Exoplanet: First Contact - Tales from K'Tharsis

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In an update for Exoplanet: First Contact we are given a few tales from K'Tharsis.

We often mention that development of Exoplanet brings our team a lot of fun and creates many quite emotional moments. Over the last years this game became not only our hobby, passion, main job but our lifestyle. When you work that much on something, you start to see even relatively simple things differently, from a different angle. You get surprised and shocked by your own creation and you learn a lot from it. You get laughed on and trolled by your teammates. And that is great. Because this shows real friendship and camaraderie. Today we would like to share 2 stories that already became legendary in our team. We hope that these will help our backers and other players to understand what we are as persons, not just producers of game-related content. The tales from K'Tharsis await you. Here we go.

The Green Rocket.
by Alexander Pischenko, lead programmer

This story happened with me when I was play-testing our first functional sidequest in the alpha version and taught me that you never know what your own engine and tools can create. Share them with other creative members of the team, like scripters and mission designers, and prepare for the results. They can be sometimes terrifying or harmless and funny, like this little incident, and lead to an interesting idea for a cool feature of just a small but fun addition to the game.

One of the quests in the current alpha version includes catching a bitebug mutant. This creature feeds on crystals to obtain special powers. To test this quest, I set the bait, a valuable large crystal, outside of the bug-hive and waited for the mutant to come out at night and eat it. To make the waiting easier I increased the speed of time via editors hotkeys (setting the campfire and the waiting mechanics were not implemented yet). Right at midnight the green insect appeared and trotted on its six swift legs to the bait. The bug is supposed to have a preset timer in his behavior script to chew through the crystal. For about five seconds it's agro radius is supposed to have decreased so it can easily be grabbed, even by a slowpoke player. The mutant was not designed to attack the player, only to escape. But when I walked to the creature to catch it and was ready to press the "E" button, which stands for the Interaction in Exoplanet (e.g. grabbing and picking up things), the bug jumped on my character with a speed of an attacking cobra. It bit poor Jack with a high pitched predatory sound, then left with a tremendous speed leaving a green trail of particles behind.......​

More of this story and another one at the Kickstarter page.