Extreme Planetary Variety - A Few Ideas

I was thinking about all the photos we've seen so far, and they look amazing, but they're layouts are all pretty similar. They're mostly all just a few shallow hills, trees dotted around and a bit of water here and there. I know it's early days yet but I was thinking about some more varied planet types that you could explore, some maybe requiring more advanced gear to be researched before you can survive on the surface.

• Water(/Lava?)
  • Almost entirely covered across the surface, with lots of underwater tunnels to explore
  • Maybe just a few tiny desert islands dotted around above the surface.
  • Would require being able to breath underwater to explore.

• Gas Giants
  • Only a small solid core and maybe a some debris and small land masses floating around.
  • Would require some kind of vehicle to get around in.

• Extremely Mountainous
  • Huge straight cliff edges and snowy peaks.
  • Would require something to traverse all the steep cliff faces.

• Perpetual Night/Day
  • Multiple suns/no sun mean that the whole planet is either in permanent daylight, or permanent night.

• Pitch Black
  • Could have sparse glowing wildlife
  • Enemies that will only become aggressive if you shine light on them.
  • Enemies that are afraid of light and so run away.

• Extremely Windy(If wind is a weather type)
  • Very flat and barren due to strong winds
  • Blows player around making it hard to move on the surface?

• Perpetual Lightning Storms

• Very Dense Forests
  • Extremely dense tree-cover across the entire surface.

• Giant Trees
  • Huge climbable trees towering above you.

• Fog
  • A lot of your view is obscured by a dense layer of fog.

• Spider Planets
  • Everything is covered in a thick layer of webs.
  • Populated by spider mobs.

• Crystalline
  • Everything (including the enemies if possible) is made of tough crystal instead of the usual dirt and stone etc.
  • Everything is stronger so takes a lot more hits before it can be mined/harvested/killed.

• Electromagnetic Planets
  • All electrical equipment won't work. Back to basics.
  • (There would have to be some way to get back off the planet again though.)

• Floating Island Planets
  • A small core surrounded by small orbiting chunks of rock that you can walk on.

• Extreme Solar Radiation
  • Planets that are very close to the sun and have strong UV rays blasting the surface

• Tidally Locked
  • One side always faces the sun so has drastically different biomes on each side.

• No Gravity
  • Areas such as space stations with no gravity at all so you can move around in all directions and liquids will float.

• Zoo Planets
  • Covered in cages and containers filled with mobs that you can purchase from an npc.

• Mechanical Planets
  • A whole mechanical/robotic ecosystem with metal trees and robotic looking mobs and terrain.

• No Atmosphere
  • Planets without any atmosphere at all, so you have to wear a spacesuit at all times and the planet is little else other than a empty, barren landscape.

• Highly Radioactive
  • High levels of radiation mean special equipment is required to explore.
  • Mutated flora and fauna?
  • Dangerous to spend too long on them?

I'm not expecting quite such variety in the finished game, but maybe an expansion pack or something after the game is released and these ideas could also allow for more variety in enemies and plant life to encounter.
Feel free to post any other ideas that you might have

 

I think the reason the pictures look so similer of late is because that is what they are focusing on atm. Instead of using up reasources focusing on more then one idea at a time. Small team and all.
Now saying that I'm sure most of what you have said will be there.

 

Heyo! \o

I've not much to say other than that I find all of the content within your post to be to my liking. Not certain if you've seen it yet, but Blue's List of Announced Game Information makes mention of "eternally dark" planets (Go for the glow!).

Also noted within that thread is work on oil physics which, assuming there are planets with large bodies of inflammable oil, will cause me great amounts of joy. Set the oceans ablaze! >

(Nice job on post format by the way.)

Edit: Frozen poses a valid point regarding the planetary similarities at the moment. Gotta start with the basics first and work your way up.

 

Well thank you very much Thanks for reading it. I do enjoy my formatting hehe. Still getting used to the slightly weird controls they have here though.

Ooh sweetness thanks, I must have skipped over that. Hopefully it's more no natural light at all rather than just 'always night time'. If night time is anything like Terraria you could still pretty much see everything. This gives me an idea for having varying darkness depending on cloud cover and whether the moon and stars are visible though With the fact that you can hold a torch and a weapon in Starbound fingers crossed nights will be a bit darker anyway. It would make it feel a bit more dangerous if all you could really see was your torch beam.

And yeah oil planets sound awesome. I wonder if it would actually burn down until all the oil was gone?

