Modding Discussion Weapon Creation: "Cauldron" Method

Discussion in 'Starbound Modding' started by Twindice, Oct 26, 2016.

  1. Twindice

    Twindice Void-Bound Voyager

    Idea inspired primarily by Alberto-Rota's Weapon Assembly Mod when he asked for ideas on how to expand it. Thus, partial credit should be given to him for the following, much of which is restatement of what I said in that discussion.

    ...By which I mean, go check out his mod. It's cool. He's cool. And he suggested I post this here, so blame him if you hate it :3.

    The idea is this: What if there existed a station that allowed for the creation of weapons made out of... Oh... Whatever you have lying around? Maybe you've got some metal and volatile powder and a bit of cryonic extract, and a spare flashlight, and you really want a frost gun with a light on. So you throw all that in to get a gun; probably an assault rifle or a shotgun, given the amount of metal used; with those abilities. But, after all, this is mad science we're talking about. Maybe it mixed them together in a different manner; perhaps your gun isn't frost, but the attached light is a frost flashlight; you know, the one from Elemental Flashlights. Or maybe your gun shoots flashlights. ...Which would be hilarious.

    For example, somebody using core fragments or piles of volcanic rock to try to get a fire aligned weapon. Or maybe they're throwing in explosives in the hopes of getting something like the explosive bullets you see in some of Supper's guns. Or maybe they're in mad scientist mode and just shoved a hundred tomatoes in it to create the tomato flail. Or tomato bomb. Tomato launcher? ...You get the point~

    Naturally, this would primarily generate random weapons, but with nearly infinite variety. And also a great deal of special, secret unique weapons and throwables and so on. Also naturally, this would strongly encourage experimentation and engagement in terms of discovery. To add on to this, rare-ish lore books could be added in to treasure pools; books which either detail or theorize about possible recipes and combinations. Some of them could even be complex puzzles which contain a hint at one of the secret unique weapons. You could even design a dungeon/mission around some of that.

    This would also add a very large amount of new projectiles, elements, alternate abilities, weapon types, attack types... so on, so forth. At least, ideally it would.

    Here's a fleshing out of what I mentioned before.

    Let's say I walk up to this hypothetical experimental creation station. I'm a low level player and I just need something in particular. So first, I throw in some tungsten. That's a good way to indicate the level of the weapon; it's tungsten, so not very high, and since at that level there are no 'special' metals, just a straight progression, no more thought needs be made. At levels like Aegisalt, yeah, might have to give different attributes for all the different metals, but not at this level.

    Anyway! I start with tungsten. Now, I could throw some timber in; that could tell it that there's wood involved, a handle. A melee weapon. What kind of melee weapon? Well, that depends on how much timber and metal, doesn't it? Or maybe I want a gun and use volatile powder and more metal in place of timber. Of course, these needn't be hard-and-fast indicators for weapon type There are other options, or this mod could add its own items, though I'd prefer to avoid something too selector-y.

    I was recently on a volcanic planet, getting my ♥♥♥♥ kicked. But I picked up a lot of ash while I was there, so I throw that in, hoping for the best. Perhaps what I get is some kind of ash launcher that creates the actual ash blocks on projectile hit; probably only because I used a full thousand-stack of ash to make it. Less so, and maybe it wouldn't do that, but still look ash-y.

    But I'm not gonna hit that create button yet. I then throw in a flashlight, hoping to get that particular special ability cause I like caves but I need an EPP, not a lantern stick. And if it's a one handed weapon I end up with, perhaps it just has a permanent light. Maybe add a little junk tech for rate of fire or AA batteries to power up the flaslight, and perhaps some crystals for the visual, and I hit that create button, and I watch the machine go, and I squee like a little girl because I'm the kind of person who gets a thrill out of this kind of thing, and VOILA.

    I have my very own ash blaster gun with a flashlight and perhaps a smoky crystal-ish visual, perfect for caves and barricades. Most likely it functions like a two handed grenade launcher, spitting chunks of ash. Or maybe I made a sword that releases clouds of ash on swings, and has a lovely ashy blade? Or perhaps the flashlight is ash colored even, who the hell knows. I could use the EXACT SAME RECIPE multiple times and get different stuff just because this machine is AWESOME and, although the stuff I throw in matters a whole hell of a lot, I still am not totally sure what I'll get.

