New Temporal Storm Enemy & Freeform Painting

[Astrayo]

I'm no expert on game design, but I have come up with a few ideas that I think would be pretty nice to see in the game.

 

One idea that I've had is a way to make temporal storms more interesting. I've seen a few people that basically think that temporal storms are rather lackluster as they are now. One thing that I thought of that I actually found to be kind of intriguing was the idea of a new monster that only appears in the storms. The basic idea is that it's some kind of tall creature which makes a distorted wind chime sound and saps your temporal stability when you look at it, taking health instead of stability if your stability runs out. More severe storms would make more of them appear, as well as strengthening their effects. It would also make the wind chime sounds louder and more distorted.

I feel like this could be an interesting addition to the storms for a few reasons.

• They make it much more important to take shelter during temporal storms
• Them only appearing during temporal storms makes the storms more special
• They threaten to trap players in the storm if they're not careful
• They can give the temporal storms a much more unsettling atmosphere

 

I also wanted to add something to the dyes/freeform painting suggestion from the Frequently Suggested thread.

If things like canvases and paintbrushes could be added, I think this would actually be a great feature for more creative players. I think it'd be really fun to be able to make my own paints and create paintings from scratch to liven up my buildings. Another great feature could be the ability to paint most surfaces (Similar to chiseling) and certain objects. Being able to do things like creating murals and painting objects to make decorations would be great. An example would be if you could get skulls from the bipedal remains in 1.14. What if we could take those and paint them to look kinda like sugar skulls? If it's possible to implement, we could even have the ability to paint on chiseled objects, opening up even more options with them.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Glitch
Made the title less generic.

[GhillieEilish]

I like the idea of a temporal storm specific hostile mob. There would have to be some way to prevent it from spawning inside your shelter though to incentivize taking shelter during the storm, such as not spawning at certain light levels, or within a certain radius of certain blocks/items (lanterns, perhaps). To build on this, I feel there could be another deep underground variant of this new being, or just a separate new underground being, because just having drifters and bugs underground doesn't make it too spooky/difficult. 

Love the painting idea, there are already a variety of colors one can make from existing berries and flowers, and might encourage the addition of some new plants to fulfill this purpose. Adding a painting canvas and easel for small, portable artwork would be a good idea in my opinion as well, and perhaps using these pigments to write on signs and signed chests could replace using coal, chalk or lapis for this purpose.

I can imagine, spending hours in game, painting a masterpiece on canvas to hang up in my castle somewhere. Would be awesome.

[Astrayo]

1 hour ago, GhillieEilish said:

I like the idea of a temporal storm specific hostile mob. There would have to be some way to prevent it from spawning inside your shelter though to incentivize taking shelter during the storm, such as not spawning at certain light levels, or within a certain radius of certain blocks/items (lanterns, perhaps). To build on this, I feel there could be another deep underground variant of this new being, or just a separate new underground being, because just having drifters and bugs underground doesn't make it too spooky/difficult. 

I think an underground variant would also be very good. I could imagine people being terrified just by hearing the sound of the distorted wind chimes underground. And yes, it absolutely should not spawn in your shelter.

2 hours ago, GhillieEilish said:

Love the painting idea, there are already a variety of colors one can make from existing berries and flowers, and might encourage the addition of some new plants to fulfill this purpose. Adding a painting canvas and easel for small, portable artwork would be a good idea in my opinion as well, and perhaps using these pigments to write on signs and signed chests could replace using coal, chalk or lapis for this purpose.

I can imagine, spending hours in game, painting a masterpiece on canvas to hang up in my castle somewhere. Would be awesome.

Could paint things to put up pretty much anywhere, really. Would also be cool to be able to paint directly on the chests, for things like symbols instead of text. Would be good for variety and creativity.

[l33tmaan]

The painting idea is amazing, especially if you have some sort of RGB-based mixing system so you can have full spectrums of color at your disposal. Just add in a dozen or two base paints and let people make their own blends from there.

[Astrayo]

4 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

The painting idea is amazing, especially if you have some sort of RGB-based mixing system so you can have full spectrums of color at your disposal. Just add in a dozen or two base paints and let people make their own blends from there.

Would actually be fitting to be able to mix paints, because you actually can do that with real paint to create different colors.

[Digitalr]

This temporal specific hostile mob definitely must have ranged attack or ability to climb walls. No More Safe Dirt Pillars!!11

[l33tmaan]

I would argue that regular hostile mobs should have those features. Temporal mobs should be extra crazy, like just flying straight over your walls to kill you.

