A new artist has joined the team of Stellar Overload (formerly called Planets³):

Today we double the size of the artistic team!

Finally, yes, Reymantha is no more the unique artist in a team composed mainly of engineers. He will be able to talk about art with someone who has the same sensibility and who will completely understand his language :)

Let me introduce « Crounchann », real name Sylvain Trabut, who joins the team to assist Reymantha on the artistic side of our beautiful project.

Sylvain will bring his artistic and technical expertise to the team. Indeed, since 5 years, he showed all his creative talent working as creative and artistic lead at Ankama on the games Fly'n and Island of Wakfu.
He will also be in charge of more technical parts, like the integration of our 3D assets.

I am really glad that he chose to join our team!

The alpha version of Planets³ is out:

Today is a big day for the Planets³ project: the alpha version is now available!
For those of you who preordered a game license eligible for the alpha, you can download it here.

We wanted to surprise you with the alpha: you will be able to experiment a first preview of a randomly generated dungeon. The goal is to show you the science fiction RPG aspect of the game and a preview of our generation engine. We spent almost 5 months to develop all mechanisms required for this new feature. 5 months during which we had to remain silent, to prevent any spoil of this surprise until today.
Even if we are still far from what we will deliver for the final game, we hope that you will like this alpha content as much as we like it!

This version is an alpha, so you need to be aware that, despite all our efforts to stabilize the game, you will ineluctably encounter bugs during your playing sessions. You can report them on the forum here :http://www.planets-cube.com/forum/16/

We are open to receive all of your comments, opinions and critics on this delivery (as long as they are constructive). We can’t wait to see all your feedbacks on this first random donjon experience.
And do not hesitate to share any screenshot on our website gallery!

For the Kickstarter’s backers who did not register their account yet, please follow these FAQ lines : http://www.planets-cube.com/faq.html#58. This operation will activate your licenses and other options you have chosen on Kicsktarter.

Cubical Drift has posted the next weekly status update for Planets³ with news updates will be put on hold till the developer organizes their new office.

Weekly status #4

As mentioned during the campaign, during a few weeks (at least until June), we won’t be updating you about the game because we need time to settle into our new office, to leave our current jobs, and for some of us, to move to the south of France.

Meanwhile, the game development will progress slowly because devs and artists are directly concerned by this situation. Don’t forget that in France we cannot leave our job in one day. We have notice periods of several months.
So we are asking you to be patient and to give us some time to settle in.

What this all means is that the updates might be a little bit light during this period, but don’t worry this doesn’t mean that we gave up on the project, on the contrary! So we’d like to take this opportunity to present you the real person behind Coding Marmot, who developed the “infinite” view distance engine : Fabien Perrot.

Fabien is a huge fan of Lego and that’s one of the reason why our vehicle system has been designed in this way.He has worked for a french video game company for 4 years where he had the chance to develop games on PC, Nintendo DS and Wii.

Like for all the other team members, here is his LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/fabien-perrot/4/913/106

Even if we are not spending as much time as we would like on the game development, we are still working on our engine to improve the performances. We also started to work on the improvement of the block picking mechanism.

Regarding the store on our website, our bank has finally resolved the problem with paypal in USD.

Cubical Drift has posted another weekly status update for Planets³ with some new statistics about the games successful Kickstarter campaign.

Weekly status #3

This week we’d like to present you some statistics about Planets³'s Kickstarter campaign and more specifically the 13 first countries in number of backers:

• No big surprise there, the large majority of the backers come from the United States (38%)
• As French ourselves we are proud that France is the second most represented country with 13%
• 11% of the backers didn’t answer to the survey

We know that people of some countries (especially in Europe) couldn’t take part in the Kickstarter campaign because, in their country, having a credit card isn’t that common. So we really are curious to see how this distribution of backers will evolve with our online store (that you can find on our website: http://www.planets-cube.com).

