Welcome back to another devblog, Starmourn! Today, we’ll be covering Archaeology. This system’s been cooking for awhile now, and we’re excited to announce that it will, at last, be available April 1st (not even an April Fool’s Joke)!
So let’s get our hands dirty and dig deep. Here’s everything you can expect from Archaeology.
Dig sites
All archaeological work begins in the field. To get started, you will interact with an NPC at a museum, select a celestial body to target your investigation, and assemble a team. Archaeological teams will be made up of various NPCs with a Trait and a Profession. You then travel to the wilderness entrance for the chosen celestial body, enter the separate dig site instance (having no effect on your normal wilderness instance or its cooldown), and your team will get to work unearthing fossils and fragments over the next 1-2 RL weeks.
Every so often (not more than once per RL day), a new complication will arise. The traits of your team members will determine the sort of complications that might arise over the course of the dig that your team members will want you to resolve to proceed with the dig at maximum speed and effectiveness. Skittish team members may ask that you clear the zone of mobs before they’re prepared to continue working. Posh team members may ask for a particular Furnishing or Art pattern to continue working. Design patterns which plug into archaeology this way are pulled from a list of approved designs of your own OR designs that are currently available in shop autocrafters, providing a new mechanical incentive for non-designer players to seek out the wares of designers. Since you will be able to pick and choose the traits of your team, you’ll have control over your dig site experience. Not interested in PvE? Avoid the ‘Skittish’ trait! Not interested in Cuisine or Mixology? Avoid the ‘Foodie’ trait!
Completing complications will make the dig progress more quickly overall, and will also activate the team member’s Profession bonus. At launch we have 4 professions: Intern, Supervisor, Palaeontologist, and Anthropologist. Interns are careful and cautious, providing a boost to the quality of your finds. Supervisors keep everyone on task, making the dig take less time overall. Palaeontologists specialize in fossils, improving the likelihood that your finds will be fossils, and improving your chances of finding rarer fossils. Anthropologists specialize in material culture, and thus receive bonuses like Palaeontologists, but for fragments.
Museums
Each faction has their own Museum where players can deposit the finds from their personal dig sites. At a museum, factions will be able to browse their collection and conduct Research (see below). Players with the new Curator power can exhibit items in display cases, exhibit DNA reconstructions in hardlight projections, and write informational blurbs about their exhibit.
We want factions to have full control over their museums and for them to also be persistent, mapped buildings. Curators will be able to redesign the museum’s physical space, rewriting museum room descriptions, and factions will be able, via Requests, to expand the museum if they wish to at a commodity cost.
We currently have no plans for a factionless museum, but factionless players will certainly be able to sell their finds to a faction or keep them for their own private collections.
Research and Discoveries
Archaeology will feature a free-form Research RP system. In the back rooms of Museums, players will be able to conduct research sessions on particular fossils or antiquities either alone or with others. These research sessions are completely free-form. All in-room communication commands (like emotes and says) from participants in the session are logged and, after the session ends, posted to a public Research Board.
From the Research Board, you can view the research sessions of other players in the last 30 days and upvote them for good RP or downvote sessions done in bad faith. This allows us to let players provide some first line of defense moderation if players aren’t using the system in good faith (such as starting the session, writing some gibberish, and ending it, just to get research progress for their faction’s museum). Note that we’ll be watching downvoting in particular. Downvoting is strictly to help us identify players using the mechanic in bad faith, and not to be used if you simply don’t like someone or don’t like their brand of RP. Whenever you make any vote, up or down, you will also gain a bit of extra bonus progress to your next research session, providing incentive for players to keep tabs on the research boards and vote.
Every 20 upvotes you receive, you will also gain a Kudos. A Kudos is a super powerful upvote and can only be granted to players in factions not your own. When you grant a Kudos to someone, both you and the recipient gain a powerful bonus to the discovery progress made for your next research sessions.
After enough research progress on an item within a faction, the faction will unlock a Discovery on the item, revealing more lore for this particular tidbit of a celestial body’s ancient ecology or material culture.
