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XboxPants posted:Mining ore blocks isn't an inherently fun enough mechanic for it to be the focus of your gameplay, regardless of how many ores you have spawning. It would need to, like, have a puzzle mechanic or something, like a Super Motherload-type game, for it to be that fun. Like bonus combo chains when you mine the same type of ore or something. I meant the game in general. And for an example on fun mining, just look at Minecraft - there's just something satisfying about spelunking in Minecraft, you got extensive caves and canyons and stuff, you can spelunk for hours and it just feels fun. Starbound on the other hand, has very little caves, you actually have to install a mod to have more caves, but since it's not part of the core mechanic, the tacked-on caves don't feel that good. Terraria, IIRC, had a lot more caves going on, and digging between them was faster.
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Feb 6, 2015 13:17
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XboxPants posted:I'm sure I'll get poo poo on for this but you asked and there's an answer. seems like the logical step is to stop all development on the game and move to starbound 2. why waste time with what is obviously a placeholder game??
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Feb 6, 2015 13:23
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I don't know if I'm getting different generation or what, but I don't see all the "no cave" complaints. Since nearly everyone brings it up I have to assume I must have gotten some fluke version of Starbound where the caves are actually passable. It's not hard to find a way down even with minimal digging, and once I pass the subsurface layer on a planet I'm mostly wandering around in pretty wide open areas with occasional thin walls of stone separating caverns, which is about what I do in Terraria. Maybe a bit moreso, but it's easier to see past or through walls and you can mine multiple blocks at once so it doesn't bug me quite as much. But then I don't think mining really takes as long as some people make it out to, either. I do just make a major mineshaft straight down sometimes (like one would in Terraria) but that's usually lategame when I can do that really quickly and just need to get to ore depth. I really don't agree at all with using Minecraft as an example of fun mining though. But then I only play with tinker's construct, vein meiner, or at least something that doubles basic mining speed or more.
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Feb 6, 2015 13:24
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Pochoclo posted:I meant the game in general. And for an example on fun mining, just look at Minecraft - there's just something satisfying about spelunking in Minecraft, you got extensive caves and canyons and stuff, you can spelunk for hours and it just feels fun. Starbound on the other hand, has very little caves, you actually have to install a mod to have more caves, but since it's not part of the core mechanic, the tacked-on caves don't feel that good. Terraria, IIRC, had a lot more caves going on, and digging between them was faster. I'm drawing a distinction here between "Spelunking" in general - caving, in other words, and all that entails - and "Mining", specifically just breaking blocks with your MM or a pick, and nothing else. I guess I could have said "breaking blocks". I don't think "Mining" was all that fun in Minecraft, either. It really wasn't all that fun or satisfying just to break blocks, though it was a little better than in Starbound. Very small things contribute to this, like sound design, how the mined materials fall on the ground, what the notification looks like for picking up blocks, how different the "exciting" blocks look from the surrounding tiles, how the lighting changes when you break a block, poo poo like that. Things like that can make the pure act of breaking a block and collecting a piece of ore fun, even without doing any exploration or combat or anything else. There are entire games that center around it, and succesfully so. Starbound's lacking in that department.
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Feb 6, 2015 13:29
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XboxPants posted:I'm drawing a distinction here between "Spelunking" in general - caving, in other words, and all that entails - and "Mining", specifically just breaking blocks with your MM or a pick, and nothing else. I guess I could have said "breaking blocks". Also the amount of mining required. In Minecraft, you can just spelunk and explore and mine up whatever ores you encounter and you'll be fine, especially because you can just do whatever you want instead of following a linear crafting progression. In Starbound, you need way too many ores so you end up needing to dedicate yourself to mining.