As previously stated, we have had an issue preventing people to pay in USD on our website, we resolved the problem for the direct payment by credit card. However the paypal option still doesn’t work in USD, we are still waiting for a response from our bank.

As for the technical progression, we are updating the version of the libraries we use to the latest versions (Boost and Ogre 3D). Updating the version of Ogre improved the dynamic shadow rendering even if some work is still required on that subject. We also added the possibility to use Direct3D 11 (for now the prototype only worked with Direct3D 9) but this is still a work in progress. It is already possible to use OpenGL (which is required for the Mac and eventually the Linux version of the game), but it still requires some tweaking of the shaders to get the same results as with Direct3D 9.

Cubical Drift has posted the next weekly update for their funded kickstarter Planets³ with information on the games progress, and future development.

Weekly Status #2

We are proud to announce that our online store is now operational!

During the first 2 months, people who missed the Kickstarter campaign (because of the lack of a PayPal option or simply because they discovered the project too late) will have the opportunity to take part in Planets³’s funding on our website with the same prices as on Kickstarter.
In 2 months from now we will switch to a classic pre-ordering mode of the first opus “Race to Space”, with a price closer to the final price of the game.

Of course, you backers have had the exclusivity on some of the rewards.
That’s why on our website:

• some tiers have been removed
• the add-ons are gone

For the time being, you backers still need to wait a few weeks to be able to login on our website. As a backer do not use this online store yet, do not try to create an account or try to login until we send you an email to inform you that your user account has been created.

We also updated some pages on our website about the game to reflects the information we gave you in the Kickstarter updates.

Kickstarter’s campaign validation shouldn’t take much longer.
Today we can already tell you that 206 backers have canceled their payment, representing a loss of about $20 000 (there are finally 2 Space Travelers and no Lore Master). This makes the total funding drop below the Mac version stretch goal, but of course we decided to maintain it, so the Mac version will still be made.

Upcoming tasks:

• Migration of Kickstarter data on our website to enable you to logon and manage your add-ons on your account page (should be done mid-May).
• Creation of the forum (should be released at the end of may if everything goes as planned).
• In the mean time, we resumed the work on the game, you should get more details regarding our progress soon.

Cubical Drift talks about the weekly updates, more add-ons, and game surveys in the latest post-funding update for Planets³.

Weekly status

This week, priority has been given to our website’s online store.

• We had to move our website on a dedicated server, more robust and more efficient.
• We had to set up the online sale options with our bank and Paypal.
• We also had to write the terms and conditions with our lawyer.

If everything goes as planned (we are still waiting for a validation of the bank) we should be able to open the online store in the coming week.

Addons & Survey

We decided to let you manage the add-ons (pets and licenses) directly from our website once your accounts are created (should be in May) because it would have been too complicated to manage on a survey.

So, we are about to send you a simple survey (in the next 3 days) that only requires you to enter general informations about yourself (like your name, country and postal address).

Stick Twiddlers has posted a new interview Cubical Drift to talk about their funded voxel based RPG kickstarter Planets³. Here is a small part of the intrview below.

How did Cubical Drift begin, and where did the name come from?

“It all begins with a crazy idea: making a coherent voxel world. At the beginning it was just to develop something outside of our work. As time passes the project was more significant. And one day (end of 2012) I decided to believe in the potential of Planets3 and quit my job to create the company.”

“We wanted a name that pictures the pixel (Cubical) with some “poetic” aspect (Drift).”

What are your inspirations? Both for this game and in general.

“We are gamers ourselves and we are big fan of RPG, adventure and MMORPG game. I can mention some of them: Zelda, Skyrim, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft. And we played a lot of Minecraft some years ago. And we like sci-fi movies like Star Wars or Star Trek and physical game like LEGO.”

Where did the idea for Planets Cube come from?

“As I said before, it was all about making a coherent voxel game and also to bring a story over this coherent world.”

“The cubical aspect of planets is first a technical constraint, you cannot create rounded planets with cubes without facing major issues with gravity. But this technical constraint became a beautiful design.”

