Modding Discussion Avali 1.0 Reboot Discussion

Well, as it is what comprises their blood, it's also what they intake for sustenance and excrete, the same way water is for us.

I tend to believe they do. It's most certainly an attempt to humanize them on my part, but on the other hand there's no reason they wouldn't be able to. Of course, only Ryuujin has the actual answer though..

And on the subject of Avali eyesight, it's not bad in dark places, it just leaves them nearly blind in places with increased light level. And remember, this can be overcome through augments; that's what I've done for my own Avali character who spends a lot of time on Earth-like planets.

 

Hmm, well.... I just read an interesting piece of mind from someone named "Drunken Whaler" on the steam forums...
From: https://steamcommunity.com/app/211820/discussions/4/610573009257243819/?ctp=4


( Note: Facial expressions are already being discussed as an issue )
It is a bit harsh, but it does give some thought to the Avali structure and shows some flaws.
I hope I'm not considered aggressive by posting this, but this does poke a lot of holes in the way an Avali works physically and the way they work with the world. I think that if we want to move forward with scientific justification of the Avali, we'll need to address the problems that are mentioned in this user's post, which I do not own and am only using for educational and scientific purposes.
Problems are as follows:
1: Near blind ≠ Facial expressions, visually augmented reality (Possibly hearing integrated, however HUDs do not make sense as stated above.)
2: Harnessing energy from atmosphere (I do not know whether this is an issue as I have no clue of the methods of which or what is being harnessed, please specify if possible)
3: Wing not attached to base, flight is unstable and non-effective, would probably twist limb without some sort of base tethering(?)
4: Wing digit? Specification is needed.
5: Body is reactive with 90% of common elements.

I am not rallying anyone into action or complaining about said problems, I am simply stating that these problems exist, and am making no attempt to insult the work of the hard working modders, or any of the community who are associated with or are fans of the avali.

I think that's about it... also I hope this helps you guys in explaining how the avali work. For that matter, if tears are ammonia, wouldn't they be crying blood? Kind of creepy. However, it does kill some types of bacteria, although not all...

 

Who cares when they look and play so well lol

 

1: Near blind ≠ Facial expressions, visually augmented reality (Possibly hearing integrated, however HUDs do not make sense as stated above.)
They're not 'near blind' their vision is more akin to our peripheral vision. The presence of facial features and emoting however is primarily for human players benefit; at the end of the day a race that never emotes or has any recognisable facial features just comes across as 'creepy' and unrelatable. Someone's reading too hard into the lore while forgetting that at the end of the day, this is a race for players to play, not to murder.

Now left to me, I would have them emote with their ears; BUT the way Starbound's hair/hat/head system works, means I can't do that, so I required another option.

2: Harnessing energy from atmosphere (I do not know whether this is an issue as I have no clue of the methods of which or what is being harnessed, please specify if possible)
The Avali homeworld is tidally locked, Tidally locked worlds typically have a permanent super cold night side and, depending on condition a partial or permanent day side that is much warmer. This results in stable and predictable surface winds, which are ideal for wind based power generation, especially around the equatorial regions.

3: Wing not attached to base, flight is unstable and non-effective, would probably twist limb without some sort of base tethering(?)
4: Wing digit? Specification is needed.
Not sure what they mean exactly by 'not attached to base' the structure of the Avali wing differs little from that of a bird's except that not all of the digits are fused into a single basal digit, but retain a few individual digits, in addition to the basal digit, ulnar and metacarpus. The shitty 'shaved Avali' pic was done largely as a joke way back but, like absolutely any brief sketch or musing, gets filed into the wiki when I'm not looking at written up in 'lore'. I've been trying to chop out some of this depricated, unclear or incorrect material.

Maybe he's confused by the fact a lot of fan-art incorrectly depict the wings as 'arms with feathers', instead of actual wings. Incidentally, a human could fly on their homeworld if they taped cardboard to them and flapped hard enough, if anything is unbelievable, it is that Avali ever evolved such complex and efficient wings on that planet.

5: Body is reactive with 90% of common elements.
The human body is reactive with 90% of elements; it is by volume 70-80% hydroxic acid, with a large amount of oxygen held in solution... indeed this is why human biochemistry works at all. Humans do not find this reactivity inconvenient because our biochemistry evolved to survive in this environment; take us out of this environment however and suddenly you find alien worlds are incredibly toxic for us... would you assert on this basis that water/carbon is rubbish?

Avali biology is ammonia/carbon rather than water/carbon, this changes up a lot of the precise biochemical pathways, but it's still viable on paper; or so NASA says. I'm not a biochemist, I'm told it works but has a lower energy yield; Avali have a burst metabolism that tries compensate for this a bit, which again, on paper is a suitable work-around. There's no more precise information than that, I don't even have a canon answer for what gas they breathe - like I said in #1, people are trying to read too hard into the granular details

Have you ever wondered why Wookies live in giant trees? - Probably not, I doubt even Lucas has an answer for you, it's irrelevant finicky detail in the grand scheme of the story being told.

 

It's just some idiot who takes everything in the mod for granted, and not as non-canon necessities from engine limitations, plus a dash of lore misconceptions.

