Lobster Uprising II: Terror from the deep

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Anarchid

11 years ago
(edited 11 years ago)

I want to try redoing the amph factory, so i'll write a neonpost about that.

Why:
- current amphs don't look amphibious at all.
~~- they lack a consistent style~~
- some of them are old and clunky not-really-but-TA models.
- they offer for some interesting things to be done (more on that later).
- i might have sufficient free time following three months.

Also: None of the amphs are listed in replacements-wanted list here, but of the stuff that is wanted:
- ships are claimed by Sak and don't interest me.
- commander models seem to be CptBenz' domain, and he's good with them.
- aircraft con seems already taken, and also doesn't bother me much - plus there are existing models for construction aircraft lying around on engine board that just wait for the taking.

How:
- a common atlas (customized from pieces of nexuiz, cube2, and the like) to enforce consistence by technical means and speed of progress.
- blender and no upspring at all. exported to collada as per zk guidelines (makes no real ingame difference though).

What (in general sense):
- Dome-like hulls to convey amphs' resistance to underwater pressures. Sleeker droplet-shaped versions for raider types.
- Generally rounded and solid appearance, minimum of hard edges. Organic-like shapes made of cold metal.
- Less-humanoid appearance generally. (tentacles!)
- More appendages that fit with marine units - fins, tentacles, and such.
- Different underwater and overland walk animations.
- Visibly disable surface-warfare weapons when submerged.

Specific unit ideas:
- Buoy: vertically extended dome shape, visibly packed weapon when underwater (but rid of the whole closing armor thing i did in other thread), tentacles, general jellyfish-like shape.
- Archer: horizontally extended droplet-shaped hull, visible water tanks, shoots from a pair of side-mounted hose/tentacles. 4 appendages for walking. Tentacle guns retract into hull when submerged. Possibly animate water level in the tanks somehow. "Chthulhu scuba diver" general concept.
- Duck: pretty much like current, but sleeker. Torp guns change shape when surfaced to indicate inability to fire at submerged targets from surface. Slightly longer walking appendages to allow for nice "almost-swimming" animation when submerged.
- Angler: either assimilated version of current one (with smoother launcher rack to fit into dome shape better), or a squid-like shape with missile tubes like on rocket subs irl (fixedlauncher). In either case, opening hatches for missiles when on surface.
- Grizzly: Kraken-like thing with raised corpus mounting a dome-shaped turret on top, 4 walking appendages. (or betentacled guns like your average martian tripod instead of turret)
- Clam: Hermit-crab-like shape (most appendages concentrated into frontal part) with extensible eyestalk-like nanolathes. "Body" is raised when walking in water, dragged on ground when moving on land.

---------------

Discuss (mainly in terms of should-do or forget-about-it).

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MrPingu

11 years ago

I liked your Mutant Octopus. Also I like the idea of "Chthulhu scuba diver" very much.

What do you want to do with scallop? Maybe make it like a lobster that has shotguns in it's scissors that only open up when on land, and a torpado launcher in it's tail? Or maybe it looks to much like Scorpion then.

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karacho

11 years ago

Different underwater and overland walk animations.

i like this idea a lot

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Anarchid

11 years ago

quote:
What do you want to do with scallop?

I actually like the current scallop and it almost fits with proposed dome-shape theme. A minor paintjob and slight shape adjustment, at most. Well, and retract and bolt-up the shotguns when submerged.

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Saktoth

11 years ago
(edited 11 years ago)

Amphs are behebots, and thus all match closely and are of relatively high quality. Your new models would have to be REALLY excellent to replace them, and you'd have to make the whole factory.

However, the behebots are OTA remakes, and sea creatures could offer enough interesting designs. Certainly transforming robots are cool with different swimming vs walking animations, and gun swaps.

Really though, 'Variations on the theme of a sphere' is a very poor place to start.

If you are planning on using the atlas I used for the LLT, you might want to think again. It is very 'building-y', and most of the textures only really work on a flat, square plane: not on spheres or rounded shapes. This is a texture atlas for FPS maps remember.

More 'transforming mech' style, ala Pelican, would probably fit much better. Or Lobster-like, ala Pinchy (though that model was very flat and seriously exceeded its footprint).

You want to make lots of rounded shapes and use an atlas? Work on hovercraft. They could do with touchups to their details (the guns are just the same 'saggy stick' that makes up most of the rest of their hulls) and a few could definitely afford re-designs (the mace is just the scrubber with extra bits).

