Interface: Space (Undo's recent work)

[undo11]

p.s. so while everyone is trying to be a legend in their own time, i'm just looking at the timer for normal human life span and thinking, crap, i'm gonna be a senior citizen soon.  ye olde brain aint gonna work in its current state, forever,  so if i don't get something working on this thing soon, i'm gonna be too old.  in fact, i may already be too old but i would like to be able to make that decision for myself, not have other people make it for me. 

[petrus4]

p.s. so while everyone is trying to be a legend in their own time, i'm just looking at the timer for normal human life span and thinking, crap, i'm gonna be a senior citizen soon.  ye olde brain aint gonna work in its current state, forever,  so if i don't get something working on this thing soon, i'm gonna be too old.

Screw old age.  I'm paranoid enough about that myself, for the both of us.  In reality though, not long ago I heard about a woman who took up marathon running when she was past 80.  I've heard of people who go surfing in their 70s, as well.  Life expectancy is continually getting longer, as well.

Even if it wasn't, as long as your mind is working to a basic degree, you can keep going.  Hell, your mind is going to work for longer if you keep doing this stuff, even when you are elderly.  My great grandmother lived to 93 in her own place, and then when they put her in a nursing home, she was dead within a year.  She had nothing to do, and lost the will to live.

Just keep going, and don't focus on anyone else's preconceptions about whether you're too old to do anything.  From everything I've ever read, most scientists supposedly do their best work in their mid to late 20s.  If I believed that rubbish, I wouldn't even be doing what I am in Minecraft now, let alone anything more serious.

Common sense is for common people.

[Cyanhide]

Update male Mercurian.


If you want anything changed please feel free to say so . Still Work In Progress.




Cyanhide

[thorfourwinds]

OUTSTANDING !

[Cyanhide]

Gosh! Thankyou Hope it'l eventually lure people to the game haha^^.


Cyanhide

[undo11]

that's pretty.   

here's my observations:

nice pose. 
he's too muscular for a mercurian. 
his biceps and thigh muscles are more like what you would see on a venusian or martian, particularly venusians who are fitness freaks and tall, whereas the martians are more compact athletes .  same for the family jewels.  abs are good but could probably be toned down a bit.   he looks cool though.

i like the rest of it.     those feathers are so nice. too bad it would be impossible to make them that beautiful on a 3d model.  also like the wing design. that's cool looking.  thumbs up on that.  got the whole retro vibe going on.  are you still having problems with the lower half of the mercurian female?

do you think it's better to have them be so brawny? i mean all three races of the inner worlds faction will be these fairly large, muscular people if we do that, vs. the outer worlds faction who have 2 short races and one average height with an average build.   

may have to add 2 more races, and give the inner worlds a shorty and the outer worlds another tall.

[undo11]

k, here's the race legend on these guys

mercurians: native americans, extra-terrestrial with greek mythos in there too

venusians:  scandanavians, extra-terrestrial with some norse mythos

martians:  african, semites, extra-terrestrials with some egyptian mythos

jupiterians:  chinese/japanese, extra terrestrials with chinese/japanese  cultural styles,  a bit of buddhist lore in there.

saturnians: australian aborigines, extra terrestrials with  aborigine art motifs (gotta be careful on this cause some motifs are new creations and not public domain/. i created my own for their markings. you can see them on prior page of the thread)

neptunians: sumerians or atlanteans, extra terrestrials, with mermaid/merman thrown in.

[undo11]

k think i figured it out:

2 new races will be:

earthians (hehe):  tall reptilians - outer worlds
moonians (as in earth's moon):  greys, short - inner worlds.

woot.


the lore for the greys will include that they were genetically designed by the reptilians to mine the moon and became disatisfied with their servitude, and joined the inner worlds faction.

the reptilians will be a challenging race to do lore and art for.

[Cyanhide]

The female lower torso is literally killing me I'l adjust the hair then to be more 3D friendly then.

What do you mean by brawny ? ( uhm like super torso ? ).
I'l slender him down then .

Cyanhide

[undo11]

The female lower torso is literally killing me I'l adjust the hair then to be more 3D friendly then.

What do you mean by brawny ? ( uhm like super torso ? ).
I'l slender him down then .

