RELEASED Avali Race Mod, The second thread!

He already said that because of that fact, they'd get a mixture of special ranged weapons and melee weapons.

 

While there are a lot of things here I'd like to quote, I will just quote this one.

TL;DR - They're discussions with examples to get you thinking. Read them if you wish to.

There is actually a lot to ask, the only real issue is we're not or haven't though of it yet. After readings around a bit on the Avali, I'm interested in one thing; in-game augmentation. Would this be possible? As in legitimate augmentation. It would be interesting to see as in the lore bits it says some Avali go full-out and modify there entire bodies, while others only use small amounts (this I learned from the wiki pages and a few others I privately talk to.) I'm not sure how accurate either source is however, but it would be awesome to have augmentation be a legitimate option. Higher jump, running, perhaps some form of enhancement to melee damage, can see farther with the when you move the camera around because of a bionic augmentation, maybe even an an augmentation that enhances the growth of wings for abnormal growth and therefore full on wings so you can fly - I have no clue, but it's augmentation. Possibly it could be done in a completely automated station; these fluffy little raptors are a pretty advanced race. What else do you think they should be able to do given their advanced tech?

Another thing I'd be interested in is the fact that Avali seem to travel in packs it says. In game it says you leave your pack because you had to and that it's a lonely existence. You can spawn Avali (either with the mod itself or another, I actually forgot it's been so long...) but you never really get them to follow you, so you never get your "pack" back. Would it perhaps be possible to have the Avali you spawn follow you like the creatures you capture do? if so... could you have a new pack? (Note; you COULD just play with other people and have your pack, but for people like me who just like quiet, calm time to themselves so they can build in peace often don't get that option.) For a question for discussion, should you be able to have a pack? If not what would be your reasons?

Yet another thing to discuss would be equipment. Their weapons seem actually fairly advanced and strong, yet we don't get things beyond ye olde pick, drill, axe, and what not. Also that new matter manipulator thing. Yeah. But wouldn't the Avali have something a bit more substantial? I've come up with a list of ideas revolving around a tunneler, or an area miner, the former being more OP then the latter, but come on, you'd think there'd be something to make their lives easier. Or perhaps their planet didn't really focus on metal crafting and mining, and instead focused on agriculture and tailoring. Still more options in both cases, the most of which we see is the unique farming tubes, which are multipurpose and awesome, but would still be nice to have more ideas to build off of. Thoughts on what you should or should not be able to do with the equipment?

STILL more, they are used to living on a planet of low gravity. Loooooow gravity, enough for them to be able to fly with their miniature wings (according to wiki, would like confirmation on that though I shouldn't be here to do that) and yet now they are able to go to planets with extremely high gravity, enough to almost immediately pull them to the ground which would probably just outright kill them or anyone else to begin with. It would be awesome if to combat this gravity effect they invented a machine that lowers gravity in an area, similar to the sudden changes of gravity in previous Starbound builds where you'd find a dungeon or complex and the gravity would go from super low to suddenly crushingly high. Or perhaps it is an item they carry? who knows. They're also not oxygen based like humans, and that can go into a huge lore detail on certain subjects, but this is a discussion's thread. My question is, should more lore based things be added to the mod to make it more immersive? If so what do you propose to be added or removed to make it seem like it is/isn't?

These are all just examples, but hey, if you got something to add to them, build off them. They're things to discuss or consider. It's the mod author's choice to not give permission to change the mod, but we might be able to still give him ideas, or even guess at something he's going to actually make. He's not dead, and that's reason enough to at least think he is working on it, status update or no.

 

Someone finally brought valid mod discussion to the thread. I think I'm going to have a heart attack.

 

Well, the question was asked for what there was to discuss on the mod, and while I've sat here and waited, I've been thinking about the mod as well. So I have a lot of questions and ideas.

 

I'd very much like to see Avali vehicle techs, hovercars, mechs, etc. As well as more clothing options (not that there's any lack of them now, but more would be awesome). I'm really missing the Avali and their outposts in-game right now, but I am a very patient person so I can wait.

 

Hmm..