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Anarchid

11 years ago
(edited 11 years ago)

quote:
If you are planning on using the atlas I used for the LLT, you might want to think again.

Yes, i figured it wouldn't fit too well. I'd start by stitching together something more befitting.

quote:
Your new models would have to be REALLY excellent to replace them, and you'd have to make the whole factory.

That was the idea :P At least, the "whole factory" thing.

quote:
Really though, 'Variations on the theme of a sphere' is a very poor place to start. / You want to make lots of rounded shapes and use an atlas? Work on hovercraft.

It's not that i totally want a lot of rounded shapes because of themselves - i just don't think all-hard-edges fits underwater mechs much, since it doesn't anyhow convey the underwaterness. Roundedness sits with deep-sea stuff well in popular culture, but i guess there can be other ways to convey that (and i'd totally expect to use all of them too).

Wrt touching up hovers - i'd have to do that from scratch likely, because upspring-abstainer. Or can i retrieve .dae or something similar from s3o's?

(alternatively, sources exist?)

Except for pene. I could lift muffe's pene and UV it, but that's almost boring.

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Kyubey

11 years ago

as long as the Mutant Jellyfish Ghost Octopus Photon Cannon comes in pink, or the TES dwarf tech skin, i dont mind at all

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swappan

11 years ago

Your last model looks really good. So I am exiting to see the other units when ready.
But as an idea, why not make a whole new factory out of it instead of replacement? Sea could really use something to lower the RPS of it and lower the boundary between sea and land.
It could be a fast (swimming) and cloaky factory (organic shaped, minimum of hard edges, so less detection) for example.

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Kyubey

11 years ago
(edited 11 years ago)

you have the problem of the all seeing sonar... nothing can hide from its giant white eye

kinda like that but for water

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Antelope

11 years ago

>- Grizzly: Kraken-like thing with raised corpus mounting a dome-shaped turret on top, 4 walking appendages. (or betentacled guns like your average martian tripod instead of turret)

I had an idea for a unit with a harpoon gun ages ago that I proposed somewhere on the forum. What if instead of floating to surface to fire when underwater, the grizzly were to use a barbed tentacle to spear an enemy ship, anchoring it to the ocean floor. One of the biggest weaknesses of amphibs vs. ships is that ships are so much faster and just constantly kite. I think anchoring a big ship in place so that it could be killed would be awesome.

A variation on that theme would be that the Grizzly could be strong enough to PULL the enemy ship, not just anchor it. The Grizzly could grab a big ship and slowly pull it back towards porc or something.

The Balance Gods might not like it (utmost respect to them the same!) but you could at least design the Grizzly with this option in mind, and let the balancers/scripters decide if they want to implement it or not.

Amphibs on land suffer from the same weakness - much slower than land-based units. What if the Grizzly were to use a similar ability on land?

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sprang

11 years ago

You have proven yourself with the mutant jellyfish ghost buoy. I say go for it!!!

(obv you need to convince the Aussies though, not me)

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Kyubey

11 years ago

:P retooling the gizzly and the scalop to have an extra gav gun/harpoon gun would be awsome

the only problem is to drag a ship you need verry strong grav cannons, so harpoon gun would probably be better

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Anarchid

11 years ago
(edited 11 years ago)

Retooling any units is a balance consideration and thus completely outside of scope of this thread.

Power down the derailgun.

Only half-relevant possible note wrt this thread is whether and how should pack/unpack animations for surface weapons affect balance. How many milliseconds of lag before firing is acceptable?

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mojjj

11 years ago

some great ideas and some awsome ideas. i envy you having free time to do fun stuff like this. go for it!

and dont forget the tentacles! they have to be everywhere!

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Pxtl

11 years ago

Be careful with the Nexuiz and Cube 2 texture atlases, they may have license encumbrances that need to be considered or may be property of their respective projects.

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Anarchid

11 years ago

quote:
Be careful with the Nexuiz and Cube 2 texture atlases

Actually at least Nexuiz doesnt have an atlas to start with - it's a collection of squared tilings. I'd be assembling an atlas from some of those (and more of others) with rather heavy graphical modification enroute.

I'll watch out for licences though, such as whether we need to pay respects for any CC-BY etc.

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