A new patch for the Early Access game Astral Terra is out:

Town Update Live!

Greetings friends! As promised, here is the Town Update which introduces the much asked for Town biome. There have been a few adjustments to how the biomes are formed. This was needed in order to introduce the Town biome into the world generator. Towns now generate at the 0 point in the world. Previously players were spawning around the 500 X and Z point in the world. We moved this initial new player spawn now so that new players will spawn in or next to Town. Towns form between the Barrens/Canyons biome and the Forest biome. Since there is still some randomness to where players end up, you may end up on the edge of a biome. Take a look around and you should see a town close as they are formed in huge rifts between the two biomes. There are only a few NPC's in town initially. We will continue to add to the complexity of the town biome over the following months as well as add guards to help keep away wandering monsters. ;) There are some new interactive vendors in town as well, and in the future there will be some starter quests. We also built the new Climbing functionality but it is still being tweaked. ;) There are also a few items that still aren't quite ready that we have been working on, but are very close. Expect some fine tuning and a HotFix patch later in the week. If you have any issues with your world generating please try a new seed that you have not run before. If you would like to regenerate a world from a seed you like, simply go to the game install folder, Worlds/yourseed and delete the folders with the seed name you would like to regenerate. Creating a new UI button to properly delete these worlds is on our to-do list.

Patch Notes for version 0.6

• Added new town biome.
• Added new food cart to Town.
• Added new general Merchant to Town.
• Added climbing functionality in a limited capacity to ladders. Once more polished, climbing will be added to other items and more ladders introduced. Press F when touching a ladder to climb it. Press F or jump to get off of the ladder, or climb to the top and press up or hold up to climb up to the top.
• Added new Face Cam for the Character Customizer panel. Open up the customizer while playing with N key to see it in action.
• Added LOW quality back to the game. Low Quality disables shadows and can give a boost of 10+ fps to the game for those right on the edge of getting 30.
• Fixed Race descriptions in the create character scene.
• Fixed text on Terraformer panel for types and camera.
• Fixed shader on crafting cart potions.
• Fixed sell amount text on store sell panel by increasing size and changing the color.
• Increased gravity on players by 0.3 and reduced jump power slightly.
• Reduced Grottonoid and Bloodfiend spawn density.

Chalgyr goes in-depth with the sandbox RPG Astral Terra in a new preview.

Dungeons and Dragons meets Minecraft is about the only way I can think of describing the sandbox/survival/RPG game called Astral Terra. It’s currently in Alpha and very rough around the edges but it could hold some promise if the developers focus on their goals and try not to do too much.

Astral Terra uses a now familiar voxel based world that is fully destructible which i've seen a few games employ with varying degrees of success. I’m not entirely sure how to approach this one because it blends many different game elements but doesn't seem to fully employ any of them. It has some builder/sandbox elements that allow you to harvest resources as you explore your environment like wood and ore. I will warn you now the game is rough and your first time mining a rock will be a slightly startling experience as the object comes flying at your head! These materials can be used at a crafting station to build better weapons, stuff for your home or more advanced crafting stations for more advanced items. So far, pretty standard for builder/sandbox games like Minecraft. It gets weird when you summon this crafting station with magic.

Unlike a traditional builder/sandbox games that makes you work for everything, in Astral Terra you are given spells depending on what character you chose along with your initial crafting station for free. You can also create huge, majestic bases right off the bat, complete with marble staircases and windows without having to first find the raw resources! Building is done through a terraforming mode that can either be used from the view of your character or through a very handy third person, freeform camera mode. The controls are a little confusing at first but once you get the hang of it the mechanics are quite powerful.

More information.

MMORPG has checked out the survival sandbox RPG Astral Terra:

Astral Terra is an Indie, fantasy-themed sandbox RPG developed by Tethys Interactive that has been in early access on Steam since November 10th. At this stage in its development, Astral Terra is in Alpha and allows players to get a look at the most basic elements of the game with an eye to the future. The future of Astral Terra will include such things as procedurally generated world created by players, complete with survival elements, character progression and much more.

[...]

