I like the general idea, though some of the stats should probably be combined together for simplicity/ease-of-use. Additionally I'm not generally fond of durability, but I wouldn't mind if it was optional or if players could use some moderately high number of materials (~5-10 times the materials used to craft it? or perhaps some other special type of material?) to make the item invulnerable.
Yeah, durability would be annoying if you found a really cool and unique weapon. It would also be nice if low materials with low maleability shattered as they hit something. EDIT: According to the List of Announced Game Information, durability will not be in.
on the subject of durability: I have created a thread with my idea of how durability could work without being a grindfest: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/on-the-destruction-of-items-and-weapons.4172/ tl,dr: items only take damage when used wrong.
i just want to say that i did not read all the posts here but i figured my thread on finding gasses in caves could be merged with this idea! thread found here: click me! EDIT: i have now read the entire thing here, and i think there is a better way than to have a rating of 0-100 that if wood could have these stats: non-flammable -highly fire retardant -slightly fire retardant- flammable- suceptible to fire- easily ignited- very flammable- extremely flamable. this adds the same system but won't put off as many people who like more casual play. does this sound reasnoble?
A system with adjectives would be a lot easier, you're right! I just want variety between materials other than purple sand, brown sand, purplish sand, dark purple sand, etc.
I think some of y'all are getting a little confused. For the record, I think this is a brilliant idea. Why? Because I came up with it months ago for the MMO I was working concept for, and my ideas are always brilliant. Okay, but, seriously. It's a great idea. Procedural generation is one of the next greatest tools that sandbox environments will use, and harvested crafting and construction materials need to be in this lineup. There are ways to streamline and handshake the concept of randomized harvested materials that have generated stats and qualities with the concepts of crafting and construction. Really. It's not difficult, and you don't even have to have that elaborate of a number-crunch. First, establish types for every harvested material. A basic type, and perhaps a subtype. For example: Water (as we know it) might be Liquid. An oak tree might be Wood. This allows easier generation for seeding, but more importantly, easier for crafting using generalized recipes (I.E. a wooden door needs two planks of a Wood-type material). Second, include a simple list of statistics for each material (respective to its type). Materials can be inspected, at a glance, to determine basic properties. A Wood sample would have just a few - namely Density/Hardness, Flexibility, maybe one or two others - and stylized, color-coded icons could be used to give the general idea of its qualities - an icon that represents high density, another icon that represents low flexibility, and so on. For materials that have special generated qualities that are somewhat unique to the Type (like resistances or exotic tendencies, such as magnetism or luminosity), there would be extra icons in the next row underneath. For those of us who love to micromanage our discoveries and find out the real nitty-gritty, any sample could be taken home to be researched in a lab (or scanned with a portable lab, with limited results). The results would reveal numbers instead of icons, giving specific statistics. Instead of a "Very High Density" icon, you would get to see the material's real underlying data: 95 Density (or whatever). The numeric data would give players a better idea of how the material would act or perform. And special non-numeric qualities would be described in a sentence: For example, "Magnetic: Attaches freely to Metals." When it comes to crafting, there are a few of options. Option #1 allows players to mix-and-match between types: I.E. With a recipe requiring 10 wood, putting together 4 Ironwood and 3 Silverbark and perhaps 3 Gluttonseed would composite the data between the generated materials, producing a Wood object with the resultant stats (and perhaps any special qualities unique to majority of the used materials). Option #2 allows players to use only one type of generated material type: I.E. With the previous recipe, 10 Ironwood OR 10 Silverbark OR 10 Gluttonseed could be used. This would result in qualities relating directly to the materials used. Option #3 would allow players to alternately composite two or three materials together before crafting (composite, meaning to combine the materials into a brand new material). For example: Combining Ironwood and Silverbark together would make a new material named Wood Composite with its own unique stack and the combined statistics of the two used materials. This Composite Wood would be of the shared type of the used materials (in this case, Wood) and would average (or perhaps cherry-pick, in the case of using high-quality compositing tools, which would allow for making super-quality composites) statistics between the materials used. Crafted items (such as weapons, building materials, armors, and so on) that were created from these procedurally-generated and random materials would only change in appearance within the limitations already included in procedural generation - basically, color relating to the material used (thus already in the general color palette), a luminosity or gloss option, and nothing more. For colors of composite materials, the engine would simply average between the two or three materials used. It's doable. It's a good idea. I seriously want to see it in the game. With the proper understanding and technical eye, I know it can be done. We need to have someone on the design team take a closer look at this whole shebang, if they haven't already.
i think procedurally generated materials would go too far. but to give the wood types different attributes is fine.