Note that anyone with access to the backroom of a museum will be able to conduct research for the museum, including the factionless and members of other factions. Curators will be able to control who has access to the room via Permissions.
Tying it all together
Once the conflict rework is fully assembled, Museums will comprise 1 of the 3 main pillars of a faction’s Cultural Score. “Museum Score” will be a measure of progress towards completionism in the breadth and quality of the museum’s collection, exhibition, and research.
And now, a disclaimer. We have been hard at work preparing fascinating fossils and antiquities for you to unearth across the Sector. We do intend for every celestial body with a wilderness in the game to have archaeological objects eventually, but in the interest of ensuring a high quality standard here — doubly so for racial homeworlds — we will be gradually releasing new archaeological objects into the game more piecemeal over the next year or so. Thus, at launch we will only have so many wildernesses available to target as Dig Sites.
We are also paying close attention to the number of current wildernesses in each faction’s subsector. For now, we will ensure factional wildernesses are released in equal proportions (i.e. we would not release Archaeology for the 3rd Scatterhome wilderness until we are done the Archaeology for Song and CA’s 3rd, too). But eventually, we want each factional subsector to have the same number of wildernesses overall. Archaeology for neutral celestial bodies, on the other hand, may be released at any time whenever it is ready.
That’s it, that’s all! We are terribly excited to bring this massive new system online starting April 1st. See you in the field!
Hello again Starmourn and welcome back to another devblog! Today, we’ll be talking about our plans to overhaul Cosmpiercers and our new Mercenary system. We’ll also touch on Caches, Energy, Crystals, and Vouchers, and end off with a general progress update on the Conflict Rework as a whole. These changes will arrive in multiple phases, with the first release covering Cosmpiercers and Mercenaries coming very soon, March 1st. Lots to cover today, so let’s get started!
Locking it down
First up, the life cycle of Cosmpiercers has been reworked somewhat. Cosmpiercers now have 5 “states”: Immune, Vulnerable, Lockdown, Besieged, and Rebooting. Immunity and Vulnerability work the same as before, on the same 4 hour window. We may in the future explore giving factions some control over vulnerability window, but nothing set in stone.
When you kill the generators on a factional Cosmpiercer, the siege no longer begins immediately. Instead, the Cosmpiercer enters Lockdown for around 24 hours. Kill the generators at 17:30 on Sunday, and the siege will begin on the hour, 17:00 on Monday. This allows defending factions to plan ahead, gather their forces, and show up to defend their hard-won Cosmpiercers. We want Cosmpiercers to be the major conflict flashpoints they are intended to be.
Ishvana Cosmpiercers do not enter Lockdown, but are besieged immediately after destroying the generators. More on that later!
After a siege ends, the Cosmpiercer now enters a 10 minute Rebooting phase. Anyone still on the Cosmpiercer after 10 minutes will be killed as the Cosmpiercer reactivates its defense routines. Ships with players on them will be launched into space, and ships without players on them will be safely towed back to their home station. No more need to rescue your ships from Cosmpiercers.
May I capture your attention, please?
Once the Cosmpiercer is besieged, we now have overhauled mechanics for capturing it.
Cosmpiercers still have 3 control points, but they come in 3 different types:
- Hacking Control Point: As before, successfully hack a terminal to gain control.
- Ground Control Point: When there’s only one faction in the room, the control point will start capturing for that faction. Once it reaches 100%, the faction is locked in as its controller. If the controlling faction is not in room but other factions are, the control is gradually lost until it becomes de-captured again.
- Space Control Point: Spawns 30-50su away from the Cosmpiercer when the siege begins. Ships must enter a 5su radius around it to start capturing it. Otherwise, it works the same as Ground Control Points.
On launch, Cosmpiercers will spawn 1 of each of these 3 types. However, code support is there to spawn any odd number of control points in any distribution. To spice things up as we progress season to season, we can modify particular Cosmpiercers to spawn, for instance, 2 space control points and 1 hack control point, making space supremacy key for this particular Cosmpiercer.
