#design issues

Starbound cannot support server-side mods.

That is, you can't have it connect to an external server and have the server send any missing mods over.

Consider the startup process:

On startup, the game goes through all asset sources (assets\packed.pak, anything in assets\user, folders and zips in mods\, and anything in the Steam Workshop folder), listing all the files in there, in prioritized order and all that, and then loads all the data from these files into various in-game databases. This takes a fair bit, especially when you have a couple mods in place (that's both the mods folder and the Steam Workshop).

You create a character if you haven't already.

You can now start a new game, in which case your copy of SB plays both server and client roles, or join another game.

If you try to join a game that doesn't have the same assets, things break. This is what server-side mods are supposed to solve! But there's a problem:

Same as before.

Same as before.

You join an external game. An asset mismatch is found, so the server's mods are downloaded from the server, to a special server-specific folder. All that's gonna take a good while.

The game has to go back to step one, effectively restarting to load only assets\packed.pak and what's in the server-specific folder. Depending on the server's mod loadout, this will another good amount of time.

If you didn't create a character of one of the vanilla species, or they had items from a mod this server doesn't have, you now have to create a new character specifically for this server.

You can now join the game... but starting a local one or trying to join another server means starting all of this all over again.

In the meantime, I've gotten it in my head to make a custom based off of Disney's Constance Hatchaway. I have the bait. I have oodles of hair. I just also have a conundrum. What colour hair should I give her? I'm going with the official Disneyland design, which I always envisioned as blonde based off her in-life-portraits and the way the highlights work in her projection, but all of the official dolls and the costumes in the parade give her blue or silver hair. And of course, I have all three colours going spare. So heading into 2024 with a goal of getting more projects done, I figured I'd get some opinions.

Pattern design: trial & error & editing

Oh, patterns. In my lifetime I’ve actually designed several. Yes: several. But they occur few and far between. For instance, if you’re viewing this tumblr account on a computer - the background of my page is obviously a pattern of squares. And yes, it repeats. Designing something obviously less linear that doesn’t rely on a solid background - that’s a bit more of a challenge.

I’ve frequently mused that it might have been helpful if I’d taken any graphic design course in college… but I saw their homework and it was a lot of text kerning (as if Photoshop wasn’t a thing in 1998 and we were ever going to go back to manual typesetting). For those unfamiliar: I have an art degree, my concentration was scientific illustration. That might explain why I draw birds and bugs and flowers and naturey things.

Anyway, trial and error with patterns is one of my current side projects. I have a reflective moment at the end of every year where I write down some ideas about stuff I might want to do the next year in the back of my sketchbook… sometimes I make an attempt at that stuff. So, this is it. Spatial relationships, symmetry, placement, juxtaposition, scale, eyeballing it - all that fun stuff.

End up giving him Soma's wear of clothing, because apparently that's Glamrock fashion too.