One flaw, in my opinion, starbound has.

How the hell do you protest to know what an ALIEN would look like living on an ALIEN planet, that's so damn obsurd. THIS alien is too damn alien for it's own alien planet, doesn't belong.

 

They are xeno experts how dare you disrespect them lol

 

Well, I partually agree. For mating purposes, it would make sense. Same for showing of toxity. Buts its just wierd thats its like with every monster.

And yes, I agree 100% with the second pargraph. That bugs me a lot too.

 

You cannot know, you can guess. It'd be logical to be able to bear a low temerature on Mars, for example. And educated guess is always better then a blind guess.

 

Because everything we know and theorize we extrapolate based on our home planet.

 

The worlds are pre generated. You can be on the same planet as someone else and it will be basically the same. That's what makes this game very unique. The fact that its impossible for us to fully explore the whole universe

 

Yeah sure, has nothing to do with people not liking bright colors. It diffidently has to do with years a papers published to scientific journals.......

 

Could you just leave and never return? Please? As a personal favor? I see you all over these forums, white knighting your hardest for Chucklefish and pulling your best Wicked Witch of the West impression. You contribute nothing and only serve to derail people offering legitimate criticisms.

Take this post for example. Scientific journals, or science for that matter, have absolutely nothing to do with the current argument. We BOTH know that the reasons some of us want monsters that fit their environment is that it looks aesthetically better by terran standards.

 

Changing the colors of the creatures is actually very easy.

How it currently works: The monster parts template are all in the same colors (very reduced palette): Orange for the main colour, beige for accents, white, black, dark grey and red (2nd colour accent).

There is a separate file that includes swaps.

Ex: Orange > Bright blue, Beige > Neon yellow, Red > Purple ((Black, white and grey do not have swaps, there are outlines or shadow colors)
There are currently a few hundreds swap scenarios in the file.

EDIT: That means that colors are NOT randomly generated. They are picked from a determined list of possible chosen colors by the devs.

Now, this swap file is the same for ALL planets (i.e.: they are not linked to biomes)

If the devs could work on the Swap Palettes, and carefully link them to biomes, that would help for immersion. The creatures would look less like Pokemons too (which is my main concern about creatures - I've started changing the eyes of some of them and the effect is REALLY better).

examples:

In order of appearance (bear with me, I did that in less than 10 minutes)

1. Current overly bright, non-logical colors (also notice the cartoon eyes)

2. Hypothtical Jungle palette

3.Hypothetical Snow palette

4. Hypothetical Magma palette

 

Yeah I am a white knight, not at all just a person that finds this stuff ridicules.

Also we both know yet this was your argument

 

First off, good palette work, I mean that sincerely. Secondly, I don't like your eyes, I feel as if they have less depth if that makes sense? But that's wholly personal opinion! However I have to disagree as a whole, I personally would not want colors to be meshed with biomes it'd feel samey and boring. I'd visit my tenth desert planet, see the same few colors, and get so sick of monsters it's not even funny. Right now if I don't like the enemies on my world, or their looks, I can visit one of the other bajillion planets and see if they are better there with the same world biome. This is a topic that is purely based and biased in opinion though, we all know that.

He does contribute, quite often actually. He just has a strong disdain for things based purely in opinion. Color pallettes in this game, have absolutely 0 effect on the gameplay, they may break some people's immersion but that's it. I love the current monster gen, the only two issues I have with it, are that I want more parts/variety added. And that I want there to be a more definitive way to see if a mob is aggro before you get close, but that's not the monster generation, just a gameplay mechanic that I'd like to see added. (Much how minibosses have a tell-tale glow and red swirls around them.) So I'd rather see him stay, even if he can be prickly at times.

Actually it does, sadly. Because of your statment of

I have personally never seen a Poison Dart Frog. I've only seen pictures, I did not know they were so brightly colored to ward off predators, and because they were so venomous etc. That is all because of scientific research done, that was his point. It has everything to do with the post he quoted, it may have been exceptionally sarcastic in nature, but then these forums are overflowing with sarcasm as of late.

 

The blending thing isn't always a great idea. I've run into monsters that blend perfectly. Like nearly invisible until they move. This was still when everything one shotted everything btw. Imagine my surprise when I just randomly died to nothing. I only later found out what it really was when I saw one randomly jumping up and down for no reason. As soon as it stopped, it was like it turned invisible.

