Welcome to our 36th newsletter on Star Atlas! This is a weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, that is focused entirely on Star Atlas. Here we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits that were dropped by the team throughout the past week.
Publications
Star Atlas released issue #12 of their roadmap scan: Ustur CEO -The Unveiling: Star Atlas Roadmap Scan #12. This week’s story seems primarily meant to drum up anticipation for the upcoming 426Live event, which was also announced this week (see below).
Besides articles released by the team, CNET also published an article: Gamers Hate NFTs. A New Wave of ‘Web3 Games’ Hopes to Change That, featuring several games including Star Atlas.
426Live
The team went to Twitter last week to announce an upcoming online event, dubbed 426Live, being held on Thursday, July 21st. This is a clear play on the “4-6 weeks”-meme that has been making the rounds for many months, but it also directly ties into the announcement made by Michael (CEO) during the recent COPA event.
Details have not been made available, besides the following small tidbits:
- It is “going to be a party”
- “COPA-ish style (but smaller)”
- There will be special guests
- Major alpha going to be dropped
- No graphic novel issue just yet
Most importantly, expectations are that the team will announce the very first release date/s for some of the features described below (or even release one on that day).
The summer heat is rising… ✨
The great assembly of DACs has put gears into motion. The announcement of a new galactic order fast approaches… 🌌
The answer to the status quo is #426LIVE. If you know, you know.
Coming on the 21st of July on https://t.co/LdjcSyryF4. 🚀 https://t.co/sKSO4Xzild
Education
In the past, the team has published a few images trying to explain some of the core fundamentals of crypto. It looks like they are now planning to release short clips of Michael (at least for this first installment) explaining some of the key concepts behind the web3, and in this case: the metaverse.
The video itself is a snippet from Michael’s much longer GDC speech, which was published earlier this year.
There’s a lot to learn about the Web3 space, which is why our very own @at_mwagner is here to help! 🪐
Check out our first installment of Michael and the Metaverse below 👇 https://t.co/1hYUFHTISZ
Galactic Marketplace
The big news for the marketplace is that the Blockchain team reported their work is done! Meanwhile the front-end team is still hard at work, but they reported that they will finalize the features planned for release this week! To that end, restricted access has been created that will be shared with the internal and moderator team for training. For the remainder of this week they are currently focusing on the QA process, final design reviews, and potential bug fixes.
The team is getting ready to ship!
POLIS DAO
The highlight this week is that the Econ0mic team moved into the validation phase, with them finalizing the emissions schedule. On the development front, the front-end team converted the locker function to high-fidelity designs and this week they are finishing the landing page. The blockchain department meanwhile added functions to support the emissions schedule.
Showroom
Little changed with regards to progress for the Showroom, with Concept Art, UX/UI and Game Design all still officially being listed as complete. The Blockchain and Core Gameplay teams did both provide an update, sharing they finalized the wallet and authorization integration. This week the focus will primarily be on performance fine-tuning.
SCREAM
Last week Chip (Director of Game Systems Design) clarified, in response to a question, that you can command your fleet to defend a starbase while you are offline/sleeping. If that starbase then gets destroyed (and with it, your ships), your fleet will respawn at a different starbase, minus any potential cargo they had on board. Before taking your fleet out again, you will have to repair those ships using Toolkits.
Additionally, when a starbase is destroyed, a small part of the materials used to build/upgrade it will be lootable.
Progress
For Game Design, the team worked on defining the map, planets, and resource emissions. They also worked with their product manager to define the scope for the pre-alpha release. The only other real update that was provided last week, was that the Web team has been working on building the map and coding various UI elements.