July 16th Progress

I really hope modders can make their own pocket dimensions too.

Obviously I'd try and make the Hakurei shrine.

 

Many, many roleplay servers could benefit from being able to make these gates have multiple destinations.

 

Well you're not wrong. But a Floran with a moustache bugs me! Florans don't have moustacheses!

 

I really like the gate design, but not as a gate to a friendly outpost.

Something like that feels like it should be closer to Eclipse Phase's progenitor gates, and lead to worlds with interesting or terrifying things. Gates where maybe you come back with new technology or all kinda of resources or knowing about a new habitable planet, but likely don't come back at all.

I feel something leading to a friendly outpost should be cleaner and less ominous.

 

Does it occur to anyone else that the "missing eighth face" is completely meaningless and just part of one of many artists' mock ups?

 

Of course. But it's just so much fun.

teehee

 

I think it might be a Novakid.

 

I get that a lot, heh. I hadn't really kept up to date about the NovaKids, so I wasn't aware of that, but mostly the whole "Alpha is the first letter, and Omega is the last. NovaKids are being implemented last, so...does this mean that the missing face is the Precursor race?"

Spelling it out was no fun, so I just wanted to see if anyone else wanted to play Tinfoil Hat games, or just me.

 

stargate!

 

Possibly "impractical", but not in any way impossible. It would be pretty trivial to write a texture swap script for when the armor was used with that race (at least on the dev's end, not sure how hard it would be with current modding limitations). Sure, it would require a great deal of time spent on armor conversions, but it would be well worth it!

Avali is BY FAR my favorite race, even if they're not strictly cannon - they're just so dang cute and cuddly!

 

I had another idea months back, to have a body mold key-lock combo. By default, a species or costume item would have the Vanilla mold, but then the Avali species file would specify it uses the Avali mold, perhaps with a bit more granularity in that it uses the Avali mold for chest and legs parts, and Vanilla hats. On the other side, Trimmed Shoulder Wrap would specify it's for the Avali mold. In the end, this would cause the game to prevent a felin or hylotl from wearing an avali shoulder wrap, and an avali from wearing a felin just-a-jacket. Molds would, of course, be arbitrary.

 

I mentioned this in a later post: The concerns I mentioned were raised by @GeorgeV , the games Art Director. It would require a whole ton of work to make parts work properly regardless of race. The additional work to make all vanilla items work with the Avali and vice-versa would be too much at this point.

 

True, but at least only armor would need to be retrofitted - it's not like weapons or other "held" objects have any big issues (may be off by a few pixels, but it's hardly noticeable). I'm perfectly content with the Avali armor packs right now anyways, and if I really want a conversion/something new I can just make it myself!

...But your comment makes it sound like it would me more than just a huge amount of artwork. While I don't know how Starbound's engine was codes as regards races, even if armor sprite coordinate sets were hard-coded (and I feel fairly confident saying that they aren't since you CAN use normal armor with the Avali race, it just has default legs with default animations overlayed on top of your character), I can think of several workarounds, including something like what Kawa mentioned above. I guess I'm just saying I'm curious if I simply misinterpreted your post, or if there are HUGE coding issues, I was also curious what those could possible be! :]

 

As I understood it's more of an issue with asset management and the work involved in creating the conversions to make every piece work with every race. It's the same problem that Blizzard runs into when they create a new race for WoW, they have to retrofit every existing piece to work with the new race. It also doesn't change the fact that there are quite a few people that don't like the Avali (for me it's the fact that the art style is distinctly different from the rest of SB and to me it makes them feel out of place).

 

Hmm, I had the exact opposite reaction - I thought they fit in extremely well with the vanilla game. It's not like there's not already all kinds of a crazy-weird sci-fi-esk races in the vanilla game (i.e Hylotl). If pressed, I'd almost say they make more sense as a more "realistic" race than, say Floran (sentient plants are pretty far out there haha). The art style seems fairly vanilla even. I'm sorta curious - what parts did you think stood out?

(This is purely intellectual curiosity at this point - I'm not trying to belittle your view of what "fits in" or say you're wrong in any way - I just haven't really run into anyone who didn't love or at least like the Avali race)

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Also, Blizzard sure makes up for that "work", as you say, in a whole ton of other ways haha! A lot of their armors don't even have meshes - they're just "painted" onto the bodies. This is why you never see mod "ports" of their armors into any other games (I'm not saying I support cross-game asset porting in any way, I was just trying to make a point). Their hairs all use alpha masks rather than having an increased poly count, and they re-skin, retexture, and re-use the same models, creature rigs (skeletons and animations), world objects, armors, icons, etc. ALL THE FRIGGIN TIME! >

Seriously, people used to go nuts over trying to farm a mount that was just a retexture of 10+ other commonly found ones (they probably still do - I haven't played WoW in a VERY long time). I could make such a retexture in 30 seconds in GIMP with just a few filters and overlays! @.@

Also, I'm sure Blizzard has automated bodyslide tools by now that use vertex-search algorithms - it's not that impractical, at least as a starting point to cut down on the time it takes. I've used such tools for automatically converting armors between different body types and across different games (player-made armor, of course), for pretty much all of Bethesda's RPG's (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas). At least in good old 2D Starbound you ONLY have to worry about textures and not meshes! It's SO much easier lmao!

 

I can't say (with any actual evidence) why I don't think they fit. I'm just personally not a fan of the style.

As far as Blizz and their armor in WoW, they've made some pretty significant strides to get past the "painted onto a mesh body" look. Most of the newer tier pieces use additional polygons and add to the models. The idea though is that the distortion and positioning of their models are done by hand for literally thousands if not tens of thousands of pieces. Every time you make a race capable of wearing all 4 armor types, you significantly increase the number of configurations (2 for each piece [based on gender]). Regardless of the lack of technology (the game is nearly 10 years old now), it still takes a significant amount of time to configure those pieces.

 

wow... how ominously Lovecraftian

 

The bubble reminds me a lot of the Crash Bandicoot : Warped.
http://i62.tinypic.com/14m534g.jpg

The funny thing is that the teleporter looks like a button.
It's so zappy!

 

thats gotta be the race who made the glitch

 

It's an open mouth with fangs you wally