[Astrayo]

16 hours ago, Digitalr said:

This temporal specific hostile mob definitely must have ranged attack or ability to climb walls. No More Safe Dirt Pillars!!11

In a sense the way it "attacks" is ranged. The idea is that looking at it for too long will effectively trap you in the storm so that other enemies can kill you, or so that they themselves can kill you if you continue to look at them for too long after your stability is gone. Climbing walls is unnecessary because of how it works, if anything those pillars would be a bad idea anyways with these things around because it would just make it harder to not look at them.

10 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

I would argue that regular hostile mobs should have those features. Temporal mobs should be extra crazy, like just flying straight over your walls to kill you.

The way these things should move is just slowly walking around. The threat is looking at them, not them attacking you directly. And if by "regular hostile mobs should have those features" you mean normal hostile mobs should sap stability when looked at, that really wouldn't work very well in practice.

• The mob that's specifically designed to do this becomes redundant and worthless
• Things like wolves are technically hostile mobs, even if they aren't like drifters. Them sapping stability just by looking at them would make zero sense.
• PvE combat would immediately become one of the worst parts of the game, because hostile mobs would easily kill even skilled players without even being anywhere near them. This would mean that people would have to fight things without even looking at them 80% of the time, even with simple drifters. This wouldn't be fun at all.

In any case I don't think temporal mobs should be super crazy at all, the whole thing is supposed to play into a "fear of the unknown" horror aspect of the game. Things flying around like crazy and whatnot wouldn't fit this at all, I would think. When it comes to lovecraftian horror, things should be more subtle and terrifying. Things like deep drifters phasing in and out of existence like we have now and things like tall creatures watching from the distance that you can't look at are more fitting for that sort of thing.

[Digitalr]

IMHO, dont looking is not so hard task

1. Build pillar
2. Climb on
3. Stare at sky/wall/own feets, until annoying storm is gone
4. ...
5. Profit. Our dirt pillar still best and cheapest shelter ever.

Also, not sure, how "trapping in the storm" mechanic can be compatible with current "server-wide" storms.

Edited November 21, 2020 by Digitalr

[Astrayo]

24 minutes ago, Digitalr said:

Also, not sure, how "trapping in the storm" mechanic can be compatible with current "server-wide" storms.

Is that not effectively what already happens when your stability gets too low? Throw something else into the mix that stops people from simply using pillars, and that extremely cheap and stupid trick no longer works. Regardless, people shouldn't be able to do that anyways because it completely ruins the fun and makes zero sense realistically.

[Thalius]

I like the idea of a temporal storm specific mob(s), but what you describe just sounds like a VS version of the enderman from Minecraft.  I'd like to see something original and challenging, and much less Minecrafty.

As for painting- would love to see that make it into the game. Use the microchiseling feature with a paintbrush, but instead of chiseling microblocks, color them.

[Digitalr]

What if make some "twist"? I mean, player lost stability when this monster looks at him?

[l33tmaan]

14 hours ago, Glitch said:

The way these things should move is just slowly walking around. The threat is looking at them, not them attacking you directly. And if by "regular hostile mobs should have those features" you mean normal hostile mobs should sap stability when looked at, that really wouldn't work very well in practice.

• The mob that's specifically designed to do this becomes redundant and worthless
• Things like wolves are technically hostile mobs, even if they aren't like drifters. Them sapping stability just by looking at them would make zero sense.
• PvE combat would immediately become one of the worst parts of the game, because hostile mobs would easily kill even skilled players without even being anywhere near them. This would mean that people would have to fight things without even looking at them 80% of the time, even with simple drifters. This wouldn't be fun at all.

In any case I don't think temporal mobs should be super crazy at all, the whole thing is supposed to play into a "fear of the unknown" horror aspect of the game. Things flying around like crazy and whatnot wouldn't fit this at all, I would think. When it comes to lovecraftian horror, things should be more subtle and terrifying. Things like deep drifters phasing in and out of existence like we have now and things like tall creatures watching from the distance that you can't look at are more fitting for that sort of thing.

I think there's been a misunderstanding. I mean that regular mobs should have ranged attacks, climbing, and other interesting methods of combat/maneuvering. You can keep putting in land-based melee animals, but that's unnecessarily limited. You need more to fight, and not just during a temporal storm. 

