tModLoader Astral Plane

Pretty nice mod, really looking foward to it, but just a question.

Do the astral enemies spawn even while you don't have the lens equipped? Peharps make them only spawn when the lens are equipped so NPC slots don't get taken up too much. Maybe even just reduce their spawnrate when the lens are not equipped.
 
Pretty nice mod, really looking foward to it, but just a question.

Do the astral enemies spawn even while you don't have the lens equipped? Peharps make them only spawn when the lens are equipped so NPC slots don't get taken up too much. Maybe even just reduce their spawnrate when the lens are not equipped.
They will spawn at the same rate regardless if a lens is equipped - lenses are client-sided anyways.
I know about NPC slots but I don't think this'll be much of a problem.
 
They will spawn at the same rate regardless if a lens is equipped - lenses are client-sided anyways.
I know about NPC slots but I don't think this'll be much of a problem.
You could add some kind of spoopy visual effects on the astral enemies that appear occasionally when you don't have the lens on. You know, for random ghost sightings. :eek:
 
You could add some kind of spoopy visual effects on the astral enemies that appear occasionally when you don't have the lens on. You know, for random ghost sightings. :eek:
Yeah, I plan on doing so. Maybe will start working on that a bit later.
 
This looks like a great concept! The things I like most are the idea and the art. This must have been pretty difficult to code...
Also, you mentioned learning how to make pixel art from '100% Not a Scalie'... My original sprites aren't the best, so I've had to resort to requesting spriters. I have a feeling that I might not get a decent reply, if one at all, so I was wondering if you could point me to any decent tutorials or anything. If not, that's completely fine, but I want to feel comfortable in another area of mod development.
 
This looks like a great concept! The things I like most are the idea and the art. This must have been pretty difficult to code...
Also, you mentioned learning how to make pixel art from '100% Not a Scalie'... My original sprites aren't the best, so I've had to resort to requesting spriters. I have a feeling that I might not get a decent reply, if one at all, so I was wondering if you could point me to any decent tutorials or anything. If not, that's completely fine, but I want to feel comfortable in another area of mod development.
Thanks! Idea creation is one of my strengths, as well as visualising them if I am able to. Coding is gonna be painful for me when I'll start working on bosses or other more complex things, but with the useful help in #help of the tModLoader Discord, I'm sure I can YOLO through this stuff sooner or later.
Apart from Scalie's "tutoring", I've made use of alot of other tutorials I could find on the internet. This one is really good, for example. Other than that, just learn the basic terms such as hue-shifting, which you gotta do when creating a palette, banding, which you have to avoid, and others. Don't forget to use anti-aliasing on your outline. The outline should also be only one color, no matter what the insides are. Having parts of the outline in different colors doesn't fit in Terraria's style, so avoid selout (selective outlining) when making mod sprites. Also try to stay and master a certain style and move onto the next, more complex one.
Don't have any other tips for you, it's better for you to ask one of your spriter friends for private tutoring like I did with Scalie. Either way, good luck~
 
Speaking of coding, I've been wondering something. I think I remember that the method you're using to hide hover info has the side effect of making signs unreadable? It had my wondering if there was another way to do that. For instance, I know that various enemy prefix mods are able to dynamically rename enemies, which had me thinking you could just change the display text to a " " when the player can't see them, maybe?
 
Speaking of coding, I've been wondering something. I think I remember that the method you're using to hide hover info has the side effect of making signs unreadable? It had my wondering if there was another way to do that. For instance, I know that various enemy prefix mods are able to dynamically rename enemies, which had me thinking you could just change the display text to a " " when the player can't see them, maybe?
Interesting... I mean, it should work. But how to do it, though?
 
Speaking of coding, I've been wondering something. I think I remember that the method you're using to hide hover info has the side effect of making signs unreadable? It had my wondering if there was another way to do that. For instance, I know that various enemy prefix mods are able to dynamically rename enemies, which had me thinking you could just change the display text to a " " when the player can't see them, maybe?
Yeah, you can change an NPC's GivenName to an empty string, but even then, it's health will still be shown. The health won't be displayed if you set dontTakeDamage to true, but then of course you cant damage the enemy... You could probably make it work, but multiplayer will be interesting.
The sign thing is really not a big deal. It will only happen, if you are mousing over something that displays cursor text, and an invisible enemy just HAPPENS to walk by your mouse. You could just call that a random ghost activity. ;)
 
Yeah, you can change an NPC's GivenName to an empty string, but even then, it's health will still be shown. The health won't be displayed if you set dontTakeDamage to true, but then of course you cant damage the enemy... You could probably make it work, but multiplayer will be interesting.
The sign thing is really not a big deal. It will only happen, if you are mousing over something that displays cursor text, and an invisible enemy just HAPPENS to walk by your mouse. You could just call that a random ghost activity. ;)
Yeah, exactly. I think the way I implemented the mouseover text hiding seems like the best option. Ghost activity is also just a fun little thing, 'cause why not? :p
 
Tl;dr of me for the past few days:
  • work on some textures
  • play either some Dota 2 or PUBG, or watch some YT videos
  • work on some code
  • see step 2
  • continue doing the first 4 steps until it's 4 AM
  • sleep until midday
Either way, the code slowness that I had due to my inexperience with tiles/tile entities is going away, so that's good! I hope the next complex tile I'll do won't take that much time as this one. The only thing that's left for me to do with the current one is to make the whole Plane Merger sucking in & killing mechanism, as well as to make it pause it's animation when unpowered.
 
Update: I made the AIA use a separate sprite when not activated instead of pausing the animation. It looks better like that imo. Now it's time to add particles and make it kill Plane Mergers! :)
Update 2: My attempt at making particles that move in a spiral pattern has succeeded! First try, too! That's great news. Next step - Plane Merger mangling! `:cool:
Update 3: And it's done! Plane Mergers are now pulled into the force of activated AIAs and will drop a certain material, that can also be used as a decoration block, which will be useful for crafting later on. ~:cool:
 
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Started making the code for the Planar Anomaly! This one will be fun. I mean, new and unique mechanics are always fun. Right?
(look out for updates to this reply and the Current status spoiler!)
Update: Visual part is done! Now onto the mechanical part of the code.
Update 2: Almost done with the mechanical part as well! This is some interesting stuff...
Update 3: And it's done! Feel free to check out the Bonus in-dev media spoiler! :dryadwink:
 
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I absolutely adore this mod, indeed you excel at elaborating ideas shade.
This will be a great mod when its out, so please never give up.
Heh, I like the sound of that. Thanks! Indeed, not planning on quitting anytime soon haha.

As for what I'm gonna do next... currently I'll just make a furniture set with the astral theme, just to "relax" a bit. More crazy stuff is coming after that, however, so stay tuned!

Update: I made a door. That's it. I've been feeling a bit lazy for a few days, but I'll be returning for more developin' tomorrow. More stuff's comin', no worries!
 
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