Modding Help a slime race mod

Let the rambling begin!


So... I'm taking a stab at making my own mod, the first I've ever done.

I've got this weird attachment to the idea of slime people (I blame Space Station 13), so after playing with the /sbg/ race mod for a while (which is a fine mod), then not really being content with the little bit of extra bulk the Golgians have due to being based on the slime costume set, I decided to do up my own set of sprites, starting with a human, and recoloring it similarly to the slime costume, but with adjustments since the costume's a little bigger in the head and torso.

I know squat about modding, but thankfully there's DrPvtSkittles' template. I've gone through renaming the files, slightly adjusting the color of some ship objects (perhaps I'll actually replace the ship one day, or at least the ship object sprites), completing the body sprites (need more palettes though, I copied various liquids to start with), made up a sort of racial trait buff (sorta between thinking of an SS13 slime and a D&D ooze, more SS13 and its poison/electric immunities, but no idea how to immunize against specific damage types), and... I've made a grand total of one hairstyle, based on myself somewhat (though my hair isn't that long).


I tried to make the feet look like what one typically sees in artwork of slime people, including a little bit when walking or running.

The race's playable, and I haven't had any crashes of any sort, so that's good to know, but I should probably stop being lazy and try to complete the thing n' upload it already.

I'm trying to get ideas of hairstyles people would like to see, but none of the messenger channels I've spoken in have shown any real interest, so... maybe someone here can throw me some thoughts, or images to replicate? If you're in the mood, I'd be up for seeing what you might come up with yourself, and naturally include your name in a contributor list, though I'm a competent spriter as well, so... images of what you'd like will do, too.

It'd also be nice to have a custom ship, but... I have no idea how I'd start that, and it seems like a lot to think about. I thought I'd look at the ship mods (noting the ones that allow inclusion in compilations of course), but none of them are really what I'm after. I've got thoughts of a rather large workspace that has ample room for... say... a Frackin' Universe science lab, and a gardening area when one wants to plant a variety of stuff. I don't know if I'll ever start on a ship any time soon. I might just leave it to people to pick whatever ship mod they want to use with it, though a thematically-appropriate ship would be interesting. ...Maybe there's a slime— er... slim chance there's an intrigued artist out there? Er...

Ah, also, I'm going to replace the "Underwear" color setting with "Eye Color". I think people would appreciate being able to choose the color themselves... and I'm gonna see what I can look up about making a variant of at least the Spike Sphere tech so it looks more racially appropriate. If it was possible for it to match skin color, that'd be awesome, but I'm expecting it not to.

 

Hey this actually looks pretty good, to start off. I have a few suggestions though
For one, a human based slime race is one thing, but have you thought about giving the player the option to choose a different race, maybe? Have the face/hair be a separate setting with options for apex/hy/floran etc faces, and just sorta... Goo-ify them. It'd be interesting to see if you could pull that one off, it'd be the first I've seen
Secondly, a unique ship really is that extra mile that makes a race mod good, I would suggest looking into either mucking up a race's ship, or making a sort of monstrosity of a gooey mash-up like the floran ship, a bunch of stuff stuck together or something. Again, would add that extra fun bit to the mod!
Sadly though, I don't believe there'd be any way to recolor the techs (without recoloring them for everyone). I do like the idea of some sort of ball of goop sliding along the walls and such, but the techs don't exist as a per-race thing, so you'd have to pull off some wizardry to change them about

Good luck on what you do do though!

 

...That feeling when someone confirms your preferred account name over two years ago and never uses the thing... egh...

Well. I've made another hairstyle.


Maybe I can look up some more well-known slime characters. Are there even that many?

Also, the palettes I've got in are a shade of purple I like, liquid erchius, slime, liquid slime, poison, swamp water, normal water, healing water, lava, oil, and... an attempt at coconut milk which I'm sure someone somewhere's gonna say is something else, but nope, don't care, I know what it is. If anyone's got any other liquid ideas they'd like me to throw in for coloring, let me know, but I'll of course include more common colors, like shades of red, yellow, blue, green, etc.

I'm gonna see what other liquids there are in Frackin' Universe, I guess... and maybe I can make up a chocolate-looking color.

...

Ah, I just remembered, I had a sort of error at a point when I was seeing how this new hair looks in the tutorial area, but I couldn't figure out what the gibberish was referring to.

Also, the ship you escape in doesn't seem to be showing up for some reason. I wonder if I renamed something I shouldn't have, but I only did what the template directions said, renaming all instances of "sktest".