Victory Points
The old Influence capture system is also gone. If you’re unaware, Cosmpiercers currently use a “tug of war for points”-style capture system. So long as a faction has more control points than others, it starts gaining influence, or removing the influence from the current winning faction. The problem with this system is that it demands you show up to the fight very quickly to have a chance of winning the Cosmpiercer. You could very well show up, wipe the opposing faction, capture all the points, but still fail to drain the faction’s Influence and lose.
Instead, all factions now start with 500 Victory Points (VP) and lose 1 VP per second for each Control Point other factions have more than them. If Scatterhome has 2 Control Points and CA has 1, CA would lose 1 VP, Song would lose 3, and Scatterhome would lose none. If all 3 factions have 1 Control Point, then each faction would lose 1 VP. If no one has any Control Points, then no VP are lost. The winning faction is a) the faction with VP remaining after others have drained, b) the faction with the most VP after 40 minutes, or c) in a case of a tie, the defending faction, else a random one if the tied factions are not the defenders. This new setup allows factions to show up late to a Cosmpiercer and, even if they only have 1 VP remaining, still pull off a victory.
Ishvana Cosmpiercers
Ishvana Cosmpiercers have received a huge upgrade. They are now a PvE experience, where Open PK is disallowed. If you’ve been following our devblogs, you’ll know already know that our motivation is to create a place where factions can onboard their factionmates to Cosmpiercer mechanics, and we feel like this will not take space away from PvP content, but rather will invigorate it.
These come in two varieties: Ishvana Defenses and Ishvana Assaults. The “blitz invasions” used to reset Cosmpiercer ownership are now defensible. Factions receive a warning 24 hours in advance that the Ishvana is preparing an assault on their Cosmpiercer. Within that 24 hour period, they can muster their forces, fly to the Cosmpiercer zone, and those with the power can then COSMPIERCER TRIGGER to start the Ishvana invasion. If no invasion is triggered after 24 hours, the Ishvana will simply swoop in and conduct one of their “blitz invasions” as before.
During Ishvana assaults and defenses, the Ishvana will show up in force, with the strength of the Ishvana forces dependent on the rank of the Cosmpiercer. They will bring ships familiar from Ishvana Fleet Incursions. They will also bring Troop Carriers which can show up as nimble Interceptors, armored Freighters, or heavily-armored Superhaulers, again depending on the Cosmpiercer’s rank. Troop Carriers will attempt to dock and, if successful, will unleash a crew of Ishvana Operatives into the Cosmpiercer. Similar to Overseers, Operatives use class abilities, but also fight and move together. Successive docked Troop Carriers will deposit Vihana and top up the numbers of any Operatives that have died.
With this setup, it is possible via space supremacy to prevent the Ishvana from docking at all, assuming you have talented enough pilots who can pull it off.
Ishvana ships attempt to capture any Space Control points. Operatives, on the other hand, will attempt to capture any Control Points inside the Cosmpiercer. They even hack the terminals, leaving behind hacking bodies you can attack!
Mercenaries for Hire
IRE games are no stranger to the woes of factional population imbalances. There is no silver bullet solution to this, but it is a problem that affects everyone. Starmourn is blessed with what is, to me, the perfect number of factions. Having exactly 3 factions means that 2 factions are able to gang up on 1, when necessary to maintain the integrity of competitive content and ensure everyone gets to have fun on more-or-less equal terms. And since the overall theme of the conflict rework has factions pitted against one another for the greater good, there is hopefully some in-character motivation for factions to balance the scales.
To support this, we are introducing a Mercenary system. Individuals can post themselves as mercenaries for hire, with an hourly fee in Marks. Faction members with the Mercenary power are then able to hire mercenaries on behalf of their faction. If the mercenary agrees, they will be treated as part of the hiring faction for the purposes of capturing Control Points on Cosmpiercers for a set period of time agreed upon when the contract is initiated. This allows for a free-form approach to factional allegiance for the purposes of conflict systems, opening the door for new character archetypes such as freelancing privateers or entire mercenary companies.
