Kyren and I have been working on debugging and configuring the new monster spawning system, and I’m happy to say that it’s starting to behave quite nicely. The biggest change from the previous system is that the set of monster ‘families’ that will spawn in an area are now specific to each biome. This gives the biomes a much more unique feel and is important groundwork for some planned features such as making monster palettes match their biome, and giving them immunity to poison or lava when they’re spawned in a biome containing those liquids.

The other major change is that the target density of each monster family can now be individually adjusted, so we have much better control of which monsters are common and which are rare. This is particularly important for monsters like birds that can be annoying if they appear too frequently. There are a few other changes we’re considering, but the basic implementation is now configured, so naturally occurring monsters are back in the nightly. Which is nice, because I was starting to feel a bit lonely out there in space.

Hey there, little bird. It’s good to see you.

Per some suggestions from our Starbound Modding channel. I’ve been exploring options to make how we do JSON merging better. And I would like comments from current modders on this.

As you’re no doubt aware, currently, the system in place has a big limitation, in that it doesn’t have the ability to address any point conceptually below a list. This has been discussed a bunch, and one interesting result of that discussion has been a JSON patching RFC being brought to my attention. I’ve spoken with the modding channel on freenode and they were more or less welcoming of this change, even though it would invalidate all files which use “__merge”.

I really don’t want two different JSON patching systems running at the same time for reasons of complexity and weirdness. So I’d like to take a vote. If you are currently a modder, and you’re currently using our __merge system, would you rather have __merge eliminated and use the new system, or would you rather I go back to the drawing board and figure out a way to fix the __merge system, which may or may not actually be possible?

I’ve spent the last couple of days pumping the outpost full of different rooms of different types for a fairly diverse range. While I will likely revisit this and add even more at a later date, it should be enough for the timebeing. Check it out!

I’ll be moving on producing more outpost layouts soon, but I may need to divert for a little while to implement George’s racial variations of the new stores. We’ll see how I go!