I guess it could be implemented via the back item slot or a toggleable tech. Like the bouncy tech pressing and holding F could activate it while draining energy. For lore sake there couldn't be a legit vision augementation though they're supposed to be sound based in physiology and culture so maybe a sonar beam that flashes ores for like 5 seconds. I kinda want special bows though they aren't lore friendly. Something about the color pallete makes everything cooler. I'm trying to figure out what their new ai will be. I feel like sound wave or a satellite would be logical, but it seems weird to have an ai not look like a sentient being especially if there's a personality to it. Honestly that alone takes up a crap ton of time. I just hope the update is released before Chucklefish pushes all that front page stuff to stable. Not because I'm impatient, but because its looks pretty mod-breaky and nothing says screw-this-I'm-out like doing a ton of work only to find out the new update changed the rules.

 

^ thought of this at first, but I wanted to take it a step further. Physical augmentation chances you, usually physically. If you were to make your arm mostly mechanical, given that the Avali have feathers and fur, there is a chance they might not be able to fully replicate the look and feel. So if that isn't a possibility, would they simply wear it out? this was my train of thought. From that, I looked at this recovery/sleeping station that was either implemented in this mod or another, and thought "wouldn't this be a good place to actually select augmentation for yourself?" It seems to be a medical station, designed to heal and rest it's patient. It could possibly be used to augment the body then. It would add a bit of depth and choice, as I recall from reading that some Avali actually full-out went machanical in favor of keeping their body normal. Perhaps augmentation could come with pros and cons, giving the player more choice.

Somehow did not know this. Thank you for clarifying. If they are based on sound, perhaps a physical augmentation could instead let them see in caves. Similar to bats that use echolocation, so to speak. An augmentation for sonar could be bound to a key, or react based on when you move around in the darkness of caves. sending out a wave or some such that bounces off walls. As long as something is moving, you can see, but if you stand still and nothing moves, it doesn't work as well, if at all. another could be literal underwater sonar, for ocean/poison/lava planets. Though for the latter most... no. Just no.

Hopefully it won't be to hard on him...

Edit:

Null, I agree with the mechs. A few friends and myself actually thought that mining would be done with mechs instead of themselves, as they don't look to be the strongest of races, and the gravity of their home planet would probably make them weaker then ourselves, thus why a lot of their materials are very light yet very durable. we also went on to make heat resistance suits for swiming through magma.

For vehicles, how about one that flies? perhaps some microdungeons spawn in the air at some point in time, this would be an awesome idea. Or if a mini map was ever invented, this could be used for a form of fast travel from place t place. or could be used to make a hovering base! God, the options...

Clothing wise, I'm not fairly sure what else they can get. they seem to have the most diverse clothes in the game thus far. What would you like to actually see?

 

Well, I think I'd like to see clothing with some animation actually, pulsing lights, entoptics (miniature holographic displays, could be anything, roses suddenly blooming around you, electric arcs, snow falling, etc.) and the like. The Avali clothes options right now are pretty nice, but for a massively advanced race, the clothes have little reflection of it (not talking about the exoskeletons and such, just the normal everyday clothes)

 

That would be pretty cool, though might be difficult to add in game

 

Well the avali favor the art of tailoring, most of their materials are woven via nanolooms( Hence the tents) I dunno if you can animate clothing in a still/idle frame but the most I'd imagine is animated embroidery or some nice headsets. There were add-on mods that added nice head items( A little scout headset too I think.) They could have new nice glowing back items since one of their racial crops has a bioluminscent effect. They have very lithe frames and arm wings so they'd probably stick to special woven armors and exosuits at most. I think visual effects are a great idea, but the games engine might limit this. You could rig it to a facial expression animation and have a little display or little scouter, though it would overwrite the expressions. I might try that once the mod's released, since that's mostly pixel editing. That might be limited to the head region though. If you rig it to a facial expression you could use SBSE to keep a scouter permanently up, and maybe have a effect overlap it, but thats just a theory and a lot of work for the majority of players.

 

Update on all things Avali

What's the progress report?
Well there isn't much of one to make. I've been busy doing other things right now, mixture of real life and other interests. Each time I've tried go about updating the mod, things get torpedoed by real life.



So when will the update be out?
"Mañana", honestly, I havn't played Starbound properly in like 7 months, nor am I particularity interested in doing so. My plans to update the mod were mostly as a matter of service to the player base and to try out some ideas I then any actual love for the mod; the Avali mod was only ever intended as a tech demo, that proved way more popular then it should have done. And here's the kicker...

...the tech demo was a failure. Starbound was not a suitable platform for the idea. Hence the large disparity between Avali lore (A concept I'd toyed with for a long time, exploring different aspects of techological, biological and cultural topics with an alien culture) and the mod implementation.



