nutmidge

feel like starbound is an example of too much procedural generation diluting the personality of the game

most procedural generation lacks cohesion to give things an Identity. at the same time most things lack enough variation to distinguish them from each other

take a gun for example. game randomly generates parts, a name, color, ability, stats independently from each other

imagine if instead the game generated a “theme” from a pool of themes. like biomes (desert, ocean), species (apex), and dungeons (snow laboratory)

the weapon generates colors from a pool that fits the theme. like bright coral reefy oranges or planty floran earth tones or whatever

the weapon gets a name after the theme as well. like weird science jargon on a lab produced gun

abilities stats etc. actual functions but NOW the weapon cosmetically has a personality. like you go “oh this is the gun i picked up at that water planet and i kept it bc it was REALLY GOOD. its name sounds like its a religious artifact”

boom . 0 effort fun lore

i wish they did something with the armors more. instead of just having, like, main game ore-based sets, and then a million cosmetic useless armors, generate shit like mining helmets (a la terraria) or things with weird particle effects, passive statuses, and a similar generation system like the weapons

a more in depth animal husbandry system (e.g fluffalos) would be cool

adds NEW item types for mod-generated weapons (instead of replacing the old ones - for the sake of maintaining compatibility)

this mod concept aims to give individual weapons more personality and utility, possibly even incentivizing the player to own and use multiple weapons at a time. most of this mod is cosmetic changes

part 1: weapons' metadata

each weapon has a set of defined characteristics that factor into generating the rest of the weapon. these are:

theme: dungeons, biomes, and species included; maybe relates to object 'tags' like the ones you use to spawn tenants

traits: think like terraria's quality system but a little extended. 'antique' may make your weapon sell for 50% more money, 'swift' could increase attack speed, 'hunter' weapons will drop meat like the hunting bow does.

source/purpose: determines the palette of 'parts'; whether they're more industrial, fantasy, futuristic, etc, or 'military' (more generic-looking parts, like vanilla game)

element: much like base-game, but now it factors into the design of the weapon as well

part 2: display traits

weapons' random-generated names depend on the source, element, and weapon type; thunder weapons might have some electricity pun for an item name, and industrial weapons often have the name of the company that made them.

descriptions will reflect the traits of the weapon, highlighted in orange

the individual parts are selected based on weapon source, and the palette is based on theme and element, sometimes the source as well. an ocean sword might be very coral-pink and blue, while a jungle weapon a mix of green and other bright colors.

part 3: wild shit

higher-tier weapons might have particle effects, inflict status effects, or do other crazy shit . havent thought much into it yet but it will be fun.

ancient vaults will spawn these weapons too and these weapons, being in these sorts of 'pocket dimensions', will be EXTREMELY wild and less bound by procgen categories; e.g. really bright colors

1. download this mod

2. make a new character

3. type /admin

4. type /spawnitem dirtmaterial 999999 (make sure your cursor is next to your character)

5. spam the p key

sorry for taking a second to reply (and a minute of inactivity). i also did not check at all what my previous plans were so i’m answering this question based off the first thing that came to mind, and that would be the story overhaul.

with the features i have in mind, i WILL say that custom races will be compatible in the sense that you can still play as them and complete the game. however, there won’t be any special progression line given out by modded races’ villages - unless someone programs them in. an avali could still follow the path of an avian pirate dungeon, for example, as would any other race in the game!

if i ever do get this mod going and i have the time, i’ll try to make some form of documentation for my mod so that other modders can try to make their own storylines. however, it wouldn’t be easy, because i’m not exactly trying to make the mission system easier to work with, haha - it’d just be integrating your missions with the planned system of the future mod.

dedicated servers are still compatible! however, steam-hosted servers (such as those most people host for their friends) aren’t. the folder for the operating system you use has an executable called starbound_server which im sure can be worked into a dedicated server; however, in order for other people to actually join your dedicated server, you need to port forward.