...and I just got another error. This happened when clicking the workbench.

I take it by this that I need to make crafting recipes for each of the ship items, do I? Or at least the ship door and hatch... though if this errored, there's a chance other things will error, even if they only show up in /admin mode. I've got an OBJECT file for 'slimepersonshiphatch', but I don't know if there needs to be an item file for each of these things as well, or recipe files.

Now I suddenly wonder what determines the requirements to craft an item. Time to delve into the game files...

...

Okay so it's recipes, but where the heck are the ship object recipes located? And do I still need an item file made up for 'slimepersonshiphatch'?

...

I've found the slimepersonshiphatch.RECIPE file, and it looks alright.

{
"input" : [
{ "item" : "titaniumbar", "count" : 1 },
{ "item" : "smallbattery", "count" : 1 },
{ "item" : "wire", "count" : 5 }
],
"output" : { "item" : "slimepersonshiphatch", "count" : 1 },
"groups" : [ "craftingfurniture2", "doors", "all" ]
}

Guess that's not the issue. I wonder what is, then.

 

Not a fan of "bumping" threads, but I'm getting a bit buried, and any help would be appreciated. I've got no clue what specifically is causing this error... though I'm guessing a hint is in the log of course.

Seems like slimepersonshiphatch.OBJECT is a possible problem. Maybe I made a mistake in there?
I see no more instances of "sktest", I renamed all those, so that's not the issue. Maybe if I just compare the file to an existing vanilla one...

EDIT: I just renamed the first of two instances of "apexDescription" to what it should have been, "slimepersonDescription", and after checking again....

...it appears to be working. Huh. I guess the mistake was having two cases of "apexDescription". Who knew that could cause the game to crash...

Well then.

While we're here, is there a limit to how many colors you can throw into a character, or is separating the codes all that matters, like this?

"80bc72" : "ae1e1e", "478844" : "570f0f", "416638" : "420a0a", "174217" : "2c0707"

If there's no limit, I could throw in another shade to replace the white spots. Heck I could try to make the sprites more smoothly colored in general.

...

Oh right, uh... the idea of being able to pick a head to represent a different race would be neat, I guess, but I sorta see issues regarding hair, then, and emotes. Changing head types entirely is a bit more complex than stuff like how one can adjust the head of a Carodont in the /sbg/ mod. You're still playing as a shark-type person in that case, and it's not changing the position of the eyes or mouth.

Also a reminder, still need help making the ship's sprite appear in that final tutorial cutscene. Not sure what I'm doing wrong there.

...

Screw it, I'm gonna throw in different color options for a thematic variant of the Spike Sphere, at the least. This variant will require unlocking the Spike Sphere first, but I don't think I'll bother charging people for a theme.


Now if only there was a way to target a tech's image files for a color setting, so I didn't have to make a set of files per color...

Anyone got any ideas?

 

As far as I can tell, there's no realistic limit; that is, if there IS a limit it's probably more than you're willing to type. I've made a piece of clothing recently with like 8 color replacements.
Coincidentally, if you're interested, it's worth noting that you can also make skin colors transparent by adding an extra 2 letters on the end of a hex. For example, if you take ff0000, which is red, and add CC to the end, you get ff0000CC, which is a slightly transparent red. There's a whole chart I can post later if you want it.

If you're referring to the small ship that flies off into wherever, you need image files in /cinematics/story/smallship
they need to be named <racename>Ship, <racename>Ship2, <racename>Ship3, and <racename>Ship4.
Pvtskittle's race template is a fantastic start, but when I was making my own race using it I came across several issue(all of which I probably should have reported in that mod's mod thread, but I already forget what they were, for the most part). The ship not appearing in the cutscene was one of them, and that was because the ship sprites weren't in the proper folder, /cinematics/story/smallship.

Also, for some reason your last post switched to black text a quarter of the way through? I doubt it was intentional, but I was really confused for a second because I use the old dark forum theme and that last post was just "edit", a big block of empty space, and a picture.

 

Huzzah, a second person speaks! I thought I was going to get buried, hehe. I mean I guess I could keep bumping things but it's kinda sad just talking to myself.


Alright, considering the whole idea is a slime race, and slime tends to be transparent, I would LOVE to see this transparency chart, Antyrus. Also, thinking about that I'm doing a slime race, you've got the lamia race covered, and PeppehGreens is working on centaurs, that'd make an amusing collection to assemble. Now we just need someone to try and tackle arachne, harpies (I've seen an avian replacement in Cutebound, but emphasis on "replacement"), and whatever else... and we need tendrille to come back to life to bring succubi/incubi back in.