For The Future

The team has a lot of plans for the future that will include a lot more RPG and MMO elements:

• More items to craft
• Mobs(Bloodfiend ready to go, new unique mobs on the way)
• More advanced Combat and Skills
• Multiple armor types
• Additional Character Races(Human, Elemental)
• Character Customization-Changing hair, body type, etc
• Starter Missions
• PVP
• Dungeons and quests
• MOB Factions(friend or foe) and Rewards

For the short amount of time I have played Astral Terra it was fun if a bit challenging for someone who is not well acquainted with construction games of this sort. That said, it has so much potential for people who like to build, construct, create and survive in an open sandbox environment.

MMORPG have uploaded a 9:47 minute playthrough of Astral Terra.

Thanks Eye.

Here are three gameplay videos made by Ghelmaron for the Survival-Sandbox RPG Astral Terra:

loading...

loading...

loading...

Astral Terra is a video game by Tethys Interactive that takes place in a randomly generated fantasy world. Gather resources, craft items, explore the land and build structures. As of the time this video is uploaded the game is still in very early development with a lot of gameplay features not available.

-> Steam Page

Astral Terra has been released as Early Access game on Steam:

A Procedurally Generated World-Crafter with RPG Elements!
Unlimited Terraforming and Building in your own Smooth Voxel World.

Explore, Adventure, Craft, Build, Survive. How will you shape your world?
Astral Terra is a fantasy-themed sandbox world-crafting game for PC with RPG and survival elements. Set in a beautiful smooth voxel world that’s generated on the fly and completely editable, no two players will have the same experience, as everything from the skills you learn to the world you play in is fully unique and customizable. Explore the endless realm of the Fae Sanctum as a Planar Warden and pick out a piece of land to build your fortress via your unlimited power to terraform and build. Gather resources for crafting and building or just explore the various biomes for the sake of discovery. From character progression with abilities and powers, to the terrains and the environments, everything is procedural and editable! Shape your world and your character the way YOU desire! Feel free to invite or join friends to collaborate, Astral Terra allows the player to host their game online.

CORE FEATURES

• Play Your Way! Shape Your World! No starting Archetypes – your character, a Planar Warden, grows the way you want them based on your choices(skills) and discoveries(items). Pick from 3 starting races: The Fae, Dark Elf, or Dwarf for character races.
• Unlimited Terraforming. You have lots of choices for editing your environment using the Kinumon Astra(Magic Cube). The tool is one of your core world powers so gathering materials is not needed. Add or remove land, change textures and more. No restrictions on terraforming.

• Unlimited Build Tools. You can build using multiple shapes, materials & prefabs. The tool is one of your core world powers so gathering materials is not needed. No grinding required.

• Next Gen Dynamically Generated Worlds-With a robust modern smooth voxel system, our worlds are generated on the fly every time a player starts a new game (or load up your saved world that you already worked on). Simply put in a seed and see a new world every time!

• Discovery & Adventure-Unlock the mysteries of the world through exploration and discovery. Explore underground caves & find rare minerals for crafting.

• Mining & Crafting-Gather ingredients & resources from combat drops OR from mining your land to build new weapons and items. Check our wiki for more details.

• Skills & XP-Gain XP through combat, harvesting & exploration. Choose skills based on the type of player you want to be. Check our wiki for more detailed spell listings (basic powers and spell tomes available at launch, new advanced skill system coming soon).

• Solo & Coop-Play alone or Invite friends to join your world or travel to other players worlds with the in-game server browser. Sign in, make a character, host your game. Your friends will see your game and can join you – all done seamlessly without third party software (online private and public mode, single player coming soon). Online play is set to a current limit of 10 players per room/world. [...]

Thanks Eye.

It looks like Tethys Interactive is still working on Astral Terra. After the failed kickstarter I thought the game was finished. Here is the latest developer update from January.

Greetings fellow gamers, apologies for the delay in updates. We had some very tough family things that we went through recently, and now Amy and I are expecting parents (we’re actually adopting). Anywho, thanks for having patience and understanding and supporting us! While its been slow, I and two other developers work on Astral Terra daily.

