Some concepts for new background structures around cave walls, alien ruins, and outposts

[royal hearth]

Right now level backgrounds are very bland, almost nonexistent. The passive background creatures and floating chunks of ice are nice, but we're lacking varied, immersive backgrounds which could make each biome feel more unique.

Alongside these, I'm also suggesting that structures should intentionally be generated encased in level's walls in some cases. If the interaction between hull boxes and level walls around them is fleshed out (it doesn't work all that well right now), outposts might end up looking a lot more reasonable with the new generation method. Currently they generate as weirdly shaped structures with nothing in the background and can be approached (and flooded) from any direction.

But even without that, generating some background chunks around structures would already be great.
Last image is a more detailed example of a background structure that could appear behind an outpost.

[molten bronze]

Outposts just existing seemingly suspended in open water with no suspension or anything always bugged me, since it seems to be implied that outposts and other human settlements hang out near the ceiling of the biome they reside in

also cold caverns feeling more "lived in" could reflect how save the biome is, which makes it's absense in later biomes much more impactful

I know Baro is 2d but backgrounds can sell some really immersive and awesome effects, the hallucination cave being my favorite

also UPDATE ||Jupiter|| PLEASE

THE TEXTURES ARE LIKE 2 PIXELS PER METER

GRAAAAAHHH

[royal hearth]

[royal hearth]

The docking module that generates as part of the main level is sticking out of the level's ceiling, making the actual outpost generation even more of a travesty.

[molten bronze]

exactly

itd also make various cheese strats mute, such as drowning cultist modules for free zealot robes

[royal hearth]

Yeah. Though to be fair, that strategy is only possible on servers that deliberately enable destructible outposts.

Abandoned outposts, however...

Those get flooded all the time, often unintentionally.

[harsh wharf]

#baro-unstable message

[molten bronze]

ooh

[royal hearth]

Ye. It's entirely doable.

[molten bronze]

youd probably have to set "encased" walls to be unbreakable if you simply rendered the stone behind the outpost

because i reckon you could just open a hole and then "oops water rushing in, immersion ruined"

[royal hearth]

Not sure how exactly that should be handled from the code/sub editor perspective. If the game could detect if a wall segment is inside the level's wall, that'd be perfect.

But the easy approach is to make only the docking module breakable.

[molten bronze]

considering nothing is a threat to an outpost besides player themselves, i wouldnt mind if outposts were just invariably indestructible

regardless of setting

goes for abandoned outposts too. Surely static, meant-for-housing outposts would be made with stronger, more durable material than a mass-produced submarine, right?

especially if you consider the threat of war between sep and coalition and the threat of railguns and such

[royal hearth]

It would make sense. But I do admit that breaking outpost walls is fun, in a way. And people would miss that if it no longer was possible at all, regardless of server settings.

[molten bronze]

its fun in the "haha look at me being a stinker, im breaking the game heehoo" way

I say this from experience

its not immersive, at all.

[royal hearth]

Might be one of those things that are inconsequential enough to not be worth pissing off the """casual""" community over. Or whatever a good term for that part of the playerbase would be.

[harsh wharf]

it would be "fun" if it was done with intent rather than for efficiency

as in

specific goals such as breaking out prisoners and... that's all I can think of

[royal hearth]

Yeah. People don't do that often.

Maybe a lot of these problems can be avoided if we just make the uppermost module of the outpost always touch the level's ceiling and add background chunks around the modules themselves.

Outposts are still floodable if you can break their walls, but they no longer look completely ridiculous.
Except for mining modules. Those will look like shit unless they generate in the level's wall.

[thick shuttle]

But isnt it always pitch black, wouldnt make sense to see anything in the background

[royal hearth]

You can see floating ice chunks in the background. Whatever is close enough to the solid layer can be seen, if you shine a light in its direction.

It's how the game handles background structures at this very moment. And it makes sense to me.

Our lights aren't flat, after all. Any searchlight or a flashlight would illuminate a cone, allowing some of that light to reach background objects.

[noble cosmos]

abyssal vibes would be cooler

bigger background creatures

glowing creatures

also this concept art goes hard

since when was wendy an artist

[royal hearth]

I've been a mid-tier artist since school. Never went hard enough on learning art to get good, but I have worked in a bunch of different styles and got decent at them.

[harsh wharf]

if you want to mess with ruins background you can build a small ruin module and photobash a texture

and use that

[royal hearth]

Yeah, that'd be a reasonable approach.

