[Suggestion] SetPiece Compilation Mod Team

[RogueYun]

I am new to don't starve, and I am new here. I am just a lowly gamer, and I submit the following suggestion as humbly as I may.

 

~I'd like to suggest a group forms that works on compiling and creating custom setpieces into a mod/mods.

~I'd like to suggest a thread dedicated to suggesting, discussing, and balancing custom setpieces.

 

I spent a good portion of the past few days struggling to learn how to make custom setpieces, and having no success, I thought I might come here and post some of my ideas to see if someone else might be able to do something with them. I was surprised at not finding the forum/thread/group I was looking for (this seemed the closest http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/36392-mod-request-setpieces-galore/?hl=setpiece#entry481445), so I decided to make this suggestion.

 

Does this seem like a good idea to you? Would anyone be willing to be a part of such a group? This is not something I think I can hold together or push forward, I just don't have the experience or know how. I am just hoping someone else might see its value.

 

The alternative was to create a thread on the suggestion forum dedicated to setpieces, but I felt I should present this option here first because this seemed like something enjoyable/doable by the Don't Starve community.

 

Again, I am not very experienced, so I ask your pardon if this idea isn't plausible, but if it is a good idea, is there someone other there with more experience that would be willing to help push it along?

[Sketchiverse]

If I understood correctly, I really like the idea. I can imagine a "Custom Setpieces All in One" mod containing a bundle of them made by different modders, with credit given to each of them obviously.

 

I never made a setpiece mod myself. Just giving my opinion.

[Mobbstar]

I've messed with custom mini biomes once. They're like setpieces, but with random arrangement and seamless transition.

Mention me (mark this text and click the button) if you're interested.

[Kzisor]

@RogueYun, check out Additional Set Pieces mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=394470322 or http://forums.kleientertainment.com/files/file/1097-additional-set-pieces-dst-and-ds/

 

While it is not a mod collaboration, it does add more set pieces to both Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together.

[RogueYun]

I've messed with custom mini biomes once. They're like setpieces, but with random arrangement and seamless transition.

Mention me (mark this text and click the button) if you're interested.

 

Custom mini biomes sounds great! I don't know what your are offering exactly, but I believe I would be very interested

[RogueYun]

@RogueYun, check out Additional Set Pieces mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=394470322 or http://forums.kleientertainment.com/files/file/1097-additional-set-pieces-dst-and-ds/

 

While it is not a mod collaboration, it does add more set pieces to both Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together.

 

I actually have looked over them. I got my idea for the suggestion strongly from that mod. I appreciate the mod, and I think it is great! I tried breaking apart it's code to create my own custom setpieces (Again, no success).

 

Do you think the modder would be willing to work on requests? I feel what I propose might be overwhelming for just one modder.

 

You see, my goal in suggesting this is to increase variance between generated worlds as much as possible. In the RoG DLC you can predict certain things, like that the pig king will be near a cave plug and adjacent to a deciduous biome and the teleportato is on a chess biome, etc. Though those things might be hard coded I would like to change them, and if I cannot, I would like to have more random (either worthless, dangerous, advantagous, whatever) encounters in survival mode. An example might be a pig/merm fortress, a farm with some carrot seeds, a boon with a tentacle spike/spots/tetacles, a fairy ring with all three mushroom types and a spiders nest/pig guard/merm house in the middle, a small patch of tooth traps with batalisks. It is my humble opinion that the more well balanced random things in the world the more intersting the world would become and the more of an adventure each game would become. I want it so that people might consider changing where they settle/avoid.

 

Selfishly, I would like as a regular gamer (like myself) to have somewhere/someone they could turn to with ideas and know that they might be heard/considered.

 

As Jack Handy once said, “I hope if dogs take over the world, and they choose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.”

 

I think the best chance to reach that goal would be if a small group dedicated some time to listening to suggestions, programmed, created, and compiled such setpieces. I think it would be great for the community as a whole, but I can understand if there just isn't enough experience/support for this idea.

 

Again, this is just my inexperienced opinion. Forgive me if I come off as being pushy.

[Kzisor]

@RogueYun, I am the author of Additional Set Pieces.

 

The problem with only having ideas is that you're not bringing anything to the table. Anyone can have an idea, only those who are capable of executing it are the ones that should rise to the top.

 

I am willing to work with anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort to do the same amount of work. That means you will need to learn how to use Tiled (yes, I will teach you if desired), you will need to know everything about your idea, layout, creatures, treasure, traps, etc. and finally you will need to accept criticism or guidance. Some times a plan or idea cannot work out without adding several thousands lines of code; these ideas should be set aside and reassessed to ensure they are worth the effort to put into them.

[RogueYun]

Kzisor, I appreciate your support (and your marvelous work!), and I will gladly take what help I can get.

 

My sleep schedule being as it is, I dedicated some time toward giving something you could work with, and I had some success using your mod as a basis. Before, I was trying to make my own set piece mod from the ground up and that seemed to be going nowhere, but making some adjustments to your mod has enabled me to create the following.

 

 

The big problem with this one that I can tell is that the BG_TILES seem out of place. The merm house was supposed to be centered on the swamp tile, but I was just testing to see what I could do. I will attatch the files I changed, including the tiled tmx file.

 

Any suggestions for imrpovement would be appreciated! Especially if you know how to fix the skewed tiles.

Test_SetPiece.zip

[Kzisor]

@RogueYun, the tile width/height should be 16x16 and the overall width and height should be adjusted accordingly. You need to make sure that you only fill every 4 tiles with textures, otherwise you will have this issue. It looks as those you didn't completely have them in the right size and this causes misalignment; this happened to me in the early stages of development for my mod. The new set pieces are all correct, however, the first ones are not.