Certainly a cool idea. I love variety and it would certainly make for some cool play options. However, I don't get the impression that this type of functionality has been implemented in the game build (maybe something like this has?) and it might be quite an undertaking to do so. Durability (if I remember correctly) is NOT something being implemented in the game, and wiring is wireless so making conductive materials for the purpose of wiring is unnecessary (also if I remember correctly). Also, since general building blocks are not subject to physics (i.e. gravity etc), the purpose of having such varying properties might be lost. So a density dictating whether a block of a certain material would float on a given liquid would not be necessary because the engine does not model such physics on blocks. Other than sand and liquids, blocks are just attached to wherever they happen to be placed and won't fall if undermined even if no longer attached to ANYTHING. (It would be kinda nice if this was remedied but I'm doubting it will). Anyway, I DO like the idea, and maybe in a significant update to the game or in a future one, this kind of thing will be doable. But until we have a more physics-based engine (almost like Bad Piggies or something lol) affecting interactions with building materials etc, I don't think this kind of functionality will have a real effect on the game (other than making some building materials more resistant to being destroyed perhaps. That would be a cool feature at least). Regarding crafting of ITEMS, I think this kind of system has more potential in Starbound. I would love to see some form of this idea make it into the game!
Wow, this thread is still going? Any way. I love the idea on randomly generate materials, however, how will you store them, like take notes. And will every planet have their own ore? Or will it just use the pre-discovered ones with a random chance of creating a new one?
I love this idea, will make finding materials for specific purposes a lot more entertaining and rewarding. Rather than the normal "I've used Oak, I need Maple next" type of thing... Also, it will be great for replayability and give me even more reasons to visit more planets, to find that perfect wood!!
First of all: Thank you for the amazing posts, and a good read. Below are my own 5 cents. As for the idea itself: +1! I love the idea, and I very much like the mentioned icons that could replace item info. My idea would be to combine that with the later mentioned researching of blocks to discover their properties. At first you would only have the icons to know what an item does, but after researching you would know the specifics. I'd add to this that, once researched, switching between the 'icon only' and the 'extensive data' screen should be possible at all times. Whether or not this should automatically change the overview on all the items is up for debate. I for one am a fan for using a single button to change all the overviews (if another is accessible) at once. This because you could first sort a chest on general icon, click one button, and then start sorting on specific stats. This would allow fast and clear sorting. As for the originally named stats: Durability Electrical Conductivity Oxidation Resistance Toxicity I really dislike these 4. Due to a combination of them being generally useless or making things overly complicated. Rust for instance, is a stat that could be interesting, but combined with all the other stats and the current game it would simply make things overly complex. Not to mention that no matter how high the stat, everything not 100% resistant would have to be replaced eventually. As for Durability and Electrical Conductivity, it has been stated in the posts above that neither of these will fit in the main game as it is now. Though I personally would be happy to see electrical wiring modded in.
While this definitely sounds like a great idea, the amount of inventory management the player would have to maintain would be outrageous. A trip to 1 planet would fill up the player's inventory with that planet's specific materials, and then when they wanted to travel to a new planet they'd need to clear their whole inventory to make room for the new planet's materials. Again, it sounds like it could be fun, but you'll have to work out some sort of consolidation method to prevent this level of inventory management.
I hope I don't start a flame war from this but I just started playing "Edge of Space" and they are using this same idea and they manage the issue of inventory in a somewhat simple, if somewhat counter-intuitive, way: Materials have one archetype (e.g. Dirt, aluminum, mud, ice, etc) These materials have general types: Dirt is Inorganic/Mineral/Ore, Aluminum is Inorganic/Mineral/Metal These materials can then be refined into randomly generated materials -- The names are even randomly generated, as far as I can tell -- which posses stats such as "permeability," "absorption," "surface energy," "density," "hardness," "viscosity," etc. So, it's actually the refined materials which posses these stats, which can then be used to craft items. Now, craftable items require specific material "types," such as Inorganic/Mineral/Ore, which can be fulfilled by refined versions of mud or dirt, for instance. The final crafted items then seem to base their properties on the stats of the refined materials, so that the same "assault rifle" has entirely different stats based on what items you used. Rifles for instance can vary in their color, shape, Damage, Fire Rate, Accuracy, Reload Time, Crit Rate, and Clip Size AND they can even gain random little effects. For instance, my fourth rifle possesses a property called "Remote Control x1" which allows you to guide the bullets coming out of the rifle by holding down right-click. I have to say that this is very very cool and pretty well executed. The only downside I can think of is that since, as far as I can tell, every refined material has random stats, names, color, etc and this means that if you have one left of a specific refined material, you may not be able to use it to craft anything and can't combine it with any other refined material, thus you may have a lot of leftovers from crafting that you can't do anything with. This seems like it may be easily fixed if you could "unrefine" or "rerefine" them at a loss. I'll post more details and maybe some screenshots, if anyone is interested.
I love this idea, but wouldn't the seperate types of wood, for example, not be able to stack and clutter your inventory
This feature would be nice to add, but it's also time consuming. I think post-release should a update come to proliferate the info to materials and revamp the mining system thereon, but for beta it doesn't seem right.
