The Truth about Gerio — Part I: Star Atlas Roadmap Scan #16
When all hope is lost, the group prepares for a last stand against the manifestations of the creature Atoph in the depths of Gerio’s mines. Pawn touches the door scan, and the door miraculously opens, recognizing the presence of Doctor Ammarena Star Sight, also known as Pawn and Fang’s mother.
“Truth has a very special property: it always surfaces. One may try to hide it, dismiss it, or even mask it behind lies, but in the end, the will of the universe loves truth and always finds a way of manifesting it.” - The twelfth teaching of Vignus to his oracles
Before the door even finished opening, Pawn was already shouting:
“It opened! Everybody run inside!” The Punaab said while turning to provide cover fire for her group members to reach the door. Yago and Fang, who were farthest on the defensive line, started to retreat, walking backward and shooting until they realized that they would be overwhelmed if they didn’t turn around and run.
“Get inside, Pawn!” Wenn shouted over the barrage of screams and lasers. “We need someone to secure the other side. I will cover them!” said the human lieutenant while trying his best to snipe the enemies that were reaching for his friends.
Pawn moved into a badly illuminated room, and as soon as she passed, the door behind her started closing automatically.
“No!!!” She shouted with all of her strength. “It’s closing!! Get in, everyone, quickly!”
Upon seeing the doors closing before them, Yago caught his Punaab companion and tossed him to Wenn, who wasn’t prepared for the maneuver and fell together with the Punaab inside the dark room. A few seconds later, they felt another hit as the Mierese tumbled over them after jumping through the door at the last second.
“That’s it… I will kill you for sure, Yago. As soon as I catch my breath, I’m killing you. You had to throw me like a freaking bag, didn’t you?! And what’s with all that freaking weight?! Damn, are you made of iron?! It felt as if a Tuffa fell on me!” said Fang while pushing Yago away and catching his breath.
Yago smiled and replied: “Oh, I’m sorry you got squished by my glorious muscles while they were saving your Punaab hide. You should be thankful I keep myself fit. Otherwise, your tiny legs wouldn’t have made it to the door.”
Before another fight started, Wenn got up between the two and said: “Not the moment, guys. For all we know, the monster could tear this door down any second. Get ready to engage.”
The three of them shifted their attention to the enormous door. Curiously enough, all the unnatural screams of the beasts outside faded away, and no monster appeared to be interested in knocking at the door or leaking through the strange yellowish walls of the lab.
“Weird.” Wenn thought to himself.
Before he had any more time to process the information, lights suddenly started popping all across the entrance hall that they were in, leading deeper into different corridors. It seems whichever facility they were in, it was quite a surprising enterprise to be built this deep with a monster lurking around.
After a few seconds of scanning through the room, Wenn noticed that the whole ambient design style reminded him of the interior of the Ogrika ships, full of the opulence and style that made the manufacturer known throughout the galaxy. A lot of things started to not add up in this situation, and Wenn saw that they all revolved around Pawn. The Lieutenant walked towards the Punaab, who was engaged with a panel right before the lights turned up.
“Something is not right here, Pawn. Or should I say Doctor Ammarena Star Sight? You better start explaining yourself right now.” Wenn said while resting a hand on his holstered weapon.
Fang immediately reacted, directing his weapon towards Wenn. “Have you lost your mind, human? My sister has nothing to do with this. You should be glad that she saved us. Otherwise, you would be Atoph food by now.”
“This is the second time you point your weapon at my friend, Fang. Drop it now, or I assure you there won’t be a third time.” Yago said in a cold voice, totally different from his usual cheerful self.
“Drop the weapon, Fang” said Pawn. “Yeah… I can see where you are coming from, Wenn, but trust me, this is as weird for me as it’s for everyone else. I didn’t know about this place either and didn’t plan on bringing any of you here.”
“If that was the case, why did the door open up for you? Why did you never tell us that you were a doctor? Why lie about your name? I thought that after everything we went through, and after I told you everything about us, we deserved a little trust?” Wenn said while still holding his weapon in the holster.
Fang, still holding his weapon, said: “You don’t owe them nothing, Pawn. They are not from our pack.”
“I already said to drop the weapon, Fang.” Pawn said, irritated. She then continued, while looking Wenn in the eyes: “To be fair, Wenn, I never lied to you. I’m far from being a doctor, and I’m not Ammarena Star Sight… She was our mother, who was lost to the mines ages ago. My best guess is that our mother added my DNA to the database of this place or that the scan isn’t precise enough to pick the difference between us. But we didn’t know about this place, and we are as clueless as you are about this whole thing.”
The story was hard to believe, Wenn thought to himself, but something in his heart told him that the Punaab was telling the truth. He stopped holding his weapon and replied: “Ok, Pawn… I will believe you. Nevertheless, it seems your mother was involved with whatever was happening at this place. I guess we might find some answers for you here.”
