The Road to SAGE: A Guide to the Tech Demo (Part 1)
Hello my dear explorers of the Star Atlas metaverse, here’s your friend explorer Jall.doer. The entire community is in a state of total excitement waiting to hear news about SAGE, the browser version of the Star Atlas game that we hope will be released soon. Waiting is really difficult for all of us who love this metaverse and love its expansion, but we must understand that every project takes time, especially if you want to use your creativity to do something truly revolutionary that changes the way the current generation of players understand video games. In the meantime, we can find valuable information in the Manual, and it is with respect to this that I will dedicate a guide focused primarily on its Roadmap to explore all that we expect for now for these future releases.
A First Step into the Roadmap
In the second delivery of the SAGE Manual, we find a Roadmap of the features we will see for each stage that the game must take before it is considered a complete launch with the gameplay we expect. The stages are:
- Tech Demo
- Pre-Alpha
- V0-P2P Economy
- V1-Land
- V2-Careers
- V3-Crew+Space Stations
- V4-High Risk Zone+End Game
Tech Demo
The technical demo is perhaps the most important stage in the short term for the success of SAGE. Thanks to information from the team, we already know that the community will participate in this stage within the Solana Devnet.
Expectations
It would be healthy for us not to expect a complete game in these stages, it is what it is, a demo to validate that all basic mechanics work well and are viable to integrate with everything that will come later, a first stage where Galia can take shape. There are no doubts that for many who have been waiting for a long time for this release, at first it will seem little, but we must keep in mind that not everything can be seen at first sight, the important thing is to contribute with useful feedback and understand that we will be the first to try a form of game that did not exist until now.
Gameplay within the Tech Demo
In this stage, we can expect the mechanics that provide the foundation for the gameplay of SAGE. It is crucial that each of these mechanics work correctly and smoothly, as they will be the player’s most frequent interactions within the game.
Web-optimized Ship Models with Metadata + Metrics
The ships within Star Atlas are the fundamental asset, without them we will not be able to integrate into any of the gameplay mechanics we expect in the short and medium term. As we can see currently within the Hangar, most of the ships in Star Atlas already have a 3D model created in Canvas, the technology used by the team for the creation of the SAGE interface. These models interact with the game and through animations will allow for an immersive experience within it.
Currently, each of these ships belongs to NFT collections created with the Metaplex technology, this technology allows for collections to be created swiftly but is limited to creating generic characteristics within them. That is why the Star Atlas team is currently carrying out an update of each of the ship collections to turn each ship into a unique and customizable asset. The so-called V2 Configuration is part of the team’s progress in this direction. With individual metadata and information through its interaction with the game, we can see the start of a completely new race of players who take customization to previously unknown extreme levels. It is also one of the fundamental steps to integrate the gameplay of SAGE with what we currently know as Showroom, the first module created in Unreal Engine 5 to visualize our assets within Star Atlas.
Faction Security Zones(5 Star Systems per Faction)
The first interaction within SAGE will begin in the Safe Zone, this is the location within Galia where it is not possible to engage in ship battles. All of the gameplay in this zone is based on the common passive mechanics that the player will be able to perform within the game. Each Faction will only have 5 Solar Systems to start with.
Starbase Construction (T0 to T1)
The Star Bases within Star Atlas are a highly important asset for the faction. It should be noted that we must differentiate between Star Base and Space Station, as they are often confused but are completely different. One is the faction’s operational center within the System, the other is an orbital station that allows for extraction and more efficient resource collection on planets. We also have Central Space Stations, but we will talk about those later.
Only one Star Base can exist per System, allowing for the initiation of mining operations and control of the System by the faction. During the Technical Demo, we will be able to build Level 0 Star Base and a Level 1 from an existing Level 0. This construction will require the collaboration of players within the Faction, testing their ability to expand for the first time with respect to others. From the data resulting from this first experience, the team will be able to balance the amount of resources needed for the construction of these structures and the difficulty of expansion.
Localized Cargo Management
The inventory management currently is as simple as distributing collectibles by type and they are read directly from the wallet. At the time of this first release, the load within SAGE will be associated with the Player Profile that aggregates all the addresses that belong to the specific player and the inventory can be located depending on where they are within the game. There will be collectibles outside the game and those that are located in the localized loads, these cannot be extracted without more, to extract them you will need to transport them directly to the Central Station of your Faction.
Planetary Resource Extraction
One of the most discussed topics among the community is resource acquisition and its variation in future releases. In this first interaction, we will be able to extract resources with our ships from the planets that have been unlocked by the level of our Star Base in the System. The team has stated that in a future experience, it will be the players’ Claim Stakes that will allow us to extract these resources, rather than the faction’s own structures.
Fleet Formation, Disbanding, Spawning, and Management
The creation of Fleets within SAGE is one of the most interesting mechanics we expect in this first release. The statistics of each Fleet will determine its usefulness in different scenarios, so it will be extremely important to study all the possibilities from the start. In this interaction, we will test the mechanics of formation, dissolution, appearance, and management of the Fleets.
Faction Central Space Stations (1 Per Faction)
Central Space Stations are the fundamental structure within each faction. They are the engine and the main market within the game in its early stages. We will start our adventure from them and experience the SAGE economy. During the beginning of the game, these will be the only place where we can create all the resources necessary to maintain our ships and the only bridge between the Galactic Market and the game itself. We will depend on the expansion and the level progress of the Star Bases to create more self-sufficient domains. So far, only one of these can exist per faction.
End of Part 1
Finally, to wrap up this first guide, I must emphasize that all of the information discussed corresponds to details revealed by the team through talks and some written sources, in addition to the manual. Everything revealed in the SAGE manual is subject to change and should be taken into consideration when making any decisions. For now, I bid farewell to my friends in the metaverse. Soon we will delve deeper into this first delivery of SAGE and discover more of its short-term potential.
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