Thank you, the template race mod had those files placed in just cinematics/story for some reason. I just compared to the vanilla game files, I wouldn't have noticed that without you pointing it out.

As for text, I do this silly thing with changing "EDIT:" to red every time for some dumb reason, and doing that changed the rest of the text I type. I'm not quite aware of how to stop it from continuing on as the same color... at least when we use the UI as opposed to HTML tags. I gotta stop bothering with the UI.


On the side, I'm not sure if this is related to my work or not, pretty sure it's not, but playing with what exists so far, I activated a gate, did a couple tech quests, then went through things up to where Esther sends us off on the Floran mission. When I tried to teleport back to my ship, it seemed to linger a rather long time in teleporting, so I waited a bit... and a bit more... and nothing happened, so I hit Escape to check where I was, I was nowhere, but I still had the UI. Thought I'd try relogging, didn't help. Tried /suicide, didn't help. Had no real choice but to start over, though I guess I could also just delete the universe files too.

...

Thanks for the tip, Antyrus. Testing with adding 80 (128) at the end of my first color palette, and it looks to be working pretty well, but it's a tad too transparent for my liking. CC adds a tiny bit of transparency, but I feel like I want to increase it a bit.

AA seems like it'll do.

 

Here it is, even though you seem to have already figured things out:

100% — FF
95% — F2
90% — E6
85% — D9
80% — CC
75% — BF
70% — B3
65% — A6
60% — 99
55% — 8C
50% — 80
45% — 73
40% — 66
35% — 59
30% — 4D
25% — 40
20% — 33
15% — 26
10% — 1A
5% — 0D
0% — 00

100% is full solid, 0% is invisible.

This bug has happened to me several times when there's something wrong with my ship after upgrading it, but it sounds like you haven't messed too much with the ship yet, so I couldn't tell you. I don't know if you're in the habit of looking at log files yet, but that's definitely what you should do in this situation. Log files can be kind if a mess but often tell you exactly what's wrong. If you can reproduce the bug, exit the game and take a look at the log immediately, and if you can't figure it out, post the log here.

I might have actually already have sprited both of those like a month ago
both are more than a little rough but totally playable

 

I may be messing with things a bit, but I might fine-tune it to 75% with BF, so thanks for the list, yes.

I've been getting into looking at the log file lately. I'll try to keep it in mind if I ever get stuck in the void again.

Those sprites look pretty awesome, though personally I think I'd leave clothing options to whatever people equip... but they might end up equipping invisible clothes and go streaking about, hehe.

...Actually I sorta do just that, I'll admit, but just with this slime race, 'cause typically, there's nothing to show anyway. If there WAS, however, or if I found a style I really liked, I would definitely put something on.

 

I'm diggin' the cutesy appearance if this one so far; definitely gonna keep an eye on it. What are some thoughts of some tier names for armors?

Heck, what are some thoughts regarding armor? The basic race is there, but we don't seem to have a tech-theme goin' with them! What kinda society? Makes it harder to visualize what armor for them would look like, y'know? Names could be based on traditional RPG monsters (slime, goo, Royal Slime? Maybe a metal slime for good measure)

As for hairs, https://cgcookie.com/app/uploads/2015/05/goo35-hair_1600px-1024x376.png and http://66.media.tumblr.com/85f4e9dc750e7a1b715cbb9d30b01081/tumblr_msk6zgqoZK1sobytio1_500.png are the only two I'm findin' that look pretty goopy. Don't make the hair look too sharp; slime's gotta look all round and fluid-like. I'm sure Kenkou_cross has a few solid hair designs with his slimes, too.

 

I'm game for ideas, Alpha_StevO.

I admit I haven't really put any thought into armor at the moment... or weaponry, though we've got tons of that, and a friend suggested a slime whip for one idea. Maybe it could have some slime-related abilities, sorta like the Cutarrh and Katarrhna, though I keep thinking about the obstacle course I might create for my friends if I coat the area in slime. Not fun for them to deal with, sliding and bouncing about.

Society........... I'm not much of a writer, unfortunately. For starters at least, I'm thinking of a race that evolved from the more common variety an adventurer might run into.


I've seen those images before. If you like those sorts of styles, I'll do my best to replicate them. At the moment, I've got my style (in the avatar), and recreations of Suu and even Jamanen/Jellax's hairstyles (minus what'd be behind their bodies because the back arm's layered behind the hair).


