The (planned) journey to 1.0 (Quotes from the dev Tiy)

Tiy was nice enof to speak of the plans for the future on irc, i have been asked to emphasize that every new feature planned is not mentioned, so dont panic if something is missing, heres some quotes:

<Tiy> Next update is likely the colony update, colonies, some new biome content, other bits and pieces

<Tiy> update after that is the combat update, very revamped combat, special attacks as secondaries on weapons, scriptable items (finally boomerangs, homing rockets, other interesting things), new monster types, some other bits and bobs

<Tiy> update after that is vehicle update, vehicles that persist in the world, multiple seats, moving platforms, some other bits and bobs

<Tiy> update after that is the story update, we're producing missions throughout all these updates, they'll all be tied together, all of the current awful sidequests will be replaced, and youll have a storyline that gives the game a lot of context

<Tiy> then some polish updates, and we're more or less at 1.0 (I haven't mentioned every feature)

<Tiy> then a bunch of post 1.0 updates


Edit: Bonus:
<Tiy> also survival mechanics will make a comeback at higher difficulty levels
<Tiy> hunger will return, but food wont be stackable anymore, and it will rot over time

 

Awe yissssss

Izzabelle approves.

 

So vehicle update after combat huh. Well here's hoping that won't break the XS corporation mechs too badly

 

Im just hopeing its not delayed again Its been delayed twice allredy for something else considered higher priority (the vehicle update that is).

 

Oh trust me my friend I could not agree more with you.

 

Too late, Tiy.

So, let me get this straight: not only you're not expanding the player's inventory (nor making it categorized nor self-sorting), putting stack limits onto tools (such as pickaxes or completely identical shields), but also going to strip us out of ability to stack the food...? I... I'm speechless.

 

Theres was little point to hunger if you could carry around a 99 stack of a food item. It just became a "click this every few minutes" mechanic. Personaly i realy look forward to the new hunger mechanic. (Also, its added as part of a higher difficulty, so people dont need to use it)

 

I completely agree. Plus, this should encourage people to actually build bases and storage instead of just carry EVERYTHING mildly useful on the player.

 

Hmm... that's quite the list there. Hope it's not overwhelming.

Non-stacking food... actually comes to no surprise to me. In fact, I'm already quite familiar with this mechanic from a Minecraft total conversion mod called TerraFirmaCraft. On that note, will the various planetary climates effect crop and crop growth? Will the refrigerator and refrigerator-like storage furniture reduce the accumulation of rot-over-time for food-based items?

 

I can see storage being the go to for preventing rot. There are food items in chests, after all.

 

A mediocre mod implementation of an anti-AFK mechanic means it can't be done in vanilla? Or is that your nostalgia speaking up?

Not being specifically mentioned does not mean that it won't happen. Tiy did not go into the specifics of what each update will entail, what each update will include, etc., did he?

No, he didn't.

Given the demand for such features, they will, in all likelihood, be added before hunger is reimplemented.

You can remain speechless all you want. It doesn't change your jumping to conclusions and hostile attitudes towards the developers, MrChow.

 

No need for that, hunger will be optional.

 

Just wanted to quickly quote IRC:

 

Did you even read the mod description before typing your knee-jerk response? I could remove starvation entirely and still have it be a perfectly viable mod because it overhauls how food in general works.

The old hunger system had the problem that it added some nice atmosphere but was fundamentally flawed as a gameplay mechanic: for a mechanic to be interesting it must give the player interesting decisions to make. Under the old system the only decision involved was if satiation < x then eat cooked meat. This is hardly an interesting mechanic hence most games with hunger mechanics focus more on actually obtaining food and the decisions derived from the need to find more food before starving. This doesn't work in an open-world sandbox game like Starbound where you can always just go out and farm, hence for hunger to be viable you must attach interesting decisions to the act of eating itself. There must be significant up- and downsides to eating, choice of food, etc. so the player will sit down and consider what food to eat when. Giraffe introduced sufficient variety of foods but their benefits are too insignificant due to low duration buffs and excessive cooldowns. If they want people to put thought into choice of food its effects must receive a significant overhaul.

Unfortunately it doesn't sound like CF grasps this as the whole food spoilage system is only adding to the problem: there is no interesting decision attached to going back to your megafarm every X minutes, its just a chore you have to do. Same goes for making food unstackable, since inventory space only really matters when you're raiding for furniture or building.

 

As long as your mod punishes players for going AFK, then it is still a reimplementation of the anti-AFK mechanic from the Koalas, regardless of whatever work you've put into the mod (admittedly, I haven't playtested it but that's because I'm not one of the people who were nostalgic for hunger in the first place, unlike some people... plus a non-optional thirst mechanic? Eugh).

Aside from the fact that you've ignored my quoting of Tiy from the last post (<Tiy> im sure there are features coming that people are waiting for, and are planned, but I haven't spoken about), this is an off-topic discussion so I won't continue it.

 

It punishes players for going AFK the same way roaming monsters do but I haven't seen anyone call birds an anti-AFK mechanic. That is because monsters actually serve a meaningful gameplay function, the old hunger mechanic didn't, but that doesn't mean there cannot be a different, better mechanic.

I'm not nostalgic for the old hunger mechanic either, hence my skepticism when I hear Tiy announcing they will bring it back but with even more tedium.

I don't see how it is relevant to my point. They announced a return of the old hunger mechanic with some changes I feel will actively detract from gameplay. Maybe they are planning on some massive food overhaul but I figure they would have mentioned it with the other changes if that was the case so I'm going to assume they don't plan on anything of the sort until they say otherwise. I don't see how this is off-topic either since it directly pertains to one of the features announced in the OP.

 

That's because, with any monster, you can wall yourself in with any blocks to protect yourself from birds, quadrupeds, bipeds, etc., while AFK... but you can't do that with hunger. Unless your modded hunger takes into account player movement and doesn't decrease if the player isn't moving (hunger system in Minecraft, as an example), then it is an anti-AFK mechanic. If you're serious about your mod, please look into a way to reduce the anti-AFK nature of hunger because I believe that that was one of the main critiques of hunger before it was removed because it would be revisited at a later date.

You may not be, but your mod userbase is the people who are.

They did not announce a return of the old hunger mechanic, Tiy announced a return of a hunger mechanic without going into specific details. It's pretty assumptive of you to assume that it will be the same, negatively reviewed hunger system and not an improved one with lots of changes. :/

 

Stacking food is what made hunger trivial in the first place, if the idea is to making it a meaningful mechanic throughout the new difficulty lvl that you do not have to play, its a good idea.