The good news is Multiplayer is now functional in a limited capacity. The bad news is we have had a couple developers over the last 6 months come on board very enthusiastically, only to find out later they couldn’t actually do the work they were hired for and then they just disappear – which is a major factor in our recent delays. It’s unfortunate but we are still new at this business and also overly optimistic so I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Anywho, Terraform tools are now networked we just have a few nasty bugs to sort out before we push the update to you guys. Our new networked method is a bit limiting in some ways as well so while its working, we are trying to make it better before letting you guys try it out. We brought on a new developer last week, Addison, who is also a Unity enthusiast and skilled programmer, in order to speed up the process of getting this update into your guys hands and also getting the Alpha to Steam. Once we get this character and mob syncing issue sorted out we’ll post some new screenshots of the MP in action, as well as some of the new content players can use/buy/craft. Farms now grow, special enemies now spawn at night instead of the day, attacking mobs works more consistently now, new spells have been added and a plethora of other things have been refined or added. Thanks again for your patience, we will have another update for you guys soon!

It has been a while since I covered another failed kickstarter game called Astral Terra. The games developer is still making the game, and posted an update last year.

So if any members were interested in the game read on.

Greetings Kickstarter Backers!  Its been a minute since our last update on here, so we wanted to check in and give you the latest.   The single player portion of the game has been live via our website since May and our Founders have been instrumental in helping the game evolve by providing valuable feedback. For anyone who missed it and still wants to get in on it, you can obtain Founders packs by visiting the Founders Page via astralterra.com. 

Multiplayer is coming along nicely (finally) and we will be making an announcement soon about going live on Steam Early Access. We ran into a number of unexpected roadblocks over the last few months but things are now starting to finally shape up. :) We also wanted to let you know about a ton of new content that will be pushed with the next game update - mainly goodies for your building endeavors but also some new crafting stations, recipes and weapons. We have changed the spell system up a bit and players now have homing spells! There have been some really neat changes to the environment, tweaks on our multiple biomes and overall bug fixes and optimizations. As always, we greatly appreciate your support and continued patience in the development of this independent project. See you all on the planes soon!

Seems I missed another kickstater update last month for Astral Terra. The new update has information you can now play the single player Alpha.

Play Astral Terra Alpha Single Player Today!

Astral Terra Alpha Single Player is now available, a massive voxel engine update with Caves and Waterfalls, as well as a new monster – the Bloodfiend!

Greetings gamers and gratitude for your continued interest in Astral Terra. The single player portion of the game is now live for all Founders (people who pre-ordered)! You can still obtain Founders packs by visiting the Founders Page but there are a limited amount left (a little over only 200 keys remain). We would like to stress, however, that Astral Terra is still in a very early Alpha Phase. 

Tethys Interactive finally has a new update on the kickstarter webpage for Astral Terra with news you can now buy Founders Packs to help fund the game.

Secure Your Head Start, Early Access, and Final Release Keys among other Special Limited Edition Perks!  

Many of you have inquired about contributing to the development of Astral Terra as well as how to get in on the Alpha and Beta testing phases. Your chance has arrived! The Founders Program has launched on our website and we are offering 3 different packs ranging from $15-$45, which will secure your key in our Head Start Program and entitle you to other special goodies. Head Start keys will be sent out prior to Steam Early Access public release and should arrive in your inboxes at the end of April 2014, next month. Your support in our Founders Program also helps fund the continued development of the game, prepare for public release and give you the chance to help shape the final version of game by being directly involved in early development.  

Along with the Founders Program, we have released our latest video update showing off some of the recent game updates. Check out the new video below, Founders Pack options and the Founders Pack FAQ on the new Founders Pack Page.

They even included a new video update with more news on the project.

Video Update of the development

This is the sixth video update of the development of Astral Terra. Astral Terra is a smooth Voxel Sandbox Fantasy Survival Game (Minecraft / Morrowind / Rust hybrid). Adventurers travel 7 different planes/worlds to seek out treasure, power and resources used to develop their characters, survive the dangers of the planes and build a home while shaping the world into their vision. Our world is completely editable and dynamic, similar to Minecraft, using a powerful smooth Voxel Terrain System. This update includes the new dwarves, Alloy shader framework, new day and night system, farming, polish and bug fixes as well as additional content. Astral Terra is an Indie game being developed by the studio Tethys Interactive.

Tethys Interactive talks about the new drawf race, gane lore, and more in the latest post-funding update for Astral Terra. Here is  a small snip of the update.

Dwarves, Lore, Pre-Order and More!

Greetings Friends! We have been hard at work with so many different pieces of the game as well as continually interacting with our wonderful supporters. Development continues on multiplayer integration, crafting and harvesting systems, combat and player mechanics, bug fixes and polish as well as building out new zones, quests, powers, monsters and loads of other fun stuff! Here are a few new developments we are announcing for the first time!

