A few weeks ago I discovered the game Starbound. It’s a new (as in not finished) platform adventure game by a developer called Chucklefish.
It was released a bit before Christmas as a beta, which is to say that they’re constantly updating the game and there are quite a few things that aren’t complete, or are just filling in until the real bits are finished.
Perhaps because of this, the developers have made modding the game very easy, and there is a thriving community of people creating mods for the game.
Part of this being easy, is that all the data about the items in the game is easily readable. Basically all the content for the game (different from the engine that makes it run) is available in JSON files along with all the images and sounds.
So I started building an online database of all these items, so that I can look up on my phone what “ingredients” I need to make a new item.
It’s been a fun little project, in fact so fun that for the last week I haven’t even played the game. I’ve spent my free time building this site rather than playing the game.
As I said to a friend today, programming can be an incredibly cheap hobby.