RELEASED Pandora's Box (Legacy) V4.0.2-Final

Hmm, good to know. Unfortunately I can't download it because I bought StarBound through GoG, and Steam won't let me download from the workshop.

 

Got some important news..

Pandora's Box development will be going on hiatus for the time being. Need to perform some maintenance on my pc (doing a fresh install due to some issues I've been having)

Not to worry, as everything I have been working on is backed up (along with everything I wanted to keep.)

I'll also likely be taking this time to take a breather as I get things in order again...

So see you soon guys!

 

ManicRykker updated Pandora's Box with a new update entry:

Pandora's Box V3.3

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

Looks like I goofed a bit with the zip this time. The archived folder is inside another folder with the way I compressed the archive this time around..

Make sure you put the pak file into the mods folder and NOT the whole archive folder in there.

 

Hey guys. I have something I need to talk about in regards to the mod's foreseen future.

As some of you may know, I recently ran into issues with my system. This caused me to have
to do a re-install, and get things back in order via some backups I created before
the re-install.

The re-install has been doing well up to this point... and though I have starting
experiencing quirks with this new system too, it has been doing it's job so far.

That said though, the incident got me thinking about the situation during my few days
of downtime... and I have ultimately made a decision as of the push of V3.3:

Until further notice, I am going on hiatus. I am taking a break from modding...

All of the recent content that was finished up to this point is in V3.3 (And the only
other thing that wasn't I will be postponing until further notice.). I am hoping that
will satisfy you for the time being...

I just sort of looked back at how things have been going lately. I have been modding for
a little over a year now. I haven't had that much time to put into other things
(Like just simply playing other games, playing the game I've been modding so much...
just watching youtube videos... living life.. Lol). That's just how devoted I have been
to delivering this content to you guys!

Well, I feel like the stuff required to get this stuff off the drawing board and into the
released project is starting to take it's toll...

In a way, I am doing this for the sake of my sanity, and to hopefully get back into this
with a better handle on things. I still have so many ideas for PB, that I'm kinda having
to force myself to throw on the breaks for now.


That said, some details on this hiatus:

-I'm not sure for how long the hiatus will be. I will be taking some time to have fun,
as well as monitoring this system to make sure the problems I was experiencing aren't
going to make a comeback...
-If any updates to the game are pushed in the near future, and they break anything in
the mod, I will "try" to come back and get things fixed. If I can't, I will let you know,
and someone can go ahead and make a patch or something.
-I'm hoping to get a grip on some things in my life during this time too. There's some
things I need to take care of during this time.


All that said, I'm really sorry for the news of ANOTHER hiatus, after essentially just coming back from
one already... but I'm sure most of you will understand.

 

ManicRykker updated Pandora's Box with a new update entry:

Pandora's Box V3.3.1

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

Sweet! Those Erchits and Erchlings were Freaking annoying.

 

They will be coming back next update mind you. They've just been pulled for adjustments. (When they return, they'll only agro if you have fuel, despawn if you don't have fuel, and keep track of ghosts in the surrounding area. (New ones will fade away if there are too many))


Anyway, I have decided I will likely be slowing down a bit development wise from here on out.

I was kind of ripped out of my hiatus, and I feel like I need to slow down a bit development wise. V3.4 will be pushing hopefully tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.

 

Ah... well good luck then.

 

Seems the update has been taking longer than I expected.. it'll be ready eventually guys

Just gotta make sure things will be ready to go.

 

ManicRykker updated Pandora's Box with a new update entry:

Pandora's Box V3.4

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

ManicRykker updated Pandora's Box with a new update entry:

Pandora's Box V3.5 - The Hiatus Update

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

ManicRykker updated Pandora's Box with a new update entry:

Pandora's Box V3.5.1 - Hotfix

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

I don't know how I missed this mod for so long, but its breathed some new life into my game, and gave new purpose to revisiting vanilla biomes.

One thing I might suggest is more stuff with farm creatures. I've mostly been playing with poptops, but only the caketop produces anything as far as I can see, and it has no visual change to indicate harvest status like other farm creatures.
You could also try to cannibalize some concepts from this abandoned WIP, such as harvestable hemogoblins and things like that.
https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/in-vitro-meat-lab.123441/
Even ask the author for her assets if you wanted, since you've already touched a bit on gene work in your mod.

 

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying the mod.

There are a few monsters that are harvestable in the mod. I think the capture system interferes with it a bit. (For right now, I suggest utilizing the monster hatchery if you plan on using certain monsters for harvest, and treat them as farm animals rather than catching them.)

It's also worth mentioning I am on hiatus now. It's mentioned in the update above the hot fix. Check it out if you haven't read it yet. (Though having some visual indicator is a good idea... I would probably look into it whenever I got back into things. Noted.)

 

Yeah, nobody blames an author for going on hiatus now and then. No rush.
And I agree, if you're doing anything other than combat, it's better to just have the farm versions when they exist. Got a ton of poptop varieties, and the ones where a farm version exists are all just so much less glitchy.
Except the glitchtop, of course. Silly girl, walking up the walls on her head.

Just as a brief for indication ideas, I'd say for the caketop, removal of their sprinkles would be sufficient.
Was gonna suggest chocolate caketops, but checked the files and saw that exists as a separate type of entity. Do chocolate cakes and albino normals have any special notifications or features to them? If not, it might be worth separating them into technically being different creatures.

 

Yeah in the current version they are generally the same monster. Nothing special about em.

It would be possible to split em, but my only problem is their food items would be generally the same, in terms of what the food value they give and what not, since there's not really much of a difference between em. Redundancy is something I don't like.

 

Totally get you. I've done work on mods for other games where tons of items identical in all but internal ID were a ceaseless source of frustration when it came to recipe lists.
Just using our caketop as an example that could be applied to other possible future endeavors, but they could drop the same cake item as all others. Every palette could be assumed to be its own flavor so that distinction doesn't innately matter unless it actually had some special property.
Rather, rare varieties could have a special pool added to their drops that makes them sometimes drop an additional item unique to them on top of their shared standard. Even if it's just something with high value, a special buff or that could be used to craft a rare piece of gear or something. Like a rare fluffaloo that might produce exceptional quality wool usable in some outfit or other.

Or if there were to ever be some method to make selling captured creatures differ in price based on specific creature, uniques could just go for big bucks due to rarity.
Or their eggs could. Maybe just have them drop gene samples so you can sell pricey, exotic pet eggs.
Sorry if I rambled, really tired.

 

Since I may be unable to work on the project for a long time (My self-imposed hiatus has become a forced one due to pc issues), I decided to make up for it. I have put together something to shed light on something that's gone fairly unexplained in the mod up to this point: The Pandora constructs.

You can find this little closed "Q&A" here.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1117792278/1742216747645454601/

(Note: Anything said by the Pandora may be subject to future change. Otherwise, anything they say is canon to the mod.)