ALLOY SHADERS IMPLEMENTED

We are thrilled to announce a new partnership with Rust Ltd, makers of Alloy, the most powerful, amazing, and AAA graphics quality shader package for Unity. You can check out the Alloy website here (http://www.alloy.rustltd.com/) where you can test out their material demo. Really amazing work these guys have done and continue to do! We can’t wait to show the Alloy system off more as development progresses! 

NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

After a lot of research, discussion and testing by our wonderful network specialist Matt Magginnis, we have decided on our multiplayer/network architecture and we will be using uLink! Matt has been busy implementing networking components within our procedural terrain with the end goal being the multiplayer component being ready for Early Access. We as gamers know how important it is to be able to play with friends and we are excited to share it with you all as soon as Early Access hits! 

FOUNDERS PROGRAM – EARLY ACCESS KEYS & OTHER PERKS

Based on your awesome feedback and requests, we have been finalizing our “Founders Program” that will launch via our website(astralterra.com) late next week. The “Founders Program” will offer early access steam keys(3rd party DRM Free), special founders forum access for interacting with us directly, as well as other special perks only offered before the game officially releases on Steam Early Access. Please make sure you have signed up for our newsletter via astralterra.com to stay informed on the latest!

OFFICIAL ASTRAL TERRA FORUMS NOW OPEN

We have upgraded our forums and opened them back up to everyone that wants to get involved! You can visit community.astralterra.com or navigate to the “Forum” Menu above to register! We hope to see you there! 

After the failed kickstarter for Astral Terra development still continues on, and Tethys Interactive has a new update about being Steam Greenlit.

Astral Terra is Greenlit and a Dwarf Arrives

Gratitude for all the support, votes and sharing that our followers did to get this project Greenlit. There are many of us who just can’t wait to play this game (the development team included) and it is a great privilege to be able to make something like this dream of ours and have the opportunity to put in in front of 65 million players. Gratitude to both the community and Valve for giving us a chance.

This week we finished up the the male dwarf color concept and model sheets. The female dwarf is in production now and we will be fleshing them out to be 3d playable avatars in the following weeks. Here is the final color concept for the male dwarf.

Astral Terra has failed to get funded as seems to be the trend with a majority of RPG kickstarters lately. Here is the latest post-funding update with the details.

Campaign Overview, Greenlight Excitement and Future Plans

Gratitude to all who have backed, shared, stayed involved and encouraged us throughout this campaign. Though we didn't make our funding goal, the time here has been extremely valuable in other ways! Most importantly, we have had incredible support and insight on a variety of topics from our over 400 backers, Steam users, patient YouTube lets players, various Indie sites and other Kickstarter campaigns. We have gained new followers, made lots of new friends, learned so much about crowdfunding in general, PR shortcomings, organization, and so much more.

#24 on Steam Greenlight 

With your continued support, we have reached a nice spot in the top 25 out of over 1400 other games on Steam Greenlight and hope to be Greenlit in the next batch of releases chosen by Steam! Please continue to tell everyone you know about our Steam page so we can keep our ranking! Being greenlit would be huge for us and would allow us to offer Early Access soon. 

Moving Forward

Since funding is still a priority to get this game finished and into your hands, we are planning a “relaunch” of our crowdfunding campaign through IndieGoGo in coming weeks(late January-early February). We will drastically reduce our funding goal, reprioritize mechanics and refine our reward tiers before a relaunch. We would also offer current Kickstarter backers a special perk if you follow us over to IndieGoGo. Please share your thoughts and suggestions for us on this! 

Stay In Touch

The feedback, support and involvement here and on Steam has been incredible and invaluable! We have learned a lot and have answered a lot of open questions. You all have already helped us in development with your suggestions and we want to keep you involved!

Tethys Interactive has posted a new update for Astral Terra talking about a Steam update, dwarf concepts, and new team member.

Greetings All and Happy Hump Day!

We are down to the final 3 days of our Kickstarter campaign! Thanks again to all who have stuck with us during the 40 days we were here and to all of those just finding about us and continuing to back, share and get involved with us despite the campaign outlook.

Steam Greenlight

We are up to over 8,800 Yes votes and are sitting at #64 of the Top 100! Please continue to help spread the word about our Steam Greenlight page! We are so hopeful that Astral Terra may be Greenlit during the next round if we can keep the momentum going. Help us get there! Every vote counts!  