Cyanhide

on the female, you could paint one leg, then mirror / reflect it / clone it, on the other side.     

yeah brawny means muscular.  you can leave the feathers as they are. it's a concept art so that gives you room for flair and creativity you can't ordinarily get in a 3d model.  just as long as it approximates the final 3d model.  if you think it can be modelled in 3d and not be too far from the concept, it'll work.  .     also keep in mind that the 3d model will have to be low res to keep it mmo friendly,  so quite a bit of your pretty detail will be lost.

[undo11]

every race has different reasons for their level of fitness:


mercurians use fitness as utility*
venusians use fitness as beauty
moonians use fitness as utility*
martians use fitness as advantage

earthians use fitness as utility*
jupiterians use fitness as advantage
saturnians use fitness as utility*
neptunian use fitness as entertainment

*utility is defined, in this case, as anything that is secondary to primary skill sets.  dps benefit from fitness but it is not the basis of their function in the mmo environment.   whereas tanks/warriors gain the most use out of fitness/athletics because it's their primary skill set. because neptunians and venusians don't use fitness as a primary skillset or secondary utility skillset, they can use it any way we want in order to fit their race with their lore and the game world's lore

our 2 new races, will both be dps

so now each faction has
one healer class
one tank class
and 2 utility (dps) classes

oh and i used this free 3d modeling software to create the 3d examples: Make Human  http://www.makehuman.org/
maybe it will help you arrive at fast answers for how something you're designing would look in 3d.

[undo11]

gonna have a problem figuring out the earth racial equivalent of reptilians.  because they have such negative connotations, i am leery to assign them to any particular racial traits other than dinosaurs lol 

we either have to make them extremely savage and scary or fun and interesting.   not sure which to choose because on the one hand, i want to keep both factions equally attractive to new players so there's not a shortage of people interested in a faction due to social norms, and on the other hand, since the outer worlds faction have no large, intimidating race, the reptilians might serve the purpose well by adding intimidating features to their appearance, not just tall but tall and scary.  they can't be too musclebound though, or we end up with a dps that's musclebound, and that wouldn't make any sense, particularly since the outer worlds faction has a short tank class.  the reptilians would seem like the more natural choice for tank then and that's not gonna work. our little jupiterians are martial artists of a sort.

i think the greys have the same problem.   probably have to make these 2 races solely dependent on non-race based information.   in other words, we'll have to make it up as we go along and just add bits and pieces of common ufology type information and dinosaur info (have to be careful of copyright here as well) where applicable.

the next issue is, what kind of dps to make them.
the inner worlds has a rogue dps already but no hunter dps.  we could give the hunter type to the grey, who uses ranged weapons and some kind of pet.  would have to be a biological pet, because its from inner worlds and they are all about natural stuff for the most part.

in outer worlds, make the reptilian a rogue type class.

now these have to be separated from each other somehow.
remember the mercurians were masters of disguise, which they achieve by the use of imagines and potions.  but the outer world factions rely more heavily on artificial means to achieve the same or similar effects as inner worlds abilities. 

yeah that'll do it. make the reptilians masters of disguise, rogue type,  too, just via a different process, involving technology. the animation would have to be either sillier or scarier, than mercurians, depending on which approach we want to take on this. 

guess we need to have a set of nice art examples of what all these guys/gals look like, then blurbs on their lore/classes, then ask people which race they find the most appealing, think they would play and why, then determine which side needs a tweak to keep the factions evenly distributed with player populations.

the mercurians, jupiterians and neptunians are our equivalents to furries.  with the addition of reptilians we now have 3 furry types on the outer worlds side.  vs.  only 1 on the inner worlds side.  hmm...   perhaps make the grey's pet, the grey himself/herself, controlling via a mind link or something,  a furry racial pet.  but what is the question.  in other words, the grey is there via mind link but not physically present other than the furry pet who's eyes he sees out of and extremities he uses but that means the grey would no longer be a ranged dps, more like a wow druid in boomkin form.

would work if we depicted the grey translucent and dimensionally shifted when in combat,  so he's interfacing with 3d reality via the furry.  any suggestions for the furry type?   has to be something you might consider for a moon based critter.   also, it's ranged dps, so maybe an imagine user.  our first mage type, perhaps.  i'm resisting the urge to say "fairies."