We’ve made sure to include a reputation system. After a contract concludes, contractors can rate and review the mercenary’s services. Space Yelp, but for people who kill.
Also note that while the Mercenary system was designed with Conflict systems in mind, the system is totally free-form and can be used for whatever purpose players wish. Individuals, not just factions, are also able to hire mercenaries, should they want to hire someone to take them hunting, go exploring with them, hack terminals for them, anything at all! Mercenaries in their postings are able to describe the nature of their services, which need not be combat-related at all.
And now, the laundry
And now, a list of other miscellaneous changes going in:
- COSMPIERCER BLOCKADE added. In a short range around a Cosmpiercer, you can prevent ships of other factions from docking. Ishvana Troop Carriers are able to blockade run, but their docking takes longer. We’re going to experiment with this a bit and see how it plays out. We may need to dial it down some, or else create some method for player blockade runner ships.
- COSMPIERCER WARP is no longer an unlockable ability, but returned to a default power. Anyone is able to warp their ship to a besieged Cosmpiercer.
- WARP has been replaced with CREWWARP. This powerful ability works just like the ability it is replacing, but allows you to warp all ships in your crew nearby you to the destination besieged Cosmpiercer zone. You’ll also land closely clustered together, preventing the need to form up after normal WARP scatters you and your faction mates randomly.
- Items on ships remain completely in tact if your ship dies and is insured.
- If your ship is insured, the bulk of your commodities will now carry over after ship destruction. Part of them will be destroyed, and the rest will drop.
- Interdiction webs no longer deployable right next to Cosmpiercers. Also not deployable near Space Control Points.
- Overload now has a max of 60su, down from 120su; its cooldown is reduced from 60s to 30s. This allows you to overload the same distance as before when cruising, but should improve space combat a bit where ships just disappear straight off of beacon.
- COSMPIERCER LOCKDOWN as we knew it is now gone.
- Cosmpiercers now have cloning rooms. When you die on a Cosmpiercer, you will respawn in an unmapped cloning room with 3 one-way exits into the Cosmpiercer. If you wish to leave the fray, you can simply RECLONE. The cloning room is peaced, preventing all forms of aggression. You will not be able to move by any means for 2 minutes (with the exception of RECLONE), allowing all classes plenty of time to get their defenses up. As with facilities, you can also repair your gear or even change your class in this room, should you wish to switch up your approach.
- Cosmpiercer participant tracking is more reliable. So long as you’re in any ship in the Cosmpiercer zone, or ever set foot on the Cosmpiercer, you will be marked as a participant.
- Vouchers will be changing, but in the interim, vouchers are awarded for simply participating, no longer requiring victory. The same is the case for faction Influence for Song and SH.
- Terminal lockout timers for Cosmpiercers have been reduced to the minimum.
- Cleared out all the legacy Cosmpiercer bugs. Definitely didn’t add any new ones, either…
- Currently, PvP ship combat is over way too fast given the stakes. While we’ve lessened the stakes of losing your ship, we want there to be more room for skill expression in ship PvP. These changes will not go live immediately with the initial release, but will be an iterative, ongoing process. The goals of these changes are as follows: Make player ships take longer to kill, opening up more opportunity for play and counterplay; Scale PvE space combat appropriately so it remains mostly unaffected; Make interdiction and electronic warfare more powerful, while making counter-interdiction and electronic countermeasures more meaningful.
Vouchers, Crystals, Energy, and Caches
Everything above is coming March 1st, but things will remain in an interim state until we reach the next phase of changes covering Vouchers, Crystals, Energy, and Caches. We hope to have these changes done in March, but it is still unclear whether we’ll reach that goal. In any case, we will have another devblog coming which will describe these changes in greater detail.
In brief, the major changes coming in the later phase are as follows:
- An overall reduction in the number of Cosmpiercers.
- Energy generation formula reworked in accordance with above.
- Excess energy after unlocks is now stored in reserves.
- Vouchers reworked. Vouchers are no longer granted for crystal deposits or Cosmpiercer participation. Instead, faction leaders set daily voucher allowances to positions, faction ranks, and/or individuals. Each voucher represents an entitlement to withdraw Energy from the faction’s energy reserves, consumed to power Cosmpiercer Abilities.
