20 August - Stats and Scripts
Recently, we’ve been discussing adding some more capabilities to the Status and Status Effect system in Starbound. There are a lot of interesting things we want to do, but as of right now the Status system is a bit of a pain point in the Starbound codebase.
Every Status equipped entity has around 20 stats, all defined directly in c++, and they can be affected by about *45* status effect primitives, also specified in c++. Status primitives are everything from ForceField to FlawedProtection to ClumsyProtection to ExplosiveDefense to ExplosiveDefensePower to.. you get the idea. Extending the status system right now involves doing things like extending this enum and adding to this set of fields.
Now, don’t get me wrong, simple and hard-coded sometimes works great. Usually, it’s what you want to try *first*, and you stick with that until it’s clear that it needs to be replaced by something more powerful. Well, for the Status system, that time is NOW.
Omni and I have been working on a replacement for the Status system that should hit (fingers crossed) master in a few days. Stats are generic String -> Float mappings, there’s a system for adding temporary modifiers to the String -> Float set, there is a resource system that is closely tied to the stats system for things like health / energy / warmth, and, the most exciting part is, it will be driven by lua scripts!
Not only will this allow us to have, well.. sort of more “interesting” status effects like brain reboot and things like that driven by an isolated script and with way more interesting graphical effects, it will allow modders to add additional status effects and, as a side effect, will give modders a place to add persistent client-side data and scripts that affect the player without having to tie into the tech system.
Also, as either part of this update or soon thereafter, I’m trying to work it so that status graphical effects like cold and hunger that affect the screen can actually modify the shader used by the world renderer for some more interesting graphical effects than what we have now.
It’s exciting!
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21 August - Kid strummed that guitar...
I ended up deviating a bit from my work on the lunar base mission today, as I’m waiting on further developments on the new enemy before I go too in-depth with careful placement and setting up the loot distribution. We have some other cool stuff for it in the works, but I’d really like to keep those elements a surprise if I can help it.
Instead I primarily spent my time getting the Novakid armors that George showed off last week actually craftable in-game. We’ve got all their tiered weapons designed and ready to go too, they just need to be implemented and balanced.
The Novakids feel so at home in our universe, they could well usurp the Glitch as my favorite race!
I’ve also begun work on rebalancing all the armors that fall into the separator, accelerator and manipulator classes. I expect to spend most of tomorrow continuing on this task, so I’d like to get it to a good place. That said, I have no doubt we’ll need to do some fine-tuning down the line as we continue our playtesting.
Until next time!
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22 August - Adding skies to outposts
So a while back I mentioned that I made some changes to sky to decouple them from the coordinate information. Today I hooked it up to the WorldParameter system so that it could actually begin to be used on Floating Dungeons and stuff. There’s more work to be done, because currently there’s no randomization in this area. But we can put any sky on the outpost worlds now. Here’s an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-TZ_NP1utA
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26 August - Biomic Enhancement
One big part of the game’s progression will be the ability to access new planet types as your ship and equipment improve. To facilitate this, we’re making biomes correspond with threat levels as you advance through tiers.
What does this mean, exactly? Previously, some biomes would only appear on planets with higher threat levels, but there wasn’t much relating a world’s appearance and environment to how challenging it is other than the explicit threat level. We’re now grouping the primary biomes by tier in a way that makes the progression of difficulty more logical and encourages players to visit a wide variety of planet types as they play through the game. When a player acquires gear with the appropriate environmental protection (such as heating systems to insulate them from cold environments), they will gain access to several new primary biome types (such as Tundra, Arctic and Asteroid worlds). We’re making sure to have enough variety within each tier to keep exploration entertaining while still retaining a somewhat consistent theme at each stage.
Once a player has completed the game’s progression and can access all of the various primary planet types, they will be able to visit planets with special high-level versions of the biomes. These will include some of the stranger variations like metallic trees/plants, as well as previously unavailable mini-biomes and dungeons. There’s no need to rush or grind to the endgame, but there will still be lots to discover after reaching it!
I’ve also been working on some smaller biome and planet configuration improvements. I’ve made the biome/sub-biome combinations more reasonable, so you won’t find ice trees growing next to pools of lava, and improved the matching of planet types to the distance from their star so you can reliably look for hot worlds in near orbits, temperate worlds in the habitable zone and frozen worlds in the outer fringes.
'Til next week! ːpizzasliceː