Who doesn't love Dwarves?

As mentioned in Update #6, we had been trying to narrow down the next playable character race for Astral Terra. Due to the overwhelming feedback shared by the community here and on Steam, we decided on DWARVES! Our character concept artist Marius Andrei has been busy since our announcement with character concepts that we wanted to share with you! Here are a round of concepts for the male dwarf (female concepts to follow). Our next update will include the final color version.

Tethys Interactive has posted a new kickstarter update for Astral Terra with news the game has nine days left to get funded. I have to say it's not looking good.

9 Days Left, New Interview and Screenies

9 days to go and we are 20% funded. Though it doesn't look like we will meet our funding goal in just over a week, we are going to keep pushing forward and we appreciate those of you who have stuck with us and continue to encourage us and help spread the word! If we got a major outlet or two to pick up our story, things could change, but we haven't caught that break yet. 

Many of you are probably wondering what happens next. We do have a few back up plans in place and will definitely keep you all in the loop of how we decide to move forward. We still need funding, so we will continue to pursue our options! 

Latest Interview with Chris Wightman
Dolores at RX6 Gaming was nice enough to contact us last week for an interview regarding the development of Astral Terra. You can read that interview HERE. 

Steam Update
We are up to over 7,000 Yes votes and up to 88% of the way to the Top 100! If you haven't checked out the Steam Greenlight page, please take a look, vote us up, and let your friends know! Every vote counts! 

Tethys Interactive talks about the Dwarves in the latest update for Astral Terra.

The Dwarves are Coming!

Greetings & Happy Saturday! We hope that anyone celebrating Thanksgiving this week enjoyed their time off work and time spent with family and friends :) We have been busy with development on many exciting and upcoming features we will be sharing in future updates. For now though, lets talk about Dwarves.

Who doesn't love Dwarves?

We have been trying to narrow down the next playable character race for Astral Terra. Due to the overwhelming feedback shared by the community here and on Steam, it is clear the next race we should develop is DWARVES! We have added a new character concept artist Marius Andrei to the team and he is already working on the character sketches that we hope to post in one of next week's updates.

New Building Tools

We have new building tools in development! Our quick terraforming tool is great for on the fly terrain editing, and our build mode works well for environment sculpting but still needed a more refined tools for voxel building. The new tool set in development will allow players to use a multitude of voxel shapes, allow for saving of structures, scaling, auto leveling of the ground as well as many other tools that will make the voxel construction mode much more intuitive and fun for players.

Steam Update

We are up to over 6,600 Yes votes and up to 73% of the way to the Top 100! If you haven't checked out the Steam Greenlight page, please take a look and vote us up. Every vote counts and we want to keep the momentum rolling!

14 days to go!

We are down to the last 2 weeks of the campaign and have a long way to go. We have over 300 backers now and need to keep asking for your help to spread the word and let everyone know about this game! Thanks for your efforts on our behalf as well as your continued encouragement and feedback! You are helping shape the game :) Thank YOU!

Tethys Interactive has posted update number five for Astral Terra were they talk about video spotlights, a Steam update, and a new Live Stream.

Ongoing Video Spotlights

We will be posting a new video spotlight every few days throughout the remainder of the campaign that focuses on specific aspects of game features for Astral Terra. We will be posting these on the main Kickstarter project page under the links to the Updates in a section called “Game Features - Video Spotlight”. The first spotlight available now and included here in this update is focused on Terraforming and it highlights some of the different methods players can use to terraform the environment. 

Our next video spotlight coming in a few days will focus specifically on building. We would love to know what aspect YOU would like to see in future videos. Please feel free to leave us a comment about your suggestions! 

Steam Update

The Yes votes and exposure continues to build on our Steam Greenlight page and we couldn't be more excited about the feedback and comments the community there continues to share with us! We are up to over 6,000 Yes votes and up to 68% of the way to the Top 100 in just 16 days! If you haven't checked out the Steam Greenlight page, please take a look and vote us up. Every vote counts! 

Live Stream & Lets Play Videos

Astral Terra will be featured in a Livestream with Maevrim at Twitch.tv this Friday night starting at 8:30pm ET. She was also nice enough to write up an article about the game & feature us on the front page of GameGeex! We love support like this! Thank you Maevrim! 

