Star Valor with procedurally-generated galaxy, available now on Steam

[TheLostSwede]

Star Valor is a Space Action RPG game that puts you in control of your own spaceship and destiny. Explore a vast open-world procedurally generated galaxy as you make your way from a nobody to the biggest name in the galaxy. But be warned, in a universe where the last of humanity is ruled by the alien beings that nearly made them extinct, wealth and power don't come easy.

Carefully choose which factions you join or go independent and make your own friends and foes along the way. Earn credits through a variety of activities such as mining asteroids for valuable materials and minerals, completing various missions, trading goods, salvaging shipwrecks, crafting weapons, claiming bounties on pirates, or becoming a pirate yourself. Gain experience and level up your skills while unlocking new options for subsequent playthroughs.




Features:

• Open-World Exploration in a Procedurally Generated Galaxy - Each new game is completely different from the last with players getting to choose how big or small a galaxy is.
• Dynamic and Easy to Learn Combat System - Engage in head-to-head dogfights or massive fleet battles.
• Craft Your Own Weapons - Craft weapons using materials found from shipwrecks and mining asteroids and add your own modifiers to create unique weapons that cater to your needs.
• Over 160 Different Pieces of Ship Equipment - A vast selection of varying ship equipment to allow you to customize your ship how you see fit and give it the perfect loadout.
• Over 80 Different Ships - Over 80 different ships across various classes and roles to choose from, ranging from small Fighters to big Battleships.
• Choose New Character Abilities as You Level Up - As you level up, you gain skill points that can be allocated to the skills and skill trees of your choice to create the character of your play style.
• Hire a Crew to Improve your Ship and Gunners to Operate Turrets - As you grow and you gain a bigger ship you will need to hire a crew to help run it along with gunners to operate turrets.
• Make allies or Hire Mercenaries to Help You - Become a fleet commander and assign allies to your fleet to help you in combat or alternatively you can hire mercenaries to help out… for a price.
• Unlock Perks to Open New Play Styles - Complete specific tasks or make particular choices to unlock new perks granting different and various new play styles.
• Story and Procedural Quest System - Embark on a story that spans throughout the galaxy or take on a large variety of quests with a procedural quest system.
• Seven Factions to Interact With - Interact with seven different factions each with their own agenda. Allying yourself with one may make others your enemy.
• Wars Between Factions - Become a part of wars and conflicts between factions as they struggle for power.
• Arena Mode for Combat-Focused Challenges - An additional arena mode for you to test your combat abilities as you face off against waves of enemies that grow in power as you progress.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[ZoneDymo]

sigh...procedurally generated.....just about the most lazy empty thing devs can do.

 

[dirtyferret]

sigh...procedurally generated.....just about the most lazy empty thing devs can do.

besides permanent early access as to avoid professional reviews telling the gaming community how bad the game really is since most sites will only review a finished product?

 

[The Quim Reaper]

sigh...procedurally generated.....just about the most lazy empty thing devs can do.

Lol, what did you expect the Game Devs to do, for a game set in the infinite of Space?

Go and survey it, or something.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

eeewww that combat.

Someone will enjoy it. good luck!

 

[TheLostSwede]

eeewww that combat.

Someone will enjoy it. good luck!

Got to cover some smaller games too...

 

[WorringlyIndifferent]

sigh...procedurally generated.....just about the most lazy empty thing devs can do.

Like Minecraft, the most popular and successful game in history by an overwhelming margin?

besides permanent early access as to avoid professional reviews telling the gaming community how bad the game really is since most sites will only review a finished product?

"Professional reviews" mean far less than community reviews. Rotten Tomatoes is a great example of that - anything that "professional" reviewers disagree with from a political or social stance gets a bad rating, even when actual people love it (ie The Terminal List - horrible "professional" review rating while it gets a 95% from real audiences). Game reviewers aren't as overt (yet), but the point still stands; audience reviews matter, critic reviews objectively don't, unless you know the critic you're looking at shares your tastes exactly.

Bizarre to see people crap on a game they've never played and don't intend to. I'd like to see TPU cover more small games like this, since this is the only way we can get away from a tiny handful of devs and publishers controlling the entire industry and shoveling rehashed garbage year after year and making games worse as they go.

 

[robot zombie]

Lol, what did you expect the Game Devs to do, for a game set in the infinite of Space?

Not really. I expect them to use their creativity to meaningfully convey infinity. This doesnt mean it should actually be infinite. Theres no point to it being infinite if it isnt fittingly diverse. Suitable diversity for keeping infinite intrigue isnt possible. Procedurally generated "infinity" is both closer to the actual thing and less interesting than it.

The best video games have always been made with a lot of thought put into conveying things that actually are much shallower than they may seem due to technical limitations. The art of faking it is critical, same as in any show or movie.

The procedural tech doesnt really overcome the limit. In a conceptual sense it is sort of infinite. But its infinitely repetitive and once you acquire the patterns the illusion is gone. Procedural generation ultimately fails to *feel* infinite. I mean... a loop can technically be traversed infinitely. Procedural generation basically puts you on a loop where sections are always shifting different parameters in a fixed set in order to hide the limits to what variety it can generate. It is still fake infinity. The infinity of space is almost entirely incomparable to proc gen space. And proc gen isnt a free lunch. More often than not players bottom out on it and realize how small their little infinity is in actuality far too soon to be worth it.

 

[WorringlyIndifferent]

Procedurally generated "infinity" is both closer to the actual thing and less interesting than it.

Well, no. See: Minecraft. Most popular game in history, and procedurally generated infinite world. Technically not infinite, but the worlds are ~60 million by 60 million meters, and a unique world is generated for each of 2^64 seeds, so in the practical sense of exploring a video game world, each one is effectively infinite and you have an effectively infinite number of worlds to explore.

