ashgcy Posted September 13, 2023 Share Posted September 13, 2023 Welcome back watery wanderers! After the reception of the tropics release, we've been hard at work getting ready to populate the map with lots of new creatures! For this peek behind the curtain, Aquilolamna makes its debut, Ferrodraco's animations are well underway and we'll be doing a deep dive into the design process of Anomalocaris! If this is your first time diving into the deep end, we are a dedicated team of individuals who are looking to spruce up the ocean biome in the same way that Scorched Earth offered a unique, biome specific challenge to survival. New creatures, resources, structures, items and more, all set on a huge custom map, we're looking to give ARK's oceans the TLC they deserve! The main goal is to bridge that huge gap between early and late game ocean exploration, and make it much more viable and more fun to live a life beneath the waves! This is unofficial content and is only related to our mod. It is in no way related with the official game and its content releases. With that out of the way, let's explore all the new features that came with the tropics! AQUILOLAMNA MODEL REVEAL Sighoptera has been hard at work improving his modelling skills! This is his first fully custom model, and everyone in the team is really proud of his incredible work! As mentioned in Sunken Scoop 1, Aquilolamna will be like the Tropeognathus of the sea, a jet propelled shark to get you where you need to be! Below is a selection of images, showing this shark's unique proportions, and its proposed patterns posed in the Dev Kit! SOMETHING METAL THIS WAY COMES You might want to start checking the sky for danger... Ferrodraco's animation work is well underway! Hauki has been breathing life into the terrifying pterosaur in the form of Idle, Walk and Level Up animations! With its giraffe like proportions, it's been an interesting challenge to give it a more "accurate" gait and make it a true terror! Though these animations don't have a sense of scale... this beast will tower over you as it walks, it's as tall as a Rex! The model shown here may look a bit different to our previous reveals. This is because a lot of animation work is done with a lower quality version of the model, called a "lowpoly". If the high quality model was used, it would take far more time to render, as the animation program would have to load up much more data (textures, more intricate details etc). ANOMALOCARIS CREATURE FEATURE Time for a deep dive into the development of everyone's favourite little scuba tank! While the concept may seem simple enough, there were some surprising difficulties we encountered (and still encounter :p) when designing this invertebrate! The biggest difficulty on an aquatic themed map is "how are you going to breathe". It simply wouldn't be fun to have to wait all the way until you get scuba to be able to swim. The main design principle for Anomalocaris was introducing a creature that would allow you to explore the sea much earlier than in the vanilla game without the same limitations. However, living scuba had to come at a cost, so the original plan was to have Anomalocaris drain your health while you used it, alongside its tendency to wear down the durability of your chestpiece. The issue we ran into was that in vanilla, while a player is swimming they will never regenerate health naturally. This posed a huge problem for gameplay because... well you need health to live. After debating other options, we chose to allow Anomalocaris to regenerate your health, stamina and oxygen, at the cost of causing your food to drain down much quicker. Another difficulty we ran into was how to keep an aquatic shoulder pet underwater. When Anomalocaris first released, the animal would remain on your shoulder even after you left the water. Throwing it off while on land either caused it to be stuck there until picked up again, or fly off into the distance. In addition, if you were on land and tried to throw it into the water, it would skip along the surface like you were skipping a stone! Thankfully we've introduced a check that boots the animal off your back when you hit the surface of the water, but knowing ARK as the glitchy mess we know and love, sometimes you might see your Cambrian compadre fly off into the realms unknown! I guess you could say Anomalocaris really put the "bug" in buggy. Seriously... why is the most important creature on the map such a problem child COMMUNITY CORNER While there may not be any screenshots or artwork to share, we've seen some really incredible WIPs in the discord, and can't wait to share the talent around! As always, feel free to submit your content in the channel in our discord, or tag us at @ARKSunken using #SunkenScoop to be featured! Screenshots, artwork and Youtube videos welcome! That's all for this issue of the Sunken Scoop, thanks for tuning in! Let us know if you enjoyed the more in depth view of our creature design process! Have a wonderful timezone! If this is your first time seeing TSW, check out the links below to find out more! Please note that if you want to play our mod, you need both the map and creature mod active.Discord: https://discord.gg/BAkvgc7Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArkSunkenMap Mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2182740759 Creature Mod:https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2182770728 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danlillis Posted September 13, 2023 Share Posted September 13, 2023 well the anomalcaris buggyness was not at all what i expected but funny noneoftheless Draco is looking rlly mean and aquilo is actualy looking quiet cute for a shark... it reminds me of a dolphin or killer whale but yeah i see its gills doing quiet well sunken world team XD 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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