RELEASED The Orcana

Thank you, @HypnoMaster372 . It's messages like yours that give the the motivation to continue. I shall now proceed to address your comments and questions...

First of all, I'm glad you're enjoying the mod and that the racial color selection is to your liking. I have included things other that just material directly related to the race itself, like the giant coral mini biome for the purpose of lore. I wanted the Orcana to primarily colonize their own type of planet like the rest of the vanilla races do and since they're aquatic that limited me to the Arctic planets due to the only other viable oceanic planet was already taken by the Hylotl. Now the conflict I had was that the Arctic planets are fairly barren and didn't apparently offer much to support advanced life. I thought about adding a completely new planet type (which strangely enough still sounds appealing) but I'm pretty sure that would have resulted in altered universe generation and no planet coordinates at that point would match up with vanilla universe coordinates for the purpose of navigation and location sharing. So, I came up with a reason that the sea floor of Arctic planet could be habitable by advanced life like the Orcana and called it a giant coral biome. I made tree sized corals (still working on finishing all the art variants) and farmable ember corals that the Orcana can harvest for building/crafting material, and a couple of new farmable plants to supplement their diet. with these added materials and farmables I HAD to make a few food recipes (and possibly will make more in the future) and crafting recipes for new blocks that the Orcana use in construction. And to give ambiance and illustrate the improved habitability I added the thermal vents and tube worms.

Wow, this is getting a bit verbose. I'll try to keep the rest as brief as possible...

When making the tridents as well as the boltguns I wanted to keep them as balanced as I could with the rest of the tiered weapons in the game, so they should give about the same damage output as other comparable weapons. The rustic trident was naturally the first one I implemented and I think I probably just forgot to change its animation image to one of my new three-pronged versions. I'll take a look at that.

The weapon colors in the preview images here are outdated and should match up in-game.

The giant coral mini biome is only found on arctic planets, but I may add it to ocean planets.

I'm glad to have given you a reason to visit arctic planets.

Again, I thank you for your enthusiastic praise. If you ever have any additional questions or even suggestions don't hesitate to bring them to my attention.

 

I just finally visited an arctic ocean and found one of the orcana cities, and I really like it! It gives some interest to what was otherwise not that exciting of a planet type. The new special plants you added are also really lovely. And the style in the cities is quite aesthetically pleasing.

I had some difficulty with the entryways into the city, though. I first went to one entryway and it wouldn't let me in at all--hitting the button did nothing. So then I travelled all the way to the other entryway, and got in, but then when I went out the other entryway to leave, I could only get back in through that entryway, and could no longer get in by the one I'd gotten in by earlier. And eventually I got to a point where I couldn't get in either of them, and so now I'm locked out of the city.

What would happen is that the space in between the two doors in the entryway is supposed to fill up with water when you press the button, and then once it's full of water, the outer door will open. Then once you're inside, it closes again, and the water drains back out. But sometimes, I'd go to press the button to get in, but the inner space between the doors was already full of water. So then nothing would happen when I'd press the button.

One other minor suggestion: At least the city I found was quite wide, spanning most of the ocean floor, and that led to tons of running back and forth when I needed to enter or leave the city to do quests for the inhabitants. I think it'd be preferable for the city to be a bit less wide, maybe building up a bit more in a few places to compensate.

 

Thanks, I'm glad you like the city. I've only ever come across a broken airlock once in all of my testing, and that was because somehow the water level inside apparently stopped midway through the process and prevented the airlock from seeing the room as either empty or full. For the most part, they've been working fairly well. If the airlock is full of water then the outer door should also be open. If that's the case and you are outside, then enter the airlock and press the button inside the airlock. That will close the outer door, drain the airlock, then open the inner door. The same is the case in reverse for when you want to leave. Now, if you're on the outside and the outer door is shut, then that means that the airlock should be dry and the inner door is open. This is when you would need to make use of the outer button to close the airlock and fill it up so you can get in. There shouldn't be any normal instance where both of the doors are closed. If that ever happens, then the airlock is pretty much broken and unusable. Because of this issue I have thought about reverting to a simpler system similar to what the Hylotl cities use.

The size of the city is something that I've been trying to balance. I don't want it to be too wide, but I also want it to have a decent amount of variety in it's buildings. I've thought about the possibility of adding a vertical component, but I'm not sure what that would look like at this point.

I very much appreciate this feedback. Keep it coming. This is the kind of stuff that helps me make improvements to the mod.

 

I do have a bunch of other mods, so it's possible that something in FU or some other mod that makes it go wonky? I definitely found one entryway with both doors closed from the start. I'll keep an eye out for other arctic planets so I can test more widely.

