Outdated Creative Mode - Complete control over your experience. 1.4.5

So, I have a couple of observations/complaints/suggestions. Some of them appear to be addressed by the screenshot you've provided very recently, but I want to state this from my perspective.

Firstly, the Spawning and Weapons&Armor Boxes (the red and green ones) have a godawfully huge list of things, making it lag considerably when trying to access them, the lag sometimes eating up three full seconds before I can do anything. If, perhaps, there was some way to reduce the number of things per list, such as splitting up the boxes, or having the default filter show little or nothing.

As well, what is shown is both eclectic and ver close to useless at times. There's none of the findable objects, and so many of the smashable things that nobody gives a second glance to. There's nothing from the Apex laboratories or apartments, nothing from the USCM facilities, no Floran decorations, and no Glitchian heraldry or displays. In fact, the only decorations in the spawning box are all miscellaneous things that, I'm sure, exist but are buried in the files and cannot be accessed. I don't those things, they don't fit with the theme too well, except in a few occasions, and I never use them.

As well, there's a severe lack of lights. Of doors, and bookshelves, of those little eye/hand scanners found all over the place if you're willing to scour enough of the universe.


Anyways, I'm not trying to attack you, or belittle you. You've accomplished an incredible amount, and it looks like you're going to be doing even more, and I look forward to that.

 

Hi, I've just downloaded this mod for the first time and I'm unable to craft the ultimate box. I've put everything in my mods folder, and my game starts up just fine, but when I look for the ultimate box in my crafting interface, it isn't there. Am I doing something wrong? Am I supposed to unzip the mod file? (I've got both zipped and unzipped versions in my mods folder, is that somehow interfering with it?)

 

Update for Enraged Koala is crashing my game. Here are is my .log

Info: Preparing Star::Root...
Info: Loading Star::Configuration from '..\starbound.config'
Info: Done preparing Star::Root.
Info: Client version 'Beta v. Enraged Koala' '639'
Info: Running from : C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Starbound\win32\starbound.exe
Info: Starting from the title screen
Info: Initialized SDL
Info: Initialized SDL Video
Info: Initialized SDL Joystick
Info: Initialized SDL Sound
Info: Opened default audio device with 44khz / 16 bit stereo audio, 2048 sample size buffer
Info: Loading Star::Root...
Info: Initializing SDL Window
Info: Loading Star::Configuration from '..\starbound.config'
Info: Created initial window 1600x900
Info: Initializing SDL Window
Info: Not loading ImageMetadataDatabase from file '..\image.cache', digest mismatch or assets not digestable
Info: Re-created window 1600x900
Error: Exception raised during Root finishInitialization: TreasureException: No such TreasurePool 'heckTreasure' for TreasureChestSet named 'heckChest' in file '/treasure/default.treasurechests'
00504D26 (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/game/StarRoot.cpp:158)
00404B3C (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/client/StarClientApplication.cpp24)
009A64FC (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/core/StarThread_windows.cpp:74)
750E336A kernel32.dll
774E9F72 ntdll.dll
774E9F45 ntdll.dll

Info: Shutting down Star::Root
Error: StarException: An error occurred during loading: TreasureException: No such TreasurePool 'heckTreasure' for TreasureChestSet named 'heckChest' in file '/treasure/default.treasurechests'
00504D26 (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/game/StarRoot.cpp:158)
00404B3C (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/client/StarClientApplication.cpp24)
009A64FC (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/core/StarThread_windows.cpp:74)
750E336A kernel32.dll
774E9F72 ntdll.dll
774E9F45 ntdll.dll

00404FAD (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/client/StarClientApplication.cpp38)
00406CA7 (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/client/StarClientApplication.cpp:407)
0040A9D4 (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/application/StarApplicationBase.cpp:200)
004081C4 (/Users/builder/starbound-slave/releasebuilder-windows/build/source/client/main.cpp8)
004F0F21 (\SDL-1.2.15/./src/main/win32/SDL_win32_main.c18)

 

Alright, I'll try and keep you posted on the progress then.

Don't worry, I don't quickly feel attacked, especially if the feedback given are concerns I'm working on and agree with as well. Anyway, I'll try and adress your concerns.

1. The lag when opening boxes. This has been a problem since the first day I've introduced the spawning box. Luckily, the game itself was improved a lot by the awesome bartwe. However, I thought the lag was pretty much minimal right now. Does it still take 3 seconds for you to open the box? Because that's a proper concern and I thought I was past that problem already. In fact, I was planning to add another 900 items to the spawning box on top of what's in there already, since I thought it could handle it now. If this is stil a concern to you, could you post your computer specs? You got me curious.

2. Items barely findable. I agree in full. I've been working on a new filter button system that will make it a LOT easier to find items (as you probably guessed from the recent screenshot). There will be around 15-20 filter buttons for the spawning box giving a lot more control over what you want to find. It might be somewhat troublesome in some cases, still, simply because of the sheer amount of items (for example, armors will still be fairly hectic) and I honestly don't really know a solution to making it less hectic.