And if the temporal mobs aren't crazy, then what is? The game is fairly grounded outside of the lovecraftian stuff, so that's the only design space you have to really play around in when it comes to enemies. And in order for "fear of the unknown" to mean anything, there has to be a payoff. Surface drifters simply aren't scary once you realize how easy they are to kite once you have a flint spear. Even during temporal storms, when things are at their wildest, you can just make a dirt pillar and watch everything go all weird for a while and be completely safe. There's nothing to be afraid of. Now imagine if during a temporal storm you had swarms of flying locusts descend upon your base. Horrible tentacle beasts writhing free from the earth beneath you. Complete and utter madness where no place is truly safe. That's what you expect when you hear a lovecraftian storm is approaching, not some blinking dudes you can easily ignore with no investment into a base whatsoever.

EDIT: I mean come on, a voxel-based lovecraftian game is begging for some hounds of tindalos. Oh, you have a 2x2x2 doorless bunker buried deep in the earth? You thought that would save you?

Edited November 21, 2020 by l33tmaan

[Astrayo]

19 hours ago, Thalius said:

I like the idea of a temporal storm specific mob(s), but what you describe just sounds like a VS version of the enderman from Minecraft.  I'd like to see something original and challenging, and much less Minecrafty.

the Enderman attacks the player when looked at. The mob I've described does not attack the player at all, and directly causes stability loss when looked at, and eventually takes health instead.

If anything, it would be kinda like a much smaller, weaker VS version of Cthulhu, considering that part of the lore around Cthulhu is that looking at them makes you insane.

Though, in all fairness, I can definitely see why people would still see it as a VS version of an Enderman, especially with the shape that I've described it with.

When I came up with the idea of this thing I actually didn't think of the Enderman at all, and was just thinking about lovecraftian horror in general.

19 hours ago, Thalius said:

As for painting- would love to see that make it into the game. Use the microchiseling feature with a paintbrush, but instead of chiseling microblocks, color them.

This is exactly how I imagined freeform painting would work. It would probably take some extra work to make it work for certain objects on top of regular blocks, but I'd love to be able to do so.

This feature could also be used in tandem with the chisel to paint the things you make via microchiseling.

15 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

I think there's been a misunderstanding. I mean that regular mobs should have ranged attacks, climbing, and other interesting methods of combat/maneuvering. You can keep putting in land-based melee animals, but that's unnecessarily limited. You need more to fight, and not just during a temporal storm. 

And if the temporal mobs aren't crazy, then what is? The game is fairly grounded outside of the lovecraftian stuff, so that's the only design space you have to really play around in when it comes to enemies. And in order for "fear of the unknown" to mean anything, there has to be a payoff. Surface drifters simply aren't scary once you realize how easy they are to kite once you have a flint spear. Even during temporal storms, when things are at their wildest, you can just make a dirt pillar and watch everything go all weird for a while and be completely safe. There's nothing to be afraid of. Now imagine if during a temporal storm you had swarms of flying locusts descend upon your base. Horrible tentacle beasts writhing free from the earth beneath you. Complete and utter madness where no place is truly safe. That's what you expect when you hear a lovecraftian storm is approaching, not some blinking dudes you can easily ignore with no investment into a base whatsoever.

EDIT: I mean come on, a voxel-based lovecraftian game is begging for some hounds of tindalos. Oh, you have a 2x2x2 doorless bunker buried deep in the earth? You thought that would save you?

I do think there should be ranged mobs and mobs that climb and such, and yes, I think I did misunderstand you and I apologize for that. Yes, on further consideration, there definitely should be some level of craziness with the lovecraftian things. And when you put it that way, flying and burrowing mobs and such causing a lot of chaos during those storms would definitely make them much more interesting. Now that I think about it, I would love to see things like tindalos.

[RobinHood]

What about some enemys like in Wolfenstein. For me RTCW the most scariest game of all time. Also nice cool sounds & music. This sounds I would have to ike in TEMPORAL STORMS - okay, not a shooting game will be Vintage, but some scarie atmosphere here in Temproal Storm, or in some caves, Ruines etc.

 

 

 

but the most scariest part was this episode in my eyes. Dumb, this we could have in Ruins & Catacombs a bit - not only drifters.
 

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by RobinHood

[Domkrats]

On 11/21/2020 at 6:20 PM, l33tmaan said:

design space you have to really play around in when it comes to enemies. And in order for "fear of the unknown" to mean anything, there has to be a payoff. Surface drifters simply aren't scary once you realize how easy they are to kite once you have a flint spear. Even during temporal storms, when things are at their wildest, you can just make a dirt pillar and watch everything go all weird for a while and be completely safe.

Wanted to spam a little too here...