 

I love your mod, such attention to detail and you always are there to help people with issues. Keep up the outstanding work

 

Hey, I saw the dome part of the orcana ships being used for builds ingame by some people and was wondering if I could ask for permission to use them as well? Love the mod btw! It's one of my fave race mods in starbound.

 

I'm glad you enjoy the race, but I'm afraid that I have had to rescind those permissions due to cases of abuse. Sorry.

 

It's alright! I understand

 

Thank you for updating!

 

hello, it's me again from steam workshop, just like your fossils were, the sandstone statue for the orcana is patched in an unsafe way that can conflict with other mods, this small edit will add the statue to treasure pools in a safer way:

{
"op": "add",
"path": "/desertTreasure/0/1/pool/-",
"value": { "weight": 0.05,"item": ["sandstonestatueorcana",1] }
}


edit: i noticed that you were considering a vertical structure, have you considered buildings suspended by buoys like a hot air balloon, attached to the ground with chains and/or ship anchors, there could be houses, observation platforms, merchant shops, elevated up above the ground level buildings tethered to large ornate bags of air, or perhaps clusters of coral glass floats like so:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Large_glass_floats-9-2.jpg

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I got it changed.

 

i forgot to check the other pools too but here's some adjustments to the common treasures, hopefully i didn't miss one. and another in the generatedfish spawntypes. it's best to add things at the end of a list than try to insert them somewhere in the middle, patches can conflict if they want to add stuff to the same spot

common:

[
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/microformerTreasure/0/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0, "item": "microformergiantcoral"}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/seed/3/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 2.0, "item": ["krillberryseed", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/seed/4/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 2.0, "item": ["krillberryseed", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/seed/4/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 2.0,"item": ["bubbulbseed", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/seed/6/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0,"item": ["krillberryseed", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/seed/6/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0,"item": ["bubbulbseed", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/seed/6/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0, "item": ["embercoralseed", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/instrument/0/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 0.0001, "item": ["aulos", 1]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/instrument/0/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 0.0001,"item": ["lyre", 1]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/produce/3/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0,"item": ["krillberry", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/produce/4/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 2.0,"item": ["krillberry", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/produce/4/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 2.0,"item": ["bubbulb", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/produce/6/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0,"item": ["krillberry", 3]}
},
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/produce/6/1/pool/-",
"value": {"weight": 1.0,"item": ["bubbulb", 3]}}
]

generatedfish:

[
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/-",
"value": {
"name": "smallFishOcean3",
"spawnParameters": {
"area": "liquid",
"region": "all",
"time": "all"
},
"spawnChance": 0.03,
"monsterType": "fish",
"monsterParameters": {"aggressive": false}
}
}
]

 

Latest update caused my current non-Orcana character's energy regeneration to drop to zero. Energy literally wouldn't refill. Went back to normal when I rolled back to previous version.

 

This is happening with the current version? (The folder and not the pak file?)

 

The folder, yeah.

 

NEW UPDATE!

B.6.3c

• New Objects
  • Orcana Ship Hatch +
    
  • Orcana Table Lamp
    
  • Coral Stove
    
  • Coral Wall Shelf
    
  • Small Coral Wall Shelf
    
  • Orcana Coral Relief
    
  • Orcana Coral Relief BG
    
  • Coral Stool
    
  • Potted Ember Coral
    
  • Orcana Beacon
• Cooking
  • Recipe and food item added for Fish With Krillberry Sauce
• New Codex Entries (Thank you Griffin for preparing these)
  • Codex - Helios Histories Volume I
    
  • Codex - Helios Histories Volume II
• Other
  • Renamed Orcana specialty merchants to avoid naming conflicts - these merchants will disappear from previously spawned planets, but they will appear again on new planets.
    
  • Additional Orcana structures can now be found on the islands of arctic planets
  • Added even more Orcana dialogue interactions *note: there are still some "..." entries that I'm using as placeholders. They will be replaced with various dialogue lines as I get to them.
• Bug Fixes
  • The issue with characters being invulnerable and not regenerating energy should now be fixed. Please, let me know if you're still experiencing this.

 

Excuse me friend, if you don't mind, can you tell me where can I find their settlement? I have explored many planet of various type, but only found some houses of Orcana style with a bed and a table, but with no Orcana inside.

 

They are on the ocean floor of arctic planets.

 

This will make my search much easier, thanks!

 

NEW UPDATE!

1.4

Just a quick fix to a minor quest bug.

• Fixes and Other Changes
  • Removed the Orcana-only invisible quest that taught the Laurel Wreath recipe upon acquiring plant fibre. All Orcana now start with this recipe.
  • Finally changed the version number to coincide with the current version of Starbound. Any sub versions of the mod will be appended with letters. (ie. 1.4a then 1.4b)

Happy Hunting!