Advanced Blacksmithing (Equipment Creator)

Okay, so, I am aware that what I'm about to suggest is very hard to implement into the game. Even so it's more than worth it to suggest this in my opinion. So here we go:

ADVANCED BLACKSMITHING​

Let's say you have metal bars in the game, you can create a metal armor from some selection of pre-created armors. Just like you would in Terraria, although what I'm going to suggest now is that you can create your own unique metal armor from those metal bars.​

​

First you have to convert the metal bars into metal pixels, when you've done this, you can use those pixels just as you would in Microsoft Paint (Although not that advanced, for obvious reasons), and draw inside a already existing metal armor outline. The catch is that since you only have metal pixels right now, you can only use the metal pixels to create your new armor, you can't use another color pixels unless you already have it.​

EQUIPMENT CREATOR​

I don't have a image right now for how the "equipment creator" would look, but I'll make some example later, so image coming soon with maybe some more details / examples.​

​

Anyways, let's say you created your unique metal mask right now with this "equipment creator" - It could look like anything you want, from the type of pixels you have available, but right now let's say you only had metal pixels.​

Metal Mask Example​

​

If you look closely, you can see that I only used close to metal colors for the metal mask. Anyways it's just an example, the metal mask or helm could look like anything you want by using your metal pixels.​

Metal Chest Example​

​

Same thing here, you can make it look like whatever you want if you have the desired pixels available.​

Metal Legs Example​

​

Same here lol.​

​

Everything Equipped​

​

​

Let's take this time to understand the concept, you get ore, make bars from the ore, then turn the bars into the materialized pixels to use with the "equipment creator". So to create your own unique armor, you use special precious pixels and draw just as if you would draw pixels in Paint. The final "product" could look like anything you want from what pixels you've got at your disposal.​

​

Animated Pixels Example​

​

Sometimes you might want a little extra eye candy on your equipment, in this example you have used some kinda "fiery pixels of epicness" - Nah but to be serious, you have used animated pixels, these will animate all the time like shown in the GIF animation. It's a little harder to explain exactly how they function because I haven't thought about it myself yet. Other than that they would change from one color to another individually, which is probably the best way to explain it for now.

How exactly to go about developing this for the game?​

​

You are asking a very demanding question, however I will try to explain somehow. First, the "equipment creator" would do all the work basically, surely would probably need a new name though.

Anyways, the "equipment creator" would let you draw the "pixels" in desired places where the equipment is supposed to take place.

There are a number of ways to create the "equipment creator" - For the part how it would function. First way would be a frame by frame standpoint. Where you draw the pixels frame by frame, stance frame, attack frame, walk frame, etc, but that could get a little too much, even though it would be the easiest way to get it into the game. The second way would be to calculate how many pixels you used in a basic frame, and where the pixels were placed, and that would somehow put them in the corresponding places in all the other frames, walking, jumping, etc. Would be a lot more complicated, but would be worth it in the end.

When all the frames are drawn with special pixels, it would make it into a GIF probably or another file type which would be saved somewhere in a folder as a custom item / equipment. Which could be used in the game as any other item / equipment, only difference would be that it's custom made, and would probably need it's own folder, idk.

GENERAL IDEA​

​

The general idea is that you would be able to create your custom items / equipment, and trade it with another person if you wanted in some other server, or your own server. You could trade it for anything the other person has to offer, could be pixels, could be anything.


I hope you enjoyed reading this, feel free to share your ideas about the concept and help out as you please. This concept is not completely solid, so I'm interested in all your ideas and yeah- anything and everything realy.

 

People would abuse it too much. People could be wearing a bunch of scribbles, or inappropriate drawings, etc. Only about 10% of the people who would use the feature would actually be making realistic drawings that look good.

 

This is very interesting and yes it is a very creative idea. But, I'm not sure if Starbound is quite right for it. As far as I can tell, Starbound puts heavy emphasis on discovery. Allowing the player to create their dream armor this easily kind of ruins one of the key aspects of the game imo. Because, if a person already has what they believe to be the perfect armor for them, what would motivate them to find different armors? (possibly one they would end up liking more) It could also mess up progression if a person can make armor more suitable for later in the game than they are at. Now, if it were only for looks and did nothing to up a character's stats (e.g. vanity items) then I think it would be acceptable for late game (or maybe endgame even). But it would still be kind of pushing it. That's just my opinion though. You could be looking at it in a completely different way than me.

 

Well, you wouldn't be able to use skin colored pixels, if that's what you were thinking about. I don't see any way to abuse this other than having fun with it. Sure they could be wearing scribbles if they wanted, if they want to look that way, which I kinda doubt, other than for having fun.

I doubt anyone could make inappropriate drawings with it though, the colors would all be based on the ores you can get in the game, and I don't think any of them would look like skin color. Either way you wouldn't be able to put the pixels outside the equipment outline.

 

The pixels would be more valuable than the bars, specifically the animated pixels. I know I didn't go into much detail about all that but I will when I have thought about it some more.

It would be much easier to craft armor that already exists for the game, thus making them more used overall, they would have higher stats to begin with also. The custom made equipment would have worse stats if not modified which would take even more time to do. (Or it could function like vanity items, wouldn't mind that even though it goes kinda against my idea)