Planet Explorers

[wanderer27]

Seeing a Link with upcoming games for 2015 had this as a possible release and reminded me to check this out as I had seen mention of it some time before.

I thought there was a thread for this game on here already but a search didn't find anything so I'm starting this one.


This is an Early Access game (yeah, I know) which is currently in Alpha, but so far I've found it to be very stable.

Planet Explorers is an open world voxel based sandbox adventure rpg game set on a distant planet. The game uses a new OpenCL system based on the Unity 3D engine to allow players to change the terrain in anyway, create new objects in any form, and do it anywhere.

In Planet Explorers, it is the year 2287, one of the first colony ships sent out by Earth arrives at the planet Maria, in the Epsilon Indi Star System. During its landing sequence, something appears in front of the massive ship that causes it to lose control and crash into the planet. Some of the colonists survive in lifeboats, but what they find is an unforgiving land filled with creatures ready to outlast the visitors from Earth. Now the survivors must explore, gather, build, create, fight, and ultimately, conquer the land.

The gameplay will be in 3rd and 1st person perspectives. Players will be able to customize their character, combine and create weapons, vehicles, and buildings. At the same time, players will have to defeat multitudes of enemies of varying intelligence and defend the remnants of the colonists. There will also be a mission system that features NPCs giving the player goals to achieve to advance the storyline. The game will feature a single player story line as well as random single and multiplayer adventure maps. Multiplayer will feature prominently in Planet Explorers.

http://planetexplorers.pathea.net/about/

There is also a little Q&A on the Link.


As of now, I believe you can get a stand alone version and/or a Steam version, though there may be a difference in versions (Steam is ahead I think at A0.86).

They seem to be on a schedule of releasing one update per month so far, with quite a bit of updates in each version.

I haven't bought the game, but I have been playing it a fair bit and so far it's been quite stable and looks to be pretty cool.
No, I'm not Pirating it, you can get a Demo (version A0.72) to check it out for yourself.

You can get it for PC, Mac, or Linux here :

http://planetexplorers.pathea.net/download/

For PC, use the Mediafire Link as the IndieDB Link is actually the full A0.72 requiring activation.

From what I've read, once they reach A0.91 or so they will also update the Demo version - A0.72 is actually the full game to that point as I understand it.

Here's an in game pic to show the current graphics state :

A few Video clips, of which I've seen maybe 3% of stuff shown after a few days so far :

http://store.steampowered.com/app/237870


Some key features implemented so far (I know I'm missing several) :

Single Player
Multiplayer
Combat
Mining
Resource gathering
Building
Crafting


You start out pretty bare, and have to Mine/Craft or obtain advanced items through the game.
It can be pretty tough at times, especially at night, but I'd rather have some challenges than a cakewalk.


I'm hoping others on here can lend their impressions, hopefully someone that has either Backed or bought the game and has the newer version.






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[nsafreak]

I do recall seeing a thread on this game as well but I haven't had any luck finding it either. I'm curious about this game myself so I'll be interested to see if anybody posts that has purchased the early access and what they have to say about the game.

 

[KeithTalent]

It's here, with the exact same thread title... http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389386

KT

 

[wanderer27]

It's here, with the exact same thread title... http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389386

KT

Thanks for finding that, but I just tried it again and it still doesn't pull up when I do a search for either Post or Titles.

Something broke with the Board Search?


I guess you can merge these two threads then, though the other doesn't have a lot of info and has no mention that you can Demo the game.



For those interested, I really do recommend that you check out the Demo and run through the Story Mode aspect of it.
While the complete Story is not available in A0.72, there is quite a bit and it gives a good feel for where the game is heading.
I haven't completed Story Mode yet and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.







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[KeithTalent]

Don't know man, just typed "explorers" in the search and it popped up. Going to close it though since this one is actually about the game the other is just about early access games in general.

KT

 

[wanderer27]

Don't know man, just typed "explorers" in the search and it popped up. Going to close it though since this one is actually about the game the other is just about early access games in general.

KT

Thanks Keith.

I was using "Planet Explorer" and it only returned 4 hits, "Explorer" just returned 3.

I figured the Search function would be good enough to not need the "s", but apparently it's not :\


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[pontifex]

I played it a long time ago and it was terrible. dunno if it got any better.

 

[wanderer27]

I'm still playing the Demo (A0.72), probably 50+ Hours of game play so far.

I'm taking my time, really checking things out and just enjoying myself.

Playing Story mode, and still have a bit to go . . . I'll easily double the time I've put into it so far . . . and this is just the Demo.

As long as they maintain their stance of having a Stand alone version, I'll be buying this one.

