RELEASED Elithian Races Mod - A Starbound Expansion 2.3.10

Aegonian submitted a new mod:

Avikan Race Mod - Adds a race of galactic nomads from a distant desert planet

Read more about this mod...

 

This looks suspiciously similar to the Avali race....The bodyshape is similar,the fact that they're nomads and use tents,and the name even starts with Av.Is it a coincidence or something?.....

 

It is a coincidence - this race was created for the Eithian Alliance roleplay (which has run for a few years now), and existed before I knew of the Avali race. The fact they use tents is in almost inherent feature of them being nomads (an they're nomads for a very different reason than the Avali), and their similar body style is simply because the Avikan also have bird-like legs.

I do admit that the the Avali mod was one of the many race mods I dissected to learn Starbound modding, and a few things were inspired by that absolutely amazing mod, but I guarantee you that this mod has plenty of unique things to offer. Do give it a try and tell me what you think of it, I'd love to hear your feedback!

 

Ok.Sorry if I was rude. I do get that it can be hard to come up with a unique body shape when you have the limitations that starbound has.

 

No problem - I was expecting to see at least a few people comment on the similarities (I had noticed them too, but felt they weren't significant enough to overhaul my race). And Starbound's small sprites does make creating unique body shapes difficult, so anything other than the default shape is likely to look a bit similar. I do hope you'll enjoy the mod as much as I enjoyed creating it!

 

While I approve of this race, you're definitely going to want to mention that the avali mod inspired part of it. The body shape is very close, they use beanbag chairs, and you even have the orange/yellow cloth that is in the avali mod, the colors just a shade darker. The avali mod is the top mod on the site, and without (and even with) giving credit, there's going to be a horde of fans leaping on this. I wish you the best of luck and patience, as this does seem to be a very interesting race!

 

Oh. My. God.

I can already tell from the amount of content you've shown in this thread that I won't need to look for another race mod for a very long time.

 

Thanks for your understanding Lindazana, I added a bit about this to the FAQ to clear things up for people. And just to clear things up a bit more, the orange/yellow colour scheme for Decorated Avikan items is a coincidence too. I experimented quite a bit with these colours, as they had to fit both the brownish leather style and the sand-coloured metal style of the Avikan. In the end, I found this combination of colours to work best with both styles and still be fitting for a desert race. And I'm very glad you like the mod so far, it means a lot to me!

I'm, glad you like it, WoogaBooga! I had hoped to wow people by uploading such a large mod out of nowhere, and I'm glad to see it's working! I hope you'll have a great time playing around with the Avikan!

 

The new FAQ additions should cover your bases then! I understand that after making original content, it's annoying to be told that it resembles someone else's OC, but it's far better to be paranoid and give a nod of recognition to them, than to have rabid fans storming the place shouting that everything has been copy-pasted. This may just be my dark view of humanity showing, but better safe than sorry, hrm? That said, I'm definitely trying this race out when I get the chance.

Unrelated: Does there happen to be a picture/art of the race anywhere, or is only the profile headpic and Starbound pixel-work you're using done? I checked out the RP forum, and couldn't find any.

 

There is a bit of art, but most of it are tiny little sketches in a notebook of mine. I have one larger, full-body sketch which I used as a base to draw my avater, along with a silhouette version of the same sketch. I'll share the sketch here as soon as Imgur starts working again (it keeps giving me errors when uploading at the moment).

The silhouette can be found buried deep within a members-only thread on my forum, sorry about that... While I can't upload the sketch at the moment I can share that silhouette with you:



As you can see, the shape did change a bit in-game - there are far fewer flaps on the body, and the legs also changed a bit - I am simply not good enough a sprite artist to translate everything into such tiny sprites...

 

Mate, if you can keep up work of this caliber then you will be making some of the largest and best mods out there. I must say though, that nothing can beat a good moustache

 

I'm very glad you like the mod, EpicNomming! It means a lot to me, and really motivates me to keep working (that was probably the hardest part of developing the mod unannounced)!

