[WIP] Don't Starve wormhole breeding

[XIII]

I just got started making mods last night. My friends downloaded a mod that messed up our server, so I opted to recreate the functionality of the mod from scratch myself. Over the next couple of hours, talking to my buddies yielded an idea for a mod: Wormhole breeding.

While it might seem a bit overpowered, I'm a firm believer that any idea can be balanced by resources costs. Having the option to do something game-breaking isn't something you should necessarily shy away from in a videogame. The point is fun, not necessarily ensuring that the game stays difficult or pure.

Current plans are as follows:

Items:

 Worm Food

Feed one of these to a wormhole to make it no longer inflict a sanity penalty when going through it. The wormhole will remain fed for 5 days. Feeding a wormhole has a small chance (5%) to spawn a worm egg.

 Wormicide

Feed to a wormhole to kill the insanity worm. This will not work against very old worms. Only the wormholes that have been placed by players can be killed with wormicide. Feeding wormicide to an elder worm is inadvisable.

Insanity Egg

Wormholes will sometimes produce an egg when fed. Keep it warm and it will hatch into an insanity maggot. Holding the insanity egg in your inventory will slowly drive you insane. Hatching an egg that is too cold will yield wet goop. Allowing an insanity egg to spoil will yield a rotten egg.

Insanity Maggot
Insanity maggots are just plain gross. Plant it in the ground quickly! Insanity maggots will drive you insane much faster than insanity eggs, so it's best to unload these quickly. Just plopping down an insanity maggot doesn't make a new wormhole, though! You've got to tend for your nightmarish newborn grub by feeding it worm food until it matures enough to become a juvenile insanity worm!
 

Wormhole Goop
Seriously, you don't want to know where this came from. Take it somewhere far away and put it in your mouth. Don't think about it. Chew and swallow. Doing so will cost you 50 sanity and 30 health, but the juvenile wormhole you got this from will instantly become an adult and its second mouth will open beneath you.

Set Pieces:

Insanity Maggot
When planted, the insanity maggot must be fed and kept warm or it will die. After three days, the insanity maggot will grow and become an insanity grub. Being near an insanity maggot is taxing on a player's sanity. Smashing an insanity maggot with a hammer will kill it as will removing it from the ground with a shovel, yielding wet goop and nightmare fuel.

Insanity Grub
The second stage of an insanity worm's growth cycle is the insanity grub. Insanity grubs must be fed and kept warm or they will die. Being near an insanity grub is severely taxing on a player's sanity. After four days, the insanity grub will grow and become a juvenile wormhole. Smashing an insanity grub with a hammer will kill it was will removing it from the ground with a shovel, yielding 2 wet goop and 2 nightmare fuel.

Juvenile Wormhole
The third stage of the of an insanity worm's growth cycle is the juvenile wormhole. Juvenile wormholes have anchored themselves deep into the earth and can now warm themselves. They cannot yet feed properly, and must be fed at least once every three days or they will die. A juvenile wormhole that dies at this stage will yield 2 monster meat and 3 nightmare fuel (including via hammers). In order for a juvenile wormhole to reach adulthood, it must be fed worm food until it becomes engorged. When engorged, it will vomit out a sticky substance (best not to ask) called wormhole goop.

Adult Wormhole
The final stage of an insanity worm's growth cycle is the adult wormhole. Juvenile wormholes reach adulthood once gathered wormhole goop is consumed by a player. Adult wormholes can feed themselves, but still isn't quite mature enough to transport people. That's not gonna stop you, though! Jumping through an adult wormhole will cause severe gastric distress to the creature, which is quite sad, really. A good feeding with worm food ought to pep it right back up. If an adult wormhole is traveled through too many times, it will become a dying wormhole.

Dying Wormhole
If a wormhole's innards are mucked with too many times by a wandering player, it will begin to die. A dying wormhole will die in 3 days if it is not nursed back to health with a worm food. Travel through a dying wormhole will instantly kill the wormhole. Obviously, traveling through a dying wormhole is tough on the psyche and not recommended. Instead of the normal 15 sanity cost, the sanity cost of traveling through the dying wormhole is 50.
 

Recipes:

 x4  x2  x2 = 

 x4  x2  x2 = 

 

Art is still in progress. Animations need to be completed and the juvenile wormhole needs some arting.

Edited June 11, 2016 by XIII
New art

[XIII]

Adult and Dying wormholes now have graphics. The dying wormhole looks a bit like the sick wormhole, but is slightly darker and has desaturated cyan innards. The adult wormhole looks a bit like a normal wormhole, but is slightly more orange and has purple innards.







worm eggs have art. Don't worry about the jagged shadows, it's an artifact of the conversion process onto imgur.

It's a shame I can't edit posts on this forum after a set period of time. I'd prefer not to bump this every few hours while I work on it.

[XIII]

Alright, all the items and mature worm art is done... Now to work out how the heck animations work in DST and start making the maggot, grub, and juvenile setpieces and animations.

Likely gonna take me a few hours to work out how this all works.

[Arkathorn]

Check out this tutorial by Malacath. It's comprehensive and specific, and should give you a clear idea of the toolchain involved.

[XIII]

Ooooohhhhh... I was just frantically googling "how I not be tard" when you posted this.

Thanks a lot! I'd worked out quite a bit just from digging into the lua files and figuring out the game's basic structure. But now that I've made the connection to .bin files and Spriter, this gives me a pretty serious head start in the de-assing of my head.

EDIT: Incidentally, thanks for the tip about Krane from October... My google-fu turned up another of your answers on that subject.

Cheers!

Edited June 11, 2016 by XIII

[XIII]

Beginning to understand the way that animations are constructed. Currently finished with the grub/maggot's spriteset minus the smashing graphics. I stole all of the dirt bits from the mole and am going to use those for the early stages of the wormhole growth.

I looked into the way that the wormhole graphics are structured in the base game, and it raised some questions about how it all works, but I'm hopeful that I can figure it out once I take the time to look at the code for the sick wormhole.

At this point, all that's left art-wise is some nice smashing animation stuff for squishing these guys with a hammer, and a few graphical elements for responding to a wormicide.

I'm going to use the cough animation for spitting up worm goop and the death animation for vomiting up a wormicide.

Once art is done, it's on to animating and then once that's all done I can finally move on to putting it all together code-wise.

These are some mockups of what the insanity maggot will look like:



And the Insanity Grub:



Juveniles will likely be done tonight or tomorrow depending on whether my friends want to play some starve or not.

Edited June 11, 2016 by XIII

[TheAtomicSquid]

I can't add much in the way of advice but I will say this mod looks absolutely AMAZING and a ton of fun! I cant wait to try the finished product. keep up the good work!