- No more ability maintenance. After unlocking a power, factions have it until the conflict season concludes. Seasonal resets wipe all energy reserves, unlocks, crystal deposits, and owned Cosmpiercers.
- Caches can no longer be triangulated. Instead, the time of the next cache will be fully visible.
- Rich caches once or twice a week, containing a great abundance of crystals.
- Tighter algorithmic controls on the number of crystals seeded to the game, compared to the number of crystals consumed. Crystals will overall be scarcer to help funnel combatant groups into conflict with one another in caches.
- A trade-in shop allowing players to trade Cosmpiercer Abilities directly for crystals at a steeper rate.
- A limited pool of crystals available via Crystalline Mutated Facilities and Crystalline Xeno Mobs; Crystalline affix buffed overall; Crystalline affix added to Facility bosses and boss adds when using Crystalline Mutation; Crystalline Xeno Mobs no longer appear randomly, through collectible sets, metamorphic crystals, or the metamorphic affix. Rather, Crystalline spawns are tightly controlled.
Ever forward
Let’s conclude the post with a brief status update on the conflict rework as a whole:
We are still aiming to have Archaeology prepared for April, though we still reserve the right to push it further to ensure the strength of the release. Once released, the greater majority of pieces of the full Conflict Rework will be assembled. Afterwards, we still have a bit of work to do implementing the third pillar of Cultural Score, the other two being Achaeology and Commerce, and gluing everything together before we are ready to start the first conflict season proper. We are still unsure exactly how this will be deployed, but we’re considering conducting a shorter “Season 0” intended as a test run of the full system.
Whether that happens May, June, or even later is still uncertain, as our phase-based release plan can always turn up surprises where we need to refocus our efforts on something unexpected! In any case, we’ll be continuing to keep you abreast of our progress!
That’s it, that’s all! Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in the Starmourn Sector.
Starmourn, let’s get trendy.
In today’s devblog we’ll be talking all about Design Trends as well as changes coming to physical shops, NPC shop sales, ‘Help Wanted’ Posters, and related bits! These changes are set to hit the Starmourn Sector on Monday, February 13th! Read on, and at the end of the blog we also have a status update to share on the state of the conflict rework in general!
Now we’re trending
We’re happy to introduce a new system coming to the design skills, Trends. The Starmourn Sector is constantly brimming with life, and just like in real life, trends in fashion, jewelry, cuisine, furnishing, art, and mixology are constantly shifting. Every two weeks, a random pattern for each tradeskill will start to Trend, along with a random in-lore material. In one trending period, the Sector’s tastebuds might be all about limfruit parfaits; in the next, the Sector might just be absolutely craving Oldtown Mold truffles. In Art, the Sector could be really into atlases made from disheet, for some reason; the next, calludite parasols are all the rage.
Within the two week period of a trend, designers can submit a design of the trending pattern where the design fields contain one of the “keywords” of the in-lore material. Once submitted, the Trending flag of the design is locked in, so even if it takes us admin longer than the trend period to approve the design, your item will still be considered Trending once approved. Your design will retain its trending status for 120 RL days after Approval.
Along with the formation of a database of in-lore materials and their keywords, we will also be creating a new, in-game CRAFTPEDIA, where in-lore materials will be fully explorable with writeups, to help you write your trending designs without needing to access the Starmourn Wiki to learn about them. But hey, you should still go check out the wiki!
The age of Commerce
So, what’s the point in designing trends? In short, they make your shop extremely attractive to the denizens of the Sector.
Denizen shop sales are being reworked somewhat. We LOVE that the denizen sale system has provided a powerful source of revenue for designers, and they will continue to be a strong source of marks revenue, but re-emphasizing the rewards for those actively engaged in design.
