We need shadows in the forests! For a long time I was playing Starbound and I always had a nagging feeling whenever I would walk through a forest or jungle planet that something wasn't right. Then I bought and played Terraria (which by the way even in it's completed state is nothing compared to Starbound) and when walking around the environments I realized that the vines cast shadows. Then it hit me! We need shadows in the forests! Forest and jungle planets to me don't feel like forests or jungles. The concentration of trees when you find them is nothing to brag about and when you do find a reasonably dense forest area it feels like walking through a nice park, rather than something like the taiga or the deciduous forests that make up the northern part of Canada. These forests are dense and dark, but beautiful and tall as well. What I'm saying is that we need the foliage to cast decent shadows, and enough tree density to make the effort worthwhile. Right now, the "Forest" planets may as well be called "Temperate" planets, which I would prefer because it is much more accurate. (Especially since when you look into the horizon on a forest planet you see nothing but flat land and one or two trees.) Even two different biomes would be great! A Forest biome and a Temperate biome! Recently I saw a post where someone said that they want trees with several tiers, with the ones we regularly see as tier 1 and every subsequent tier thereafter becoming taller and with larger, longer limbs that would be strong enough to support a players, perhaps cities(avian makes the most sense), nests, vines, creatures, and the like. That would add a lot of verticality to the world and I think that if properly pulled off, I would spend more time climbing to the tops of trees in forest and jungle planets than I would mining, which would be a nice change considering most of the interesting stuff is underground. In effect, this would create worlds with not only two layers (Ground, Underground) but TREE! Who knows, maybe there could even be materials and minerals only found in certain trees at the very tops. OR maybe they could lead to floating islands! (NOVA KID HABITAT !!!! ) Anyway hope this sparks some ideas and if this was said already I apologize for my ignorance. Cheers! - Drawfire
I have been thinking that too over the last few weeks and i also think that in the day time there could be something like SUN that makes the trees cast shadows and such. that would be neat. we can only hope.
