I understand. It's kind of hard to believe that a year later, the game still isn't up to version 1.0. I knew that they were having a difficult time with development because the staff were scattered, but I figured development would greatly speed up once they all got together. It doesn't seem like that happened, but I know they have been working on the game for a long time and they frequently post on the site to let us know what they've been doing and are working on. In the news that I posted, they did include a link to what show most of what has been changed with the game, you can check it out if you'd like (http://starbounder.org/Version_History/Nightly).

I enjoyed the game when I first played it, but I reached a point where all it seemed that I was doing was looking for higher-tiered ores to craft higher-tiered gear. I was disappointed a few times at least with the nightly builds. I remember the time they took out the vines that were so abundantly found in caves, which made it much harder to get plant fiber which is an important ingredient in the game. It took me a bit of time to realize that I could get plant fiber by farming, but it was still less abundant. I also remember the game crashing at moments, like loading a saved world or character with a new version of the nightly build. Also, visiting some planets contained nothing but sudden death. Still, I understood that the nightly builds are a work in progress. They've added a new race and some more quests. They've made changes to the game's progression, so I think it *could* be more fun and worth it when they release a new update to the stable build. I may have to pop back into the game's nightly builds to see what's changed since the last time I played (months ago). I do hope that a new stable build is "nearly complete" as they say (also note that on the site "nearly" is written in italics) and not something that we'll have to wait another 6-12 months to see. My impression of this news was that we could definitely see something soon.

This kind of ties in with Terraria. Right now, I can't wait for 1.3 to be released, I'm VERY excited about it and have said so on this site numerous times. Unfortunately, we still haven't been told when that will come. I think I saw a post from October that said it wouldn't come "within the next two months." They also seem to be saying that it will be released when they finish with it, but don't want to put the pressure of a time-table on the developers because they want to make sure everything works well.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while waiting can be disappointing, it can also be worth it. A better game can be created or updated if developers have enough time to make sure that the game functions very well and is as bug-free as possible. Terraria developers have done a good job at posting some spoilers and updates in the forums, but I think the developers of Starbound have shown much more transparency in regards to what they've been doing. They update their website frequently, which is great because it lets us know that they're still working very hard on additions we expect to see that will (hopefully) make the game much better.

On another note, wow I'm really good at exceeding that 3,000 character comment limit! LOL

Travis, where did you find more info about what else they have to do on the game?

Tim, I know the feeling! Since characters were constantly wiped, I didn't really face that problem in Starbound, although I do have that issue in Terraria.

Oh yea, duh! I forgot all about that. Thanks, Travis! =)

The unstable (not referring to the nightly build) branch has received the Winter Update. I watched a video about this last night. It is expected that this update will reach the stable branch in the next few weeks (probably before we see Terraria 1.3).

I had my copy of Starbound configured to received the nightly builds branch. Unfortunately, the last time it updated, I got an error about Steam failing to update it due to a "disk read error." I ran a scan disk check, which resulted in no errors for my hard drive. So, I re-installed Starbound. I decided to leave it on the stable build, since it should be receiving the Winter Update soon.

That's cool. I'll share some thoughts with you that I had last night. I'm impatiently waiting for Terraria to update, both mobile and PC versions. Yet when it comes to Starbound, I can definitely wait. It's not that I don't like Starbound, I do really, but "like" is an understatement of how I feel about Terraria. Also, both games have good music and I'm sure I've spent more time playing Terraria than Starbound. However, I grew tired of Starbound's music, whereas I don't feel that way about Terraria. Is that odd or understandable? Maybe it's because both games have their own individual sound, I don't know.