We also released a pre-alpha press build to a few selected Lets Play YouTubers and other members of the press this week, so we are expecting more of those to start popping up any time now. If you are an active Youtuber, streamer, blogger with a decent following, we want to talk to you! Please comment or message us and we will get a build to you! The idea here is obviously exposure and we need everything we can get!

Tethys Interactive posted a new update for Astral Terra that goes into detail about the games procedural voxel terrain, and includes a new Q&A.

Voxel Terrain Details &  A Juicy Q&A

Thanks for the continued support - we really appreciate it. We are going to need a huge push from all of you in order to reach our goal by the end of the campaign. It's going to be a very long road, but we know it's possible with 28 days left as of the time of this posting. 

Procedural Voxel Terrain

For our first big update, we want to show off thee sheer scale of the game world when a new seed is created, specifically in the Fey Vale. Here is a nice screenshot showing that off:

(Voxel Terrain Map)

If you're one of those techie people interested in how we are able to adapt voxels and use them how we do in Astral Terra, then allow us to explain. The terrain in our worlds is made of voxels, generated on the fly using Marching Cubes, and that voxel data is stored (for example broke into chunks). We are also using standard 3D-type meshes as well for many of the terrain decorations such as tree's, bushes, grass, pre-fabricated buildings and dungeons. 

However, the player can build out of voxels as well using cubes or a clay like blob method. You'll probably notice that, graphically, it looks a lot different (in our opinion, more detailed and better) than most voxel-based games that are blocky and overly saturated colors. We really put a lot of work into making the game look great, as well as play great.

Detailed Q&A with RootGamer.com

Check it out right here - http://rootgamer.com/8093/interviews/interview-astral-terra-developers

They asked a lot of good questions, so you all should definitely go check that out when you get a chance!

Tethys Interactive has posted the third update for Astral Terra that goes over the first week of the project, and talks bout a new enemy concept called,"Death in the Dark".

First Week and New Enemy Concept Spotlight: Death in the Dark!

Greetings and Gratitude everyone!

It’s been a full week since we first launched this campaign and the support we've received here, on Steam, forums and just from random friends and strangers across the internet has been overwhelming. We couldn't be happier with the feedback we have received and have already worked on improving our existing build of the game as much as we can before sending it out for press previews this week!

New Enemy Concept, Death in the Dark

We've done a pretty good job of highlighting the environment and our world editing features thus far, but it wouldn't be a very engaging RPG (or game, for that matter) without something to fear, now would it? We've got a new enemy in the works, tentatively named “Death in the Dark” and you can check out a first glimpse from one of our artists, Adam Roth. The beat is inspired by the angler fish, mixed with a panther, plus a fungal disease. Make sense? Didn't think so, that’s why we have a picture of this badass beast!

(Click the link for the Image)

Over time, many creatures have wandered through the barriers between the mundane world and the realm of shadow. All that stay too long are warped by their contact with this plane of darkness and evil. These beasts are no exception. They are the product of generations of panthers infected by the dark twisted fungi of the shadow plane. Fusing with the fungus, their bodies have warped into hideous forms, yet the magic of the shadow realm fails to grant them death. Thus, these cunning predators have a unique arsenal of new weapons to aid them as they stalk their unwitting prey. The luminous fungal tendrils lure unsuspecting victims with the promise of warmth and light, only to lead to a toothy demise. As well as its luring ability, this beast defends itself by releasing a cloud of mind-altering chemicals. This miasma confuses the minds of its foes, causing them to strike out at shapes that exist only in their minds.

Tethys Interactive has posted the second update for Astral Terra that talks about tech updates, and shows off some new screenshots.

Tech Updates, More Screenshots and Initial Press Coverage!

Greetings all of you wonderful backers, you!

It has been a very busy first few days for us here at Tethys Interactive. We had always heard that running a Kickstarter is like a full-time job, but we never really fully understood that statement until we made the decision to start one for ourselves. Despite the struggles we've faced early on, it's been going great so far and we are so happy with the overwhelmingly positive reception Astral Terra has received thus far!

Two of the main things we endeavored to do with these updates are: 1) Deliver them frequently (but not so much that you get annoyed ) and 2) Provide informative and interesting updates. We don't want to just post an update letting you know that we're still here, you already know that! Now, let's get into it...