    Here's another example, the one I mentioned earlier. How would one make a tomato launcher? Obviously, this is a weird gun, deserving of a weird metal if I want it to work. FU's Protocite, maybe? Moonstone? (If I didn't use a weird metal, it would probably just end up with a tomato visual or with oddly juicy bullets since obviously normal metals like titanium simply don't gel with this sort of mad science)

    Obviously I must use volatile powder to indicate gun status; quite a lot, if I want a rocket launcher-type. Or maybe I add core fragments and... iunno.. sticks of RAM maybe? To indicate I want a minigun type. Now I'm adding a lot of weird things; cell matter, fertilizer, water, mulch, and then like two hundred tomatoes. I slip a couple of bombs in because I'd love a special ability that is a giant explosive tomato (Or if I'm going minigun, perhaps my tomato rounds are mildly explosive?), and I cackle like a witch crossed with a leprechaun, shove in a ton of plant fibre to wrap it all up and complete the visual, and hit create. And then I go and terrorize the nearest Avian village with either a tomato rocket launcher with bomb option, or an explosive-round tomato minigun.


    ...I got excited just writing all that. But for something like this, it probably is okay to only work with basic stuff and maybe just a little FU ingredient compatibility (Because my GOD does FU add a planet-ton of awesome stuff) to start out and get it ironed out, and work on including more and more as it goes. And me? What can I do? Well, I'm a designer. And I'm sad to say that I don't mean in that in the art sense; I mean I've made it my life choice to be a game designer, writer, maybe comedian whothehellknows.

    But I have a lot of free time and I'm very good at endless ideas, balancing, testing, perfectionism, and fine-tuning... No matter how long the list of work is or how many hundreds of variations I have to carefully piece together. I'm very good at that sort of work, what one might call tedium or excessive detail; hell, my absolute favorite job so far has been as a volunteer library assistant, which I deeply enjoyed.

    So! This is my proposal to you, modding community of Starbound. When the workshop opened you amazed me with your daily and constant releases of mods, updates, and everything I could desire to rekindle my ability to... Sink a thousand more hours into the game. ...Congratulations I guess? At any rate, I invite criticism, questions, and any post suggesting to me either a result for ingredients or posts merely listing a bunch and asking what the hell I think that should create. Especially those. And if anyone who is talented in the ways of... you know... ACTUALLY creating stuff would like to pick this up, I would very much love to work with that person. I don't expect compensation, either; I just want to be involved and have credit for whatever design contribution I make.

    ...and maybe a patreon link because doing more game design (Currently I'm making a tabletop, for those who are interested) and not working at hobby and clothing stores would be niiiiice...






    As an aside, some possible integrations...

    One would be an option to make PARTS rather than the whole weapon, as seen in Weapon Assembly. By Alberto-Rota. A cool guy. Did I mention that yet?

    Also, FU. Because it's FU, man. It's as awesome as Evil Knievel jumping Pizza Canyon on a motorcycle made from all the awesome fantasy swords in existence with rocket launchers for engines and the soul of rock and roll as a seat.

    Also, those two big weapon mods, WMP and Supper's. If I recall correctly, as a whole, they add some new (read: old) weapon types, throwables, projectile types, and son on.
    Also, some of the God Dame mods probably count
    Also Astronomical Armory. It hasn't updated in a while, but miniguns and pepperboxes are neat, and Focused Shot is cool.

    Maybe XS Mechs and ZZ Modifications...? I mean, if you got enough material together...

    Not so sure about the Universal Uncrafter. I think it would be best to have some kind of reduced return. 50% maybe. I wouldn't want people just chucking the same ingredients over and over trying to get something extremely specific. Of course, Weapon Assembly's developer is thinking of doing weapon modification, so that would probably solve the problem.

    Weapon Fusion Station I don't thiiiiink would have any problems. It should work fine the way it is, right? Assuming it properly detects new special abilities and projectiles and all.
    I'd hope it works with Weapon Stats fine. and Weapon Reinforcer, for that matter.
     
    AlbertoRota likes this.
  2. Zavender

    Zavender Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    This is fantastic.
    The idea of taking my spare change from the adventuring jar, shoving it into the melting pot, and having a corn-based rocket launcher with a teleporter core grenade, that may or may not resemble Betty White sounds incredible. "Cauldron Method" is perfectly befitting as well.

