Modding Discussion Avali 1.0 Reboot Discussion

"So, are you still into bombarding fledgling races on first contact?"
Did you not read the top part of the post that actually specifies which lines 1, 2, 3 and 4 refer to?

 

Yes, I know all of the avali>human dialogue lines and I've seen every one on that list many times. I have them thrown in my face whenever I wander through an avali settlement or talk to my avali tenants (Yes, my tenants say I have impervium gonads coming here, to the apartment complex that I built).

The fact that some avali say things like "So, are you still into bombarding fledgling races on first contact?" doesn't mean that other avali can't take a less hostile view that the specific human they're talking about had nothing to do with the uplift war. It represents a diversity of opinion, which is to be expected in any species.

Similarly, human reactions to avali range from "You're not welcome here, turkey" to "I'm sorry for what my ancestors did, please don't judge us all for that."

 

Avali NPC dialogue is woefully outdated. Poking around in the folders and notepad though, it wouldn't be too terribly hard to update or improve, though that's something you'd have to bring up with the Triage lads at this point.

 

I think what gets me so riled up is that the hostile or at least insensitive remarks are the norm, not the exception. They outnumber the more understanding dialogue about 3 to 1. That doesn't seem very representative of the avali race to me (and we're talking about canon avali here, of course).

 

No, I mean that when I said "2. They blame the humans for enslaving them, right?" I was talking about the fact the avali asks if the humans are bombarding fledling races on first contact, which makes no sense since they did the whole uplift thing and didn't randomly find a planet with life and decide to declare exterminatus, but for some reason you linked that to the friendly avali dialog.

Yeah, but aren't the random villages you find specifically all Illuminate colonies? They do exclusively use the white / orange Illuminate colors and technology, so the majority of them being asshats is kindof justified, with the Illuminate being isolationists and all. What isn't justified are the strange references in those dialog lines that makes them asshats in the first place, so, yeah, definitely due for a rewrite.

 

Ah, I had assumed that you were calling into question the "I know it's not your fault" line. Should have read more closely.

 

As for where Ryuu is, I contacted Hetuni about it over a week ago and she didn't provide a clear answer. I can't remember anything of note from that conversation, though again this may be due to my spotty memory. This is why I waited to talk about it: thought I'd pass if there's not any useful info, but this thread is slow anyways so why not.

I remember she said he was doing fine (as in nothing really wrong in his personal life), but that's about all that's definitive. I think I asked about what he's been doing, but I don't remember her reply aside from non-avali stuff, probably games. I tried to keep it low-key, so I didn't get into much, unfortunately. I think I did ask about the avali mod but Tuu never answered my question about that despite me repeating myself, so whatever.

Basically it's everything we've hypothesized up to this point. I'm afraid to ask and prod more, but I'm just worried. I think it's something we have the right to do as a community that's concerned for the state of our leader.

 

I can say with about 90% certainty that there's no need to worry about Ryuu. There's nothing wrong in his life, he just reached that unpleasant point in every project where new-project excitement has worn off and now he has to sit down and do boring work. The project has proven more difficult than he expected (because all projects turn out more difficult than expected) and it stopped being fun. He reached the point where you have to force yourself through in order to complete the project, and he doesn't find it compelling enough to do that.

Asking after him will likely prove fruitless. If he wants to return he will, and if not then prodding him about it isn't going to help.

At this point the reboot is probably a stillborn project, but you never know. It took me 8 months to release the first episode of Ori and the Voice of Nature after completing The Monsters Below, and a lot of that was me trying to muster the will to do the boring parts.

 

Still doesn't give him an excuse to just go off the radar and never provide context. I will always stand by that point of view. I will also say yet again that I have no intention of trying to coax him to get back into the mod; I just want to find out what his current standpoint on the project is and relay it back (or better yet, get him to make a public announcement about his standpoint).

On a side note, I do remember mentioning to Hetuni that he hasn't been active on the CF Forums for over a year now. She actually didn't know about that fact and seemed surprised to hear it. Take from that what you will, but the implications I got were that they don't see the CF Forums as the particularly relevant area for avali discussion, perhaps suggesting that Ryuu is active with updates elsewhere...? If so I certainly haven't found it. It makes sense that he wouldn't focus his intention solely here, but seems weird that he'd just forget about it altogether, especially since it's where the official 1.0 updates were originally held. More likely that he's just not updating, I think.

 

I agree that leaving his community hanging is thoroughly discourteous, but I don't think I'd go so far as to say that we have a right to know.

If Ryu was updating elsewhere, the triage discord would know about it. The avali have all the hallmarks of an abandoned project (though I suppose he could be tinkering with the lore now and then), so unless I hear otherwise I'm going to assume that's what happened.

Abandoning the project wouldn't be surprising. It's not that he's forgotten about it, he just lost interest. The vast majority of big projects reach partial completion and peter out as the required work starts to outweigh the fun/creative satisfaction. Designing the art for a new ship is fun--hunting a missing comma that's breaking the mod just plain sucks. Unless the creator has a strong motivation to power through all the boring, complicated, difficult problems that come with the project, that's as far as they get.

