Recently, we’ve been discussing adding some more capabilities to the Status and Status Effect system in Starbound.  There are a lot of interesting things we want to do, but as of right now the Status system is a bit of a pain point in the Starbound codebase.

Every Status equipped entity has around 20 stats, all defined directly in c++, and they can be affected by about *45* status effect primitives, also specified in c++.  Status primitives are everything from ForceField to FlawedProtection to ClumsyProtection to ExplosiveDefense to ExplosiveDefensePower to.. you get the idea.  Extending the status system right now involves doing things like extending this enum and adding to this set of fields.

Now, don’t get me wrong, simple and hard-coded sometimes works great.  Usually, it’s what you want to try *first*, and you stick with that until it’s clear that it needs to be replaced by something more powerful.  Well, for the Status system, that time is NOW.

Omni and I have been working on a replacement for the Status system that should hit (fingers crossed) master in a few days.  Stats are generic String -> Float mappings, there’s a system for adding temporary modifiers to the String -> Float set, there is a resource system that is closely tied to the stats system for things like health / energy / warmth, and, the most exciting part is, it will be driven by lua scripts!

Not only will this allow us to have, well.. sort of more “interesting” status effects like brain reboot and things like that driven by an isolated script and with way more interesting graphical effects, it will allow modders to add additional status effects and, as a side effect, will give modders a place to add persistent client-side data and scripts that affect the player without having to tie into the tech system.

Also, as either part of this update or soon thereafter, I’m trying to work it so that status graphical effects like cold and hunger that affect the screen can actually modify the shader used by the world renderer for some more interesting graphical effects than what we have now.

It’s exciting!

The new JSON patching system discussed way back on June 25 has landed. There might be a few edge cases that aren’t implemented correctly, but it’s passed all of the tests I threw at it. Let me know if you find an edge case I missed.

“__merge” style patches no longer work. You can override files fully, or you can use the patch system. To use a patch, name the file “whatever.config.patch” where “whatever.config” is the file you want to patch. It should support the entirety of RFC6902 and RFC6901.

Q: Can you give us an example?

A: Sure:

Here’s a short example.
Let’s say you have a file named… oh I don’t know, “player.config” And let’s say you want to change the hitbox of the player by changing around the standing poly.
You would create a file called “player.config.patch” and it could contain, for example, the following:


[
  { "op" : "replace", "path" : "/techControllerSettings/baseMovementParameters/standingPoly/2", "value" : [ 1.35, -2.5] },
  { "op" : "replace", "path" : "/techControllerSettings/baseMovementParameters/standingPoly/3", "value" : [ 1.75, -2.0] },
  { "op" : "replace", "path" : "/techControllerSettings/baseMovementParameters/standingPoly/4", "value" : [ 1.75, 0.65] },
  { "op" : "replace", "path" : "/techControllerSettings/baseMovementParameters/standingPoly/5", "value" : [ 1.35, 1.22] }
]


What that will do is change the values in the file from:


  "techControllerSettings" : {
    "baseMovementParameters" : {
       "standingPoly" : [ [-0.75, -2.0], [-0.35, -2.5], [0.35, -2.5], [0.75, -2.0], [0.75, 0.65], [0.35, 1.22], [-0.35, 1.22], [-0.75, 0.65] ],
       "crouchingPoly" : [ [-0.75, -2.0], [-0.35, -2.5], [0.35, -2.5], [0.75, -2.0], [0.75, -1], [0.35, -0.5], [-0.35, -0.5], [-0.75, -1] ],
       "airFriction" : 0.2,
       "mass" : 0.6,
       // should keep the player from teleporting through walls
       "maximumCorrection" : 1,
       "maxMovementPerStep" : 0.4
     }
   },


to


   "techControllerSettings" : {
     "baseMovementParameters" : {
       "standingPoly" : [ [-0.75, -2.0], [-0.35, -2.5], [1.35, -2.5], [1.75, -2.0], [1.75, 0.65], [1.35, 1.22], [-0.35, 1.22], [-0.75, 0.65] ],
       "crouchingPoly" : [ [-0.75, -2.0], [-0.35, -2.5], [0.35, -2.5], [0.75, -2.0], [0.75, -1], [0.35, -0.5], [-0.35, -0.5], [-0.75, -1] ],
       "airFriction" : 0.2,
       "mass" : 0.6,
       // should keep the player from teleporting through walls
       "maximumCorrection" : 1,
       "maxMovementPerStep" : 0.4
     }
   },


Possible values for “op” are: “test”, “add”, “remove”, “move”, “copy”, and “replace”. They do what it says on the tin. The only one potentially confusing is “test” which simply tests the path for some value, and if it’s not correct it aborts the patch.

“test”, “add”, and “replace” take “path” and “value”
“remove” just takes “path”
“move” and “copy” take “from” and “path”

There’s other stuff like “-” for end of list and using ~1 and ~0 to reference “/” and “~” respectively. But that’s pretty much it.

It’s pretty much been business as usual for me the last few days. The lunar base mission is getting to a really nice place, and I’ll be able to start populating it with enemies and loot very soon.

Kyren kindly implemented a quick update to our lighting engine that provides far greater control of how a light flickers. Previously the controls were a little vague and it was often difficult to get the precise results desired. It was difficult to get lights doing anything other than dimming and brightening in an largely unpredictable fashion.

Now we have the capacity to make lights pulse, strobe, or flicker erratically as we wish. As a side effect of this update, you may notice in the nightly that any lights that previously flickered currently are not doing so, but I’ll be quickly zipping through them to make them work as intended again in my downtime.

I put a quick video test together with a variation of the spotlights that flickers erratically. I do not advise watching this video if you are sensitive to strobing light effects as I have purposefully used a lot of them in one space simply to demonstrate.

Good night!