As far as the Alpha Demo goes, I've only had a couple of glitches, and I'm pretty sure those are due to my Video Card - yeah, it's a 9600 GT, well below specs (GTX 970 enroute).
I know exactly when I'm going to have the issue I've seen (three times), and I even know how to prevent it, that's why I think it's my Card.

Other than that, as an Alpha, this game is more stable than a lot of Beta's (or even "finished") games I've played.


I should probably elaborate on the Mining / Resource gathering / Building aspect of this game I mentioned in the first post.

This is a Voxel based game, and as such the Terrain is deformable.

In fact, you have to deform it to build Mines and to a large extent collect certain Resources and Build your Base/Colony (which I've yet to do).


They posted an Announcement today with a few pics you can check out here :

http://planetexplorers.pathea.net/a0-9-progress-update/

A0.9 Progress Update

Posted on January 28, 2015 by admin

We’ve been working really hard over the last month to finish up all the components of a0.9. We’re getting there, but there are still lots to do. Many players have asked for an exact date for a0.9, based on our current standing, we’re looking at sometimes in March. As to why we went from the original December date to now, it’s because we’ve decided to rewrite the items code as well so that the game can become easily moddable on all fronts. We like to joke around the studio about it, but a0.9 really is turning out to be PE 2.0 as far as programming’s concerned: every system except for voxel generation has been tweaked or rewritten. The bad part is that it’s taking up a ton of time and the results won’t be seen regularly like in games such as Kerbal or Space Engineers (they had more flexible and better programming structure from the start to allow for faster updates). We do sincerely apologize for that as it is a demonstration of our lack of experience when it comes to setting up the structure for this type of game (though in our defense, there weren’t a lot of smooth voxel games around as a blueprint). But we’ve learned a lot and we’ll make sure there won’t be a repeat of that for any of our future games.

Due to the late release of a0.9, we will be releasing an a0.87 version in February. A0.87 will again be mostly an asset update, with new cloth types, biomes, locations, procedural updates, and such. Now, as I said before, we have done a ton of work for a0.9, and we’ll be showing off the new stuff bit by bit as they come online. Today we’ll show you some of our progress on the Story Editor:

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For people familiar with editors, this will feel right at home. You can pretty much do anything within the bounds of the game with the story editor, if someone wants to mod the editor itself for more, well, be our guest. We will have a decent documentation when this fully rolls out. Next are a few screens of the procedural Adventure mode:

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We did some optimization and we’re able to allow 512m height on the terrain now. All of a sudden, the mountains look much better. We also tweaked the cave systems and added more procedural code. We’ll be working on this up to the release of the game.

On a final note, we’ll be crossing the 200,000 copies sold on Steam mark any day now. We’d like to thank you all for your support and we’ll make sure this game ends up deserving of such support.

As I understand it, plans are to move this from the Unity 4 Engine to the new Unity 5 Engine . . . might even be this update, I'm not sure.

With Unity 5, they also plan to change the UI some, though I've gotten used to it and it's not bad.

While it may sound like a lot of work (and it is), one of the later posts I've seen from the Developer states that their Team is up to 37 members . . . so they have some Horsepower behind them.


Best summary I can make is it's a cross/mix of Minecraft, Terraria, and a Futuristic RPG.


Demo is free, and I highly recommend it any of you that this appeals to you.


Also, would still like to know impressions from anyone playing the A0.85 / A0.86 versions.



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[clok1966]

I really liked it but when i played the interface was pretty hard to figure out and the goals where even worse. I seem to remember if you clicked something wrong, or was it dug wrong at the very start you couldn't get that first crate that held the early starter stuff.. Stuff like chopping trees down required perfect clicking.. etc.. I really liked how it was done, but some controls, lack of understanding (without some help) at start made is super hard.. again that was (year + ago) how much has changed for anybody who has played it? I had the free alpha, and was interested in it enough i got it on Steam to pay, but haven't played it because of complaints above.

 

[wanderer27]

I really liked it but when i played the interface was pretty hard to figure out and the goals where even worse. I seem to remember if you clicked something wrong, or was it dug wrong at the very start you couldn't get that first crate that held the early starter stuff.. Stuff like chopping trees down required perfect clicking.. etc.. I really liked how it was done, but some controls, lack of understanding (without some help) at start made is super hard.. again that was (year + ago) how much has changed for anybody who has played it? I had the free alpha, and was interested in it enough i got it on Steam to pay, but haven't played it because of complaints above.

If it was nearly a year ago (April 2014), then you were running A0.53, and if it was over a year then it was an even older version.

