Jump to content

Immersive spawn colours and locations - looking for feedback on new mod


stargatedalek

Recommended Posts

Have you ever been admiring your wonderful base, built perfectly into the terrain, checked on your beautiful tames, maybe you even have some impressive colour mutations, then wandered outside and had your immersion shattered to dust by a pink dodo with a green beak walking by? Maybe it even made your colour mutations you tried so hard for feel a little bit less special? Then this mod is for you (and for me).

 

The main goal of this mod is to make creature colour spawns less varied, making the animals and in turn the entire environment feel more realistic and immersive, while still maintaining enough variety to keep wild individuals looking distinctive and recognizable. I will experiment with changing spawn regions to be more immersive too, IE removing tropical and temperate species from the arctic regions.

The secondary goal is to give added value to breeding and mutations. This is already done slightly simply by removing the more unnatural wild colours, but another thing I'm considering is preventing wild tamed creatures from being ridden, forcing players to breed creatures and then raise the young in order to be able to ride them. This is actually very easy to do, I just need to make the wild caught new animals from this mod lay the eggs of vanilla animals (the colours would still be inherited from their parents)

Unfortunately this mod can't be fully stack-able or remove cleanly. I simply lack the know-how to make a remap mod do the things I want it to. Making these creatures require breeding in order to ride (if I do go that route) would also function as a way to make it remove "semi-clean", since while you would loose some creatures if you removed the mod, you would not loose any creatures you were using.

Another thing I'm considering is chase variants, extremely rare colour variations that would have very distinctive colours.

 

Q: How do you decide the colours for the animals?

A: When it's possible I will use the real life colours, though this only applies to a few animals. Barring that I would reference their closest modern relatives (though again, even that only applies to a few creatures). Most of them will be based on the dossier art or the PIXARK colour schemes. If any particular colour looks bad on a colour region please don't hesitate to comment, this can be tweaked fairly easily at any time.

Q: Won't this make the game significantly more difficult since we need to breed creatures before riding them?

A: In theory this will, but I will try to find some ways to combat this. One option is to make some "starter" creatures able to be tamed and ridden as usual (IE Parasaurolophus). Another option is to keep this in mind when changing the spawn regions, perhaps make the starting regions a little bit easier, or adding more small easily tamed creatures (IE Vultures).

Q: Is there anything else you might consider changing?

A: Keep in mind this mod essentially only changes wild creatures. I'm also going to rename creatures that use common names  to use their genus names instead (IE change "Dodo" to "Raphus") , and I may consider changing some creatures behavior where it conflicts with the dossiers (IE Mantas).

Q: What about creatures we can't breed? And what about wild taken eggs like wyverns and rock drakes?

A: I will try to make creatures that can't normally breed breed, this would still only allow them to be bred once, since the second generation could not breed. Wyverns and rock drakes should function exactly as they currently do, the wild adults should transfer their new colours to the eggs which would be completely vanilla eggs. I can't guarantee this is how it will be implemented, but it's what I'll try for. If it proves impossible to implement this for a given creature and allow it to lay eggs or breed seamlessly to give the player access to the vanilla counterpart I will exclude that creature.

 

As an example I threw together some variations for the Argentavis. A version based on new world vultures that would replace the traditional Argentavis spawns, an alternate one based on old world vultures for Scorched Earth, and some chase variants.


Some example colours for "new world" Argentavis variants. Undersides and feet would spawn in varying shades of red, pink, grey, and black, with the main body regions varying in blacks, greys, and browns. I'm considering removing the red and pink undersides as it covers a fair amount of the body and not just the face.

Spoiler

 

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

 

 

The "old world" Argentavis, being in general lighter in colour, with undersides and main bodies of varying shades of light browns, greys, and whites, usually with darker wingtips.
 

Spoiler

 

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

 

 

A chase variant for each, based on yellow-headed vultures and Egyptian vultures respectively, and a PIXARK based variant, as a sort of easter egg. These would still have variation, but considerably less so.
 

Spoiler

 

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-forma

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...