The gap between the rich and the poor in Starmourn has been growing and growing, with the majority of new marks added to the game coming from denizen sales, and marks inflation figures reaching startling new heights. As such, if you’re making more than 250,000 marks per RL day off of denizen sales, you can definitely expect those numbers to be brought down to a more responsible figure which the game’s economy can handle. If, on the other hand, you’re an active designer who’s lucky to make 10,000 marks a day off their one poster, you can definitely expect to be making more.
And if you don’t own a physical shop to begin with, but a have a trade terminal stocked with fresh designs… The denizen sale system will now also extend to trade terminals. Trade terminal denizen sales will not yield as many marks as physical shops, but they will definitely provide a solid source of revenue for designers who have not yet been with us long enough to afford a physical shop.
An attractive proposal
Every so often, the game will check the shops of online players, pick the most attractive shop for that player, build a list of such shops for each player, and make a weighted pick of one of them, with more attractive shops having a higher likelihood of getting picked. Having up to 5 trending designs in your shop is enough to maximize your attractiveness boost from trends, and having up to 10 designs in general will maximize your attractiveness boost per-item. With these figures, we’re hoping to strike a balance between not needing to design too much, so that you can focus on writing the designs of your dreams, but also not designing too little, so that active designers are rewarded the most.
Physical shops gain some boosts to their attractiveness, as well. If a shop is physical to begin with, it gets a boost. If it has an assistant, it gets another boost. If it has an extension, yet another boost. And if it has an assistant in the extension — you guessed it — another boost! Each of these improvements also comes with a sizeable increase to the marks the shop generates.
If, however, a physical shop came from auction, it will receive the maximum boost out of the gate, and posters will be refunded to those players with auction shops who later used posters on them. The shop assistants will stay, and assistants will just be baked into auction shops from here on out. This allows auction shops to remain unique spaces, sometimes without extensions or extra rooms, but still achieve the maximum attractiveness. This includes the pop-up style auction shops, such as those inside tents.
Finally, denizen sales will also include a mercy mechanic to account for bad variance and somewhat less active designers, so that everyone can still share in the wealth generated in this new system.
Learn me a thing or two!
As part of this update, we are also opening up the design quest found on shop assistants to the general playerbase. As the only source of XP for players who exclusively design, we found it wholly unreasonable to gate this quest behind physical shop ownership. The quest will still be available from shop assistants for ease of access, but it will also be going on EIGHTEEN new design tutors which you’ll see popping up around the factional areas soon! Argus and Marra have been hard at work making each of these tutors a truly unique personality, and quite frankly the amount of creativity and ingenuity coming from this duo continues to astound me.
Along the way, we’re also making a few improvements to the quest, fixing some bugs, and the patterns they ask for will also happen to be trending ones. The interaction will also include a bit of information about trending materials and how they work, providing direction for submitting the design so that it will be marked as trending!
The bigger picture
Over the course of a conflict season, each denizen sale will contribute Commerce Score towards a player’s faction, Commerce being one of the three pillars which make up a faction’s Culture Score. The changes described above will make it so that terminal shops can compete with physical shops, but physical shops will take the proverbial cherifruit cake when it comes to marks generation, in addition to already being one of the most heavily customizable modifications to the game’s public environs available.
The state of the conflict rework: An update
You made it to the end of the devblog! Time for one last tidbit.
In our original post spoiling a good chunk of the rework, we mentioned that Archaeology was slated for March. Well, all those specimens and fossils lying in the ground across the Starmourn Sector need just a bit more time to age before they’re ready to be unveiled. Thus, we’re pushing Archaeology to April and pulling changes to Cosmpiercers up to March! We look forward to sharing more details about our total overhaul of Cosmpiercer capture mechanics, our Mercenary system, and the thrilling and unique PvE experience that is Ishvana Cosmpiercers. If we’re lucky, we may also get to changes to Caches, Vouchers, Energy, and Crystals in March, but we’ll see!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you in the Starmourn Sector!
Hello Sector!
Welcome to our Call for Volunteers! If you’re interested in contributing to Starmourn’s development, read on!
The volunteer team has been an essential part of what keeps Starmourn going strong. I myself started as a Storyteller and then a volunteer Coder back in 2021 and was instantly hooked to all the great initiatives I discovered were going on.