sorry for my inactivity!

this is a funny ask to me because there is a sort of reason why FU Does That, and it’s not the only mod to do so. the mod truespace, a mod that overhauls the way star systems are generated by renaming the star types and making planets generate based off distance from the star (temperature) rather than characteristic (like radioactive, gentle, etc.), also breaks saves like FU does.

with this said, and based off of my not-too-indepth modding knowledge, i can sort of hypothesize why FRACKIN UNIVERSE breaks saves.

basically, planet and character data are synchronized and co-existent across the entire universe. changes you make to the universe on one character, such as outpost quests/unlocks and bases you build on new planets, can be visited by any other character so long as they have the coordinates!

in addition, starbound has a fixed seed - for every single person that plays starbound, the layout of the entire universe is the exact same on vanilla. this is how sites like starboundmap can exist, because every single coordinate listed as a vanilla planet is a planet in your starbound vanilla save. it has the exact same layout and dungeon types and they’re all placed in the exact same place; people write notes like “novakid village to the left of beam site”. if you’re looking for specific dungeons or the perfect planet to inhabit, starboundmap is a really good site!

so what happens if you add a new star type? why does it break saves when the mod is uninstalled?

a few things:

a new star type has to generate to be useful, so it has to be seeded into the universe somehow. this affects all the stars around it too; now they have to change position to make sure they’re adhering to whatever limitations starbound has on star generation.

doing this, naturally, changes the seed of the universe; now the planet Taygeta Cluster III at coordinates (-325753912, -128948101) is no longer Taygeta Cluster III. stars are moved into different positions, planets now have different names, and now there’s a whole new star type in the universe, now your universe is different from every single vanilla starbound user!

because of this, everything in the starbound universe is affected. no longer do you have a preset map for the game to randomly plant you on a garden planet; the garden planet you land on can’t be landed on by a vanilla player. if you try to navigate the universe, you have to make sure the same star type is there, so it’s gonna cause HUGE issues if there isn’t.

what does this mean? if you were allowed to play starbound with your modded character after uninstalling the mod, it’d basically break everything! the planet or star system that your spaceship is orbiting doesn’t exist anymore (and it isn’t possible to be between stars in the game.) if you try to open the navigation console, it would break because it’s missing a star type. the entire universe would be re-seeded once more back to vanilla preset...

so how does starbound make sure you aren’t literally breaking the game just by existing? well, duh, not letting you exist without the mod.

why frackin universe specifically?

if you’ve never played frackin universe, i envy you for one, but the mod also adds a star type called the dying star. i don’t need to really go into the details of the dying star, because just adding a star type on its own breaks the game.

why did frackin universe add a new star type? i have no fucking clue. i think at this point sayter was like “HEY LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!!!!!!!!!!!!”. maybe he didn’t care anymore because im about 83% sure that if you removed the dying star, the game would still be completely unplayable after removing frackin universe anyway. who knows!

of course if i had a brain i would suggest that the dying star be removed from FU because i have no idea why the fuck it’s there, but of course, if the frackin universe modding team saw this post i think they’d probably just screenshot it and laugh at it in their discord server and maybe have one or two of them call me a rampaging idiot.

either way, if FU removed the dying star, i don’t think it changes anything, the difference is that leaving the dying star in makes it so the game doesnt sugarcoat the fact that your universe is broken.

the original question (will your mods break saves like FU does)

i really hope not! but if i ever do get back into modding, the thing is that my plans affect starbound on so many levels that i’m not sure if i can guarantee save compatibility. generation of planets themselves are one of the first changes i want to make - namely decreasing the dungeon count of all planets to provide more room for building (there are other features planned to offset stuff like difficulty finding civilizations).

this makes it at least incompatible with starbound map, because now the novakid village to the left of the beam site might not be there at all, but i don’t think it’ll break saves - in fact, “reducing the dungeon count” should actually be vanilla compatible because it doesn’t add anything freaky.