Pawn nodded in silence. She had been trying to understand what was actually going on since the moment that door opened for her. She had no memories of ever coming to this lab, and she also didn’t remember her parents saying anything about a huge facility deep in the mines. She looked to Fang, who replied to her with his eyes. He was as confused as she was.
The group’s attention finally focused on the facility in which they found themselves. An ample corridor went straight into the darkness, and on each side, there were doors and windows made of some sort of glass with a yellowish hue.
Yago tried to enter some of the doors but to no avail. They were locked, requiring some sort of data cube to enter, and no amount of strength could break the barrier. They seemed to be made from the same substance as the one they found at the entrance of the facility.
A closer inspection of the furniture through the glass denoted that those were laboratories, given the machinery that was partially visible. The rooms inside were still dark, and the corridor light seemed to be most reflected by the yellowish windows in each room.
Another interesting aspect is that some sort of animal life was present in the laboratory. Small worms and rodents could be seen in some spots of the corridor, running away when the group got closer. Thankfully, no trace of the monsters outside seemed to have found their way inside.
The group kept moving, trying to open door after door without success. As they walked through the forgotten halls of the lab, the lights of the corridor followed them, leaving only darkness behind.
After a couple of minutes of walking, the main corridor finally came to an end in a fork, splitting the roads into two different areas. Without any indication of where the path would lead them, they simply decided to go right, where the patterns of corridors with yellowish windows and locked doors kept going for a while until they found a door, very much like the one at the entrance, with a DNA scanner.
Pawn immediately placed her hand on the scan, and the door opened while the A.I, once more, greeted “Doctor Ammarena Star Sight”. As soon as they passed the door, they found a small room with lockers on the sides, a corridor that would extend to the right side, and many screens with an old terminal at the side of the principal wall.
While Wenn, Yago, and Fang examined the lockers in hope of learning anything about who worked in this facility, Pawn went straight for the terminal. As she gave commands to the old machine, it displayed minimum information about the layout of the closest rooms. It also displayed some images of random rooms she assumed they had passed through, even though they were mostly dark.
After a few minutes, Fang found an identity-less data cube, which probably would be the key to one of the laboratories they had found before. Yet, the group’s question remained, why would someone set such a monumental lab this far down in the depths, in such a dangerous environment, and later dump it?
After a while, Pawn gave up trying to access the encrypted information, and she asked Wenn’s Artificial intelligence to try to decipher the data that the terminal held.
The A.I. started working on its analysis, and the group moved to explore the corridor they found inside the room. There, they found two doors to the side of the corridor, with a third large door at the end. They tried using the data cube to unlock the first door, but to no avail. On the second door, the data cube managed to unlock it, and a small but comfortable bedroom opened before them. It seemed as if this was someone’s personal quarters inside the facility, and the group started to explore.
This time, Wenn sat at the terminal chair and started it, while Pawn and Fang suddenly were staring at each other with signs of confusion. Yago asked: “Hey, what’s wrong you two? You guys are looking kinda weird.”
“I don’t know… something in this room seems weirdly familiar. To be precise, it smells familiar, somehow.” Pawn replied with a confused tone while she and Fang started to discuss something between themselves.
Before Yago could say anything, a recording started playing on the personal terminal screen, and the strong voice of an adult, white-furred Punaab started speaking:
“This is Arfrentos Silver Claws, Security Supervisor of mining operations on planet Gerio. My wife Ammarena Star Sight and I discovered a terrible secret about this planet’s true purpose. I’m recording this as evidence in order to build proof to overthrow the governor of the planet, Berector Golden Fur, for the most horrible crimes against our own kind. By the end of this log, everyone in the galaxy will know the horrors that are being perpetrated in the depths of Gerio, where one monster is controlling another to transform Punaab lives into fuel for profits.”
Project: Showroom Alpha
Concept Art: DONE /// Art: BUILDING /// UX/UI: DONE /// Game Design: DONE /// Blockchain: BUILDING /// Game Play: BUILDING
Updates: Showroom level improvements are done. Bug fixing ongoing. /// Updating wallets integration feature. /// Performance fine-tuning, wallet integration finalization.
Upcoming activities: Fix all bugs. /// Regression testing after wallet integration
Project: SCREAM v1.0
Game Design: BUILDING /// Blockchain: BUILDING /// UX DESIGN: PROTOTYPING UI: PROTOTYPING /// Economy Design: BUILDING /// WEB: PROTOTYPING
Updates: Continuing to define explicit requirements for core gameplay mechanics and game systems design, with a focus on defining the combat mechanics. FInalizing ship/fleet stats. /// Continuing to build cargo program, movement program, crafting, and star systems program. /// Continuing wireframes and interaction flows, with a focus on the onboarding system, HUD system, structure system, and inventory system. /// Continue building SCREAM screens and elements, with a focus on HUD and buttons. /// Defining the SCREAM macro-economy and the sub-economies to determine all dependencies. /// Building out cargo functionality. Coding UI elements. Building hangar UI and adding The Lost Pixels’ ship models into the scene.
