What does my suggestion contain? A small, semi-easy mini-quest New small companion/pet hanging out inside your spaceship A vague idea how he could help you Concepts for the companion/pet The quest? It starts with you being on a populated planet. You meet a certain NPC (most preferrably human). He or she explains that on a planet called "Earth" he or she used to eat a meal called "omelette". He or she has grown a tiny homesickness, and wishes to relive his or her memories of the past. He or she instructs that there is a weird nest of unknown creatures somewhere on this planet, where he or she has seen some eggs, but it had been surrounded by lots of different creatures. After you've found the nest, retrieved the weird egg and start to head back, there would be a small text-box that informs the player of a small "crack" appearing on the egg. It also would state that it feels like the egg is "moving by itself". When the player would offer the egg to the quest giver, the egg would hatch and it would reveal this slimy, floating, pink blob with brains inside it. The quest giver tells that after seeing the egg hatch into such a thing, he or she no longer has appetite for eggs. However, this is where he or she gives you the creature. CONGRATULATIONS! YOU GOT YOURSELF A WEIRD FLOATING SLIMY BLOB. It seems quite intelligent tho'. The companion/pet? The creature would seem to be quite friendly and pet-like, possibly thinking about the player being it's mother (or father for that matter). It would follow you around the planet for as long as you remain there, but once you entered your spaceship with this creature, text-box would inform that it seems rather comfy in the ship and will remain there for the rest of your adventures. After remaining for a while inside your ship (possibly half an hour, hour?) player could notice it emitting some sort of "radio waves". Upon trying to talk to the creature, player would be notified about a bookmark on the starmap. Bookmark would point the player of one of the random events (a derelict ship, hidden base, village, dungeon etc.) that he hadn't found yet. From that point on, the player would have option to "feed" the blob certain amount of stuff (equipment/Pixels/materials?) per certain amount of time. Each time they feed it, there would be a small chance of it revealing a bookmark on another planet player hasn't explored, which has an interesting event on it. Concepts of the companion/pet? or possibly A default pose of the creature while it floats somewhere near the starmap. or possibly Some idle animation to give it some life. or possibly This is what it would look like when it is emitting it's "radio waves". or possibly This is what the egg could look like. Credits: -Me for the idea -My girlfriend for the art and animation of the blob Feel free to drop ideas and tell me what you think. Edit #1: Added the egg. Edit #2: Added the idea by Iroza. Edit #3: Added new Starbound-ish pictures. (They're pretty small, though. Will be enlarged later.)
Man your idea its great, and the sprites are awesome, but try to make the sprites more Starbound style. Good job.
What would you suggest to get them look more like Starbound? I personally suck at art, so I'd like to have some instructions over to my girlfriend. Yeah, and they should be really shy. Otherwise it could ruin the point of feeling "unique". But making them spawn randomly somewhere in the Galaxy, it would certainly make the people wonder how does another player find this creature. Also it would save a lot of time for those lazy people who just want to delve into dungeons.
The Vanity Pet should work like this.... It makes sense, but I don't see Kitties and Doggies born from Eggs... :B Oh well, Pokemon does it... Wait how does pokemons born?
I was getting quite worried that these got mixed up. I was rather thinking about making a fun extra side-quest with a beneficial reward to help the player (especially the lazy ones like me) to find all the interesting stuff in the galaxy, with a price. Also; I, frankly, don't know. I'm not even sure I want to know. O_____O I'll get some new examples posted here in a while. Maybe they'll look more appealing. Edit #1: Added response to Damuranashi.
Nice idea, but if it's pet...wouldn't other pets indeed have same function to make all vanity pets equal ? Like cat/dog using walkie-talkie to spot radio waves ha-ha *sighs*
Like I mentioned, I was quite thinking about him remaining on your ship. From what I have gathered from the vanity pets, they are going to follow you around the planets you are roaming. This would be just a reward from a side-quest. Vanity pets and this "Brainey" would remain as two separate beings. He could be scripted even as an NPC.
Ah, something like exclusive Platinum <-> Impervium Tier pet for ship *just kidding* It could indeed be a sidequest, yet it's only found at level 70-100 planets so its not discovered instantly and giving early access to special events.
Yeah, thats sounds quite reasonable. Really good suggestion actually. I'll add that to the original post. After you've accomplished much with the game, you'd find something that helps you to find all of the cool stuff you haven't yet found!
Do the alternatives (on the right) look more appropriate to the Starbound style? I'd also like to get peoples' opinions. Don't be afraid to comment guize and gals.
I think I like the second one better, it seems more... gelatin-like. One thing I would change though would be the eyes. It seemed better larger rather than smaller.
I know you put time into making this idea... But Starbound isn't going to be a quest game. There will be one main quest, and then mmorpg style side quests (Example: Go collect 5 feathers). I honestly don't want the developers to add side quests, because it will waste development time for a completely unnecessary and unfitting aspect. Maybe the API will support quests, but otherwise I hope the developers don't implement this.
I believe I saw Tiy mentioning side quests. So I believe they are going to implement quests into the game.
I believe what that means is the mmorpg style quests I mentioned earlier, where they will be procedurally generated so that the player must go find items and return them to the quest giver. I may be wrong, and if so, it would be interesting to see your quest idea implemented.