    On the more technical side of things, it may also go over quite well (or not!), as you could take a note from Ores+ (RAMs version) and possibly pre-make (or generate on the fly? I'm not sure how he does it) a bunch of sprites (such as weapon parts made of corn, but also projectiles and effects, etc, etc). This mixing pot of general things, along with the right amount of randomness, could give you a wonderfully quirky mod that I'm sure quite a few of us would enjoy.
     
    Twindice likes this.
  3. Twindice

    Twindice Void-Bound Voyager

    I've had to work with Minecraft modding long enough to have some understanding of the technical (read: I've had to fix about a hundred or more errors), even if I can't actually code. From what I can tell, Ore Plants is partially procedural; it does something very similar to the Minecraft mod AOBD, in that it reads and takes the primary color of the targeted object and uses that for the stem, and then simply uses the object's icon for the top of the stalk. At the same time, some of his plants look notably more unique. I think it's safe to say that he's probably hoping to make them all look good in time.

    Or I could be wrong and he did that intentionally with a lot of the plants. X3

    Anyway, more to your point, Starbound does seem to already have a way to address innumerable little bitty parts and select them for a weapon. All that would need be done is create a system where each part has 'conditions'. In your example, the 'corn' parts would only be available for selection from this assembly code if certain ingredients, in this case corn and some other stuff, were present.

    The problem with this (I think) is it would probably be pretty chunky coding to have conditions for all the thousands of things this would add. It's entirely possible there's an easy way to do it I just don't know about, or that the conditions are such easy coding even I could do it (I have a heavy tolerance for that sort of work). Either way, all the various projectiles, effects, elements, alt attacks, and so on would also have these conditions. I'm faaaairly sure Starbound is capable of this kind of work, since it technically already does, differentiating between assault rifle and rocket launcher parts and so forth.

    Essentially, what I expect is that it shouldn't be too hard to code the 'core' bits of this mod, and that most of the hard work would be visual assets and new projectiles/elements/alt abilities/hereon to be called STUFF. The actual writing up of the conditions and results and all that... I figure that's easy but tedious. I'd hope I can take over that part.

    Oh, and yes, it is possible (At least in Minecraft it was) to procedurally generate visual assets. It's not exactly easy to do, but it's possible.

    (Sorry for massive rambly posts. It's been a while since I've been excited ^-^')
     
    Zavender likes this.
  4. Twindice

    Twindice Void-Bound Voyager

    (Does this count as a bump...?)

    Quick update: I think it'd be neat if certain NPCs gave hints to possible combinations. Also, I don't think it should necessarily just be weapons; I can see creating armor, back items, and so on with this. But that raises an important question; can those be randomly generated? Or would it be no more intensive than what I've already designed?
     
    AmazonValkyrie likes this.
  5. Derpyman890

    Derpyman890 Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I think the armour would have to be the same as the weapons. I mean, starbound can generate weapons, but there aren't any generated armours. However, I think that if you were to generate armours, you could provide a selection of back arms, chest plates and front arms to generate a torso armour.
     
  6. Twindice

    Twindice Void-Bound Voyager

    I do suspect I would have to clearly define each and every possible mixture and all the chances; but I feel like RNG code, especially for the visuals, is in order. So hopefully there's a way to do that? Though I've never seen a mod do such a thing; and I know absolutely zero of either JSON or Lua.

    More pertinently though, how hard would it be for Starbound to recognize that X weapon should have Y effect when wearing Z armor?
     
  7. AmazonValkyrie

    AmazonValkyrie Spaceman Spiff

    I too have also been curious to see if randomly generated armors are possible, as I'd love to make them as well. It would be an incredible feature, as players could really make a custom character that way. I'm interested to see your findings!
     
    Twindice likes this.
  8. Twindice

    Twindice Void-Bound Voyager

    Ahaha, I don't know that I'd be finding much. I'm an incompetent coder; had to drop a Python class for god's sake. I'm hoping someone with free time is willing to work with me, because I doubt I'm capable of doing this myself.

    I appreciate the attention though~ I absolutely intend to make this reality. Eventually.
     

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