I could agree and disagree at the same time. Many people leave during storms at server i am playing at. Don't know why. Whether it's just because they think it is too stressfull or they already have chest full of gears, so they just don't want to deal with it anymore. For me it is second situation ... At some point i simply didn't need anything i would get from storm anymore. I would love to fight during storms, but only if enemies were already spawned or killing them would give me some additional parts for something unique that could be added to game later for crafting. Otherwise it is just mad running around and wasting armor because of unpredictable spawn hits near you. So for now i usually use drifter pit just to spare armor.
 

So i don't think making just storms harder would make game more fun.

As for me I would need more purpose to keep fighting during storms.  Another thing i  would wan't is some possibility to craft some device like translocator, that is temporal gear fueled and keeps some area around it free from spawning drifters (They could still come in that area from all sides but wouldn't be able to spawn there). That way it could become more like tower defence experience, but the one you could control more with good strategy and fighting skills (So drifters won't spawn just on your head). Other players, if they wish could make more such devices around base that way making area so big, they could be safe during storms if they wish so.

Sure harder creatures are welcome to taste my sword too later in game but i think that should be by choice and then i would love to see better loot from them. Maybe the difficulty could increase once you make some another special device, that way players like you you could say to game..."Come on! Bring  it on!" "Give me some baddass experience". While other casual players would still be able to get through storm rather easy.  Or maybe there could be some special areas with bad stability where you could go during storms to fight harder mobs and even have to use gears to get stability back during storm.

There are many ideas. Game is still in developement and i think developers have many ideas themselves too. But everything has to be implemented step by step, that way keeping game balanced and fun for all.  Other thing is the technical part - everything has to be coded which needs time and has to be done so game would't become unplayeble for players having low spec computers. 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Domkrats

[l33tmaan]

I am 100% behind devices that reduce/eliminate temporal stability. I think the whole mechanic's a bit undercooked right now, but hopefully it gets addressed eventually.

[RobinHood]

But did yo have seen Heinrich in the Endepisode of RTCW, he is like a Bossmonster in a fight, and if you think you are safe - wrong - he use a bit Teleportation Magic so you have fight and win, no fighting = no option. And in this end game, there are also kind of black shadows, they can fly through walls.

look for RTCW, Heinrich, EndGame   in youtube

 

mybe we will see such similar Monsters here?

 

sorry, fact is RTCW was for me the most scariest game of all time for me

 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by RobinHood

[RobinHood]

Hm, sorry, why confused, this would be very scary, if the strongest drifter or other monster can made telecinetic with you, so you have to fight - during temporal storm, to go in small panic room or 2-3 blocks high small tower woild be very to easy

telecinetic, not teleportation, sry like here in 2:27

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by RobinHood

[l33tmaan]

I think we have different definitions of scary.  Blasting zombies with a flamethrower is my idea of a good time, not something to be afraid of.

[RobinHood]

But RTCW was for me the most scary game ever, especially the episode in the Catacombs. Also the noize and music there very well. Only the shootsings sounds would nit fit in VS
 

 

Edited April 10, 2021 by RobinHood

[AngryRob]

A temporal boss would be nice, but at the moment why fight them? what do we get for fighting them? Combat needs some work. 

but yeah, for nasty temporal mobs, why stop at one? why not have a special mob per biome? A temporal sea monster, a temporal moth man, a temporal fat man that eats cooked food, and an underground temporal guy? For added problems, have these guys open doors. Maybe even add a temporal arsonist who sets fires to skeps, crops, fire wood stacks, forests, and anywhere else. Give players a legitimate reason to be worried about temporal storms rather then the current sleep through them / nerd pole avoidance. 

[l33tmaan]

7 minutes ago, AngryRob said:

a temporal fat man that eats cooked food

 

[YangKoete]

A foe that only appears with Temporal Storms should be able to move with them well to a degree; Some sort of flying enemy. 

Perhaps to fit with the eldritch-y theme, some sort of temporal specter that flies in the skies and tries to stab at you or throws things down at you that specifically harms stability more than HP like said above? If you want a "stronger" one that only appears in severe storms, maybe add some status effect that can make Drifters able to sense you better if you get hit by one of their ranged attacks? 

It would stop people from just pillaring during temporal storms for shelter, that's for sure. Make it low HP so it's not annoying to fight or make it slow down while it's about to attack, and you have something that isn't as annoying to fight. 

For drops...perhaps some hide scraps that can be stitched together or used for some other primitive weapons and such? Could also be neat for "patchwork clothes" and similar for cheap, on-the-fly equipment.