This time around, we are asking for applications for THREE different roles: Worldbuilders, Storytellers, and Coders.
Applications should be sent to neritus@starmourn.com and should include a short writeup of why you’d like to join the team and any information you deem pertinent. Additionally, include which role you’re applying for as well as any additional role-specific information requested in the points below! The deadline for submitting applications is 0:00 UTC Monday, January 23th.
Worldbuilders
Worldbuilders contribute to the game largely via creative writing. Projects Worldbuilders have worked on in the past include writing room descriptions and writing time messages for all the celestial bodies. Worldbuilders conduct their work on their main character via a BUILDERBOARD syntax, where we place bounties for build projects and Worldbuilders receive credits when jobs are completed.
If you’d like to be a volunteer but aren’t sure where to start, Worldbuilding is a great choice. It does not come with the learning curve involved in being a Storyteller or a Coder, but you still get to make valuable contributions to the game!
Worldbuilders will also have a hand in helping us get Archaeology out the door!
To be a Worldbuilder, you should:
- Have the follow-through to see a task to completion once you take it on.
- Have strong creative writing skills
- Include in your application 1 sample room description for an area of your choosing, and the #1 thing you’d like to see added to or expanded on in the game.
Storytellers
Storytellers contribute to the game in a large variety of ways including creating new mobs, items, quests, and areas as well as facilitating player RP, whether it be in admin-run events, the REQUEST system, or other ad hoc interactions. Storytellers also have a larger variety of jobs they can access via BUILDERBOARD syntax, and also can earn credits this way.
Unlike Worldbuilders, Storytellers receive an admin account which they log into the game through. Storytellers are also a public-facing role, which comes with added responsibilities and expectations around conduct and level-headedness.
To be a Storyteller, you should:
- Be able to keep a level head at all times.
- Have strong collaboration skills and play nice with others, be they admin or players.
- Have strong creative writing skills and a willingness to take on a learning curve with all the creation syntax and with our object/NPC interaction pseudo-code, progging.
- Have the follow-through to see a task to completion once you take it on, and even more follow-through to monitor your additions for bugs, feedback, or other issues players may encounter.
- Include in your application 1 sample room description, 1 sample NPC description, an idea for the flow of 1 new quest in an existing area, and the #1 thing you’d like to see added to or expanded on in the game!
- Be willing to sign an NDA.
Coders
Coders contribute directly to the source code of the game. The first months of your work as a volunteer Coder would usually involve fixing bugs or adding quality of life/accessibility changes as you familiarize yourself with the game’s codebase. As you grow in confidence, there’s really no end to what you could achieve.
Coders can have a variable level of public-facingness depending on how you want to work, and what you want to work on.
To be a Coder, you should:
- Have experience with at least 1 programming language. If you write packages for your MUD client and know your way around a for loop, this is usually a sufficient entrypoint. Everything else is learnable.
- Have or be willing to set up a Linux environment, either via a standard distro or through WSL, for compiling and testing changes to game code locally. If this sounds scary to you, just know that I’d be here to help.
- Have experience or a willingness to learn working with git.
- Be able to keep a level head at all times.
- Have strong collaboration skills and play nice with others, be they admin or players.
- Have the follow-through to see a task to completion once you take it on, and even more follow-through to monitor your additions for bugs, feedback, or other issues players may encounter.
- Be willing to sign an NDA.
- Include in your application some information about your coding experience and the #1 thing you’d like to see added to or expanded on in the game!
That’s it, that’s all! We hope to be reading your application soon!
Regards,
The Starmourn Team
Hey spacers, it’s me, Argus.
I’m so so so excited to announce the first chapter of an ongoing project of mine – The first proper Hack Dungeon / extended quest in Starmourn revolving entirely around hacking! This was the first project I pitched to Eukelade when I joined the ST team, and it breaks a whole lot of convention.
Starting yesterday, a little earlier than expected, the hack dungeon went live and ~20 people have already C O M P L E T E D chapter 1! Thank you all for really exploring this project – I hope you’re having loads of fun.
