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!