[ashen jackal]

Cold caverns is very dark, the Europan Ridge at least is not too dark due to a large quantity of bioluminescence

[harsh wharf]

@royal hearth I went overboard

the issue is of course that you don't have much control over where those appear

[ashen jackal]

I mean, with work its a good proof of concept at least

Stations are the biggest offenders obviously

[ashen jackal]

I'd reel it in a bit

[harsh wharf]

that's just proof of concept stuff

not very practical

can only control commonness in sub biomes

[ashen jackal]

fair

I dont know anything really about leveleditor

I suppose for stations from a modders perspective we could try baking it into the docking module itself

I would say we could try spawnitemrandomly to add variation, but alas that means it wont match the previous screens version

[harsh wharf]

it's easier to use levelobjects

as in they generate by themselves

but lack of control can lead to inconsistency

[ashen jackal]

yeah

thats the main issue

we cant make it persist between levels

Meaning your station morphs

Which is arguably wierder than the restocked npcs

[royal hearth]

Right now docking module has a weird structure attached to its top. A big chunk of ice the outpost is holding onto. The background modules could be added the same way, I guess.

But also, this is the sort of stuff that could be seeded.

[ashen jackal]

Oh yeah

absolutely barodevs can make it happen

[harsh wharf]

no I don't care about the morphing I care about how those decorations are placed and how they can clump rather than covering the entire outpost

leaving holes

[royal hearth]

A good approach that requires changing the code is to spawn one big "background module" behind each normal module.

Without changing the code it can be done by importing bg modules as decorative structures and placing them manually as part of every module.

In which case you have more control over their placement, but less variety when it comes to stuff like ruins, where you want each module to be hard to recognize, especially from the outside.

[harsh wharf]

you can't control where it spawns

it could spawn smack dab in the middle ooooooooooor

at the far edge

although levelstart might fix it

[royal hearth]

In the current version you can't. I'm sure there's a way to determine where the middle of the module is.

If that method doesn't exist already, it can be written.

[harsh wharf]

the middle is levelstart

maybe

[royal hearth]

Middle of the docking module, you mean?

[digital fox]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centroid

Your suggestion is very possible.

Also your art looks great! : D

[royal hearth]

Thank you. And yes, it is possible, no doubt.

[hoary sleet]

Wowie, your artwork Wendy?

[royal hearth]

Ye.

[hoary sleet]

UwU
Looks really smooth

And good ideas, I like rare background deco

[royal hearth]

Thanks. Would be lovely to give biomes more distinct identities through those background details.

[hoary sleet]

I think for great sea there can be rare big bones or just a wrecked submarine

But very rare

Considering it's a sea

[royal hearth]

Oh yea, giant skeletons appearing in the background of the abyss would be awesome.

And I suppose some remains could show up on the main path of the Great Sea, if there's enough solid ground for them to rest upon.

[hoary sleet]

Hmm, now you've got me thinking

You can probably do something with outposts yourself, by just putting some background decorations on different modules, same for wrecks, I had an idea to make some environment stuff, like instead of wreck it would just have an open nests, a skeleton, though I guess the issues with this is that it needs a spot for logbook to spawn

And it would be weird logically, why random remains have a logbook on ground

😂

[royal hearth]

You could make it make sense, if the remains have parts of a shuttle inside or something like that.

[hoary sleet]

Hmmm, good thinking

[royal hearth]

Twisted pieces of the submarine shell and a container or two.

[hoary sleet]

Sold!

Though it should be really rare

Is there a way to set how rare a certain wreck is?

[royal hearth]

Currently there isn't, I think. You can limit them to a smaller range of difficulties, I suppose.

But I'd like wrecks to have a commonness setting, much like outpost modules.

[hoary sleet]

Oooh, well I guess that's another post to make 😄

[royal hearth]

Hm, yea.

[hoary sleet]

Wendy's wrecks and ruins when???

[royal hearth]

Ruins have plenty of variety right now, and so will wrecks with the next update. But I might still do some. Right now I'm looking at the endgame sequence, which, if I do decide to do something with, will be an ambitious project.

A lot of the exploration you can do in the ending sequence feels a bit shallow and the final arena has some serious flaws.

[hoary sleet]

Endgame?

Huh, I didn't knew you could change it

[royal hearth]

The three parts of the ending. They're saved as "outposts".

[hoary sleet]

Oooooh

So an overwrite mod?

[royal hearth]

It'd have to be that, yea.

I'm not sure how possible it is yet. Trying to figure out what I'd even do with those levels first.

[hoary sleet]

Hmmm, I'd like to speak more about that later on :o

[royal hearth]

Sure. And I'll probably have some sketches for the final arena to share, as well as mock-ups of improved temple backgrounds.

[hoary sleet]

Mhm thankyyy uwu

[hoary sleet]

I could also try and help and if you'd like that

Because, I need a little break from opportunity decorations

[royal hearth]

You can tell me what your experience fighting the final boss was like, if you have the time. And have a look at the final levels (Endoutpost) to see what you personally like and don't like about them.

Maybe we should talk about it in #baro-lore or in DMs. Places where spoilers wouldn't be a problem.

[hoary sleet]

Well, I do, but not here I think, I fear some people still haven't finished game

Yeee

[noble cosmos]

i've seen this before and i always wondered like huh how do they know exactly where the center is of these things are

i didn't realize the explanation was so simple

mean, average

overlay a grid, sum and divide

[terse jackal]

Need

[noble cosmos]

forgotten with time