Planets Cube certainly has a massive amount of potential. Is it daunting to work on a title with such a broad scope? What are some of the pitfalls/dangers?”

“Sure, we will have a lot a challenge to surpass: first the technical ones such as the voxel physics, the vehicle system and the sharing aspect of the game and second the design ones such as balancing the combat system.”

In the first post-funding update for Planets³ the developers Cubical Drift talk about the games successful campaign, and about what will happen next.

A successful campaign for Planets³

Once again, we really want to thank you all, you are so awesome, we couldn’t have made it without your excitement and faith in our game. We even reached the first stretch goal. That’s pretty amazing !

So what’s next?

First we will need to wait for Kickstarter to validate and finalise the campaign, it'll take around 2 weeks. We also need to send surveys to all the backers to manage the pets and/or licenses add-ons.

At the same time we will open a “store” on our website in around 10 days that'll allow people who didn’t get the chance to support us on Kickstarter, to support us with a Paypal option. The first month, there's going to be a “special offer” during which people will still be eligible for some of the Kickstarter rewards (excluding the add-ons and rewards above $200). After this special period, we'll switch to classic pre-ordering.

We will also create all your accounts. You will then receive an email enabling you to access and configure your account as you want. This phase will take about 4 weeks.

We will then open the Planets³ official forum soon afterwards (so in about 6 weeks from now). We will contact all the backers whose rewards need additional details, starting on June and during the summer.

On our side, the team will start to regroup (some of us need to quit their current jobs, others need to relocate to Cannes). We should be able to start working full time on the project in late June.

So the first newsletter will be July the 1st and we'll try to keep in touch every week starting next week on our website news section (and also on Kickstarter until your Planets³ account has been created). So stay tuned!

In the latest kickstarter update Planets³ Cubical Drift is happy to announce the game is now funded, and talks about the games stretch goals.

Time to switch on the rocket's engine

A huge thank you to all of you, we made it to $250,000 !

You guys are so awesome and we have the foundations of an incredible community.

Over the last few hours, which have really been amazing, we kept watching the page, and reading all your comments. Thank you for your kind words, encouraging each other and pushing us to fund. Without you guys, there would be no Planets³. The love for our game is both very heartwarming and endearing - we can't thank you enough.

Project Director Michel Thomazeau was interviewed by PCGMedia to answer a few more questions about their kickstarter game Planets³.

What is Planets3, and who are Cubical Drift?

We are a small team. The co-founders of the company are 3 old friends that met at their engineer school 13 years ago. We surrounded ourselves with competent and truly motivated people from different horizons (creative artists, graphics and musician) to develop the game of our dreams.

My name is Michel Thomazeau, and I am the project director of Planets³ and the CEO and co-founder of the Cubical Drift Company. I am 32 years old, and have a 9 years background in CAD software development at Realviz first and then at Autodesk.

There’s no avoiding similarities to Minecraft, but its block world is not voxel based, whilst yours is. Explain the difference, and what it means mechanically for Planets3. How will it affect building, the type of structures you can create, and the game world?

Crafting items will be different as it will use “normal” 3d model with our specific design This depends on what you call “voxel based”; it seems that this term is use for different situations. Our game is made of small blocks (25cm square and with different shape) and the view distance is almost infinite as we use a “sub-resolution” engine we developed ourselves to be able to display blocks that are on different planets. This way we can answer to one of the gameplay constraint: to be able to see everything (with more or less details) wherever you are. The result is that the further you are from a construction or a landscape, the fewer details you will see.

Cubical Drift has posted the next update for Planets³ with news the Kickstarter is nearing the end in a few days. and talks about their voxel approach. The game still needs to get funded, and has made $192,308 of the $250,000 goal.

Final straight

Dear backers, first we'd like to thank you all for your incredible efforts so far. We know that a lot of you have already increased their pledge, this is awesome!
Right now we only have one week left and still $63K to go.