 

I have once seen a monster that fit in its planet.
It was a small goat-like reptile which was white. It was in a tundra/snow planet.

I was like "wow, this actually looks like it belongs" which was a completely new feeling I had to the game because I would see hot pink dinosaurs with blinking tails in lava planets and so on.

..You mean like how actual evolution works, adapting to their place in nature?
Yeah, we can't have reasonable things in this game. That's outrageous.

 

I'm very sorry, I try not to do this, as it comes across as being a huge-ass. So I apologize ahead of time about being a huge-ass. But this is soley a problem with your perception and suspension of disbelief. "this actually looks like it belongs" is you, as the player thinking that. Proper suspension of disbelief would allow you to take the Starbound Universe for what it is, and realize these enemies belong because they evolved to belong here. IT is your job as the player to rationalize that in such a way it makes better sense, so you can slip deeper into immersion, show me any monster, on any planet and I can quickly give you a cobbled reason as to why it looks that way instead of sharing a pallette with the terrain it's on.

 

This is the same bit I have noticed in creature creation. It's too random. Creatures don't look like they live where they live. Also they don't tend to act how they look. You can't tell if they are a predator or what kind of attacks they have based on their appearance. I think the whole thing could use some more direction and rules.

 

Invisibility in video games is a bullshit, broken artificial-difficulty mechanic that should never have even been developed.
Just try playing through the castle sewers in Resident Evil 4 and tell me how fun it is to have something you can't even see or detect until 4 seconds before you die try to eat your face.

Seconded. It takes all character away from the monster.

 

I've went through the game files.
The monster generation mechanics are WAY too simple.

They consist of body parts, in 4 categories: Small Bipeds (the small fat creatures that usually try to stomp you), Tall Bipeds (the clumsy-looking humanoid-animal kind), Quadrupeds (the stiff, horizontal creatures that move as much as a plank when they jump) and flying creatures (usually biddy-bat kind, usually spitting blood or weird light particles).

Now, close your eyes, open and image file, combine them, and you got a creature. That's how the monster generation is made right now and that's why 50-75% of the creatures do not make sense.

Chucklefish need to work on the random generation thing, being more careful on colour and combination choices.

 

I got an ice world with green plant monsters. I agree with this post.

 

I think the monster design has a long way to go, both from an art and a gameplay perspective.

From the art perspective: enemies are a little too wacky for my taste. Almost everybody makes the Pokemon comparison (I've also heard Barney), and that's really what they look like. I want (at least some of) the enemies to have a grittier, more terrifying appearance. Cutesy is fine to an extent, and I think some of the peaceful enemies should have cute art styles (bunnies and so forth), but when it comes to killer space horrors, I want it to LOOK like a killer space horror. Also, do they all have to neigh? There's a reason that Day9 and JP (check out their Youtube series if you haven't seen it) call almost every monster a "horse beast". The sound effects are too few in number and repeated too often.

From the gameplay perspective: The AI for aliens is too similar. They all just rush at you, jumping up and down, trying to bump into you. Either that or they have a projectile and they shoot it at you in-between jumping and trying to bump into you. In almost every case, the correct strategy is to just spam-click them into a corner, stunlocking them with knockback. Knockback against enemies is also probably too high and allows combat to become a very easy clickfest, where enemies never even get a chance to hit you.

I would love to see more enemy "types". Burrowing monsters have already been suggested in this thread. We could have wall/ceiling climbers, hostile vegetation (rooted to the ground but attacks if you get close), enemies that spawn and fight in packs, enemies that try to stay in the shadows and sneak attack the player, enemies that can pass through blocks, enemies that can destroy blocks, etc. All these could be basic enemy "types" that can still receive randomized cosmetic adjustments (color, texture, size and shape of certain body parts, etc) while still allowing the enemy to be more "hand-crafted" when it comes to the gameplay.

Enemy design is one area where the random generation really feels like a downside. Terraria's enemies were all hand-designed, and so they often had unique attack patterns and varied AI. Combat there felt tactical, and generally a lot more fun than Starbound's combat is right now.

Still loving Starbound, and just hoping the devs keep pushing it to greater heights throughout the beta!

 

You've never had your teeth kicked out by a deer, have you?

But the idea of creature colors and body shapes being related to the planet they live on is fantastic.