Technology Updates

Games are amazing works of art, but they're also marvels of modern technology. As such, we are always working to make our game not just look and play better, but run better under the hood. Most of this stuff the average player will be entirely unaware of, but we want to keep you updated on the specifics of our development process none-the-less. Here's the gist of what we've been working on lately:

• Smoother Voxel Transitions: Astral Terra isn't like most procedural games, voxel games, sandbox games, or really any type of game. We have a lot of things at work here and it's very difficult to get it all working in tandem without any hiccups. One of the best new things that we've accomplished that is, admittedly minor and mostly aesthetic, is the transition from one biome to another. Previously, if you were in the forest and transitioned over to a snowy area, then you would notice jagged lines and an overall unfinished look - but now it's nice and smooth! 

• New Memory Optimization: Not too much to say here, the game is being optiomized endlessly to make sure it runs as smooth as possible. Progress is coming along just fine!

• New Triplanar Shader: This means that textures in general are starting to look a lot nicer and sharper across the board. Higher quality textures = overall better looking game. We are extremely proud of the level of visual fidelty we've manage to achieve so far and by the time the game releases, it will be even greater!

• Occlusion Culling Optimization: This really goes a long way to improving how the game runs. Basically it means that the game calculates and displays drawscales a lot more efficiently so your FPS doesn't take as big of a hit, but it still looks great. 

• Climbing plants: You've probably seen in a lot of our videos and screens that we have lots of trees and plants in the Fey areas, as expected, but we've expanded this overall. Stuff like vines and climbing and hanging in areas now and caves have stalagtites! It really adds a lot to the overall immersion.

• Dynamic Multi-Threaded Pathfinding: Unity is a fantastic development tool, but it is known to have some limitations. Basically, we're able to achieve multithread pathfinding in Unity and we wanted to make sure that was clear since it's came up in some discussions. Here is more information on how we've been able to achieve that.

Tethys Interactive has posted the first update for Astral Terra with news of the new FAQ section, new screenshots. and gives a thank you to all backers.

FAQs, New Screenshots and a Public THANK YOU!

Greetings and gratitude to everyone!  

It has been a full 48 hours since our Kickstarter launched and we are absolutely thrilled with the response and support that we have received so far. As of the time of this update, we have raised $2,834 and 99 backers total! Wow! When we started this campaign we knew it was going to be a long road, but the more backers we have and the more support we receieve, the easier that road becomes to travel. We couldn't do it without you, literally! 

As for specific updates, we want to direct everyone to the newly implemented FAQ section (Kickstarter does not let you create that until the campaign is live) and we think it will help clear up a lot of questions people have been asking, including things like: system requirements, modding, DRM, how leveling works and a bunch of other details. You can view those down at the bottom of our campaign page. 

Also, we have a couple new screenshots to show off down below. The first one is a nice dark, atmospheric shot in a dungeon of a dark elf female (shoutout to Gazz and Adam Hardy, it's not a mankini, but you get the idea :P) and the second one is of a fey female in the forest. We really like both of these shots and hope all of you do as well.

Finally, we need to reiterate the extreme THANKS that we have for all of you and understand that we want to HEAVILY involve all of our backers throughout this process. Kickstarter allows us to not only fund our game because of you, but more importantly, connect with all of you! 

 Please spread the word and tell your friends about Astral Terra, we would be eternally in your debt. We can't wait to see how the rest of the campaign shapes up moving forward! 

ALL OF YOU ROCK!!!

Good morning my fellow watchers I have another kickstarter that just went live today. The game is called Astral Terra and described as a "Smooth Voxel Sandbox Fantasy RPG".

The game is asking for $52,000, and I have the usual pitch video to share also. Give the project a look, and discuss what you think in the comment section.

Astral Terra is a fantasy-themed sandbox survival RPG in a beautiful smooth voxel world that’s generated on the fly and completely editable. No two players will have the same experience as everything from the skills you learn to the world you play in is fully unique and customizable. Gather resources for crafting and building, journey among the planes to find lost temples or libraries full of knowledge and power (scrolls and tomes) or just explore for the sake of discovery. From character progression with experience points, levels and skills, to the terrain and environment, every inch of the game is procedurally generated and fully editable. Shape your world and your character the way that YOU want. Fantastic creatures and epic adventures await you in this magical journey in a world limited only by your imagination – Astral Terra!