From our side we will keep up the communication efforts. We keep getting new interview requests, some coming from major gaming websites. We also decided to distribute a press specific version of our current prototype 3 days ago.

On your side please continue to spread the word about Planets³.

Our voxel approach

A lot of people have asked us about our engine and how we manage to display all these blocks. So here are a few details about the implementation.

In Planets³ we wanted to be able to interact with the entire environment so we decided to use voxels. Moreover we had this amazing gameplay constraint : to be able to see the entire solar system at all time wherever you are. The development of our custom voxel engine required hundreds of hours of work.

To make it possible to see everything, we had to implement a sub-resolution system so that landscape elements that are far away are drawn with less precision (thus reducing required resources a lot). In our game, changing the view distance, only changes the boundary where the first resolution switches to the next.

However sub-resolutions alone weren’t enough to make the game playable, because of the massive lighting and generation computation. Multithreading was the solution but also the most difficult task to implement.

Today’s result is that we have a multithreaded voxel engine that enables us to have an “infinite” view distance in real time.

Additionally, our engine enables us to travel long distances and even to go from planets to planets without any loading time. If you want to explore the planet you are seeing in the sky, you just have to fly over there and land on it.

Gameaspect interviewed Michael Thomazeau the Project Director of Planets³, and CEO of Cubical Drift to ask a few questions about his game, Here is a smaple of the interview.

Voxel based gaming has been around for a while, long before Minecraft, but it’s difficult to think of a Voxel based game that has had the medium defining influence like Minecraft. What does Planets³ draw its influence from and how different is this experience from other sandbox Voxel based games?

Planets³ is not a sandbox game, it’s an RPG. And it’s an RPG based on a voxel world.You will have a complete story from the start of the game to the end of the story. There will be NPCs, with their own stories, which will follow you during all your adventure, helping you to progress. There will be a simple but deep craft system. Construction will even take part in the story.

Secondly, its art will be different; the multiple block shapes allow real diversity of creation. As you can see in the concept art, it is really something else.
And third: we are in space!

With these open-world/sandbox style games, gamers will want to be able to create and manipulate the game in a direct way. Does player modding become important for the longevity and future creativity of Planets³?

Yes, absolutely! We will deliver a first “version” of the game. But we want players to customize as many aspect of the game as they want. Thanks to “modding”, Planets³ will continue to live for many years.

Vehicles and extra-solar travel seem to be an important aspect of Planets³: how does the development team handle the physics of each cubical world, the vehicles on them, and the space in between worlds?

CD — As you may know, we are only at the beginning of the development, and the physical engine is not yet implemented. This will be our next challenge. What we want to do is to create a vehicle system as realistic as possible. There will be collision and destruction of vehicles blocks depending on what you do with them! An example of realism: to maximize the speed and the longevity of your vehicles you will need to build a flat long road.

Planets³ has managed to get $177,135 of the projects $250,000 goal. They have nine days left so the game has a chance of being funded.

In the latest update Cubical Drift talks about the block materials & combat system.

Block materials

In Planets³ everything is made of blocks, but what are those blocks made of? Each block has an associated material which defines its hardness and what kind of tool is required to pick it up.

Here is the list of material categories that we’ll have in the game:

• Rocks : Different kind of rocks. Requires a mace or pickaxe to harvest
• Gravels : Sand, dirt, gravels. Requires a shovel to harvest
• Woods : Wood or hard organic compounds. Requires a saw (or chainsaw), or an axe to harvest
• Sticks : Sticks, ropes, lianas, cables. Requires scissors, shears or wire cutters to harvest 

The hardness of a material determines the level of the tool needed to break it when found in block form in the world. When you craft a tool using a certain material, it also defines the hardness of that tool. To be able to break a block you will be required to use a tool with a hardness greater or equal to the hardness of the block you are willing to harvest.

Combat system and armors

As with tools and weapons, when crafting armors, the material used to craft it will have consequences on its statistics.