I heard you were dying!?
I had a bad stomach bug like 3 weeks ago? - Somehow a combination of this and my absence resulted in Chinese whispers that i had some terrible disease. That is msot certainly not the case, unless we're counting campylobacter as a deadly neurotoxin now.



Why not just update the old mod and make it giraffe compliant?
Because the old mod was crap. In order to maintain parity with the core content I had to compromise on a lot of stuff. This is no longer true thanks to the Novakids breaking the mold, however there is also now a hell of a lot of new content I'd have to integrate. If I'm going to make a mod I want to do it well, not do a half arsed job of it to get it out fast. (What am I, Electronic Arts? )



So what you're gonna leave us all hanging, update my mod dammit!
And yeahhh that's the other thing lately. People getting angry and pushy the mod hasn't been updated. You know I get like a dozen private message a week from people asking or worse, telling me, to update the mod; and then getting pushy if I don't repond to each and every one personally; usually just to repeat what I already said on the forum, that no the update isn't out and no not any time soon.

Baring in mind I havn't played Starbound in forever, and do not feel greatly enamoured with the mod to begin with, that's really not inspiring me to resume work, quite the opposite in fact. I have a certain amount of loyalty to updating the mod for the sake of the fans and not leaving them hanging, but if people are hostile towards me, I feel a lot less guilty about not being nice to them.



So what will happen?
Well, in the short term people are free to patch the old version themselves to make it usable with giraffe if they wish (I recommend co-ordinating that effort to avoid 10 different versions emerging ;p). In the long term I may eventually get around to finishing an updated version with the canon content and art changes I want to implement, though with Starbound in it's present incomplete state, I may hold off on that yet further, as it seems to me there is significant changes yet to come and I don't fancy a repeat of Giraffe all over again, having to totally rework vast swathes of the mod.



What about the Avali
They're not going anywhere; they're much older than the Starbound mod, and I would one day like to find them a home on a platform that suits their needs; as I said, Starbound's Avali mod started as a proof of concept/tech demo that ultimately didn't work, but it doesn't mean they won't find a platform that does.

 

Thank you for that, Ryuu!

With your explicit permission, I will get back to updating the Avali for your fans~

(Tomorrow, anyway. I can probably do the crops, the blocks, several armors and clothing, and some of the weapons in that time. Maybe I'll release the Unofficial update tomorrow.)

 

Praise the creator!!!! Long live the Avali!
And I'm glad to hear it was just a stomach virus, though those suckers are just awful. Take your time good sir, you deserve to have a life outside of this mod. It's better to pace yourself than to work on it til you hate the very site of it. A lot of people came up with ideas if your hurtin' for solutions to improving the mod.

@Mackinz
Good for you man! I was worried you were gonna explode if you didn't get update it. Yay everybody can be happy now and let the modder work at his own pace.

 

Thanks Ryu. Good luck in future Avali mods, maybe come back and post here when you've found a game you can properly fit them in!

 

I fully understand Ryuu... it saddens me. I really love the avali.

 

If I was going to explode, it wasn't because I was not able to update the mod (in fact, I have been able to do that. Releasing it is another thing). I was more likely to blow up from all the people who were acting like someone working on updating besides Ryuujin was the highest form of blasphemy...

I'll just slink away now and go do stuff IRL.

 

See guys, I was right. Y'all pissed him off. (The state of Starbound itself didn't help much either I guess.)
Anyhoo, it might be cool to have it become more of a community thing, provided it doesn't degenerate into drama. Accordingly, Augments and Assortments could become official in "Community Avali 2.0" as could Catalina industries.

 

\o/
official word is good to hear.

 

That's a great idea or someone could create an official avali modpack like the mlp one or the hair one. I knew the changes coming up were gonna be off-putting. Let's just cross our fingers and hope the future giraffe doesn't break all our favorite mods...again.

@Mackinz I knew that was the real issue I was just trying not to reignite that crapstorm, by choosing sides or sounding agitated. I totally get it. It's nice that you really wanted help,but yeah in the age of lawsuits,infringement and generally having to be protective of your creations nobody wanted to take any risk offending RyuujinZERO. Seems pretty chill in reality, but I've seen what pissed off modders can do. Do not want. You weren't wrong it's just a touchy situation. Hopefully this will inspire an Augments and Assortments update, but the Catalina Industries hasn't seen an update since last March and I'm not really willing to mess with until we have a working dye mod for giraffe.