 

While I find avali biology and evolutionary history unlikely at best, I'm inclined to accept it at least in the context of Starbound. It drives me nuts writing for my machinima, but for Starbound it's okay because it's significantly more logical than the vanilla races: they're not Aztec birdmen or Big Brother meets Planet of the Apes, so it's well within the amount os suspension of disbelief needed to operate within the game universe.

I will say that even though they make very little sense, I'm very glad to have the emotes. They are in general very well done (better than the vanilla races' emotes), and add a lot of life to my machinima.

Speak for yourself.

But wait, isn't Avalon tidally locked around a planet, rather than the sun? If so, it shouldn't have a permanent day side and permanent night side. Day and night may be really long, but they'd be there just like the phases of our moon (which is also tidally locked).

 

I imagine it is still tidally locked to the sun while still being a moon, with the right rotation.

 

But that would take an incredible coincidence for Avalon's rotational period to exactly match the time it takes to orbit the sun. Tidally locked objects are tidally locked because the thing they're orbiting pulls on them until the rotational pattern matches the orbit around the planet. As far as I know, so a tidally locked moon will always be tidally locked around the thing it orbits--in Avalon's case, a gas giant.

 

I guess the guise of knowing what you're saying isn't always true to what is said... Well.

Lesson learned...

 

It wouldn't have be exactly matching, but close enough to result in the same effects while having minor drift in the rotation that wouldn't really effect a mobile race like the avali.

 

Exactly why my roleplay character who's a cold blooded murderer is the avian.

 

well honestly almost everyone in the steam community is a complete butt cavity and all of them hated the avali just because it's popular, I mean I just browsed the artwork section and there always someone poop talk about the avali.

They'll always find something to hate about and you can do nothing to stop them, what can I say h8ers gotta h8 m8

 

It's a coincedence that's entirely possible though. *shrugs*

 

I don't think everyone hates them, I have a ton of upvotes on my Avali art and no negative comments

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=765644503
the comment section might give some organic lifeforms cancer, be warned and lowerdown the artwork section is where you really reach the salt mine(about a month/two ago)

so far yeah, I havent seen any bad comments on avali artworks in the steam community artowrk, probably those butt cavities are cowards.

But enough pointing fingers, I'm still waiting for a decent discussions with weapons system or game mechanic(seen several mods that have their own crafting/configuration window but doubt Ryuu have those planned yet).

 

Strictly speaking I suppose it's possible, but horrifically unlikely. And at that point it's not tidal locking: tidal locking is a process where a satellite's rotation is gradually adjusted by the gravitational pull of the body that it orbits until it matches the orbital period so that one side always faces inward toward the thing it orbits. A object can't be tidally locked to something that it doesn't orbit.

Edit: Actually, thinking about it more, if you wanted to say "Avalon is astronomically significant because its rotational period approximately matches the orbital period of its parent planet, so that an Avalon day lasts almost as long as an Avalon year. This has a number of interesting effects..."

Just don't try to call that tidal locking. Also, the day side would still have periods of darkness (potentially quite long) as it passes behind the parent planet as it orbits.

 

This doesn't even mention how in the lore AFAIK the Avali tend to compensate for any off world issues via genetic/nanobot tech or whatever. Pretty sure I read that somewhere about how every Avali citizen at least has some sort of nanite protection that guards against disease and whatnot, and more adventurous Avali spring for further enhancements. For the player or no, just because Avali has canonically poor eyesight by genetic design doesn't mean there ain't tech in starbound or their lore that can improve eyesight. I mean hell, we IRL have Lasec eye surgery, and it's only getting cheaper as time goes on. With improved eyesight comes better capacity for reading, using, and understanding facial expressions. As for surviving on alien planets. Well I mean shit, how does any race in Starbound survive on alien planets? Canonically as far as I'm concerned, an Avali PC that joined the Protectorate probably had some gene mods done that lets them breath O2 and survive prolonged contact and/or hugs from other species no problem, and even eat our food. It's Sci-fi. Use science. Not that hard.

 

One aspect of the Avali that I think is under-discussed is their social organization/kinship pattern. We all know the basic unit of avali society is the pack--a logical choice for creatures evolved from pack hunters. But what catches my attention is that modern avali packs are not formed like animal packs. Animal packs are a combination family group and admission of outside members. Whether it's more of one or the other varies by species. But avali packs are neither of these: they are assembled during childhood, not by their parents, and not into any existing social units, but by unrelated individuals into entirely new groups. This is a very centralized process, quite at odds with how it's done in any human culture or ceregiving animal that I'm aware of. Since the family unit is most likely the original system, there must have been some event at some point in the past that shifted the avali social structure into this centralized system, and it was probably big. I am very curious what sort of event would precipitate such a shift.

Eyes, sure. Temperature, sure. Breathing O2 (in the sense of using it to generate cellular energy)? Doubtful unless you've replaced every cell in their body. More likely is that they have an augment that breaks more complex molecules into a gas they can breathe (like breaking water vapor into hydrogen and discarding the oxygen).

 

How is this a problem if they can replace their entire body with mechanical replacements and just be fine?

 

Replacing body parts is not the same as replacing cells. An avali outfitted for breathing oxygen by replacing body parts would essentially be entirely machine. It's possible, but at that point they probably wouldn't look like a regular avali.