Armour statistics:

- Hardness: The hardness of an armor is the hardness of the material used to craft it.

- Armor value: Defines by how much the incoming damage are reduced.

- Durability: Defines the lifespan of the armor. Once broken it is not destroyed, you will be able to repair it by bringing the appropriate resources to a NPC.

- Discretion: Defines how noisy an armor is and therefore how easily the enemies will be able to detect you, even if you’re not in their line of sight.

When hitting an enemy with a weapon, the difference of hardness between the weapon and the armor is used to compute the damage applied. If the weapon’s hardness is greater or equal to the armor’s hardness, the incoming damage will be equal to the weapon’s full damage. However, if the weapon’s hardness is lower than the armor hardness the incoming damage will be reduced and the weapon will lose more durability. Once the hardness has been taken into account, the armor value will be subtracted from the incoming damage.

Planets³ is coming closer the last week on kickstarter, and has managed so far to make $168,126 of the projects $250,000 goal. Cubical Drift also released another update with more information on character evolution, and statistics.

Character evolution and statistics

Planets³ is an RPG (Role Playing Game), and as with every RPG, one of the most important aspects is the character evolution. In Planets³ we don’t want the player to have to choose between predefined classes but instead to develop his character depending on what he’s doing. Therefore we will introduce a dynamic statistics evolution system, in which the skill of the character at doing a specific task will improve by doing it over and over again. Like in real life in fact, you get better at doing something by practicing.

The character will not have a level and an experience bar, you develop your character by developing its statistics and its “tech-level”.

In order to present you the statistics we’ll have in the game, we need to introduce the mechanics behind the use of a tool or weapon, because they will influence it.

Strategy Informer took the time to interview Cubicle Drift's Michel Thomazeau to ask a few questions about his kickstarter Planets³. Here are some of his answers.

Strategy Informer: Can you give us a brief overview of Planets3 ?

Michel Thomazeau: Planets3 is all about bringing a story over a voxel world. Planets3 is a RPG with all that it [a RPG] involves. There will be a storyline with a lot of quests, characters that will accompany you in your adventure; some of them will help you to progress. And we want to bring the construction aspect in the quest: some of them [characters] will ask you to build specific structures.

Strategy Informer: Are there any features of Planets3 that you could share with us that haven't been announced already?

Michel Thomazeau: Not really, we didn’t want to reveal pets on [the] Kickstarter campaign, but finally we did it. The features list we revealed on the Kickstarter page is somehow complete.

Strategy Informer: Can you explain how your “Infinite View Distance Engine” works?

Michel Thomazeau: To see planets from everywhere was a gameplay constrain. But [as] planets are made of 30 trillion blocks, this was impossible to display. So we needed to implement a specific engine to be able to display a “sub resolution” of the planet. The further away you look, the more details will disappear. So as you can see on the prototype screenshot or video, you can see planets, even if you are very far from them.

Cubical Drift's CEO Michel Thomazeau was interviewed by Softpedia to talk about the developers Open World RPG Voxel RPG Planets³. Here are some of the questions.

Softpedia: Your Kickstarter pitch is well put together, and the video shows some great visuals and a nice musical score. How much time did you spend preparing for the campaign before it went live?

Michel Thomazeau: We put a lot of efforts in the Kickstarter campaign; we wanted to show a maximum of visual contents and features to our futures players. The trailer itself is about 5 months of work in total.

We had to create all the concept arts (2D and 3D), bring the prototype to a state that allows us to capture nice videos and of course assembling all of that together in a 2 minutes video.

Softpedia: You're already two thirds there now, with over 5000 backers, and you must be very excited. The Kickstarter month is famous for taking a considerable mental toll on developers. How are you holding up so far?

Michel Thomazeau: We are beginning to be tired and stressed, but it's good stress! Kickstarter is an incredible adventure and seeing all these backers supporting us is the most beautiful reward after so much work.

But we still have a long way to go to succeed!

