I think an interesting and useful concept would be to have machine that makes pre-fab buildings. Example: You're building a Roman Colosseum, and you need 1 metric butt-load of arches. Well, you could build every single one by hand, meticulously checking to make sure they're all identical. Or you could use the handy-dandy PreBuilder 3000! (The final name will hopefully be much cooler). So, how I envision this: there is a machine attached to a huge, blank wall. You build onto this wall, and any blocks you use are saved as part of the blueprint. Then, you activate the machine, select how many copies of the design you want, and the machine will count how many blocks the design uses. If you have enough, it'll deduct that many blocks from your inventory, and give you a stack of place-able items. When you place them, boom! Your perfect arch! Of course, there will be size limits, so your game doesn't crash every time you place one down. Also, it'll probably be fairly expensive Pixel-wise, to compensate for all of the hard work it'll be saving you from. Constructive criticism welcome!
I'm not sure this would really "fit" with the game. Not to mention it's uses are pretty limited. (cause how often are you gonna build a Colosseum?)
Well, maybe when you're done building a Colosseum, you want to start building a castle. Instead of making the tops of the battlements (the things that look like chess pieces) by hand, you build up the towers, and just toss a pre-built battlement on top of each one. Or, maybe you want to have a certain background design throughout your base, you could draw it out once, then just toss them around as you see fit. I used the Colosseum as an example because it was easy to visualize. It could replicate whatever you wanted it to, not just arches for a Colosseum. The only limits would be your imagination, and again, the size limits to keep from crashing your game.[DOUBLEPOST=1432894178][/DOUBLEPOST] There isn't much I can debate about that; it's a matter of opinion of whether it "fits" the game or not. However, those of us who want it in the game could use it, and those who thinks it doesn't "fit" with the game could ignore it.
its not really something that's worth the effort to code in the developers eyes. think of all those other blocky games. (Minecraft, Terraria, etc....) none of them have this for a reason.
Minecraft and Terraria also don't have space travel. Does that mean Starbound shouldn't? No, of course not. The developers haven't even seen this post yet. I understand that you're opposed to the idea, but that doesn't give you the right to act as if you speak for Chucklefish themselves. If they swoop in here and say, "This is a dumb idea", I'll accept that. But until then, I think it's a not dumb idea!
WOAH. touched a nerve there. I never said it was dumb, just not worth it. I've done my fair share of coding, and i may not be a dev, but i know what it takes to code. and what you propose is REALLY hard to do and makes a lot of bugs if not done right. If the devs do decide to put in your idea, power to you.
This actually would come quite handy for when colonization rolls in. You can setup a lot of pre-fab houses this way for residents. For bonus points, it'd be nice if the racial houses came in pre-loaded.
Iunno how much insight we have into the architecture of Starbound's engine, but it is possible that it's quite capable of supporting large blocks of structure as items without having to rewrite a ton or anything. You can't say with any certainty REGARDLESS of your own coding experience that Starbound is coded in a way that makes this idea difficult to implement. It's okay to not like the idea, but leave the dev-level knowledge to the devs! Personally, I like the idea, but mostly if it comes at a fairly large convenience cost, similar to the portable pixel printer.
I honestly think this doesn't need any dev level knowledge. Considering the planets are already pre-made, this feature sorta exists in the game already. The game is about placing blocks and what you're thinking of is just placing blocks, saving the pattern, and placing them somewhere else. However keep in mind that this is a game among the ranks of minecraft. The devs don't care about what you do since you can do anything you want and they made it that way. I play minecraft with 500MB worth of mods and it crashes every 5 minutes or so, while Skyrim has 6GB worth of mods and it rarely crashes. So if this feature is implemented, you'll need a really good computer.
its the data storage part that's tricky to code. you need to store the data from the type of block and its placements (which is far more complicated than it sounds). try to store something odd (like stuff from the arc), and BOOM! game file corrupted. and you cant just white-list everything that would break the game from being stored without spending hours specifying every single little thing it shouldn't try to store. TRUST ME, I speak from EXPERIENCE. then there's the issue of the SIZE of what your storing. bigger space, means more data, means more lag just from CARRYING the thing in your inventory. Believe me or not, im just telling you the reality of the situation. I'd be willing to bet on this not making it in the game for these very reasons. Im not hating, just telling the truth.
Good idea aswell but it would have to be polished alot and simplified but i think it is a good thought.