 

Hahaha. My friend, you missed the video didn't you? Allow me to reconcile that minor issue.

That ought to answer your question regarding nighttime (As well as some of the planetary diversity as far as light levels go). Also be sure to pay attention to the music. In all honesty, it's quite beautiful.

And yes, I know quite well what you mean by formatting oddities. When I go in to edit my dictionary thread, it's all a mess because of the way I had to tweak it so that it would come out correctly.

 

Holy freaking shit jesus that's amazing. I'm always so slow at noticing when they post new things! Thanks a lot haha. I was just about to say how much I liked the music and then I read the rest of your post. I love the fact that they've opted for some proper music over making everything 8-bit just because of the pixel graphics. I'd be interested to know who they've hired as the composer too and if they've done any other indie games I've played.

As for everything else, my hopes are extremely high seeing as he said these were all one biome. And there was definitely overlapping of trees so it should allow for much denser forests! It would look amazing with the procedurally generated trees too. And yeah there's definitely changing light levels on some planets!

This has just confirmed that I cannot wait for this game now, it is indeed looking beautiful. It's looking to be everything that Terraria turned out not to be in the end. And they seem to have a lot of the really good features in working order already! Now to watch that video again

 

Great ideas! These should be totally in the game.

But about web planets. What do you mean? That you need a vehicle with a saw to go through?
Alot of spiders in the planet?
Maybe the web planets should be small with a lot of web?
And some tall thin dead trees so it would be possible with the web.

 

Well I was more just going for aesthetics, so web all over the trees and all over the background, but you still walk infront of it all. Could get annoying if you had to cut through it all the time, although I guess there could be some that requires cutting through And definitely a lot of spider enemies

 

Thats the point. If it's a spider planet you need special items to get through for all precious resources.

 

The dev's stated in most pics that all the terrain was the same type, and that they don't want to show different terrain type just yet

 

Ah, your suggestions are very interesting. Would force us to wear special gears if we are to explore a planet that is almost covered of lava for example

 

Yeah, this was just my thoughts on it really And I made this before the last video came out and they said that all the ones we've seen so far were the same biome. I'm still hopefully that there'll be a lot of variety in the final game though!

 

I'm not sure that you will need special items for all environments. Some are obvious. If there's no air, so you'll need a space-suit, which will have an air supply (I guess better ones would have more). High rad environments could need a rad suit or you'll take damage over time, better ones protect in more radiated environments. Freezing biomes need cold weather gear (or DoT or slow and maybe some random chill effects perhaps). Biomes entirely covered in lava don't really sound that fun. Could you walk through lava (without sinking to the core of the planets) in a suit? Or would it be mario-bros-platform-jumpy time? Even have the platforms appropriately spread so that a jump pack is almost mandatory. There's nothing stopping you trying to walk through lava though, with enough healing tools you might just make it. Underwater environments would need the appropriate gear to breath, with speed/manourverabiliity increases for better ones.

Spider webs etc might just be more of a case that some things are better at getting through them than others. A sword could slowly hack through them, a spear would be really slow. Rocket launchers would be quick to blow out sections but ammo intensive, whereas a flamethrower would be perfect for the job.

Of course, not all spider webs might be fire prone, there could be laser prone ones or acid dissolving ones. Hell, some of them might be acidic themselves.

 

With you on that

 

You have some pretty neat ideas! I would really like to see some water and lava planets. That's really not all that crazy. Of course, ice planets will be my priority to find, in my search for space penguins.

 

A planet so windy that it moves the player would be pretty cool. Would have to make the wind visible through use of wind lines or dust on the environment being blown around, that way the player knows why they're moving slower.

Also, the fog planet sounds great. Can you say Silent Hill world?

 

Updated with a few more ideas

 

*High fives Alvin*

It would appear that the saying "great minds think alike" has some truth to it. Thought of having tidally locked planets back in April sometime and actually talked to Tiy about the idea. Fun fact: He liked it.

 

Like Frozen said I'm pretty sure they just have one of their generating algorithms down and instead of focusing on making new ones (or simple things like turning off the light... which I want soooooooooo bad now) their focusing on getting the other core mechanics and gameplay elements in. Also all those things, all dems right there in your post, I wants em, and if I don't gets em somebodies gonna die slowly and painfully! lol but seriously, nice post.

 

Obviously great minds must think alike hehe. That's awesome, Tiy seems to have the right idea so I'm hoping for a lot of variety in planet types in the final game