HOUSES IN DON'T STARVE?!? (please just hear me out)

[DeeterDeet]

PLEASE DON'T CLICK OFF YET AND JUST LISTEN:

I know that this idea has probably been suggested before but I have a great idea that would fit DST's game play better than: "just add the houses from hamlet!!!" So please just listen to my idea and consider it because it has been a dream of mine for many, many, MANY years.

Why this makes sense:

There are many items that you can place around the world of Don't Starve Together. However, there is never a dedicated place where you can decorate to your hearts desire. However, the game seems to want to lead you into the idea that there is! (nothing personal to don't starve and it's my favourite game I have ever played and I have been playing it since it came out). For example, you can receive items like skins and things for tables, gramophones, pots, vases, and many other things for the sort. But WTF puts tables, chairs, cooking pots, and other things outside where it gets rained on. It makes more sense to be able to put it inside a house. Plus, just think of being able to feel that sense of accomplishment of seeing your kick ass base after 10,000 hours in the game and being able to invite all your friends inside for a drink of tea at the dinner table.

How it would work:

So, some of the first thoughts are probably: "this would ruin the game play of Don't Starve." However, I have a solution to that if you just let me describe it first. So, these houses would greatly improve base building and make me actually want to spend the time to have a decorated place where I can have dedicated places to do my daily tasks. Obviously, the outside would be customisation. However, the inside is the interesting part. Firstly, once you are able to build a house, you would start off with a small room (similar to when you first get the house in Hamlet. However, here is where the interesting part happens. Instead of just being able to add rooms to your house, the house would be a giant building box to do whatever you desire. In order to expand your house, there should be little pods you can place that increases the size of rooms (this action should be similar to placing turf but instead, it expands the room). Some of these pods would make a room bigger, and others would allow you to choose where you want there to be walls. This would allow you to individually choose what color walls go where. However, there would also be a pod that allows you to place a door. Unlike hamlet, where you click on a door and then you go into a loading screen to the next room, these doors would just simply open and allow you to walk through them. There would be no loading screen, rather all of the rooms are connected and can be turned into any shape and size you want. In addition to these pods, there could be decorative items like windows and chandeliers. However, there could be staircases that lead you to different floors of the house. These staircases would function more similar to the doors from hamlet, except, instead of leading you to a new room, they lead to a new floor full of rooms. You should be able to place just about anything that you can place outside, inside your house (including things like turfs). Imagine even being able to have an entire room to keep your precious cats that you received from the Year of the Cat update. They could play for hours in their with all their little toys. However, some of the more dedicated house decorating items would be available only from a construction tab that you can activate once you're inside the house. These features would add countless amounts of hours on top of the countless hours of replay ability. Just think of it as Don't Starve Together: New Horizons!

Addressing some of the problems:

Alright! Now here is where I get into how they would fit it in with the game play of Don't Starve. So, first off, some people might say that it would ruin seasons. Some might say that being able to camp out in your house will ruin the challenge that comes with survivng the harshness of the outside world. However, there are many ways to fix this. Here are some solutions that I came up with to fix that problem:

Solution #1:

So, the house could be an item that is achieved very late game. It could be a reward for defeating the celestial champion. Say, after you defeat the celestial champion, Wagstaff pulls up and is like, "dang boi. Ya did pretty darn well defeating that dude. Now I am going to give you a quest or a way of somehow achieving my ultra secret schematics that allow you to come up with amazing houses. This would already solve most of the problems, because when you are that late in the game, you already don't really have a problem with the seasons and you definitely don't have a problem with light anymore (since you get an infinite light source for defeating the moon boi). However, what if, in order to keep the house running, you had to keep a generator running (or a generator like device that Wagstaff invented.) If you didn't keep the house running, your house would not be heated or cooled during the harsh seasons of the game, which means that you would over heat or freeze and die. This would add an extra layer of game play to keep people entertained after getting that far in the game. Alternatively, you could make the house easy to get early game, however you have to keep the generator running to keep the lights on or you will die to charlie. Once you defeat the celestial champion, you can use the deconstruction staff on the light crown and use one of those gems for infinite light power.

