Mod Idea, from an non modder

Orthum · 2014-12-23T03:23:43.000Z

So this is more of me asking, and hoping to be pointed in the right direction. After playing for a while and seeing the great improvements, and everything I have an idea for a mod(who doesn’t).
Would it be possible to make a starship mod using the cataclysm engine?
I’m not quiet sure how it would work, but I was thinking that your ship was basically a map maybe using the vehicle creator. And that it can create small maps for planets, or maybe more abstract things for planets and different environments.
I was digging the idea of keeping the systems in, with the weather, cbms, and combat just adding and removing a few things. I do understand this would be a massive overhaul to say the least, but is this a good engine to run it on?
The idea is to also have several square large components, IE you can have a single FTL drive and a single reactor, but in order to produce enough power it needs to either be very big, or advanced (with levels, sizes, requirements being in between) This is just an idea I’ve been looking at and with some guidance would be more than willing to put the time in and do it myself. I don’t don’t know where to put my feet to start.

kevin.granade · 2014-12-23T04:17:34.000Z

Wow that’s rather ambitious. I think that kind of thing would be possible with our game engine, but it would require quite a lot of coding to make things fit, and of course all the content. (on the other hand, that’s a nice mod to stick my portal feature in, heh)

FunsizeNinja123 · 2014-12-23T04:30:22.000Z

W- wow.

Kevin Granade:

Wow that’s rather ambitious.

KA101 · 2014-12-23T05:25:51.000Z

Only real problem I recognize is scale. Your ship would be the same scale as any object it encounters, so it’d be tough to land on planets, space platforms, etc. Most you could reasonably do might be asteroid mining or somesuch.

Hoping I’m missing something there, though.

Orthum · 2014-12-23T13:51:51.000Z

My thought is, to break it up a little bit… I figure space combat would feel kind of like battleships, because your trying to knockout sensors and other systems by blowing up their components…
Instead of it being a huge map landing on a map, maybe shuttle pods that get spawned on the map. and you can return to your main ship from that… teleporters and stuff…
The biggest thing I see that maybe the hardest part to get a more or less solid concept is, traveling between planets, or locations, how its handled and stuff… Even if its just a travel menu, with times to different locations and known potentials(Space slugs, pirates, anti-matter mines) during the trip and options to do other things or seek other things…

Tech would pretty much be handled the way it is now. It maybe powerful and out there, but without sufficient supply or knowledge, or familiarity that shiny new toys not that great and shiny. It would require a bunch of new skills but I think starting small, and getting far more ambitious later is the plan.

I already see the system in place for ground combat, adding and changing around the zombies to be different creatures, different terrain features for different planets… Its all basically here already…

vultures · 2014-12-23T20:46:27.000Z

Besides resetting the item pool (all the usable stuff in game), there are but a few (mundane) issues to your request:

a) You would need to tweak the mapgen “from the top” and trim it around the edges, so it makes for your planetary “conduct”;
b) Some kind of different energy-consumption mechanism is at stake here (your rig supplies the power for another, wheeled rig on ground;
c) Revamping the core of the Cataclysm program is a must if you’re to introduce a navigation system to your starship/roguelike character.

It strikes me that your “make it not brake it” approach could appeal to someone who is more into tweaking the original, Whales’ Cataclysm - mainly due to lore-ish wrap and New England setting that CataDDA’s already sunken into.