Ludeon Forums

Hi everyone! I have been working on a new mod that tries to add content to an aspect of Rimworld that, in my opinion, is a bit lackluster: Exploration!

I toyed with the idea of adding some kind of spaceships, but I wanted to do something different, so I adapted the Farcasters from the Hyperion series. Farcasters are portals that link two distant locations, enabling instantaneous travel. In Rimworld, farcasters are pieces of ancient, forgotten technology, and your colonists are rebuilding them to try and explore different planets.

From a technical standpoint, the mod creates new maps, and links them with farcaster buildings. Every time the farcaster is activated, a new random map is generated. The maps use customized map generation, and weird new biomes (and eventually flora, fauna, ruins, buildings, whatever). I also added a way to transport things between the homeworld and the new planets via the farcaster pads, so the new maps can be expoiled for resources, and that opens up a way to do some progression (ie. planet number 3 can't be accessed without mats from planet number 2).

The coding behind all this is done, and mostly bug-free. I'm opening this thread because I want to gauge if the community likes this idea (gimme yer feedbacks!!), and because I'd like you to test it and see if I left something obvious out ;)

Also, I'm a terrible spriter if it isn't creatures :( Anyone interested in collaborating?

Some images

(http://i.imgur.com/YMenjRFt.jpg) (https://imgur.com/YMenjRF)(http://i.imgur.com/eLdWit9t.jpg) (https://imgur.com/eLdWit9)(http://i.imgur.com/3Cv4Hcet.jpg) (https://imgur.com/3Cv4Hce)(http://i.imgur.com/jAlsM1rt.jpg) (https://imgur.com/jAlsM1r)(http://i.imgur.com/COtm4HQt.jpg) (https://imgur.com/COtm4HQ)

(https://i.imgur.com/BY7JPup.png)(https://i.imgur.com/fJcp0s2.png)

What's in it now?

• The jury-rigged and advanced farcasters, as well as their technologies
• The first farcaster can access the first planet, Sigma Alcyon IIb (ok, it's technically a moon). Lots of weird plants, minerals and... that's it for now
• The second farcaster can access the first planet and the second planet, Delta Servitus IV, which is a Mechanoid base!! Nothing much there yet

The future plans

• Content: it will obviously need lots of new content!
• Progression: I think it would be cool to implement gated progression, and not necessarily lineal
• For now, alien maps have the same events as the faction's homebase. This needs to be fixed
• Upgrades: the advanced farcaster will be upgradeable using mats form the new planets. The more upgrades, the stranger worlds that can be accessed.

The download

Only on github for now, obviously: Download here (https://github.com/juanosarg/GatesToTheUniverse/releases)

Credit

I was inspired by the DeepRim mod by meowmeow: Download here (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=39262.0)
Some sprites from Ayene: https://ayene-chan.deviantart.com/
Some sprites from jebo14: https://jebo14.deviantart.com/

Sound's very interesting.
At my first readthrough i got remembered on StarGate Universe.

QuoteI toyed with the idea of adding some kind of spaceships,

Maybe you should work at this path more.
When the starting map got too many resources/room why does they should explore other map's at the beginning ?
But if they can't get resources except if they deconstruct something, they need to explore. And i think that's your idea behind.

I wouldn't say that the 2. map should be difficulter then the 1. map, and the 3. worser then the 2.
Maybe researches to unlock different map tiers, then enhance the portal. And you need some special resources/drop from allready unlocked map's.

But when you are on a spaceship or mountain cave with no opening to spawn visitor/caravan or raids, there should some extra Home-event's created for this scenario.

I will give this definitiv a try soon, sounds very unique like the MARS mod :-)

Wow this looks AMAZING!!! Something that will actually be very important to me: will we be able to control what events/incidents happen via storyteller on the second map?

Thanks for this. Definitely have to keep my eye on anything you put out ;)

I like the idea and ambition. The only thing I worry about is too many new resources.
There definitely could be new plants and animals but at least regarding lore wise, everything you can find on a Rimworld you can probably find on any other planet.

I would encourage you to focus on the custom map generation and stories you might find there and less on new resources.

Anyway: if you need a decent coder I would be happy to help. I'm shit at art stuff though so you need to keep looking in regards to that.

This looks awesome! One thing I think would be a benefit would be a setting in the gate itself to select how large of a map to create(same settings as when your first start a game) That way we could either opt for a small fast adventure or a huge map to explore.

This looks really interesting! I hope you keep working on it.