Projects like this are hard. Completion is the exception, not the rule.

 

I mean, does any of us really have a right to anything *insert generic argument about specks of dust in a really big universe here*?

Also, maybe if he had people to help him with finding the missing commas and such things, it wouldn't have been so bad?

 

Thing is, his pride would have led him to reject the aid out of hand.

In the past, he had expressed a desire to complete the 1.0 reboot entirely on his own.

 

I think what Scival is trying to say is that this way of going about is no longer practical in the way of the "hard stuff" that Yellow mentions. Call the community demanding, but I don't think most of us are willing to just see the 1.0 reboot fall into an indefinite development cycle because he was unwilling to let anybody help and then got demotivated. When Ryuujin took this up, he should have known what he was getting himself into. Even a public announcement saying "Never mind, I don't feel I can do it" or something along those lines is better than this community screw-over he's effectively made.

Yes, it's easy to see Ryuu's point of view if you're any bit understanding, but he should also be taking into consideration our point of view, I believe. That's what makes a good community leader, and he is one whether he wants to be or not.

 

I heard that part of the reason he wanted to do it alone is so he retains sole ownership over the IP. Mind you, I don't think bringing in a coder would compromise that ownership, and he doesn't have copyright over most of the code in the avali mod anyway because it's based on Starbound code (he has full copyright over the art and lore, though, which is the important part).

Then again, that explanation doesn't jive well with how he lets the community use the avali. He granted me permission to proceed with my project and deviate from canon to do so, and even monetize it if I wished.

An alternate explanation is that letting random community members help could well have been more trouble than help. I've turned down very enthusiastic requests to join my machinima team because I felt like the applicant would actually me more of a hindrance and source of drama. But I do recruit volunteers from outside my fan base, so it is possible.

But yeah. He really ought to either resume work or just let everybody know he's no longer actively working on it.

 

Any notable Starbound encounters you guys have had including avali?

I know this is a repost, but it was in a weird spot before and as such nobody replied.

 

Yeah. There was that one time I found an avali tent except it was blocking my path climbing up seeing as it was perched ontop of a jutting ledge straight out of a cliff.

 

Starbound's structure generator... Not to mention that's just not a place a pack would build a tent unless they wanted to run the risk of falling to their death or at least to a severe lack of leg day on a regular basis.

 

You know where else a pack from the Illuminate wouldn't build a tent? Alone, in the middle of nowhere, with no clear purpose as for their presence, contributing nothing to society, and probably requiring resupply ships for food and maintaining whatever automagical apparatus allows them to walk around on the surface of a desert planet with an atmosphere unbreathable for them, maybe? I mean, I know this game makes no goddamn sense, but...

Other "interesting" encounters I've had with avali include one that was pregnant with 8 kits and another one adept in chronomancy... both of which had their entire pack murdered at a young age.
Roleplay servers. :/

 

Hang on, pregnant? Avali lay eggs! How lore unfriendly!

 

On the subject of project abandonment, after writing Avali Objects+ (which Triage STILL has yet to actually put in officially), I can tell you I came dangerously close to just giving up and leaving it unfinished several times. I came up with the idea back in February, posted the first version of it on Steam in March, and didn't have it officially finished until the end of June, and that's just one tiny aspect of the race as a whole. Even still, with the proper motivation I could have easily had the entire thing done in less than a month, a week, even, and it still took me about 5 months to get the whole project done from idealization to finished product.

Honestly, about the only thing that kept me going was the praise on Steam and the steadily rising subscriber count. I know it seems corny when you hear a Youtuber ask for subs, comments, and likes on videos but goddamn if it isn't actually legitimately helpful. Good fans can make all the difference, even the rabid ones. I just didn't want to let you guys down.

So with that in mind, I can understand why this reboot basically flopped. It took me 5 months just to do basic writing, so I can't even fathom building the race from the ground up again. Even still, it does honestly boggle me how Ryuu just up and orphaned an entire fanbase without so much as an "auf wiedersehen" or "sorry guys." It's to the point where it has to be an "elephant in the room" for the guy. Even during my long dry spells I still managed to answer questions and address concerns for Objects+. The fact that this thread even still sees discussion at this point is proof enough that support still exists for the race and people want to see it reach its fruition. There's new Avali mods at least once a month on Steam. The Triage version is basically a respawn animation away from actual "completion." That and statted armor that isn't just invisible "insets."

Of course, the Avali aren't the only ones. Shit, it's easier to list off the modded races for Starbound that are wholly complete and compatible with the game's current version (Felin and the Blattra, AFAIK). That includes shit like scan texts, villages and tenants, respawn animations, mechs, the works (though I don't ever see racial dungeons, come to think of it, odd that you rarely ever fight the races you mod in...).