Softpedia: What is the minimum level of implemented features before you will be comfortable with releasing a playable alpha to the project's backers, and how soon do you estimate being able to do so?

Michel Thomazeau: In the alpha we want to have the first quests of the story and all that is needed to complete them in co-op mode.

Other things that are not directly linked to the first quests will be implemented such as complete planets generation, solar system movement and night/day cycle.

We have a lot to implement about users data too, to be able to handle all players account on our website.We estimated to be able to deliver the alpha before the end of this year.

Cubical Drift has released two more updates for Planets³ in the last two days. The project so far has earned $140,156 of the games $250,000 goal.

Now on with the updates were the first one talks about the game being half funded.

Halfway there

Halfway completed today! Thank you!

We need to keep this momentum going.

And we take this opportunity to reveal a big secret :)

The second update has information on new game add-ons.

Pledge add-ons

Here are the add-ons we offer you today.

You just need to add the chosen amount to your current pledge and reward tier:

• For each additional +$10, you will get an extra digital download (1 access to the alpha, beta and release). Available from the $35 tier and above. Limited to 5 per account.
• For each additional +$20, a set of 3 pets that will help you in the game. Available from tiers between $15 and $100, included in the $200 tiers and above. Limited to 1 per digital copy of the game. 

We want backers to get something that will make them feel special when starting to play. Something that feels unique.

“Why do you have this little pet that helps you? Because I'm a Kickstarter backer!”

The little KBot will allow you to detect minerals; the loyal Kick will fight by your side, and finally the cute Onof will light up dark places.

You don’t have to pick one, you will get them all. Depending on the situation, and on your mood, you will be able to switch between them while playing.

Play Magazine interviewed Michel Thomazeau the Founder of Cubical Drift to ask a few questions about his new kickstarter game Planets³.

Play: Can you give us a general idea of what Planets5³ is all about?

MT: Planets³ is all about bringing a story over a voxel world. Planets³ is a RPG with all that it is involved. There will be a storyline with a lot of quests, characters that will accompany you in your adventure; some of them will help you to progress.And we want to bring the construction aspect in the quest: some of them will ask you to build specific structures.

Play: How is your Kickstarter campaign going? Can you tell us about why you decided to go with Kickstarter?

MT: Classical way of finding funds did failed last year, so we chose the number one option in crowdfunding. Also Kickstarter is a good way to approve our concept, now (with more than 2000 backers) we know that our concept is good. The campaign progresses slowly, but we have listened to the comments and we will modify some elements (mainly rewards).

Play: Can you tell us about some of your stretch goals?

MT: We already have anticipated what we could do with more money. The upper one is the game we are dreaming to create, but to achieve it it will cost us a lot of time (and money).

Play: What games would you say Planets³ draws inspiration from?

MT: Obviously if Minecraft didn’t exist I don’t think we would have made Planets³. Inspiration comes from other RPG or adventure game like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Zelda. But also from physical games like Lego and movies like Star Wars.

Cubical Drift has posted a very short weekend update for Planets³ with information on how the games female armors will look in-game.

Female armors

Some people told us that we have a “sexist” marketing, that all armors were only for male characters … and they seemed very serious about it!

So here is what a female character could look like in Planets³.

Come on, it’s a video game, it’s fun!

Cubical Drift has posted the next update for Planets³ than shares infomation about the team developing the game. Before I forget the game has made $60,499 in eight days.

More about the team

Some people seem to be worried about the fact that we "hide" behind nicknames and pictures. So we decided to present some of our members, via their LinkedIn profile and/or Portfolio. Some of our members want to stay anonymous for personal reasons and we will respect that.

Also I would like to share an answer I wrote on  Facebook.

The questions was : “I would like to know how you respond to the claims that "It's just another cube world." I think a large chunk of the indie market was put off by this lack of return on their investments?”

Here is the answer I gave :

“I don't know the Cube World team. Like many people, I followed their work since their beginning. I don't know what their plans are.

