Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Discussion Thread: More Variety In Craftable Creature
For variety I'd like to see some birds and snakes. First off, small birds at lowerer levels would be great as house decor. Secondly, every non-ch person that asks me what I can make almost always asks for a bird or snake. I've gotten to the point where I say up front no birds, snakes, or white banthas.
I think the size thing would help a lot actually. There are many pets in the low level Clone tree that are rarely used once Master is hit. However, if their size varied with CL people may be interested in large Dune Lizards, Vesps, or Vir Vurs.
As Arthur pointed out certain creatures come in preset sizes. I suggest creature con color mapping to one of the preset sizes.
Green for small
Blue for medium
Yellow for Large
Red for huge
Take the con color that some predetermined master combat profession would see the pet as and make it that size. For example. You create a cl45 creature that would con yellow to a master fencer. The creature size is large size for that skin.
The art department has little (if any) work to do, so you cut time and costs there. The code monkeys have less to do cause they just modify some existing code and plug it into other spots. You only have to add a one byte field to the database for each creature so it doesn't grow much (might not even push records outside their existing DB blocks if it's done right, so no block chaining).
I know it's not what many of us would like to see, myself included. It does have the advantage of a lower overhead change. The way I figure it, the less work a suggestion takes the more likely they are to seriously look at it. Personally I want a slider with a cooresponding size number 1-30 sounds good. Just don't see them spending the time to make it happen. (like so many other great suggestions)
2) Colors
Again this is a low workload change. The color pallets are already in use for tailors, just slide some over to us. Also as said before I'd like to be able to change more than one color on pets (although this will take more work). Another color approach is put the full color palette in a limited use loot schematic for a random skin that already exists. That way we could create a unique pet even if it's only different in color. (again, less work for the dev team, see a trend here yet?) In the end I want neon green and orange razorcats.
3) Skins
On this point I'm pretty simple-minded. I just want flyers. Specifically Rasps. I understand that desire for other flyers, snakes, and frogs though.
Loot schematics for other skins would be nice.
I think all he's saying is that every pet has a "baby size" (i.e. a "1") and a 100% full grown size (i.e. a "10"), and that he'd like the option to increase that full-grown size for that particular skinby 20% (i.e. a "12")
In terms of coding difficulty, my thought is that for every creature in the game, there is some range of sizes that it already can have. For example the bantha skin can be represented in sizes that range between the size of a 1-minute old dwarf bantha and a full grown bantha matriarch. Who knows what the difficulty would be in making it smaller than a baby dwarf or larger than a full grown matriarch, but we know that at least that range of sizes is available for that given skin.
Hylidex wrote:
Inkanissen wrote:
Size is independant of creature stats just like colour is. It is an option for the BE to set a different size than the default size 10 (all current pets are size 10 when grown).
Ooooh. Where did this number come from? It looks like there is a resource available that I'm not using.
Size: We have size 1-10 now as pets are growing. I would like to see BE set a max size when making final assembly on a skin just like the way we pick a colour. Perhaps they could introduce size 11 and 12 that would be an option for BE only for the HAM monsters that we make at times, such as a 13k or 14k Health clone. Default size could be set to size 10 (like it is now), and then the BE may decide to change that or not.
I would be happy to be limited to available sizes, just so long as I could choose which one the adult would take.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
For example the bantha skin can be represented in sizes that range between the size of a 1-minute old dwarf bantha and a full grown bantha matriarch. Who knows what the difficulty would be in making it smaller than a baby dwarf or larger than a full grown matriarch, but we know that at least that range of sizes is available for that given skin.
Well my thoughts about size and speed....i like the idea of size scaling by CL, and I also like the idea of manually setting size. I'm also sensitive about everyone having huge nonCH pets lagging up cities. I think there should be a hybrid system, where maximum size is still linked to CL, but you can manually scale between the minimum and that maximum stat. That way, MCHs can still have their cool jumbo sized creatures for novelty and their normal efficient-sized creatures for hunting without lagging themselves up or clogging their screen in dungeons, and nonCHs can have some variability in their pets too. The only problem I see with this might be in art for mountables, itd be kinda weird seeing a max-size wookiee trying to ride a clown-car sized dewback or something...
I think speed should be linked to CL, too. Again, more bonuses for those who climb the CL charts, to have a CL70 cupa mount or a tank-bred merek with the run speed of a jedi with /forcerun3, and again not unbalancing by giving a nonCH version to everyone and making vehicles obsolete. Since run speed is really the only factor that skin determines, making it flat rate across all skins would really open the market up to more than just the cats. Plus, how cool would it be to see that CL68 rancor tear across the plains of Naboo after a Fambaa like it was a Mantigrue? =)
when I was a BE, most people either asked for a bantha (for the cool factor) or a spat (speed)for non-ch mounts. I personally think that it was kinda unfair on the CHs as the non-chs had access to the fastest skins (spats and gurrecks), basically only leaving the giant skins left for CHs as the cool factor. I think that there needs to be some balance. CHs should have faster pets then non-chs - whether this means doing what Jekk says and linking the CL to the speed or giving/removing skin access.
droid327 wrote:
Well my thoughts about size and speed....i like the idea of size scaling by CL, and I also like the idea of manually setting size. I'm also sensitive about everyone having huge nonCH pets lagging up cities. I think there should be a hybrid system, where maximum size is still linked to CL, but you can manually scale between the minimum and that maximum stat. That way, MCHs can still have their cool jumbo sized creatures for novelty and their normal efficient-sized creatures for hunting without lagging themselves up or clogging their screen in dungeons, and nonCHs can have some variability in their pets too. The only problem I see with this might be in art for mountables, itd be kinda weird seeing a max-size wookiee trying to ride a clown-car sized dewback or something...
I think speed should be linked to CL, too. Again, more bonuses for those who climb the CL charts, to have a CL70 cupa mount or a tank-bred merek with the run speed of a jedi with /forcerun3, and again not unbalancing by giving a nonCH version to everyone and making vehicles obsolete. Since run speed is really the only factor that skin determines, making it flat rate across all skins would really open the market up to more than just the cats. Plus, how cool would it be to see that CL68 rancor tear across the plains of Naboo after a Fambaa like it was a Mantigrue? =)
SIZE:
I like the ideas of have the size controlable by the BE and also have it related to CL.
SKINS:
Now, I would like to see more skins avalible, or at least as reguarding to the size. I want to BE a dragonet, but all that is offered is the Dune Lizard. Now with the size adjustment, I could make a dragonet size lizard witht he dune skin, no problems there. But it would be nice to craft a Rasp, or a gackle bat. Like someone suggested, have a loot type item, where you sample DNA from creatures and have the possibility of creating a skin from that creature. Another item I would like to see is more mountable pets. Gualamas, Rancors, Bordoks, etc. We can craft many herbivorous type creatures that serve no purpose. But if we could mount them, then they would be of more use.
COLORS:
We are creating and altering the DNA of creatures, right, so why not have a large color palette? We should be able to craft a white gurreck, or a neon pink durni. In RL we can already clone animals and change the color. Or maybe, like a paint kit have a color kit that BEs craft that players can apply to thier pet. Like hair dyes.