I know the colors aren't exactly right. I'm gonna look up images of the characters and add in their related palettes.

I'm hoping that over time, more people get interested in the idea of the mod, and can at least contribute some more thoughts of ideas. I can handle recreating hairstyles, and I can do transparency now thanks to Antyrus pointing out how to do it. I'm at least putting a thank-you note in the mod for telling me that one.

Also, I've gotta make more colors for that slimy Spike Sphere variant. I just wish there was a way to simplify it so people can pick from a variety of palettes instead of having the tech station cluttered up with alternate-color Slime Spheres, but I've got no idea how to go about that.

Further, note to self, don't forget to edit eyes to allow for separate color selection.

 

I've seen very few modded races delve into certain cultures, such as Russian or Chinese. There's tons to choose from, no doubt! I'm sure you'll pick somethin' soon. As for society...that's a whole 'nother story, and there's likely infinite amounts to choose from. Best of luck picking, though!

Looking at some of the colors available in the screenshots, the white highlights feel a bit out of place, especially for the dark red slime. Stands out too much, y'know? I'd swap it out for a brighter base color, rather than white.

 

I don't really think too much about existing cultures when I build. Personally I tend to just aim for the slime theme itself when I do anything relating to it, much like people and their slime houses in Terraria. I was amused by this sort of thing:


but I also like the general idea on its own, too.


Of course, there's also the possibility that parts of this species might adopt some cultural aspects here and there. Slimes are one of the most common monster types that occur in games, and they're all over the world in many forms, adapting to various environments. If they started building things, they might borrow from existing cultures, but I wouldn't imagine a specific focus. It'd likely be a bit of everything.

I guess this's another reason I'd like help with the mod. I want to know what people would like to see. At the moment, I'm just focusing on the body, hairstyles, allowing eye color selection, palettes, making a few more colors for that slime version of what seems to be the stickiest tech there is at the moment (Spike Sphere), and getting another weapon or two made up. A whip was suggested, but the few instances of slime people in games that I've seen often show them doing physical attacks, like punching with an enlarged fist, or grabbing and slamming their opponent... but we can't exactly grab stuff here.

I might make a slime grapple as well, heck.

...

Another one down.

I hope I did alright. There's only so many pixels of space to work with. Also for anyone picky about the look of the face's detail, I've been doing two things:
1. mimicking the way the slime costume set is colored
2. going by shading guides like [this]. It makes sense considering the further in you go, the thicker the slime is, so naturally it should be a darker shade.

Also, I'm going to change up the white spots for a lighter shade of the chosen color, yes.

Working on the next hairstyle at this very moment. Please throw me more ideas, people, the next one's only the fifth hairstyle, and I'd rather do something better for you than simply use existing styles.

Alternatively, feel free to fling hair sprites at me, they're real simple to do honestly (and if you do, try to color them similarly to the slime costume set, though I could also just edit them myself.), but note that I'm sticking to having the hair only go down the back a certain length. Basically, if you crouch and you can see the hair pixels go past your feet, that's too long.

In other news, I'm curious about making some slime people as monsters, and having them appear in slime biomes if I can, 'cause it seems fitting, and I can picture there being some slimes which are like any other person, while others might be a bit feral. I need to learn about that bit.

...Maybe I could give them a less-intelligent look on their faces, sorta like, uh...

Just a hint of something to suggest they're running more on instinct, like common lesser slimes. Probably a different animation with a slow pace, but also a little regeneration, and they could fling slime to affect people's mobility.

I've got the ideas, but no knowledge on how to go through with it. This'll be fun.

 

Slime people should/ could have gleeps as pets!

 

That is a thought, though I was considering a more common-looking slime as a pet too... but I'll leave it to the people. Gleeps do definitely have a slimy nature about them.

Part of me wonders if I should make some invisible clothing options for them, but people could also just download one of the existing mods of that type. Invisible clothes are starting to pile up. I know of two mods that add an invisible equipment piece for the head, chest, legs, and back, and there's also head and chest parts in the Super /sbg/ Race Mod.

Next hairstyle done.

You might notice the eyes blinking slightly sometimes due to the transparency setting, but it's not so bad. Seems I didn't put too much shine on this one though... but it still works.

I should really consider getting that white spot issue dealt with already.

Anyone got any styles they'd like me to attempt next?

...

White spots fixed to a shade between white and the brightest shade used in the body coloring. Next thing to do is change liquid-based color palettes to the actual liquid colors, rather than colors used in item icons.