maybe we could have them create their pets on the spot, like a mage does when they summon elementals.  elementals as furries?  not sure on that.   too many elemental pets in mmos.  thinking....oh oh, i have an idea.   they use moon "dust" to form something like this
http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/examples/webgl_particles_dynamic.html  and it can take various shapes of their choosing. like give them 4 choices, something unique tho.

maybe they can form little light based replicas, like the images in the link, of the opposing team members racial features but are purely ranged dps. and the saturnians, form little robots that act like normal pets where lack of fine tuned control that the greys have over their pets, is replaced by the fact the saturnian can use ranged weapons as well as the damage their pet does.

maybe. i can't decide.  having those pretty glowy lighted characters really is an opportunity to have a cool, unique looking pet form for the greys. i just can't think of anything that i really like atm.   hrm, maybe angels, beings with wings but just drawn in light. and then they have a choice of making it male or female and in one of the 4 colors we choose for it.  that would allow us to include an angelic type race, without some of the complications related to the animation of flying.  they won't fly as they are just light projections  of moon dust that the grey is using for combat.

[undo11]

i'd like to clarify something about the appearance of the male characters in the game.  i don't mind if they are more masculine looking, if by chance some of them look too feminine, i don't mind if they are buffed up a bit, within the framework of their skills and lore, of course. just keep in mind that more than half of the female characters in a mmo, are played by men.  not because they are gay necessarily  or cross dressers, but because they claim to like watching a female character move more than a male character.  they can dress them in slinky armor and so forth.

personally, gender is just not that big of an issue to me.  if i like the character animations and sounds, i will be more likely to pick that race/gender.   cause you spend so much time doing things that require running the animations and sounds the character does, that they are just as important after playing them for several levels as their appearance.

here are some wow examples of casting animations.  you can see a big difference and probably tell as well how some could get really irritating if they were awkward or paired with irritating sound fx.

Blood Elves


Draenei


Worgen


All horde priest casting animations other than goblins


Night Elf Male


Night Elf Female


Goblin Female


etc.  there's a bunch more.  some of them are quite fun and decent or tolerable. some of them are irritating.  at least to me.  so it isn't just how big the muscles are or the capacity for breast size modification, but also if the model is pleasant to work with for multiple levels. 

[undo11]

i think wow's decision to not let the muscle size, breast size, height or weight of the character models be changed, was a good call.  when i played star wars galaxies,  they had a profession called image designer.  you could modify other players appearances, including height, weight, hair color, eye color, markings, markings color, horns, horn colors, skin color, muscle size, breast size, even booty size, etc.  the most popular mod by far was breast size, followed by muscle size.  what were once female models with trim physiques, turned to vast armies of laser gun wielding playboy bunnies.  it was crazy. 

can ruin the lore of a game in a hurry that way.

[undo11]

new idea for the world pvp planet.
initially we had the idea of making a separate pvp planet, where rare resources spawned.  we realized that these resources would have to be specific to pvp, so if non pvpers wanted them, they would have to want them out of some kind of business decision and fight pvpers to get them, rather than as result of them being useful to the rest of the player community, other than pvpers.  this planet would also have a level restriction. 

we also discussed making the world spawn a raid level boss as a planet mechanism, et.al, the planet has its own defenses, and once enough people start harvesting its resources, eventually a raid level boss spawns.  this boss immediately adds anyone currently on the planet, to its aggro list, then teleports them to its location, no matter where they are on the planet, nor what they were doing.   a battle ensues.   anyone that takes part in the battle by attacking the boss at least once, or healing anyone currently engaged in combat with the boss, is added to a second list to receive a token,  if the battle is succesful and the raid level boss is defeated.   a dungeon specific to that planet, and only enterable if you take part in dispensing of the raid boss, is activated and if you have the token, you can enter.  even rarer pvp based resources are inside this dungeon.   technically it isn't a dungeon.  it's more like another part of the same planet, perhaps the lair of the defeated raid boss which contains very specific, rare resources that are not otherwise available on that planet.

  this lair is only accessible for 1 hour. then the whole thing starts over again if there are enough people harvesting resources.  there would be a few different raid bosses.

p.s. you wouldn't be able to go outside the raid boss' range and start harvesting again, as long as it was still alive, as the area where everyone on the planet was teleported to would be covered by an inescapsible boundary till the boss was dead