[Mobbstar]

Here's an example, old and dusty, of what I was talking about. If you try to apply the code yourself, keep in mind that rooms in the same task will be close to each other.

I'd love to show you some quirks and tricks about that, but rather in a PM or on the API docs. If you're interested, that is.

 

A map showing the three sample rooms. As you can see, one is obvious, while two are mousy and hard to spot. One overlapped with a setpiece, which is kinda fun.

Now some more nice screenies:

This bee field solely consists of wasp hives, evil flowers and a page for easier searching

The bees kept me from the center, so this is the edge though

This one shows a hound field with exactly one piece of nightmare fuel as loot. The ground type is specified as turfless dirt.

The merm swamp at night... it didn't end so well. There are a couple of cave plants too.

 

Here's the code:

GLOBAL.require("map/tasks")
GLOBAL.require("constants")

AddRoom("houndlootroom", --name, should be unique
    {
        colour={r=0.2,g=0.1,b=0.1,a=0.2}, --idk
        value = GLOBAL.GROUND.DIRT, --flooring
        contents =  --this can be more advanced, but back when I wrote this, ...
        {
            countprefabs= -- I sticked to the simplest method
            {
                houndmound = 4, --prefabname = count
                houndbone = 7,
                papyrus = 1,
                nightmarefuel = 1,
            }
        }
    })

AddRoom("evilwasproom",
    {
        colour={r=0.2,g=0.1,b=0.1,a=0.2},
        value = GLOBAL.GROUND.GRASS,
        contents =  
        {
            countprefabs=
            {
                wasphive = 8,
                flower_evil = 20,
                papyrus = 1,
            }
        }
    })

AddRoom("caveswamproom",
    {
        colour={r=0.2,g=0.1,b=0.1,a=0.2},
        value = GLOBAL.GROUND.MARSH,
        contents =  
        {
            countprefabs=
            {
                mermhouse = 8,
                marsh_bush = 4,
                lichen = 2,
                tentacle = 3,
                papyrus = 1,
            }
        }
    })

local t1 = GLOBAL.tasks.GetTaskByName("Great Plains", GLOBAL.tasks.sampletasks) --task is a branch
local t2 = GLOBAL.tasks.GetTaskByName("Beeeees!", GLOBAL.tasks.sampletasks)
local t3 = GLOBAL.tasks.GetTaskByName("Squeltch", GLOBAL.tasks.sampletasks)

t1.room_choices["houndlootroom"] = 1 --how often to spawn
t2.room_choices["evilwasproom"] = 1
t3.room_choices["caveswamproom"] = 1

 

I can also arrange dummy prefabs to implement special biome specific spawners and stuff. Those are deeper waters though, and I would ask for a good concept in advance.

[RogueYun]

@Kzisor, I can't seem to get the BG_TILES to work... The FG_OBJECTS seem to be fine... I'm going to think out loud for a bit just so you know what questions are flying through my mind. I have a lot of them, and most will be irrelevant.

 

When you start a new project in Tiled, do you set the tile size to 16x16? And the map size to something divisible by 4, because the game recogizes tiles as being 64x64? So when working in tiled you get somthing that looks like this?

 

Is there a reason why you have "ground" instead of just "tiles"? Are you using a different tiles.png file than I am? Where can I get a copy?

 

Sorry for asking so many questions.. I am just thinking out loud in hopes you can see where I made a wrong turn.

 

 

@Mobbstar, man, those rooms look pure evil! I am still trying to become comfortable with this... a lot of this (modding, wokring in lua, using tiled, figuring out what the differnce between a setpiece, room, and biome) is beyond me and I am just plugging away in hopes I'll figure it out... I might give creating rooms a shot in the future, for now I'm going to try to create some small set pieces/boons.

 

If I were to make any requests along the lines of what you have presented it would be for something silly like a catcoon flower room where there would be mass slaughter of butterflies. It would be awesome if there were smaller beefalo heards around the map as well... Mine tend to be clustered all in one spot on the savana making it almost always necissary to build a base camp there or near there. Having a room/rooms with 2-4 beefalo somewhere else on the map would be nice, but not very challenging. Having some more chess rooms/biomes would be extremely useful/challenging. Modding the pig kingdom/village to spawn in different locations or with pig guards or any other random boon or bane would be amazing! This is just me spurting out stuff though.

 

 

I made this boon, I kinda thought it would be fun to include in a mod somewhere. But based on what Kzisor mentioned it probably needs some reworking.

A circle of 12 burnt evergreens with a skeleton and a torch in the middle. An attempt to keep Charlie at bay that backfired

 

Speaking of which, is it possible to set weapons/tools at a lower percent than 100? I know that some tools from boons generate used.

 

In any case, I have said a mouthful with little to no direction.. I beg your pardon.

[Kzisor]

@RogueYun, Here is some information you requested.

 

Set Piece setup in Tiled:

 

 

Custom tiles image:

Yes I use a custom tiles image that I created based on the one Klei provided. I've sent PeterA the updated version after a few people have requested the updated one. He stated that it was a low priority, but he would look into getting it added to the Don't Starve Mod Tools.

 

I simply sent him the .png file; however, I actually set up the terrains on my end in a custom tiles.tsx file that I will not be sharing as it's not needed.

 

Also, yes there is a way of lowering the durability of weapons and tools. This is done through scenarios, which can be set for boons, etc.

[PeterA]

@RogueYun, @Kzisor, and @Mobbstar, I've updated the mod tools to include Kzisor's updated png file. It's available in the "publicpreview" beta branch of the tools. Please check it out, and let me know if you run into any issues.

 

Thanks!