Also, to put it all together, here's the hair collection so far:


I think I'll wanna do at least 15 others yet, 'cause it's no fun running into a clone of yourself... though it's to be expected if you're mimicking Suu, Jamanen or whatever other slime characters these hairstyles are based off of.

Hehe... I don't think I'll ever actually get into playing Starbound again 'til this mod's finished, even when I actually want to play it. I really wanna get this over with n' upload it.

 

Those buildings gave me a simple concept of slime-based architecture; what if architecture's made of 'pods?' A single room would be a giant pod, connected via a thin tube to another pod. Something very unrelated to any known form of architectures, making it feel VERY alien.

https://gyazo.com/b4ab568c84f2efc46e36edf0bafcf69c SOMETHIN' LIKE THIS.

I'd imagine 'skyscrapers' would resemble Slime Stacks from Dragon Quest, looking more like this:
https://gyazo.com/29c7b5abe7c1a926f77f475b4e1cd02a

I'd imagine that the material would likely not be slime, simply 'cuz people don't live in flesh houses, BUT I'll leave those details to you.

AND as I was writing that, I had the thought of slimes all being derived from one ancestor, and have a strong sense of ancestry worship because of it. No other races in-game seem to have such a thing, not that I recall anyhow!

 

Hehe. You're making me want to see slime villages in the game. Unfortunately I don't have a clue where to even begin with that. Perhaps someone else could lend a hand there.

The building idea is pretty neat, but I'd probably replace the thought of the thin tube connections with hallways... though a five-block-high (typical door height) connection between rooms isn't a terrible thought either. I should whip up something to show what I'm thinking of, myself.

The houses being made of slime isn't actually so bad. Think about it, there's entire slime biomes, and some critters living in there, like these guys.


...and then we've got the "Adventure Time" example, which... well... hm.


Honestly that looks like something that'd be built in a sewer.

I could try making a new block type sorta like Terraria's version of slime blocks. Something more... refined, shall we say.


I'm also working on a slime grappling hook right now, and I've got it appearing, but it doesn't do anything. Maybe I should look at other custom grappling hooks. See what needs to be changed, and what doesn't.

...

Aaaand fixed.

Now to just replace that hook.

Also need to make something fancier than this piece o' junk.

Might just replace it with the whip. Whips and grapples make sense.

...

Damn I wanna get back into actually playing Starbound again...

...but I still wanna get this mod done first.

Also, yes, the sphere is transparent. Still haven't got a better method of color selection though. It'd be nice if I could link the color of the sphere to the color one chooses for their slime character's skin. Maybe there's a script thing somewhere that can help me? There'd be issues though if someone wanted to use one of these variants instead of the regular Spike Sphere as a non-slime.

...

Attempting to replace the projectile image used for the slime hook is making it stop working. I seem to be missing something...

Ah, there we go. Good ol' log file.

And I am now amusing myself with a thought just seeing that.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x319mql
(I'd use a YouTube link, but it seems like the ones I found were at a higher pitch, though this video's out of alignment with its audio a bit.)

...

I'm gettin' ideas regarding hair. It's gonna take a long while before I finally create a minimum of 20 new hairstyles, so maybe I should copy the existing human styles and just recolor them to fit with the slime theme... add a bit of shine if I can, but otherwise leave them as they are. Besides, some people might like the idea of the race, but have a preferred normal hairstyle, and it saves a lot of thinking about what else to add in.

...Hmm... y'know, at the start, this was sort of a "modding help" case, but it should probably be moved to the "Mod Releases/WIPs" section, right?

I'm working on the 128 hair image files (sheesh) at this very moment. It'd be nice if there was a way to change all their palettes at once.

 

This is some awesome s&%! i mean these guys look kinda edible tbh lol, my only criticism to your designs is the puddle at the base, it kind of looks like a solid base rather than slime.

 

have you animated that arachnid species? i think if you're gonna develop that race, it looks really kool, but i would have less human in there, maybe a different skin colour that matches the spider side.

 

Ha, I'm reminded of a friend's comment. "Nice hoverboard."
I'll... take a look at it, maybe I can learn something from looking at the currently-outdated "Monster Girl Universe" mod, but it'll mean editing all those walking and running frames again...

That's simple enough. All Antyrus needs to do is having human skin tones for those who like the common half-human types, and other palettes for people who want to be more spider-like.

The idea's mostly supposed to be like "monster musume"-type characters though (typing "monster people" didn't have quite the results I was looking for).

 

I think the answer might be to simply change the light tone on the feet to a midtone and break up the horizontal lines a bit. The hairs great too btw