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Feb 6, 2015 13:41
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Pochoclo posted:Also the amount of mining required. In Minecraft, you can just spelunk and explore and mine up whatever ores you encounter and you'll be fine, especially because you can just do whatever you want instead of following a linear crafting progression. In Starbound, you need way too many ores so you end up needing to dedicate yourself to mining. Yup, that's pretty much where I was coming from when I said "instead [mining] needs to be something you do occasionally while you explore and look around for interesting content." (except Starbound is also sorta missing the "interesting content" part! whoops!  )Vib Rib posted:I don't know if I'm getting different generation or what, but I don't see all the "no cave" complaints. Since nearly everyone brings it up I have to assume I must have gotten some fluke version of Starbound where the caves are actually passable. It's not hard to find a way down even with minimal digging, and once I pass the subsurface layer on a planet I'm mostly wandering around in pretty wide open areas with occasional thin walls of stone separating caverns, which is about what I do in Terraria. Maybe a bit moreso, but it's easier to see past or through walls and you can mine multiple blocks at once so it doesn't bug me quite as much. But then I don't think mining really takes as long as some people make it out to, either. I do just make a major mineshaft straight down sometimes (like one would in Terraria) but that's usually lategame when I can do that really quickly and just need to get to ore depth. Based on what I've seen in videos, people don't really understand how to use Torches and the Flashlight to shine light through the edges of the cave and see that you have not, in fact, found a dead end, and there's just a single layer of blocks in your way that you can pass in a fraction of a second. To be fair this is largely Starbound's fault. It doesn't teach you that you can and should have your flashlight in your offhand and your weapon in your main, and then you can have a weapon out and use your flashlight for light at the same time, and that you can then easily switch to this combo at any time with a single key, which also switches back to the last item you were using if you need it again. If you already know all that poo poo it seems obvious, but the game makes no effort to teach you. It'd be cool if they did something to encourage flashlight use. I wonder if it's possible to have tiles or objects or NPCs that react to light. XboxPants fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 13:43
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XboxPants posted:It'd be cool if they did something to encourage flashlight use. I wonder if it's possible to have tiles or objects or NPCs that react to light. If its not, it should be Half the fun of exploring a cave system should have to be shining a flashlight into the eyes of the horrible unearthed monstrosity in front of you and having it shriek, blinded, to give you a moment to fight back
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Feb 6, 2015 14:29
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It'd be cool if there was a 'teleport to outpost' button underneath the 'teleport home' one.
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Feb 6, 2015 15:14
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IPlayVideoGames posted:It'd be cool if there was a 'teleport to outpost' button underneath the 'teleport home' one. I have no idea what they were thinking making you fly over to a gate to teleport to the outpost, and then require you to walk back to the gate in order to get back to your ship.
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Feb 6, 2015 15:18
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Supposedly their next feature patch is gonna have buildable interplanetary teleport networks, including the ability to go to Outpost from wherever. I want the 3D printer to get reskinned as some some kind of lovely space Home Shopping Network 
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Feb 6, 2015 15:29
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When I think of the way Chucklefish structured the progression in this game the more I think of when I was playing a link between worlds. That game gave you pretty early access to most of the tools that were both fun and practical, but didn't detract from the feeling of "achieving something" or ruin its sense of adventure. My point is that it takes way to long to gain access to fun and practical tools in starbound. Which you should have access to from the materials gathered in the first solar system. Like the grappling hook.
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Feb 6, 2015 16:21
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ScorpioMajesty posted:When I think of the way Chucklefish structured the progression in this game the more I think of when I was playing a link between worlds. That game gave you pretty early access to most of the tools that were both fun and practical, but didn't detract from the feeling of "achieving something" or ruin its sense of adventure. My point is that it takes way to long to gain access to fun and practical tools in starbound. Which you should have access to from the materials gathered in the first solar system. Like the grappling hook. I absolutely agree with this. If the gameplay core that (theoretically would) make Starbound work is exploring the worlds looking for cool stuff, then part of that core is good traversal tools. They need to give you more of that. An early grappling hook is a good step in that direction, so are the techs, and hopefully the vehicles will be too. Enemies should probably spawn way less often, but have each enemy encounter be more interesting. Replacing quality combat encounters with quantity combat encounters is not in this game's favor. If the Large Monsters system they're making turns out well, it'd probably be a great solution to just completely remove all of the small monsters and just have the big mini-boss types. The monsters shouldn't be a constant, easily solved annoyance, while you try to find cool stuff - that was the problem with hunger. Instead, each monster should itself be one of the cool things that you're looking for. Besides being a fun, interesting encounter, you'd also actually get a worthwhile drop out of fighting, unlike now. Or I guess if you want to preserve the "flavor" that having creatures on the planet gives, you could just make all small monsters friendly. They can still farm them, too. XboxPants fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 16:46
