’s where we are now, the main priorities are all feeling really tight and now we’re in polish and release mode. I mean imagine you saw the GTA 6 leaks after all those years it was worked on and you told rockstar to just cut all their features and release gta 5.5. Or better yet, you let them cook and you get gta 6, because those leaks aren’t what it’s going to look like. The demographic at large were terrified of gta 6 when those leaks went out, because it’s something typically gamers don’t get to see. You’re able to see it with us and it leads to some strange dynamics, but I’ve been here dozens of times before as have many of our team. For example, Splitgate was insanely focused in their scope, portal with guns(that’s literally it)… yet it took 5 years to mature to what it was that finally caught on and went ka-boom. We have a different team structure and we don’t operate like a vfx shop who bring in very short term hired guns and them let them go. So, there is a big menu of what players will expect (you mentioned the vision) and a large team to be able to accomplish it. I have no doubt we’ll get there. Again if you want specific areas of our history clarified I am happy to do so. There’s a very logical reason for everything.
Q (Icy): I think a major item that is sort of handicapping SA and also contributing to a lack of focus narrative is releases of experimental features in separate gamemodes. This is really breaking the experience of 1 world, 1 metaverse. I understand that we didn’t have project galia before but now we can start having a more cohesive game? If there are experimental features they should work at the minimum with the whole game before being pushed right? Everything is still experimental anyway so might aswell all be experimental together?
A (Danny): Now that we have all the major points of tech needed for galia then these seemingly disparate core mechanics will start to make a lot of sense. I know Star Citizen gets some gruff but as a crowd funded game that was also required to build in the open they did a lot of things right. Backers demand playability and prototypes way before it should be brought out. It’s how they keep their core community enthusiastic for so long and would release some core mechanics, like gunplay, ship flight and dogfighting as seperate modes while continuing to build out the persistent universe. We are doing something similar, these experimental modes have specific purposes that compound the functionality that goes into galia. walking simulator (we need walking), hover mode, flight mode, dogfighting, racing, gunplay, etc are all needed to make the experience of the core game. So, the idea is to let players play along during development of these things. I keep saying it internally but am now repeating it externally that we’re actually finally there where the major components are feeling really tight and it’s time to go into full polish mode on these for pre-season and season 0. It honestly feels really good to be at this state.
Q (Icy): Does going into full polish mode mean to put the puzzle together or actually polish individual gamemodes?
A (Danny): Polishing surge first gets us fully confident that the gunplay and locomotion is fully intact and ready for primetime. It’s like setting a half marathon goal and training, if you’re able to run that race you reached your goal. Other game modes are relatively easy and just meant to keep the public playing and progressing while we apply that all to season 0. There are a number of team members who cannot contribute to surge gameplay who will be moved onto season 0 scope (which is more of the full game people are expecting). So there will be work in parallel here. Then fleet command of course ties it all together.
Q (Mandalorian): Do you believe it would be more advantageous to polish and release one solid module this year to capture the momentum of the bull market, rather than risk missing the window of opportunity by focusing on multiple unfinished projects? If we peak q4 2025 great, but what if we peak q1? are we risking not having a major release in time to capture a large market share in time to benefit from the run-up?
A (Danny): Basically covered this in the last response but fleet command and gunplay modes is the focus. There’s no lack of focus. It’s been the top ATMTA priorities for a while and always gets the staffing requests. There comes a point where you can’t just add web devs to an unreal game, for example.
Q (Mandalorian): What are your thoughts on the quality control on the project? Do you see his high standards as a bottleneck in the release schedule?
A (Danny): Gameplay feel and infrastructure are still a large part of the time sync needed to be built. We don’t have a fully completed game that is just waiting on art polish to be released. The underlying games here are still being built out. I think we’ve been very unwieldy with the art standards actually, I’ve had many internal bouts about releasing art too early actually. That’s not a bottleneck.
That is it for this week’s issue! Thanks for reading!