Solution #2:

So, once you are able to defeat the celestial champion, the DST world crowns you as a champion and lets you gain infinite light. That is an amazing reward that allows you to not worry about light. However, what if there were other bosses that allows you to take other challenges out of the picture. Like, what if, once the celestial champion dies, its spirit spurts out all over the world. This, in turn, posses the other seasonal bosses (dragonfly, deerclops, bearger, and moosegoose). This turns them into their celestial counterparts. These bosses should be super, ultra hard, providing an endgame challenge. Slaying each one of these bosses would grant you a crown (like the celestial crown) that grants you invincibility to their respective season. So, there could be a generator that you have to fill up in your house. In the generator, there could be a section that allows you to power your lights, heating, cooling, and rain protection or something. Using a deconstruction staff on each one of these and slotting a crystal from that into the generator allows you to power your house indefinitely (thank to Wagstaff's ingenious generator design. However, the crowns you get from each boss don't even have to grant you invincibility while you are out and about if that is considered to OP. Instead, you could just make them dedicated indefinite fuel for your houses's generator. Only being able to be in your house and be granted invincibility grants you a little safe zone that makes you want to decorate it and make it cool. However, that still doesn't take away from the challenge of Don't Starve as you still have to work to keep your hunger up. In my opinion, this is a great end-game challenge that really rewards you for conquering the biggest bosses of Don't Starve. As you can tell, there are many work-arounds to making this fit into game play.

Conclusion:

If you are still reading this... Congrats and thank you so much for giving the time to listen to my idea. I would love to receive feedback to improve this concept. Adding this would truly make me so grateful, and even considering this would be more than enough. As you can see, I put a lot of time into this. If anyone desires a more clearer picture of something, let me know and I can provide concept images that I will draw out. This has been a dream of mine for so long, so I would be the upmost great full if it was even considered. Please let me know any thoughts and how big of a chance there is that this will be added to the game.

[Mike23Ua]

In single player don’t starve the player could sleep in a tent to much like Minecraft- Fastforward through the game and skip night time altogether.

Now because I do not play with others in DST I do not know if Everyone sleeps if the game will skip nightfall or not (like it does in Minecraft)

However in the HAMLET DLC for Solo Don’t Starve the player actually did have houses they could furnish & prevent the worlds dangers from destroying (annoying little Pogs who rummage in your storage boxes) Yes you could ignore the games seasons and dangers by hiding in your little house or whatever- but you could ALREADY have done that by just skipping nightfall with a Tent/sleeping bag or whatever..

And a lot of people completely and probably intentionally ignore mentioning that.

I advocate for a Harsher, less forgiving DST that doesn’t give a crap about you or your base and DOESNT try very hard to actively avoid your base.. But really what I want is a “Safe Place” like a Hamlet Slanty Shanty where I can store my stuff and decorate with furnitures while the rest of the world outside my home hub can be harsh and unforgiving.

What people fail to tell you is that even if you could “skip” weather seasons and incoming dangers by hiding in your home, your also not getting anything accomplished in the game outside of decorating your home.

So the TL:DR is that Slanty Shanties weren’t nowhere near as busted as people made them out to be.

[_zwb]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I advocate for a Harsher, less forgiving DST that doesn’t give a crap about you or your base and DOESNT try very hard to actively avoid your base.. But really what I want is a “Safe Place”

DST provides a relatively safe place, the game avoids destroying your base with no counter play, you're not fine with it.

Hamlet provides a relatively safe place, almost no survival threats appear in slanty shanty except the Ancient Herald and such, you're fine with it.

Slanty shanty is even safer than DST bases, yet somehow you still like this place that takes away great chuck of challenge in the game. At least be consistent with your logic.

[Mike23Ua]

39 minutes ago, _zwb said:

DST provides a relatively safe place, the game avoids destroying your base with no counter play, you're not fine with it.

Hamlet provides a relatively safe place, almost no survival threats appear in slanty shanty except the Ancient Herald and such, you're fine with it.

Slanty shanty is even safer than DST bases, yet somehow you still like this place that takes away great chuck of challenge in the game. At least be consistent with your logic.

A slanty Shanty would probably be the size of a Merm Shack, with the player loading into a “Void” area of the game map to place their structures, gardens, etc.. while this would open the rest of the game up to preventing the player from being able to turn the entire constant into a personal base.