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XboxPants posted:Very small things contribute to this, like sound design, how the mined materials fall on the ground, what the notification looks like for picking up blocks, how different the "exciting" blocks look from the surrounding tiles, how the lighting changes when you break a block, poo poo like that. Things like that can make the pure act of breaking a block and collecting a piece of ore fun, even without doing any exploration or combat or anything else. There are entire games that center around it, and succesfully so. Starbound's lacking in that department. Pochoclo posted:Also the amount of mining required. In Minecraft, you can just spelunk and explore and mine up whatever ores you encounter and you'll be fine, especially because you can just do whatever you want instead of following a linear crafting progression. In Starbound, you need way too many ores so you end up needing to dedicate yourself to mining. The big change I'd make, personally, is that lower tier materials should still appear on higher tier planets. By the time I hit the endgame I was loaded with solarium and all the things it compounds with, but I was always finding myself short on steel and durasteel, because uranium, iron, and titanium only show up at their tier, not above it. So if you run out, and you will, you actually have to go back to lower tier planets. In some ways I want there to be incentive to visit planets of different tiers, to not just have one end-all be-all planet type at the very end where you never have to leave for anything you need, but I don't think the current balance is quite how to do it. IPlayVideoGames posted:It'd be cool if there was a 'teleport to outpost' button underneath the 'teleport home' one. Or at the least let me teleport back to my ship from the outpost.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:05
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Slime posted:I have no idea what they were thinking making you fly over to a gate to teleport to the outpost, and then require you to walk back to the gate in order to get back to your ship. I actually like this because it's a nice scene transition. Makes it feel special
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Feb 6, 2015 17:07
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I like it the first few times
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Feb 6, 2015 17:11
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Vib Rib posted:The big change I'd make, personally, is that lower tier materials should still appear on higher tier planets. By the time I hit the endgame I was loaded with solarium and all the things it compounds with, but I was always finding myself short on steel and durasteel, because uranium, iron, and titanium only show up at their tier, not above it. So if you run out, and you will, you actually have to go back to lower tier planets. In some ways I want there to be incentive to visit planets of different tiers, to not just have one end-all be-all planet type at the very end where you never have to leave for anything you need, but I don't think the current balance is quite how to do it. 
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Feb 6, 2015 17:16
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So are they going to be changing the quests? The fetchy nature would be resolved if they used the quests to introduce you to come of the cool dungeon types. E.g., for the avian temple thing, give you coordinates to a temple. For the Airship map, tell you what planet an airship is on and make the birds hostile.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:18
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Inverness posted:Looks like you have your next mod idea. This is a pretty simple change, as it turns out. All the ore distributions are in one file and some mods (mysterious planets) have shown it's possible to just set a tier to have all the ore, so it's simply a matter of citing and passing their ore distribution over to other tiers (and removing the above-level ores from lower levels) Pakled fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 17:20
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JerikTelorian posted:So are they going to be changing the quests? Pretty much all of that would be resolved with the implementation of a planet scanner. Instead of "find an Avian temple somewhere and bring me a thing," it would be, "here's a scanner module that lets you detect the presence of ruins and stuff! Use it to find an Avian temple and bring me a thing. If you bring the thing, I'll give you <different cool scanner thing>!"
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Feb 6, 2015 17:22
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JerikTelorian posted:So are they going to be changing the quests? That's the plan, yeah. I don't know about the part where it points you to randomly spawned dungeons (the airship counts as a dungeon), I'm not even sure that's possible to implement right now, but it would be pretty neat down the line yeah.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:23
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Inverness posted:Looks like you have your next mod idea. Thing is, I'm still trying to figure out why uranium and solarium are spawning weirdly in my custom planets before I touch any of that. There's gotta be something I'm missing.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:31
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Oh wow, holy butts http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?resources/gilzokhas-uen-andromeda-unbeat-giraffe.2561/
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Feb 6, 2015 17:34
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Another way of doing it is creating a machine that has recipes for downgrading higher tiers of materials into lower tiers. They could also produce some byproduct that you can use, and is required, to reverse the process.Babe Magnet posted:Oh wow, holy butts  This looks great. I'm glad the white recolor is available.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:35
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Yeah that is some pro-rear end pixel work. I thought it was a rip at first but then the ship actually as upgrades and custom interior work and it's pretty crazy.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:41
