RELEASED Mod: Spaceship customizeable (block by block)

Hey guys.

As i discussed here i wanted more spaceship customizeability and the ability for it to land also. So far i was able to implement block by block buildability in and around youre spaceship as well as some other items (everything you see on the screenshot can be moved and crafted) but not the ability to land which is not modable atm as far as i can tell. Hopefully the devs give more tools for that as id realy like a moveable house on the planets (preferable landable spaceship).



So with this mod there is a new line of blocks around parts of the interior of your "classic" spaceship which you can hack trough. The original background images have been removed as they cant be customized. Over the next updates i would like to bring more "decorative" items like the thrusters you see here to come closer to the original static background image but still be compleetly customizeable. The outside is wide and free to build stuff, dont fall down though (you will die due to hitting some invisible wall after about 500 blocks).

CONTENT (Rev.7)
- ship customizeable block by block
- added ship station crafting bench to craft new ship parts
- added craftable thrusters
- added craftable ship walls
- added craftable teleporter, shiplocker,captainchair,techstation,fuelhatch, and some tech components needed to craft them which might come in handy if this should evolve to some more space station like modding.

- Known BUGS: do not use the captainschair on a planet, it will crash the task.

DOWNLOAD (SVN Rev.7)
Link to SVN Repository where you can download the mod. It is located in "/svn/trunk". Please check out that compleete folder. SVN is a convinient way to keep up to date. If you install a SVN client like i.e. Tortoise (Win) the icon of the downloaded folder will change once there is an update avaible for that folder - VERY convinient. If you dont know what and how svn works, the google link will explain it also.

If you already have an SVN client installed on youre System just open a command prompt, navigate to a folder where you would like to download to and type.:

Code:

svn checkout http://mad-tulips-starbound-mod.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ mad-tulips-starbound-mod-read-only

to download the folder "mad-tulips-starbound-mod-read-only" in that location.

Once you´ve downloaded the files further instruction how to install the mod to starbound can be found in "Readme_Install_Instructions.txt" in the downloaded folder (i.e. "mad-tulips-starbound-mod-read-only").



If you like the idea think about Liking/Up-Voting for the "Suggestion" ive made about "Landing Vessels "Moveable Houses" here to hopefully get to a more sophisticaeded elegant version then i could do here with the limited resources that where available to me.

If you want to contribute to this with i.e. grafics (mine a terrible) send me a message over theese forums or just link or post your images/files/content here in this thread and ill see to implement them. If you build some nice space stations for inspiration post a screenshot .

Im planning to implement more parts like the placeable engines. Parts which are block or decoratives and help with the cosmetics of the ship. Id i.e. like to add wings or landing gears, Components to craft space stations and such. Ultimately i would like to be able to land the ship on the planet at some point . At i mainly need grafics made by a skilled hand .

This is still far from finished. There are probably quite some bugs, ugly grafics, wrong crafting costs and so on.

Anyway, gl hf !

 

The devs did some testing with this, however, they didn't quite like it, as they thought (and I agree),that building the space ship out of blocks kinda ruins the original look of them being sleek, aerodynamic and stylized. Customizing your ships is going to be a thing, although I think it might be using pre-fab parts, like the furniture is right now, to add extra rooms, and more engines, stabilizers and other cosmetics.
Still, good job getting a mod up already!

 

well yea. its only functional and not estetic . forgott to mention that.

 

dev 1: hey guys, let's make a creativity toy like all those voxel games coming out lately!
dev 2: yea! let's put it in space, with thousands of planets to explore!
dev 1: oh hellz yea brotha! let's also make it procedurally generated!
*devs announce all these things to the world*
/releasebeta
devs: oh btw guys, the world isn't procedurally generated. also, you can't customize your ship freely, because we don't want you making your ship into anything we deem ugly.

 

The world is procedurally generated, just the seed used is part of the coordinates system so everyone can find the same stuff in the same places.

 

Yea, essentially, the x,y coordinates of a system are the random seed for its planets. Saying that Starbound's generation isn't random is like complaining that you can get the same Minecraft world as someone else by using the same random seed that they did. The number of planets is so immensely vast that if you press the button to go to a random system, chances are that nobody has, or ever will, happen upon that same system, but since you can share the coordinates, if you find something interesting there, you can share your find with people.

 

To have a truely infinity number of worlds you need a PC with an infinite number of Bits which wont fit in your flat . I think saving just a seed and be able to share that is the perfect way to do it. The number of worlds is larger then you have time to explore (which is exactly as good as infinite for its purpose) but the disk space required for it is minimal and its reproduceable.

 

The worlds are procedurerly generated, as stated before the coords are the seeds. I'm sure the dev team would have hand built 420 quadrillion planets.

 

Back to topic please

 

I think if you wanted to go all the way with a mod like this, you'd want to create a ship (preferably one for each race) made entirely out of standard blocks that you can modify from there, since this simple solution has the standard ship design clash aesthetically with the blocks you can actually place and remove.