It would therefore allow things like Magma Ponds and Larvae to NOT be tied exclusively to a Boss Fight. I mean even the compendium description for Magma does not state that it’s only found in one area in the entire game.

The way I picture it working is that the player can place down one and ONLY ONE deployable personal house, it’s indestructible- and once inside can be expanded with indoor rooms, wall paintings, indoor gardens etc.. (just like hamlet version)

Which allows the rest of the game to do important things like Respawn Killer Bee Hives, Swamp Tentacles, Hound Dens, Etc.. and therefore prevent the player from landscaping an entire biome and turning it into a fair carnival.

[_zwb]

6 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

A slanty Shanty would probably be the size of a Merm Shack, with the player loading into a “Void” area of the game map to place their structures, gardens, etc.. while this would open the rest of the game up to preventing the player from being able to turn the entire constant into a personal base.

So your problem with DST safe zones is the player can make the entire map safe. Let's not talk about the fact that you can already do this in DS, RoG SW and HAM just yet, but why is this a problem exactly? Is trivialising survival an issue? By the point you eliminate all threats in the world survival has already become trivial, so this doesn't change much. If you're looking for endless survival challenge, it is simply impossible.

Also slanty shanty theoretically has infinite space, not just a merm shack.

[Uedo]

13 hours ago, _zwb said:

So your problem with DST safe zones is the player can make the entire map safe. Let's not talk about the fact that you can already do this in DS, RoG SW and HAM just yet, but why is this a problem exactly? Is trivialising survival an issue? By the point you eliminate all threats in the world survival has already become trivial, so this doesn't change much. If you're looking for endless survival challenge, it is simply impossible.

Also slanty shanty theoretically has infinite space, not just a merm shack.

_zwb, just.... let it go... it's not worth it.

Tbh Mike, I think it's such a shame mods arn't on the console. I've tried a mod before where you get to customise a little house like Hamlet - I found it quite fun, I think they had a T.A.R.D.I.S one you could spawn, funny little console to teleport across the map. I think there was one home that spawned mushroom spores (I think, or it was WIP). Console players really miss out on a lot of options to customise your experience :/

[Mike23Ua]

3 hours ago, Uedo said:

_zwb, just.... let it go... it's not worth it.

Tbh Mike, I think it's such a shame mods arn't on the console. I've tried a mod before where you get to customise a little house like Hamlet - I found it quite fun, I think they had a T.A.R.D.I.S one you could spawn, funny little console to teleport across the map. I think there was one home that spawned mushroom spores (I think, or it was WIP). Console players really miss out on a lot of options to customise your experience :/

The only time it upsets me when people talk about mods for DST is when the Klei Devs themselves are using or mentioning them. While It’s not often that they will do that, highlighting unofficial content in anyway shape or from when they have no intentions of making it official just feels I don’t know.. wrong?

That said: Some games such as Ark Survival Evolved, Killing Floor 2 or Left 4 Dead 2 HAVE Actually taken popular mod maps and modes and later incorporated those into the base game as Official gameplay Content so all players (& not just people on PC using Mods) can enjoy them.

In my opinion if Klei devs need to use a PC mod to enhance their Gameplay experience/enjoyment of their own game- Then maybe they should look into incorporating that experience (as best as they can..) into the actual game for all to enjoy?

Its cool that you mention that there are PC mods that add Hamlet Houses into DST though.. because all that does is prove that with enough development time, resources costs- And most importantly desire to bring that type of experience into the game: It CAN Be Done.

And that’s the way I feel about all the most popularly used mods tbh, I’m gonna keep my eye on that “Elevated Land” Mod to see how that turns out- Then ima beg Klei to make it officially part of the game.

[Uedo]

10 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

The only time it upsets me when people talk about mods for DST is when the Klei Devs themselves are using or mentioning them. While It’s not often that they will do that, highlighting unofficial content in anyway shape or from when they have no intentions of making it official just feels I don’t know.. wrong?

That said: Some games such as Ark Survival Evolved, Killing Floor 2 or Left 4 Dead 2 HAVE Actually taken popular mod maps and modes and later incorporated those into the base game as Official gameplay Content so all players (& not just people on PC using Mods) can enjoy them.