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Vib Rib posted:You know what this game really needs, especially with all the mods coming out that use new crafting? A single big sortable, searchable list of every recipe your character knows, listing both ingredients and crafting station. Running between multiple stations searching for a recipe is something that I hope gets done away with. This would be less of a problem if better stations did not lose the ability to make old items. Like how only an Iron anvil can make a hoe, as somebody pointed out earlier. You don't feel quite so much like you are making progression when you have this shiny new replicator and magnetic crucible... But you still have to make sure to keep the Iron anvil and wooden workbench nearby in case your uranium powered super table can't make A MOTHER loving FARM TOOL. Speaking of farm tools, The strength upgrade to the manipulator tool before it starts asking for rubium and such feels comparable to the COPPER pick. Yes, it can pick up liquids, 3x3 radius, and it has a very impressive range. But I should be doing better than "Worst pickaxe currently in the game" for digging power once I start shoving uranium into the thing. Speaking of radioactive materials, is there any current usage of plutonium outside of fuel? I think there was at least one thing that went by but maybe I was imagining things and just mashing my way through screens because I had like 100 of the stuff. You just find so much more space grape kool-aid that even with how fuel efficient per unit plutonium is, there is no point with how little you find by comparison. "I have finally gotten 100 plutonium ore!... I also have like, literally 10 thousand space goo from a single moon." But hey, I'm glad they made getting fuel so much easier when I've seen and done jumps that cost 720 fuel or something. I also totally shine my flashlight and manipulator all around and cram torches as far as I can if I see little nooks. It doesn't really help or lead to anything more interesting than "Well, that fall would have probably killed me if I had kept digging in the dark because you can't use a flashlight and manipulator at the same time". The most interesting things I have found, little single rooms buried underground for no apparent reason, all had torches or chandeliers in them anyways. "Meh, a few pixels and a banages  ... But I am unironically excited about this painting of robot Shakespeare I can shove into my 3d printer  "Babe Magnet posted:Oh wow, holy butts 
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Feb 6, 2015 19:10
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Yeah, just like there's a lot of neat environmental stuff going on that you never have to deal with, there are a lot of neat tools you don't get early enough or might never find at all. Yesterday I found an ice axe that you equip like a weapon, when you touch a wall and click with it you'll hang there. Unfortunately I'd already built the grappling hook, had the targeted blink and pulse jump equipped and rocket boots unlocked, so I used it once, thought 'neat' then never touched it again.
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Feb 6, 2015 19:15
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Section Z posted:I also totally shine my flashlight and manipulator all around and cram torches as far as I can if I see little nooks. It doesn't really help or lead to anything more interesting than "Well, that fall would have probably killed me if I had kept digging in the dark because you can't use a flashlight and manipulator at the same time". A little directional light attachment that makes the MM function like a flashlight would be a fantastic upgrade. Make it require Plutonium to unlock or something.
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Feb 6, 2015 19:33
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Angry Diplomat posted:A little directional light attachment that makes the MM function like a flashlight would be a fantastic upgrade. Make it require Plutonium to unlock or something.
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Feb 6, 2015 19:37
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There is a bunch of neat stuff from ice worlds. I found a gun that the secondary fire shot ice blocks, sort of like the throwing block item works. Haven't seen that axe, and can't really think of a situation where it would be useful, but it is still pretty cool.
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Feb 6, 2015 19:56
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Inverness posted:That's silly. It's just a flashlight. It shouldn't require anything but what other lights do. duct tape?
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Feb 6, 2015 19:56
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Babe Magnet posted:Oh wow, holy butts I don't see any room for a pool
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Feb 6, 2015 19:59
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IPlayVideoGames posted:It'd be cool if there was a 'teleport to outpost' button underneath the 'teleport home' one. I'd honestly like to see more upgrades and pixel/ore sinks at the late game. Like a one handed matter manipulator, teleport to outpost, etc.
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Feb 6, 2015 20:00
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Babe Magnet posted:Oh wow, holy butts
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Feb 6, 2015 20:01
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XboxPants posted:
In all honesty, they really need to ditch the flashlight as a holdable object in general I think. While its neat to have, they should have a shoulder mounted light or something equipped to you natively so you can see in the dark. Holding a flashlight tends to basically make two handed weapons a pain in the butt to use when you're in an unexplored cave or out of torches. That and possibly giving the player the lantern on a stick's level of illumination around the player by default I think would help considerably when it comes down to spelunking. And really, in the future people have managed space flight but no one has had the bright idea to duct tape a flashlight to their gun or clothes? Even horror protagonists know better than this.
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Feb 6, 2015 20:40
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You eventually get a directional light tech but it takes energy to operate so it's not good for a ranged-focused character
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Feb 6, 2015 20:48
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Directional light tech. You have a loving spaceship.
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Feb 6, 2015 20:51
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victrix posted:Directional light tech.
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Feb 6, 2015 20:55
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DeliciousCookie posted:Even horror protagonists know better than this. Doom 3 disagrees.
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Feb 6, 2015 21:01
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The technology of high-powered lamps was lost forever with Earth's tentacle invasion.
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Feb 6, 2015 21:07
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Pochoclo posted:The technology of high-powered lamps was lost forever with Earth's tentacle invasion. The entire universe's supply of D-cell batteries, lost forever.
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Feb 6, 2015 21:20
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