For anyone who hasn’t had a chance to check it out yet –
Your mission is this:
Find the terminals, hack them, and report back to a mysterious scientist with your findings. I’m sure you’ll find these terminals have been much more active than appearances would lead you to believe.
For now, you can get right into the action by heading to the Coriolis Mountains and picking up the quest. We’ll even give you a clue – Head right to ‘Sim address v5697. Don’t forget to mind your steps around the Windmill Drones!
– Created through AI art, woahhh
The team and I have done a lot of testing on this in my little workshop, but it’s 1000% possible there will be bugs out in the wild, much like the one that totally broke it at first! Please report any issues or breaks you notice so we can fix ’em up.
I hope you have a wonderful time exploring it and drawing all sorts of conclusions from this first chapter. If y’all like it, there’s certainly more to say, show, and do!
Paws pit-patting with nerves and excitement,
Argus
Hey everyone! Marra and I wanted to follow up with some of the Storyteller Team’s projects and goals for the coming year, in addition to helping with all the building work required for the Conflict Rework. (See Neritus’ Devblog Post)
We hope you’re as excited as we are to dive in!
Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash
Our Focus This Year
First and foremost, we have been organizing a project we’re calling variably Project Homeworld, Project Homework, Project Homewerkld, or Project HomeYaBetterWERK. We’ll decide on a name eventually. The purpose of this project is to inject more life into the racial homeworlds: more points of interest, quests, NPC interactions, racial lore, and just generally transforming these areas into a truly immersive experience.
This is a slow-burn project that will be ongoing for quite awhile and we plan to bring in you, the players, for many of the key steps along the way. We may form focus groups, showcase areas and plans through OOC tours, create a free-form discussion in one of the Discord round tables, or reach out directly for players actively engaged in RP in our areas. Thank you in advance for your feedback and suggestions as we work through this massive project.
Some stretch goals outside of the lore build-out will be creating another new area from the original Player Design Contest, creating more functionality and payoff for engaging with in-game organizations, adding more fun to hacking, and maybe even adding another round of polish on Paperweight and the Belaul. There’s no precise timeline for any of this, but we are so excited to dive in!
(Seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many spreadsheets we’ve compiled.)
For the first 2023 project reveal and your opportunity to meet a new NPC hackin-sleuth, make sure you’re logged in this weekend beginning at the sync into Jan 7th, 2022.
Events and Roleplaying
Next, thanks to the REQUEST system, it’s going to be much easier this year for Storytellers to assist players with their events or personal plots! Storytellers in 2023 will remain untethered to particular factions, and instead we’ll be discussing among ourselves who would like to take on what Requests to help facilitate player RP on a case-by-case basis based on our individual strengths and interests.
Please be patient with us and understand our team may be mighty, but we are also very smol. While we can’t promise we’ll be able to do everything you’d like, we will communicate as clearly and consistently with you as possible and we are so excited to see what you all come up with!
Discord Round Tables
We also plan to bring back our Discord voice chats this year, hopefully at least once every quarter. We will post both the recording and transcript after the conversation so everyone can access it.
Rather than focusing on particular themes like before, we’d like to have these as “Community Roundtables,” just a general venue for us to have a chat about everything that’s going on at the time.
Join The Team!
The Storytelling team has come together with as much passion, energy, organization, and creativity as we can muster, and we hope you see that coming through in these updates! If you’d like to sign up and experience it for yourself, we will be putting out a call for volunteers in the next couple of weeks.
Future Worldbuilders, Storytellers, and Coders, we want to hear from you!
Always forward –
Combat stars, hacking gurus, star-laden performers, pet collectors, titans of industry, asteroid destroyers, Ishvana simps, chefs and bakers – All of you have had a profound impact on the world of Starmourn, and we’re so glad you’re along for the ride. We’re really looking forward to fleshing out this sector of ours in 2023 and making it a fuller, more engaging place.
With a snazzy spin and tiny paws a-tappin,
Marra, Argus, and the ST Team <3
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