In my opinion if Klei devs need to use a PC mod to enhance their Gameplay experience/enjoyment of their own game- Then maybe they should look into incorporating that experience (as best as they can..) into the actual game for all to enjoy?

Its cool that you mention that there are PC mods that add Hamlet Houses into DST though.. because all that does is prove that with enough development time, resources costs- And most importantly desire to bring that type of experience into the game: It CAN Be Done.

And that’s the way I feel about all the most popularly used mods tbh, I’m gonna keep my eye on that “Elevated Land” Mod to see how that turns out- Then ima beg Klei to make it officially part of the game.

Yeah I totally agree with you, if they're using the mods then evidently they value it as part of the core experience - so yeah, they should incorporate it imo. How we don't have Combined Statuses and Geometric Placement is a bit silly, especially due to how locked out console players are of these really useful options.

Maybe that's why we sometimes run into a bit of disagreement (I'll do better in terms of trying to remember that we're gonna have very different experiences just based on the platforms we play) cause yeah from my perspective when you suggest something my brain just goes 'I'm sure theres a mod somewhere' and I guess i forget for you you're just going to be stuck with official content and if you're not quite happy with that well, that's it - kinda stuck. 

Don't quote me on it but I'm certain there's a problem with how the Hamlet houses function - The mod i used worked but there was a lot of discourse in the mod page about how impractical and difficult it was to get the game to register multiple 'indoor spaces' on a technical level and i know the creator wasn't satisfied with how they achieved it (I'm guessing it's just a lot of workarounds, Although i'm sure the hamlet houses were stored areas way off the map? (No idea ).

But yeah, I think you're right dude, ultimately it can be done - I just wish you guys had as many options as we do :/  Just being able to be told your temperature is game changing haha
 

[ShadowbirdRH]

I'd be happy to see return of the Slanty Shanty. I don't think it would be broken because you can't grow/produce food in there. You can cook food and dry meat, but you still have to go out and engage with the world to keep on surviving. As a bit of an ulterior motive, I still consider the new crafting menu a devastating downgrade, and remain convinced that a growing catalog of recipes could be better managed with the old system, provided certain categories/groups of items/objects/structures were condensed into sub-menus the same way the Slanty Shanty's renovation tabs work. Perhaps if those with more say in the matter engage more with that crafting system, they might come to consider its merits as well. Yeah, I know, fat chance, but at least it's something. I want to keep hoping for something better instead of just accepting the mess we got dropped on us.

[Uedo]

22 hours ago, ShadowbirdRH said:

I'd be happy to see return of the Slanty Shanty. I don't think it would be broken because you can't grow/produce food in there. You can cook food and dry meat, but you still have to go out and engage with the world to keep on surviving. As a bit of an ulterior motive, I still consider the new crafting menu a devastating downgrade, and remain convinced that a growing catalog of recipes could be better managed with the old system, provided certain categories/groups of items/objects/structures were condensed into sub-menus the same way the Slanty Shanty's renovation tabs work. Perhaps if those with more say in the matter engage more with that crafting system, they might come to consider its merits as well. Yeah, I know, fat chance, but at least it's something. I want to keep hoping for something better instead of just accepting the mess we got dropped on us.

If they do come though, unfortunately void walking will NEED to get fixed - I vaguely remember you could clip out and put things in the void. Also if they're going to do it now, it'd have to be sharded, not something that'll go over well for people who host outside of dedicated servers. I know that consoles get tetchy opening up modding but as Mike has suggested before there are a few games that seemingly CAN convince Sony, typically by curating pre-existing mods - maybe a bit out of reach for Klei, but certainly possible (I don't think for one second that it would be cost effective, so I completely get that it'll not happen, but hey-ho)

[chirsg]

I love the idea that a slanty shanty is requested in the game. If it's hyper post game, there shouldn't be much of a problem. Just add some rebalancing and I think everything would go well. 

 

Right now, Island Adventures, the group who made the mod of the same name, a shipwrecked mod, are currently working on a hamlet mod.

 

One of their hurdles are interiors. They're hard to get right.

If they do add interiors, I think they would have their place in the base game, 100%.

 

Not even as a sort of crutch to survival, but something that can be used as a tool. I know for damn certain, I won't have  "chest zones" anymore if shanties are introduced. I'd just have sheds.

