Creature Handler Archive

Okay, it may not be one a day, but it'll be as often as I can.

I have an excellent book called "The Wildlife of Star Wars", which has in-depth information on many of the creatures that we know and love, as well as several others native to planets that are in the game. These posts will consist of creatures that already exist in our game world, and those will have suggestions for inprovements and such to bring them up to par with their established zoological stats, and how it can be implemented in the game. New creatures that I'll list here will be ones that can be easily added (IMHO) as their skeletons closely resemble existing creatures, and would only require some new artwork. I did some work with animation myself, so I think I'll be pretty close to the mark on these.

I'll be going through the book in order, starting with animals from Tatooine.

The Bantha is pretty well established in the SWU, and its closest Terran equivilent is the elephant. (A bit of trivia, the bantha in ANH was actually played by an asian elephant named Lucy, who kept pulling off her mask, which was the bantha's face. The film crew admits that if there had been the same laws back then that there is today for working with animals on a set, they probably would not have been able to shoot the footage of the Bantha as we know it, because the costume was so hot.)

While most of the info in the book is pretty standard from what one could deduce from the EU, the movies, and basic elephant behavior, here's a couple of things that could be added to the game.

A bull bantha, at thirty years old, has horns that generally complete two full spirals. Females generally complete one full circuit. To encourage a bull bantha to be more of a status symbol, when the animal is a specific age (say, 60 days in the datapad), have it go through one last growth cycle. This would not add any height, but would complete another rotation on the horns. Adding this would make aged bantha a collectable mount, and would encourage (for at least one animal) retaining them in the datapad instead of tossing them away.

Like elephants, bantha are facinated with the bones of dead bretheren, and will carry their dead to certain areas. A bantha graveyard could be a new POI on Tatooine, with agressive bantha spawn defending it (after all, entering a bantha graveyard is supposed to be bad luck). This could also introduce a new breed of bantha, a bantha guardian, as a larger, stronger, semi-rare tamable (come on, Devs, I know its not the same name, butyou've got the code for that already, or did at one point ). Part of the POI could be an NPCquest to get a bantha skull from the graveyard itself.

The Tusken Bantha is of course, extremely dedicated to its rider. Babies born to a Tusken tribe are generally from mated banthas whose riders are married themselves, and the babies grow up with the dedication of the Tusken tribe instilled from the moment of birth.

Upon killing a full spawn of Tuskens and their bantha, make it a rare chance that an orphaned tusken bantha will spawn. This baby will be extremely aggressive, along the lines of a great plains stalker, and be very tough to tame. With this aggresiveness level, it will automatically mimic the dedication and ferocity of a bantha in a Tusken tribe, only now defending its new bondmate against anything that comes its way (whether you really want it to or not).

Feel free to discuss the Bantha and add your own suggestions here. I'll post another animal tomorrow.

Intersting back ground and lore. I like it, and the idea of the Tusking Bantha, I was going to say it would be impossible, because you gave the reason why, then you brought up the agressivness, so yeah, would be doable I think, and pretty cool too.

Walle Deabi - Shortest Master Creature Handler on Shadowfire

"Yes, my spelling and grammer sucks, but I never claimed to be an English Major." -Wallach1

We miss ya on scylla Shabhaii.

*hugs* Thanks, marxo. Though I doubt you speak for everyone. You do know how to send cross-server tells, right?

Today's animal is: The Dewback

Dewbacks, as many of you know, get their name from their main meathod of hydration: herdmates lick the dew off of each others backs every morning. They are omnivorous animals, eating mainly tubers that they dig up, but they will also hunt animals cat sized or smaller.

One interesting note about dewbacks is their speed. While they able along at a leisurely pace for the most part, they can run for shorter distances at 50 km per hour. The accompanying artwork showed a a dewback running alongside *drumroll* a landspeeder and keeping pace.

There is the obvious suggestion, speed up mounts. There you have it, proof that even a dewback can keep pace with a landspeeder when it wants to. As this is a dewback we are talking about, other models should be markedly faster than that. I for one never could understand why my savage humbaba was easily outpaced by everything else, even little shuffling banthas.

And for my other suggestion, a developer field trip to a farm. You can tell that each and every one of the development team is a city boy who is completely clueless about rider/creature interaction, and animal speed and agility. I think they should take a crash course in things like horseback riding (you don't ride like you have a pole up your ass), trying to catch a cow (so they can see how fast even "slow" animals really are as compared to humans), and idle animals (which don't rock back and forth, fidget, and make a lot of noise). They could learn a lot.

Ah, I love the Whitlatch wildlife book. I still have no idea why Condor Dragons were renamed "Mantigrues" or why Sand Panthers were renamed "Razor Cats."