3. Split items over more boxes. This is something that's been suggested, again, since day 1 that I introduced the spawning box. Back then the freeze when opening boxes with a large amount of recipes was even worse. Even then I tried to steer away from a bazillion different boxes for several reasons. The first one is that it's cluttering bases too much. You shouldn't have to build a room specifically for the CM boxes (figuratively). Second, it'll make finding items even more difficult. "What box had what again? Better right click through all boxes again to find out.." It indirectly makes it take even more time for players to find back their items unless they've been playing with it for a while already. I want to keep it as user friendly as possible. Those arguments still stand for me, and I'd rather keep in a 2 second delay while opening boxes and supplying better ways of categorizing items instead of introducing yet another box (or even 2).

4. Lots of items missing. Yes, and this is actually something that came from earlier development. The idea back then was to relieve load on the CM boxes by introducing the 3D printer unlocker, which would hold most of the furniture (or lights, or beds, whatever), only to find out later that a lot of the furniture isn't actually being saved in the printer. Don't worry, I have a list already completely ready to make sure I'm not going to miss any items, and I'll be adding them to the spawning box while not relying on the 3D printer as much. The list can be found here by the way: http://pastebin.com/iA71EG9c. Once this list is in I pretty much have every item in the game in the spawning box, so your precious furniture will be in there too.

Once again, I really don't feel attacked by feedback, and I welcome all proper feedback as long as it's not badly written or has no common reasoning to the arguments. I wish I would get more posts like yours, instead of the unreasonable requests I'm getting normally.

Your error is something that's not related to my mod. It's something about a treasurepool file being merged in by another mod but somehow failing. I'm going to take a guess you're running other mods and it's a different one causing the issue.

 

The problem is with uscm, floran and glitch items is theres no vanilla recipes for them. I'm in the process of making a mod and I'm running into the same issues. What a person has to do is go into the assets folder, then objects and find what item your looking for and make a custom recipe for each item you want. I'm looking at uscm right now and theres over a hundred items, so it will take time to make a recipe for each one and then also add it to the player.config file. the same goes for floran and others. So all I can tell you is be patient with the modders cause theres alot of work that has to be done. Thanks and have fun.

 

Err, it's not a problem at all. Atleast 50% of the items that are in the mod right now don't have a vanilla recipe. If you want to know how recipes are made for non vanilla items, just take a look at a lot of the recipe files already in the mod. Also, making the recipe files is not a problem, I have a VBA script generating .recipe files based on an excel sheet. The thing that makes it a lenghty process is actually adding a category to all of them, since that has to be done somewhat manually (in excel though, so it's not AS bad). It's just that I'm still working on the category system first before actually assigning a category to all those items. There's 2500 items I have to categorize, so it takes a while to put it mildly.

 

Yeah im not that high speed yet, ive been using notepad++ so it takes me awhile. plus I haven't come across any threads on how to make a random weapon generator. So I've been manually creating them. very low tech on my end.

 

There should be some randomly generated item recipe files in the mod as well. As I haven't really checked my latest update myself (I'm working on more of a developer build right now), I don't really know where it's located, but I'm pretty sure I have random gun crafting in the latest version, don't I?

Otherwise, here's an example of a recipe file for a randomly generated gun: http://pastebin.com/rYPQn8Cy

 

Alright, I've had to deal with a couple of snippy mod authors, and a couple of them got bad enough that I stopped using their mods. It's good to know there's still reasonable, semi-mature people around the internet.

At the moment, it jerks for about 1-2 seconds on the Spawning Box, and 1.5 seconds on the Weapons&Armor box. I'm using a laptop with pretty standard hardware from about a year and a half ago, so it's not bad, just not great. I don't think it's an issue with Starbound in particular, but rather that my computer can't handle it. Just to note, the lag comes and goes. If I open the box, close it, and open it again without opening any other menus, the data is still logged or something, because there's no lag then. good for when I accidentally exit the menu and have to re-open it. considering that I never use the boxes outside of base or my ship, it's not too big an issue, even on my server, but it bothers me slightly.

A suggestion for the armor and weapons: have a box for armor and weapons beside the normal box (keeping it around 2-3 boxes total) with filters by race. Have the guns be a filter of their own.

That makes sense to me, although I I still say some of the items from the mod could stand to be re-designed (the duplicators still look terrible, and that extra 1 tile on the bottom right with nothing there but required for the damned things to be put down makes them incredibly hard to place int any kind of base.)
On the note of the duplicators, could you maybe make something similar, but every time you use it, it costs a pixel, or something? I'm only asking because I want to make them a viable part of a live server, without the temptation for players to abuse it. Even if it's just as a patch sent to me directly. In a similar note, can you make any suggestions for a way to make them innaccessible on my server, while still having it installed? That way, I can have them placed already, but people can't make their own? Like, I don't know, make it so you have to smelt a Tabula Rasa to make the uBox, or something? I'm only asking as a favor, not a general suggestion for the mod.

Well, that clears up that perfectly, so thank you. As for the 3D Printer, when I use the all printer unlocker, it just gives me the unutilized Hylotl stuff, which is pretty useless because there isn't a design scheme that uses them and doesn't look terrible.