 

I can't wait till it becomes a plausible reality. I want to make towns and what the hell kind of town doesn't have a cell you can walk into?

[DeeterDeet]

I personally play alone. However, I can see how implementing a feature like this for multiplayer might run into some server issues. However, with my limited knowledge of software development (I program software in Unity, however I do not have any experience with online programs or servers) there may be a simple work around this. Now, keep in mind that I am not too sure because I do not mess with online functionality, however, it seems logical that it should with the experience that I have. To understand this, you need to think of the DST map like a square. The boarder around the ocean of DST is the outline of the square. Anything past that outline is just a black void. Now, if they were to add the slanty shanty from hamlet, (or something like it) this is what they could do. First off, whenever you place a slanty shanty, it generates an area outside of the outline around the entire map of dst. This square are the rooms you place. The rooms will be way outside of the DST map in the void. They won't be visible from the map. When you choose to enter into the slanty shanty, it triggers an event. This event will teleport you all the way to your house. However, it would do it seamlessly that way it gives off the illusion that you entered in the house. This would be a whole lot more effective than if you were to load an entire new server for the house. It is a lot easier to merely teleport someone to a small section loaded in, rather than have an entire new area that players can load in and load out of (which I think is how the caves work). This should not affect lag in servers at all and still allow for events to take place on the map.

[DeeterDeet]

On 11/9/2023 at 4:01 PM, chirsg said:

I love the idea that a slanty shanty is requested in the game. If it's hyper post game, there shouldn't be much of a problem. Just add some rebalancing and I think everything would go well. 

 

Right now, Island Adventures, the group who made the mod of the same name, a shipwrecked mod, are currently working on a hamlet mod.

 

One of their hurdles are interiors. They're hard to get right.

If they do add interiors, I think they would have their place in the base game, 100%.

 

Not even as a sort of crutch to survival, but something that can be used as a tool. I know for damn certain, I won't have  "chest zones" anymore if shanties are introduced. I'd just have sheds.

 

I can't wait till it becomes a plausible reality. I want to make towns and what the hell kind of town doesn't have a cell you can walk into?

Yes, I agree. I would love interiors. 

 

To be honest, I don't even care if they are a crutch to survival either. I just want it added to the game so I can I have a place that I can really call my own and decorate with all my things. It would really let me connect with my world and build a place that I love. In fact, the only reason I listed all those reasons above was so that I could give different perspectives that would allow people to rationalise different methods that would make this idea fit in the world of Don't Starve. Honestly, I would be ecstatic if it was added at all. However, I do think that my idea with the seasonal bosses dropping different materials to complete the house, post celestial champion sounds the most likely to be added in by the DST developers.

 

Thanks for sharing your feedback! With people like you, maybe this will become a reality!

[arubaro]

14 hours ago, DeeterDeet said:

I personally play alone. However, I can see how implementing a feature like this for multiplayer might run into some server issues. However, with my limited knowledge of software development (I program software in Unity, however I do not have any experience with online programs or servers) there may be a simple work around this. Now, keep in mind that I am not too sure because I do not mess with online functionality, however, it seems logical that it should with the experience that I have. To understand this, you need to think of the DST map like a square. The boarder around the ocean of DST is the outline of the square. Anything past that outline is just a black void. Now, if they were to add the slanty shanty from hamlet, (or something like it) this is what they could do. First off, whenever you place a slanty shanty, it generates an area outside of the outline around the entire map of dst. This square are the rooms you place. The rooms will be way outside of the DST map in the void. They won't be visible from the map. When you choose to enter into the slanty shanty, it triggers an event. This event will teleport you all the way to your house. However, it would do it seamlessly that way it gives off the illusion that you entered in the house. This would be a whole lot more effective than if you were to load an entire new server for the house. It is a lot easier to merely teleport someone to a small section loaded in, rather than have an entire new area that players can load in and load out of (which I think is how the caves work). This should not affect lag in servers at all and still allow for events to take place on the map.

i think that is how interiors work in hamlet

[DeeterDeet]

On 11/19/2023 at 8:00 AM, arubaro said:

i think that is how interiors work in hamlet

I didn't know that. Thank you.