Modding Discussion Suggestion: Remove Unique Monsters and Bring Back Procedural Monsters

Discussion in 'Starbound Modding' started by Lemonz, Apr 17, 2016.

  1. Lemonz

    Lemonz Void-Bound Voyager

    I miss the days of procedural monsters. Sure we still have them but they are so rare and, to my knowledge, you can no longer find passive procedural monsters. The unique monsters are cool with their own special abilities but they ruin part of the exploration aspect of the game. You see the procedural monsters were so much fun because you never knew what you would find. When you approached a creature you wouldn't know if it was passive or aggressive. I miss that element of the game.

    Which is why I am looking for a mod that completely removes unique monsters and increases the amount of procedural monsters. Does a mod like this exist? Otherwise is someone willing to make this for me?

    Thank you for reading my suggestion.
     
  2. Mumpfbrapp

    Mumpfbrapp Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I second that. I personally cannot understand why they would take away one of the most unique features of Starbound. Seriously, name even one other game that has procedural creatures!
    It is so sad to see over and over again how developers take out nice features. Possibly to cave-in/adjust their games to a more casual crowd of users?
     
  3. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    I actually like a lot of the unique monsters, but I do feel more could have been done with the procedurally generated monsters to make them feel more "uniques" from each others.

    In fact.... is it me or have special abilities been removed from procedurally generated monsters altogether? It's been ages since I've met a ground monster that did any other attack than "bodyslam" or a flying monster that could do something else than swooping attack?

    If anything, while I felt the likes of "breath attack" specials could have seen a lesser amount of chances from cropping up in procedural monsters.... the answer to fixing them would have been to give them a greater list of unique random -traits-.... not less.

    Like... sometimes I feel like "special breath attacks" were only an issue with random monsters because that was "all" that they add to be mechanically different from each others, to the point I was wondering if talk of "figuring out new attack types" were not causing procedural monsters to be caught in a loop of "thinking inside the box".

    Since if anything, it's not "more attack types" they would have needed, but more "traits" in the first place such as elemental damages resistances, abilities like a temporary "rage invulnerability" or "temporary regeneration buff".

    Even little non-combat cosmetic stuff like a "bioluminescent" trait that could have made some species glow in the dark like novakids skin currently do in the nightly branch of the game. Just something like that would have made a ton to make sure one would not forget about a particular species on a planet, or at least make it clearly stand out(and not only metaphorically) from the other procedurals on a planet.

    And I'm not getting in stuff like an "top predator" trait that could have made one species stronger than the average on their planet.... but also make them hostile to ALL other lifeforms on the planet, including other monsters. Something like that would have gone a LONG way to give the a greater feeling of a "living ecosystem" on planets.

    I love handcrafted monsters, but if anything they felt like something that would be even better as a supplement TO procedurally generated monsters than a replacement to the more unique procedurally monsters abilities. It feels almost disapointing to now only encounter procedurals who can now only ever bodyslam after the experiment with the ones with the occasional biting or breath attacks. It almost feel like a case where less is truly "less" in their case when it felt they still had so much potential behind them.
     
  4. Mackinz

    Mackinz The Waste of Time

    Play Nightly. The balance of "unique" and procedurally generated creatures is far better as far as I've seen.
     
  5. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    Have they produced more abilities for procedural generated creatures again?

    Sadly all of those I've encountered thus far(but I have not progressed far, admitedly) only were able to use "ramming attack" against me and nothing else that I have ever seen... seemingly making size/damage/health the only difference between one procedural monster and another now :(

    If randomized abilities is still in, though, that would make me happy they have not given up on that then.
     
  6. Segenam

    Segenam Phantasmal Quasar

    actually randomized abilties have actually been commented out... I was looking at that to see if I could add them in my self as I missed them so I tried un-commenting them... this just caused things to break (as in no randomized monsters spawned at all)... looking at the creatures that are not procedural I noticed they use a different method entirely.

    My guess is they just haven't worked on updating procedural monsters to the new system (it is nightly after all). how ever I have stored a backup of the special attacks of the monsters and will see about adding them back in with the new system if they are left out by 1.0

    I also want to make the special unique mobs procedural to some extent... for example giving the Snaunt different plant heads and bodies and some variants in colors based upon biome so not every planet has identical unique monsters, it always feels weird seeing the same creatures all over the universe with out even a slight change.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2016
  7. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    For some reason, though, I've had other modders report to me it might be possible to bring back elements of procedural generation. I'm not a codder though, but had reports it was doable.

    I can link you the posts and threads so you can contact the modders in questions if that can be of any help with your endeavors:

    From Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/...re_procedural_special_monster_attacks/d4j6qi3
    From the forums here, on the subject of being able to add even passives like bioluminescence to monsters:
    Tidbit specifically about constantly light-producing monsters, or ones with timed abilities(summoning an ability that gives the likes of temporary buff or a "timed explosion" ability):
    Those are some of the tidbits on the subject that I recall the most. I think there might have been a couple more but I cannot recall where else it was discussed.
     
  8. Segenam

    Segenam Phantasmal Quasar

    Ah yes, I've seen a few of those, I've done a little coding in the past (C, C++, Java, Python) but I've never really gotten around to taking up Lua too much but I do plan on looking over some of the stuff, I'm just not gonna work on it until after 1.0 and see what Cuttlefish has planed... it'd be silly to make a decent sized mod only to have it replaced in a month by the official team... I've already seen that happen with the one mod I made and released already.
     
  9. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    Well, sadly that's the reality of early access.

    I guess I'm thinking they might have made procedural monsters more basic for now so they could both make sure they could get non-procedural monsters to a level where they were happy with them AND also thinking out how to better profit from the change in NPC/entities behaviors to decide where exactly they want to take them in terms of features. Knowing it's possible to give them some passives and al, I wonder if the future of procedural monsters might not be even more surprising than before.

    If not from the devs themselves who might decide they(and an acceptable amount of players) are content to keep procedurals as a "basic" enemy meant to be the more "average" and predictible threat a playet can meet(and that's an acceptable conclusion in my head, really)..... then certainly from modders thanks to the flexibility of the game engine.
     
  10. Segenam

    Segenam Phantasmal Quasar

    yeah, Starbound is the most modable game there is and the Devs know this and focus on this while at the same time working to release a game that would hit a large audience... the only thing that gets to me is having to wait but that's not Chucklefish's fault... well it is for making such an amazing game in nightly but you know what I mean.

    but back to the topic I will be taking a look at procedural monsters an seeing how I can make them so much better after 1.0 and maybe making the non procedural mobs have random qualities per planet if possible so planets are only vaguely similar.
     
    Ludovic likes this.
  11. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    I can hear you there with nonprocedurals. I'll admit there's times I would at least not mind something like a simple recolors and all. Like one planet could spawn red poptops instead of regular green ones and al.
     
  12. Segenam

    Segenam Phantasmal Quasar

    Yeah, that would definitely be a focus I want to have some minor variances but keep them close enough to the original style that it's clear what they are. Variant colors seem like the easiest thing to add but it would be nice to have minor changes like a crustoise with more or less spikes or more jagged spikes or a Snaunt with a face that looks more like a Birdo from Mario clearly it's the same type of monster just more unique and who knows maybe even have slightly different attacks or the like (like spitting a fire shot rather than poison) or has some status effect (like glow or regeneration)
     
  13. Quillon

    Quillon Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Let's Keep Both!
     

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