And as promised, here's the scan of my sketch for the Avikan:



It clearly shows the unique hand and leg design I had for the Avikan, and the additional flaps on the body (most notably on the shoulders and on the thighs). The Avikan also have a small dorsal fin, A small leftover from when their ancestors were aquatic (and their planet was a lot less arid). Unfortunately, many of these features didn't make it into the game because I couldn't figure out how to translate them into such small sprites... I've gotten a lot better at spriting while working on this mod though, so I might try to make a few small adjustments to the body sprites later on, to try and implement a few of the unique features again.

I'll also be adding a 'Special Thanks' section to the mod page in a bit, which I completely forgot to add the first time around.

 

Man, this is SO awesome!
I've just started modding, and this is increadible!

Thank you for the experience of playing an Avikan!

 

Whoa....Very interesting picture! Big fan of the fins and tail-end! Also very curious about the hands and feet..Is that rear-structure of the feet there a support-strut equivalent? And are the feet flaps of skin, or more of a firm, spread surface, for walking on sand without sinking as much, I'd guess.
(I'm one of those weird people that RP in Starbound, and it's rather nice to know some of these smaller details.)

 

Hay Just Wanted to let you know That This mod seems to have id conflicts with madtulip's ship mod. I have checked and it is the blocks but I have no modding knowledge hope you can fix it or have a work around. if not all good I have a backup ship mod in case I can't use madtuilp's I may post a review later when I have played the mod a bit. thx and good day.

 

Glad you like the picture, Lindazana! The rear structure on the feet is for additional support, and allows the Avikan to spread their weight by moving it further back. The two front structures (perhaps we should call them toes?) can also be moved more towards the front and the sides - basically, the entire foot works like a tripod. The feet are firm structures with two flaps covering the front, and one covering the back. The design of the feet is supposed to allow them to walk on sand with ease and prevent the Avikan from getting stuck in quicksand - a very common hazard on their homeplanet Kadavan.

Their hands have four long fingers, which you could compare to our index fingers and thumbs - essentially, they have two index fingers and two thumbs on each hand. The flaps covering their hands are intended to protect the fingers and the hands in general from the unforgiving sandstorms of Kadavan - they protect the more fragile and vulnerable areas of the body from flying dust and sand. In addition, the flaps are one of the features that make Avikan attractive to each other. The shape, length and colour of flaps can be compared to our different hairstyles, with some Avikan preferring shorter flaps, while others prefer partners with long flaps.

One more important and rather unique feature of the Avikan is hidden underneath almost all of the flaps on their bodies - they can exhale air from a large number of orifices on their body, such as in their armpits, their hands, underneath the head flaps, the tail end, their hips and even their feet. The purpose of this is to clean the body after sandstorms - they simply blow off all the sand and dust that gathered. While they primarily use their mouth to breathe, they can also breathe using these orifices in case breathing through the mouth doesn't cut it. The gill-like structures on their chest serve the same purpose.

I'll look into that possible issue - thanks for notifying me! If there is indeed a conflict in material IDs, I'm not yet sure what the best approach to fixing it would be. I could change my material IDs, but that might cause all worlds that use those tiles to crash for anyone who had already installed the Avikan mod.

EDIT: Looked into the issue and I can now confirm that there are indeed conflicting material IDs. Both mods use the material ID range of 30000+, so I'm adding this mod to the incompatibility list for now. I'll look into fixing the issue, but can't promise anything just yet.

 

Where monster bones and claws?! I kill ~20 monsters and nothing! Only monster leather!

Edit: I found first bone!!!

 

Kill them using your hunting knife, dude. The starter bone spear doesn't cut it.
If you want a viable strategy - hunting knife on first slot, spear on second. Spear them once then close in to knife, should do the trick for starter planet harvesting.

 

np it is not much of a big problem. I'm Just not sure how to get the ship mod i use working for custom race's
link in case any one wants to help
http://community.playstarbound.com/resources/super-magic-custom-island.2757/

 

I downloaded it and there was an error that said something about it not being able to find ''sword recipe avikansword7"and my game crashed. Any help?