Upcoming activities: Continue to define explicit requirements for core gameplay mechanics and incorporate feedback from SCREAM stakeholders. /// Build peer review, and test programs on testnet, then audit. /// Review wireframes with Project Stakeholders. Continue to iterate until wireframes are approved. Hand over wireframes to UI team. /// Continue to build out UI screens and elements. /// Determine game balancing tactics/ contingency + scenario planning. /// Build towards playtesting and validate gameplay loops that require higher fidelity.
Project: UE5 Showroom
Concept Art: Done /// Art: Done /// UX/UI: BUILDING /// Game design: Done /// Blockchain: Done /// Core gameplay development: Building
Updates: Product distribution UX/UI updates /// Product distribution prep and packaging in progress
Upcoming activities: Finish product distribution, UX/UI updates /// Product distribution testing
Project: Star Atlas DAO — Pre-alpha Improvements
Product Design: PLANNING /// UX design: BUILDING /// Web Team: BUILDING /// Blockchain: BUILDING /// Economy: DONE
Updates: Unlock/withdraw requirements update /// Updates to unlock/withdraw for ATLAS staking /// Code cleanup, refractors, Building components for ATLAS staking /// Internal review; audits in process
Project: Play.staratlas.com
Features/Bug fixes:
Star-Atlas-portal Live updated to v0.5.23 PRE-ALPHA
[BUG] SCORE — ships R4 bars don’t fill up /// [BUG] Orders not loading sometimes (StarComm) /// [UX] Replace NPC…mom wallet with “Star ATLAS DAO” /// [BUG] Ammo can’t be purchased /// [BUG] New orders round to nearest whole number /// [BUG] Can’t remove ships from SCORE because of closed rent account (this includes both accounts that were intentionally closed by the owner AND rent accounts stolen by interacting with a malicious NFT mint)
Star-atlas-galaxy:
Ogrika Sunpaa released
Features in pipeline: StarPath audits being discussed with Kudelski /// Factory Bindings for StarPath / LP redemption /// A number of minor marketplace bug fixes are being addressed /// User driven improvements /// Site won’t load when connecting with Sollet /// Mobile nav issues /// Various sorting bugs
Project: SCREAM
Game design: PROTOTYPING /// Blockchain: BUILDING /// UX design: PROTOTYPING /// UI: PROTOTYPING /// Game Economics: R&D /// Web: BUILDING /// Art: BUILDING
Updates: Game design: Continuing to define explicit requirements for core gameplay mechanics and game systems design, with a focus on defining the combat mechanics through prototyping. Working with economics team to define emission rates, crafting quantities and recipe times. /// Blockchain: Integrating crafting and cargo programs. Continuing to develop fleets program and Sector program UI design: Continuing wireframes and interaction flows, with a focus on the HUD system, structure system, and inventory system. /// UI: Continuing building SCREAM screens and elements, with a focus on HUD and buttons. /// Game Economics: Started economic modelling on planetary mining and emissions and starbase crafting. /// Web: Building mining, docking, starbase crafting, and starbase upgrading functionality in Playcanvas. Integrated wallet. /// Art: Close to completing starbase concepts. Started concepts for planets
Upcoming activities: Game design: Continue to define explicit requirements for core gameplay mechanics and incorporate feedback from SCREAM stakeholders. /// Blockchain: Build, peer review, and test programs on testnet, then audit. /// UX Design: Review wireframes with Project Stakeholders. Continue to iterate until wireframes are approved. Hand over wireframes to UI team /// UI: Continue to build out UI screens and elements /// Game economics: Determine game balancing tactics/ contingency + scenario planning /// Web: Build towards playtesting and validate gameplay loops that require higher fidelity game /// Art: Convert into 3D assets to be added into Playcanvas
ABOUT STAR ATLAS
Star Atlas is a next-gen gaming metaverse emerging from the confluence of state-of-the-art blockchain, real-time graphics, multiplayer video games, and decentralized financial technologies.
Using Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite, real-time graphics technology allows for cinematic quality video game visuals. In addition, blockchain technology using the Solana protocol establishes a largely serverless and secured gameplay experience. Non-fungible tokens obtained and traded within Star Atlas create an economy that replicates tangible world assets and ownership. To learn more, visit StarAtlas.com, join a faction at Play.StarAtlas.com and send your spaceships on a deep space mission by enrolling them in a Faction Fleet.
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
Twitter | Discord | YouTube | Instagram | Reddit | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitch | Tik Tok | Telegram | Audius | Medium
