Development on Playable Worlds’ Star Wars Galaxies-esque MMO sandbox Stars Reach is continuing at an apparently speedy pace: The latest dev blog heralds the pre-alpha testing of the game’s player housing system, and in so doing, it shows where it’s improving on the SWG model.
The studio is calling the housing system “homesteading” since you can literally make a go of it anywhere in the universe – provided someone else hasn’t beaten you to it.
“A Homestead is a patch of a world that you claim as your own. You set up a camp, register that camp with the Transplanetary League, and voila!, it is yours,” the team writes. “Now you can build on that plot of land. You can create a home, a shop, a manufacturing facility, a farm, a giant robot…whatever you desire. If you claim a homestead in space, you can build a starport, or hollow out the interior of an asteroid as a smuggler’s base, and more.
“To do so, you use Civil Engineering tools, like the Instaformer, Fabricator, and Paver to build structures and roads. You can use Forestry tools like the Xyloslicer and Growth Pod to add/grow trees and plants. And you can use Mineralogy skills to transform the terrain around you with the Terraformer. Later, you’ll also be able to add active defense systems (like turrets and force fields) to keep the aggressive wildlife at bay or simply build passive defenses (like walls and ditches) to discourage them from wandering into your property. In other words, it’s your home and your imagination is the only limiter on what you can do.”
Players will eventually be able to set up multiple homesteads across the galaxy (assuming they’ve got the profession skills for it), move their homes (sounds like SWG’s housing pack-up feature), and make use of friends’ labor to build.
The blog closes with a list of other content Playable Worlds is hoping to get into the next few builds, including prospecting, seasons, newbie onboarding, cliff traversal, climbing damage, creature AI, and bug fixes.
If you’re just getting caught up on Stars Reach or want more details in video form, friend of the site Napyet has put out another video recapping some of the key game points!