 

Don't be too hard on them. Most mod authors have to deal with insane amounts of stupid posts about stuff not working while it is, unreasonable requests and a bunch of other stupid stuff. Most of the time they're fed up with the community so much already that they might appear hostile on posts that don't really warrant it. Most mod developers put in a great amount of time into their mods, and getting shut down by some idiot is the last thing they're looking for. After that, it's already too late and they respond hostile to good feedback as well.

I'm going to take this as a corner case then, and pay no mind to it. It might sound a bit harse from my side, but if I would have to take this as a proper concern, I would almost have to wipe all progress on my current update and start anew with more boxes to fix it. Not really something I'm looking forward to.

Apparently I have developed in my own custom build for too long. There's already a 4th box that includes randomized weapon crafting. That's why I wanted the armors to be in the spawning box, since 4 is pushing it for me. On top of that, armor is flimsy. A lot of armor is not craftable or tiered, and from the internal name you often can't see what's vanity armor or actual armor. Currently I'm thinking of doing two filter buttons. One for crafted armor, one for the rest. While it's a bit less organized, it should still be easy enough to find things back. Especially if you want a specific race armor, you can always just use the text search box to get certain race armors.

Yeah, I really have been developing in a dev build for too long. There's new art work for duplicators since ages, but apparently I didn't include them in the last updates. It can be found by going a few pages back, and it'll for sure be in the next big update that's hopefully coming soon.

I'm not sure if Lua has any calls right now to subtract pixels from a player. If there was, sure, you could do that. If not, it's not going to happen in an easy way. As for not being able to craft the tables as the player, you can always change the recipe for the ultimate box on the server. The problem lies in where the player can just have the original mod installed and still craft it the old way. If you really want to go that far, you can change internal names of the boxes so players will HAVE to download a custom version of the mod you'll be providing. Honestly though, that can take quite a bit of time and I'm personally not going to put energy into it right now. This update is already draining pretty much all free time I've had lately.




Alright, progression update time. Pretty much worked the entire evening on the UI once again. I've been busting my nuts to make it look good and to get it working with my preferences. I had planned to do this in about 2 hours in total, but it has taken pretty much the entirety of the last 2 evenings to get this done. Here's the final UI of the ultimate box, which will be ported to the other boxes with other colors.



And here's a comparison between what I started with today and what it turned into.
http://i.imgur.com/T1H0Whk.gif

 

okay, i checked out your mod and i see all your recipes, thats normal, what I don't get is why you didn't have to enter all those things in as item's in the player config.? you got nothing in there, except the merge. Am I doing something wrong or more than I should be doing? I don't get it. I guess what i'm saying is I'm stopping work on my mod til I know whats going on.

 

Okay, in order, my responses:

1. Oh, I mean I've dealt with mod authors that are snippy from the beginning. know that they (you) are spending their (your) own personal time on these projects, but that doesn't give them the right to viciously harangue even the slightest criticism. I am all for helping bash idiots who make stupid comments on the forums and pester mod authors with petty complaints and stupid requests, but I draw the line when the mod author clearly starts, escalates, and finishes the entire problem themselves, repeatedly.
2. Understandable, I was just bringing it up.
3. Keep the vanity armors in the main box, and have the crafted armors in the Armor Box. If that's not possible/plausible, then sorry for bringing it up repeatedly.
4. Thank goodness, they'll finally sorta fit into my lab. Is there any chance for a more... idunno, steel-ish color to them? Just a nitpicking from me, is all.
5. Ah, alright. I was wondering if it was possible. Also, I have no idea how to modify the recipe files, so oh well. Thank you for your input, I'll check around and see if there's any utilities for Starbound servers.
6. And finally.... that looks beautiful. I cannot wait for that build to be released. Although, I kinda like the semi-transparent panes, if only so I can see what the hell is going on around me.

Welp, alrighty then. Best of luck to you!

 

There's a line in my .config files for my crafting tables: "requiresBlueprint" : false,

This makes it so you don't need to teach recipes to the player. If you do want to teach it manually, either merge a player.config with the desired item recipes in there, or use the blueprintOnPickup method. There's plenty of guides out there that explain this, so if this doesn't help, take a look at some guides or just take other mods as examples.

 

Any chance you could share that script for generating recipes from an excel spreadsheet and a short guide or how to use it? It would come in quite handy to make dyeing recipes for modded items.

 

I don't really want to put time into explaining my own script, but here's something that's basically better than my own script anyway:

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/using-excel-to-make-recipe.57057

 

Okay, thank you for the tip.

 

My earlier post seems to have gotten lost in the flood of constructive criticism, helpful tips, and progress updates. Could I perhaps get a little help with this when someone has a chance? I'd be eternally grateful.

 

You do indeed need to unzip the entire CreativeMode folder into your /mods/ folder. Having the .rar there as well shouldn't intervene but it's good practice to just leave it out. If you did that, and it's still not working, go to your Starbound folder, locate the starbound.log file, and copy it's contents to pastebin.com and send it to me.

Sorry for not responding, it does seem the flood of new posts got yours a bit burried.

 

when r u going to bless us with you UI update?

 

Alright, I'll try it without the .rar when I get home. And thank you very much for the quick reply.