 

Well im an Engineer, not an Artist . The estectics are fully customizeable thoug if you happen to be more artsy:

Also Customize the background ship grafic:
take a look at the file "\Starbound\assets\!MadTulip\ships\glitch\shipship.png" which defines the background ship grafic behind the blocks. You can alter that to youre need after you are done building with blocks. Its just very time consuming tidious work to do it imo.

If you want to remove the background grafic compleetly:
- Edit the file "\Starbound\assets\!MadTulip\ships\glitch\dropship.structure" with i.e. notpad++
- delete the lines:

Code:

  "backgroundOverlays" : [
    {
      "image" : "shipship.png",
      "position" : [508, 512]
    }
  ], 

The ship will look like this after removing the background .png.:

Youll notice some invisible unbreakable blocks in the floor of the ship. Also there are still the thrusters beeing placed (objects). You can remove them by deleting the lines

Code:

    {
      "value" : [167, 167, 255, 255],
      "foregroundBlock" : false,
      "backgroundBlock" : true,
      "object" : "boosterflame",
      "objectParameters" : {
        "unbreakable" : true
      }
    },

    {
      "value" : [168, 168, 168, 255],
      "foregroundBlock" : false,
      "backgroundBlock" : true,
      "object" : "smallboosterflame",
      "objectParameters" : {
        "unbreakable" : true
      }
    },

In "dropshipblocks.png" you can edit the placements of the invisible and other blocks on the ship. The single pixels of the image have a color value in RGB (red green blue) which is expressed in numbers between 0 and 255 each. i.e. [255 0 0] is pure red. The further content of the file "dropship.structure" defines which color value in the "dropshipblocks.png" corresponds to which block type in game.

Here you can content of "dropshipblocks.png" as an example. The red pixel there are the invisible blocks which you cant move through, some of the green are the plate wall and so on.

 

There's some kind of error with that .png file but even with some invisible no-build patches, getting rid of the initial background goes a long way to making this sort of mod feasible, since you're not battling the dfault aesthetics while building your ship around yourself.

 

fixed. also updated the initial mod files and edited the above link.

I guess its a question of how you like it the best personaly. with background image with hula girls on it or without. only blocks, blocks mixed with custom background or just fixed to the background as it was originaly. I hope i could show a bit how you can make all of that to youre personal liking. In the end its a sandbox .

 

So If I'm reading that description correctly, you could edit the file that image is representing to move/remove those invisible blocks, as well as change around the default structure of the ship? That sounds really useful for someone who would want to take a crack at this sort of alternate/modable starting ship mod.

 

Everything in the assets folder will be parsed (the programm reads it all and loads it) when you start the game.

Yes there are three files involved in this ship
"!MadTulip\ships\glitch\shipship.png" is the static background grafics of the ship. The content of that doesnt have any impact on the game but grafical display (you wont bump against it.
"!MadTulip\ships\glitch\dropshipblocks.png" defines the block map which are the blocks in the game that have impact on your charater. as described above every pixel in that png codes for one block by its color code in RGB. One pixel or one block in this png corresponds to 8x8 pixels in the background grafic png. (one block in the game is made of 8x8 pixels). you can shift the background image versus the blockmap with the position in "!MadTulip\ships\glitch\dropship.structure"

Code:

  "backgroundOverlays" : [
    {
      "image" : "shipship.png",
      "position" : [508, 512]   <----- here you can shift the background image relative to the block image counting from lower left corner to thr right and up in "blocks"
    }
  ], 

"!MadTulip\ships\glitch\dropship.structure" defines which RGB color code stands for what block or object. so you can introduce different materials and such here.

you can create a whole new copy of it say in "Starbound\MyStuff\ships\glitch\" instead and bend the link which ship model to create when a new character is created in the file "/Starbound/assets/universe_server.config" as described above.

You can use all of that to build youre compleete own space station instead of a ship if you like.

 

so guys. have fun with this. upvote my suggestions for fully customizeable ships and the ability to actualy land ships or vessels on planets as i suggested ("Landing Vessels "Moveable Houses" here) if you like this .

 

the worlds are procedurally generated and i not being able to customize you ship is fine with me, it make sense that your species should have a stylized ship

 

It makes sense to do what you want as long as it doesnt restrict others.

 

"hey guys, we're giving you a game that's all about exploring fully modifiable worlds, but you can't change your home except how we allow you to"

there's a very real problem here.

 

I'm fine with totally not being able to modify my ship with blocks like this mod you made. (GJ btw.)
I think it'd be cool just to implement someone/something you can buy ship upgrades from. Add a new compartment to your ship and such to expand it, etc. Even adding in aesthetic ship parts. And blueprints for special ship parts to craft. Anything that really adds more to the gameplay, and also adds things to spend my pixels on Lol. I really like how the ships match the races, it's more streamlined to me.