Even though both of those are amazing, that is not why I look up to them. I have been following Wolfire for a few years now, well before HIB, and something that always stood out to me is just how open they are with their development process. They have weekly alpha video updates providing an overview of the progress made that week. Along with that they less frequently do art asset overviews. Occasionally they will make a blog posts about game tech. They even have livestreams for some of the members - David and Aubrey. Lots of great stuff and very inspirational to me.

When I started Crea I decided I wanted to apply this inspiration. When I come across a new opportunity to share I welcome it with open arms. When I decided to start a pivotal tracker to do project planning on; I made it public. I now do coding livestreams on nearly a daily basis. I like to think I am very open with my development. The other day I was reminded of my inspiration’s source after watching a reasonably old video with two guys from Wolfire doing a talk on Open Development.

I’m aspired not only to continue my growth as an indie in the same direction as Wolfire, but also to help improve, expand, and explore open development.

I wonder if monsters attacks will be randomly generated. One attack would be the creeper attack, which is a Minecraft monster that gets next to you and explodes. Just imagine you’re walking through a forest and then you spot a deer-like creature grazing. You really want to pet it so you slowly walk up behind it. Just as you extend your hand to touch its side, it turns its head toward you, glares for a second and then begins to flash. BOOM! The deer explodes and leaves a nice crater in it’s place. I’d buy that.

Starbound Arctic Planet

This design approach is not all too surprising. Sandbox games lend themselves quite well to generated content. I think this is mostly because sandbox games are all about exploration of the world and your imagination. When the world is generated with lots of parameters the sheer number of possibilities becomes nearly limitless.

There is one problem with this though. Because Starbound is putting so much focus into the randomly generated content it limits the exploration of your imagination. I am of course talking about modding. It does sound like there will be some support for mods but it seems to be more of an afterthought. Regardless, this game is going to be legendary.