Be sure to check out the sections on aiwhas and thrantas, too. Lots of precendent for flier mounts.

Keep the good ideas coming.

-Vertexon.

Oh, I've read this book a hundred times over, and believe me, I'll be going in depth with them. That book gave me a TON of ideas over the past couple of months, not to mention there's so many new and potentially useful animals in there that could be added.

Todays animal is: The Ronto

(And if you're bored with this, don't worry, tomorrow is an all-new animal!)

Rontos were the first "new" Star Wars creature that we saw since the innitial release of the trilogy. My first introduction to them was in the trailer for the re-release of the Special Edition, played before Men In Black. I'll never forget the "Oooooooooooh!"s throughout the movie theater the first time we saw one rear up on the screen. Now they seem as natural to the Star Wars universe as banthas.

Rontos are herbivores, and if you've wondered what the heck they could eat out there in the desert, they eat lichens off of rock ourcroppings. These lichens usually grow very high in the shadows, which is why they have long necks. If you haven't noticed, rontos have two sets of ears. The smaller pair is attuned to higher frequencies, while the larger pair is attuned to lower frequencies and also serve to help with heat dispersion, much like an elephants ears. Their large, domed heads are used in dominance battles, where two rontos will stand next to each other and swing their heads in for a solid knock on the neck of the other. Non-lethal to each other, but very effective in displaying strength. This is also the same way giraffes fight on our own planet.

Duh!

Some of the accompanying artwork for the ronto displayed a group of Jawas netting an adult. As a new skill, allow Rangers to net adult animals. This would be particularly cool if there was a new animation for it, with an actual net. Give a Master Ranger a 10% chance of actually netting the animal. A successful net would hold for 15 seconds. While an animal was netted, a Tamer would have a chance to train it. Yes, as an adult. A Master CH would have a 5% success chance to tame the animal. 15 seconds is just enough time for a CH to run in and have one attempt, at which time if it failed, the animal would slip the net and instantly aggro either the CH or the Ranger. This would give us an opportunity to train all animals of CL 70 or under without new baby artwork, but with incredibly low success, making wild-caught animals valuble again to some extent.

Here's a new one for you folks: the Anooba

Anoobas are predatory pack hunters native to Tatooine. They live ingroups of approximately a dozen animals, led by an alpha male and female. They stand about one meter high at the shoulder, and have very long, lanky bodiesand long tails, which help them ballance at high speeds. In color they are a greyish brown with a dorsal ridge of stiff hair, rather like a wrix. Their jaws are extremely strong, and their face is dominated by two large tusks in the fore dropping from the upper jaw, with the two lower tusks fused together and rising from the center of the lower jaw. They are very opportunistic hunters, and while they prefer game smaller than themselves, are not adverse to hunting eopie and ronto if the opportunity arises.

Here is a very good piece of fan art of an anooba, although the Wildlife book does show them to be longer of frame: (and pardon the non-clicky link, my browser and Lithium do not get along when it comes to HTML)

http://www.swagonline.net/view.php?photo_id=2030&screen=5&action=&keyword=&date=&type=search

Adding the anooba to the game could be done in one of three ways. The first two options would be pushing it a little when it comes to artistic continuity, but I don't think continuity is a huge concern in this game :rolleyes: . The anooba could be added to Tatooine by using the current "dog" model, which would also make for ease of code transport since they have the same behavioral AI characteristics of animals such as slice hounds, but they don't really look the same. Buildwise they are much closer to a gualama and the "horse" model, except for the head. Again, escaping continuity a bit to allow for a long neck and easy transfer of the skeleton frame, we'd end up with an animal much closer to the artwork provided. The third option would be to add a new animal frame and skin gallery, which in the end would probably be the best option considering there are several animals that could use this body type.

At Master, we have the option of using three pets at once, but no real reason to DO so. Add a "pack" bonus for hunting with multiple animals of the same type. For hunting with two identical breed animals (say, two grassland slace hounds), give a +10 bonus to the animals for damage and evasion. This is justified because the animals are more likely to get in a good bite while another animal is distracting the prey, and more likely to evade a blow because prey tends to move more carelessly, since its watching multiple aggressors. For three animals of the same type, make it an additional +20 to damage and evasion. And (here's the biggie) make it wild animals only. This would guarantee that the overpowered BE pets do not overballance the equation, and return a market of a sort to wild pets.

Very interesting revalations. Good work.

I just wish that one of the planets they would add would be Myrkr. *Dreams of Ysalamari and Vorksnyrs*

I look forward to future additions. Hopefully somehting about Rancor mounts and them being able to fight while mounted lol. When will the devs just do that and make all the MCHs oh so much happier.