For our part, Planets³ is a 7 years planned professional adventure (with the second opus, with all the platforms we want to support, all of the ideas we have and everything the community is expecting from us). A regional Incubator is supporting us right now (Paca Est incubator, like you can see in the “partners” part on our web site). The CreaCannes business incubator gives us the opportunity to have a premise (not free!) in the city of Cannes. And we have a lot of professional people that are accompanying us today.

We will expand our dev team very soon (it’s our main priority!), 3 devs (Including myself) is not enough to develop the game. That's one of the reasons we are on KS right now. We have created a company, which will hire new devs, new artists, a web developer, a marketing person… obviously not now, but as soon as we have the resources to do so. It is not possible for us to simply disappear or stop the development of Planets³.

Also we have a lot of ideas we want to implement, much more than what you can see on the KS Page (that we tried to keep simple btw, but it was not easy, our project is not simple!).

Planets³ is our “baby”; you don’t give up your baby!

Sure this is all just words, and we cannot prove anything today, but this is my feeling about our project and our team.

Michel Thomazeau - CEO Cubical Drift”

Cubical Drift talks about how multiplayer will work in the latest kickstarter update. As for funding the game has earned $49,084 of the $250,000 goal.

About Multiplayer

A lot of people asked about the possibility to play with friends so we thought it was worth making an update to speak a little bit about multiplayer.

Planets³ will not be a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO). In order to play in multiplayer mode, you will have to run a server of your own creating an universe, and invite your friends to join this universe.

Let's distinguish two types of multiplayer modes : PvP (Player vs Player) and Coop (progressing through the story in cooperation).

• PvP in Planets³
  
  In the first opus : Race to Space, the PvP mode will be all about fighting one another on the planets.
  There won't be any space battle, since this is a feature we'd like to introduce in the second opus Space Enemies. Along with space battles, Space Enemies will also make it possible for the player to control territories and to fight for them!

• Coop mode, the heart of Race to Space multiplayer mode
  
  In the first opus, we will focus on allowing players to progress in the story with friends.
  The progression of the players in the story will be stored on the server therefore when a player validates a quest it will be validated for everyone. If one of your friends joins your universe he will jump directly into the action.
  
  Joining a universe for the first time creates a new character on the server. You won't be able to connect to a universe with a character from another universe. We decided to use this approach because it ensures the coherence of the universe.

Cubical Drift talks about cube shaped planets, and gravity in the next game update.

Cube-shaped planets? What about gravity?

We have been asked a lot of questions about the gravity management on cube-shaped planets.

So, this is how it works : imagine a cube and divide it into 6 pyramids with the top of each pyramid joining at the center of the cube. The gravity will be uniform in each of these pyramids and in a direction perpendicular to the base of the pyramid.

Feel free to ask any questions you have left, we are here to answer them.

The promised kickstarter for Planets³ is now live. The developer Cubical Drift are asking for $250,000 to get the game funded in thirty days.

They already have the first update posted were they talk about rewards, the games alpha, and space enemies. So read on for a small part of the update.

Concerning alpha and beta: all backers who pledge 20$ or more will get access to all alpha and all beta (first and second opus) when they are available. As said in the road map diagram: Race to space Alpha is scheduled to fall this year, Race to space Beta for spring next year. We do not engaged ourselves for Space Enemies releases, but there will be an alpha and a beta too, and backer (>=20$) will get it too (in 2016 or 2017).

Thanks Icefire for sharing the link I almost forgot about this game.

Planets³ is the latest voxel game from Cubical Drift. The game is described as a 3D open-world, voxel-based role playing game. Here is a video with some footage.

Imagined by video game lovers, Planets³ combines the excitement of role playing with the pleasure of construction and the boundless freedom to roam about in a 3D universe.Its intricate plot and outstanding voxel based design offers opportunities for intense action and unlimited creativity.

The site also has a clock with four days to the kickstarter launch. So let me know if anyone on site is interested in more coverage.