Playable Worlds appears to be really, really, really excited about the procedural planet generation tech applied to Stars Reach with its recent Wild Wormholes update, as the studio is eager to talk about it. And update it. And encourage people to tune in to a livestream so they can hear them talk about it some more. Active game dev is fun.
Over the weekend, the devs put out another “fireside chat” livestream that zeroed in on literally everything wild wormholes, discussing what players will find when entering one (under the assumption that nobody knows how procedural generation works), outlining the differences of wild wormholes when they’re more fully integrated, and talking about the size of these procedural maps both in current testing and in the future. Some of those aspirations appear to hinge on getting to those larger map sizes, with discussion about experiences like “gauntlet maps.”
As for the patch itself, it got a recent update that applied a short list of important fixes such as making sure player characters are brought back to a “stable” planet if they log out on the surface of a wild world. The team is also planning a limited-time open playtest with the team on Thursday, June 19th, when the studio will also be giving away a Kickstarter access tier to those present during a livestream scheduled for that same day, though the chosen winner must be present to claim their prize.
The game’s latest Kickstarter post otherwise condenses everything that’s been patched in to this point, as well as links back to prior livestreams uploaded to YouTube and the playtest schedule for the next week.