Current Demo version is A0.72, and they're supposed to update the Demo version in the next couple months.


I got my new GPU today and played Planet Explorers for about an hour or so at max settings.
It's been amazingly smooth and stable (not really an issue) in that short time, and I'm sure I'll probably spend the weekend playing even more . . . not really expecting any issues from this point forward though.


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[wanderer27]

I meant to post a pic or two on the last update I mentioned, and since there is a new update from the Dev right now I'll put it in this post.

This shows the Height of the Terrain changes mentioned in post #8 :

They also showed this, although I'm pretty sure it will look sharper than this (haven't seen anything like this myself yet) :

Post #8 actually started off talking about the Editor, and they had a quick shot of it as well :

I have to confess, I've got almost 100 Hours of play into this Demo (A0.72) so far, and I've still got some Story elements to complete.
I've primarily been playing with the Mining aspect of things, trying to figure out how best to design Mine layouts/designs to get to Minerals indicated by your Scanners . . . this could also come into play when designing Bases as you could have underground (complete or segments?) components to your Base.

I'm almost embarrassed to say, that I could easily see a couple more hundred hours of play just in this Demo . . . may well last me until the supposed new Demo version based on a A0.8x build comes out next month (?).

And then, when they get things moved over to Unity 5.x there will be yet another version . . .


Oh, and there is still supposed to be a A0.87 version coming out this month still.


Of the following pics, I've seen briefly some Forest . . . and really that's about it.

I've seen Ocean (no pics), massive plains (first pic in this thread), a River or two, and some rugged terrain (no pics).

Have not seen a hint yet of Canyons, or Forests with lakes, Deserts (?), and definitely haven't gained the ability to build Jet Packs yet . . . it's looking to be a pretty massive game, and I've no major complaints as of yet (I REALLY recommend you give the Demo a shot, it's pretty darn good so far).




Here are some more pics I should have had in my original Post, these are in the game somewhere, I just haven't seen them yet :

Back on point, they just posted an update of what's going on with A0.9 in regards to revamping the Combat system.

There are a lot of things that still need work in the Planet Explorers alpha, but I think going into a0.9, we all knew that we needed to upgrade the combat system dramatically. We started with the animation and went from there. Pretty much all the key animations have been changed, now the player character will have different animations for hit, run, dash, different weapon types (staff, crossbow, dual wield, etc.), and much more. We’ve also included IK and ragdoll animations to give variety to all the different animation sets. We tried to make it so that the player isn’t fighting with the controls. One thing we’re making optional is the ability to attack where the player clicks.

On the AI side, we rewrote/modified the entire behavior tree, plus lots of new animations as well. We want the AI to feel smarter, to be able to dodge swords and bullets, to engage the player more naturally instead of always facing the player and throwing different attacks at a percentage rate as before. We also added in IK hit detection so that each hit from the player generates a visual response from the body of the AI.

Finally, we wanted the combat to have more oomph. Players getting hit by large attacks will fly a long way. Players getting hit with a smaller attack will show reaction from the part of the body that’s been hit. We’re still in the progress of modifying the camera and the UI so that they show a corresponding reaction with each hit, we’ll show off these as they come online. With all of that added together, we hope the combat will become a more satisfying experience for everyone.

Here's a video sans Terrain of what they're doing :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uAccvlFp0Ec


As a side note, I haven't seen this Creature yet, though it's supposed to be in the game.

Actually, there are quite a few Creatures I haven't seen yet - I believe some are Biome dependent, and I haven't seen all the Biomes yet so . . .





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[Subyman]

Looks like Just Cause in space.

 

[wanderer27]

Version A0.87 has just been released :

A0.87 is now live on the beta, includes bug fixes, 4 new cloth types, new buildings, landscape changes to adventure mode, and the tutorial area.

I'm still puttering around with the Demo (A0.72) and have discovered that the Demo version doesn't cover the full spectrum area wise of the game.

Maybe 10%-20% is available is my guess, so I won't be seeing Deserts, Canyons, or a few other Biomes/areas displayed in the pictures -the Demo map is still pretty large though.


I've gotten to the Creation System now, which is not to be confused with the Crafting System.

With the Creation System you can make pretty much anything you want using resources and parts you can craft :

Here's a short video showing a little bit of what you can do with the Creation System :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c3SnUx_J124


Here's a more involved clip showing the actual process and steps to create a vehicle :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlytgSfYzIA



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[wanderer27]

Just a quick bump for those interested.


Planet Explorers is currently on Sale for 50% off on Steam.

Looks like a two day sale or something as there's less than 48 Hours remaining.



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