 

[robot zombie]

Well, no. See: Minecraft. Most popular game in history, and procedurally generated infinite world. Technically not infinite, but the worlds are ~60 million by 60 million meters, and a unique world is generated for each of 2^64 seeds, so in the practical sense of exploring a video game world, each one is effectively infinite and you have an effectively infinite number of worlds to explore.

Big difference in interactability. The sandboxing is a huge part of what actually keeps that interesting, no? Its about what can do with those environmental features. The variety of experiences available are much wider than usual. It calls upon the players creativity. I feel like other proc gen games try to capture that aspect, but they arent going for a full free-building game and lose some of the advantages that minecraft has.

Good point still - I had forgotten minecraft. But again, minecraft is basically all about building and exploring. This is a proc gen space rpg with presumably many more linear elements and modules making the sandbox functions nessesarily more complex and thus more curtailed. Throw proc gen on that, I dont see how it doesnt get repetitive. Only so many ways to approach those tasks, with only so many possible outcomes. Thats where the illusion dies with generated infinity, for me. I actually enjoy minecraft, but thats because its infinite like a blank notebook, not the vastness of ever reaching stuff.

 

[Garrus]

This looks cool! Thanks Swede

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

This doesnt mean it should actually be infinite. Theres no point to it being infinite if it isnt fittingly diverse. Suitable diversity for keeping infinite intrigue isnt possible.

This makes me think of No Man' Sky, its not infinite exactly but close. Not even sure Eve Online is Infinite. Personally not a fan of minecraft, its too 8-bit looking for me.

 

[defaultluser]

Lol, what did you expect the Game Devs to do, for a game set in the infinite of Space?

Go and survey it, or something.

Procedural-generating a game where you fight and explore a whole galaxy gets boring after awhile - I cant see there being that many popular Elite clones out there.

I'd rather have a fixed space (also machine-generated,but then more personalized by content creators - other bonus: I can actually lookup the secrets on subsequent playthroughs.

A Diablo map is about as large a random play-field as you will ever want in an action game - making things galaxy-sized will just frustrate most players.

 

[Mysteoa]

This makes me think of No Man' Sky, its not infinite exactly but close. Not even sure Eve Online is Infinite. Personally not a fan of minecraft, its too 8-bit looking for me.

Just put some Minecraft shaders and run RT, and see your PC struggle while looking realistic.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Just put some Minecraft shaders and run RT, and see your PC struggle while looking realistic.

Realistic? HAHAHA it will still look pixelated 8-bit, not talking about graphics .

 

[Mysteoa]

Realistic? HAHAHA it will still look pixelated 8-bit, not talking about graphics .

If THIS looks pixelated for you, I'm afraid to ask what kind of eyes you have.

 

[Steevo]

Like Minecraft, the most popular and successful game in history by an overwhelming margin?


"Professional reviews" mean far less than community reviews. Rotten Tomatoes is a great example of that - anything that "professional" reviewers disagree with from a political or social stance gets a bad rating, even when actual people love it (ie The Terminal List - horrible "professional" review rating while it gets a 95% from real audiences). Game reviewers aren't as overt (yet), but the point still stands; audience reviews matter, critic reviews objectively don't, unless you know the critic you're looking at shares your tastes exactly.

Bizarre to see people crap on a game they've never played and don't intend to. I'd like to see TPU cover more small games like this, since this is the only way we can get away from a tiny handful of devs and publishers controlling the entire industry and shoveling rehashed garbage year after year and making games worse as they go.

Wasn’t there another space procedural generated game that No Mans Sky didn’t make it big due to being a overhyped overpromised under delivery of buggy issues?
Remember games released on disc that were complete and you owned them to mod and host your own servers?

I do.

 

[robot zombie]

If THIS looks pixelated for you, I'm afraid to ask what kind of eyes you have.

The materials look pretty realistic. But the grid is still obvious - theres no polygonal granularity. Just perfectly-fit straight edges and right angles. Real life isnt made of big cubes.

"Not talking about graphics" was the tell. Its not a matter of lighting or material behavior, but the fact that nothing in real life is shaped like that. Visual design, not graphics. Most things in the game are basically giant depth-extruded square pixels.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

If THIS looks pixelated for you, I'm afraid to ask what kind of eyes you have.

My eyes are bad for sure, but do you see those huge square blocks? They are bigger than a normal pixel, so it all looks like a magnified pixelated 8 bit game from the 70s.

The materials look pretty realistic. But the grid is still obvious - theres no polygonal granularity. Just perfectly-fit straight edges and right angles. Real life isnt made of big cubes.

"Not talking about graphics" was the tell. Its not a matter of lighting or material behavior, but the fact that nothing in real life is shaped like that. Visual design, not graphics. Most things in the game are basically giant depth-extruded square pixels.

This. Exactly This.

 

[Mussels]

sigh...procedurally generated.....just about the most lazy empty thing devs can do.

Not when done right, some games do it well (DRG)

 

[kapone32]

Why does this Game remind me of Asteroids on steroids?

 

[Oblivion-330]

Looks a lot like Space Pirates and Zombies (spaz)

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Not when done right, some games do it well (DRG)

PG is used with parameters, the more input the better output, such things increase what appears to be attention to detail.

 

[Garrus]

Why does this Game remind me of Asteroids on steroids?

It looks like a new Escape Velocity, the famous Mac game.

 

[R-T-B]

Lol, what did you expect the Game Devs to do, for a game set in the infinite of Space?

Go and survey it, or something.

Basically procedural generation in space games with a large universe is not lazy, it's neccesary.