Do you think Starbound will become a modders paradise?

I've been thinking a lot about how large the playerbase is and I'm a little curious to see how many of us are talented in the modding department .

A few things to discuss:
Are there any ideas you have that could work well as a mod?
Do you think Starbound will become what Skyrim has become from its moddability?
If you are a modder, do you have any plans or ideas to make a mod?

As for me: I feel like the way that Chucklefish is designing the game to be modder friendly, this game has a chance at becoming a modding paradise. I am a computer science major so I have a good concept of LUA and JSON ( learned that from this thread
http://community.playstarbound.com/...started-modding-starbound.29611/#post-1229880)
I might just think about making a mod since one of my suggestion posts about the grue received good criticisms.

 

Minecraft got a major popularity boost due to mods, and Starbound will be easier to mod than Minecraft. Gamers love mods. So modding could become a huge thing for Starbound

 

Once pets are added in, my goal will be to create a special game mode designed around it. I was thinking I could come up with a PVP/PVE area where most weapons/items are disallowed or don't work, so you'd rely on your pets to do stuff, pokémon-style.

That's the main idea anyway. I'm not sure if anyone else would be interested in it.

 

As someone who doesn't really get in to the whole mod scene, I still think this game will garner a large modding community.
It's not that I don't like them, I just personally hate scrolling through a 1000 nude/sex/female skin mods to find something interesting and balanced.

Races might be something I look at first though when the base game runs it's course for me, but game lore is a big thing for me and I hate when modded races are basically some kind of Jesus race.
(Not saying the Grue were, I think I remember seeing the post. But there are some that make me roll my eyes when I hit the racial descriptions)

 

Not every game has this. Though Minecraft has that one that no one uses .

 

This is true. Consideration has to be taken that some modders are looking to improve their mods through releasing mods they've made. Its not necessarily a bad thing, but I can agree It does fill up a lot of empty space

 

Yeah I know, I was just being a sod. Often mods add some really interesting aspects and ideas to the game.

I doubt Starbound will cop anything too crazy, but there may be a few RP servers people might want to avoid. (Was a GM in an RP game once, one rule was no cyber, collected 15 A4 pages of cyber logs in a week, some people needed serious help)

 

My biggest worry with mods is making sure I'm getting what I want, and not downloading a virus or something. I'm more concerned about how trust will be established with new mods - I have a feeling there are going to be loads of them and I'm sure they'll add a lot to the game, but mods still freak me out a little from the 'you're downloading files from a strange person on the internet' side of things.

 

I'm actually hoping that the base game itself will cover most of the areas so modding isn't quite as needed. From the progress so far it does seem to be shaping up in that direction though, so i'm not really worried that it'll be an Elder Scrolls/Bethesda Softworks game that NEEDS mods to be fun.

 

Yeah, the base game should feel like a game, not a basic modding tool

 

Although thinking about it, I wish there were race specific transformations that would let them go super for a shortwhile.

 

I didn't choose mod life. Mod life chose me.

 

Only if it's extremely easy to mod, and even then it's a gamble.

 

Yes. Even if you'll need extensive programming knowledge to implement something new, judging by Molly's preview on how to implement new stuff reverse-engineering already existing code and adding functionless decorative items is easy!

 

The thing about Minecraft, is that it seems to me that it is sort of a "base" game, a game that is meant to be incomplete without mods. Of course, that is not true, considering the game has no moddding support whatsoever, though I think that's why it's got so many mods.

Terraria, (before 1.2 was released) had a really nice modding tool called tConfig, that was pretty easy to use. Even with that, there still wasn't as many mods for Terraria, is because the game seems to me, to be complete without them, so mods need to find something really new to add, if they wanted to become popular. (And, yes, I am part of the modding community in Terraria.)

I imagine Starbound will be the same as Terraria, even if modding is really easy from the start.

 

Between Crea and Starbound I imagine the 2D sandbox genre will have a lot of opportunities for mods that can alter their base games in large or in small parts. Part of what makes the idea of modding both of these games an attractive idea is their somewhat modular nature. Placing new biomes, dungeons, monsters and the like exclusively in new worlds can make for some significant alterations that don't affect the natural progression of the core games. That will allow people to release incremental modifications building toward total conversions, getting community feedback in an iterative design process which can really help projects maintain a cohesive feel and incorporate player feedback from the early stages of design. This can help to minimize wasted effort, as well as making modders feel that their work is appreciated and being looked forward to by fans of the game. I know that receiving and incorporating feedback has helped me to streamline and balance some of the work I've done in the past, where working away without any community involvement can seem like a thankless task and be a lot easier to set aside until the desire that started the project dies, when other responsibilities arise.

To me the modular nature of both Crea and Starbound can help to minimize this by allowing people to incorporate their work gradually, building upon the core assets with their own content, until they have something more finalized to release. While the nature of changing world generation may necessitate losing work on worlds added by work-in-progress mods, having your own base in the core worlds can minimize the impact on the overall game, allowing people to keep the feeling of progression even if some of their work is lost. In Terraria any mods that drastically alter the game typically require the creation of all new characters and worlds, while it isn't impossible to imagine less drastic overhauls being possible in games with a variety of worlds to work with.

Since I haven't had the chance to crack open any files for either game myself at this point, it is of course pure speculation on my part. Still, I'm hoping that a more modular modding experience will be possible with regards to content.

Part of what makes Elder Scrolls game modding somewhat difficult with regards to load orders and compatibility without specific patching is the fact that they are very much designed games rather than randomly generated worlds. Dungeons of Dredmor for example can easily have additional rooms, skills, items and monsters added in to draw from when generating a world in a way that allows many mods to play nicely together without specific intent on the part of the mod designers that they function well together. However projects like NVamp that require a great many modders working together to get a large number of modifications to play nicely together may not be the default in Crea or Starbound. Total Conversions will of course tend to be mutually exclusive, but if there are a lot of content heavy mods there is no reason that anything more than a balance compatibility patch would be required to get mod content to work inside of any total conversion that the community comes out with.

I for one hope that the potential for modular modifications will help ease the production of larger scale mods without requiring a huge team of modders working together for months or years. I know we've probably all looked forward to some modification or another over the years that never came to be due to teams falling out or running into real life issues that prevented the project from coming together. I'd like to think that won't have to be the case for modding a more modular randomly generated experience.

 

This might be because there are quite a many people who may not know how to code expecting large things from the people who do know.

Sorry for piecing apart your post, but I agree that the whole open-ended world concept does make it easier to mod. I think what also might help is the support of public figures. For example, Direwolf20 (a popular lets player of minecraft and its mods) Has a large amount of followers that he lead to help support the Feed The Beast modpack.

The modding community I feel should turn out something like that of Minecrafts: droves of inexperienced modders trying to get out what they can, and then the big showcase modders who know what they're doing and help and support the weaker modders with tips,guides, or APIs. Heck, any form of support for the weaker modders can get them going into much more awesome and interesting works, thus increasing the face-value of the modding community.

 

To be honest, I don't think it will be what Minecraft became. Primarily because minecraft is 3D, so bigger world means more room for potential.

HOWEVER! I will say that the ease, and flexibility that Tiy, and his crew have implemented into this game.. It will be a lot of peoples first modding experience.
Like me, as a programmer and looking to try my hand at modding.. I will start with this game, and maybe move onto minecraft if my confidence increases.

 

As much as Minecraft has mods, Starbound will have at least an equal share. At least.