Let's chat seriously about PC Animals...

Paragon Studios has been working pretty feverishly on their four-legged rig. If you chart the progress from when the NPC 'scenery' wolves showed up at Halloween, you can see that they've been progressively adding animations and variations to the rig until we now have PC-pet animals in Darkness Control and Beast Mastery.

While some may consider that to be the end of the line of the rig, I'd like to think that the use and steady improvement of the rig means that we'll have player-controlled animal models in the not-too-distant future.

Obviously, this is a ton of work, but Paragon ALSO has a ton of skilled folks working there at the moment. I don't think it's an unreachable goal.

That said, what do we, as players, expect from PC animals? Do we expect them to do nothing but bite and claw? Is it fair to limit them to non-weapon powersets? Can we anchor blast and melee animations to the animals' noses and get away with it?

The following is what I want from PC animals:

Jaguar Strike: Electrical Melee/Energy Aura Stalker

Jaguar Strike is the apparently human son of a Mayan jaguar god. He's supposed to be able to shape-shift into his namesake. (Accordingly, Paragon has me by the short ones when they release the 'Panther Stealth Power'.) I would like him to be able to express all his melee powers in the form of biting and clawing. I'd also need to be able to customize the existing cat skeleton and colors slightly to make him look like a Jaguar rather than a dark lion.

I'd have no problems with all the melee particle animations for electric melee simply starting at his nose or paws. The Energy Aura animations would have to be deformed significantly to fit a 'four on the floor' model as opposed to the existing bipedal models we have. However, they do already seem to have all the necessary anchor points to fit... neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, hips, knees, feet.


Electric Hamster: Electrical Melee/Electric Armor

The Electric Hamster is the pet of a young girl who got lost in the machinery of Heaven. The various divine devices project him onto Earth as a human man. I'd like for him to be able to shape-shift into his namesake for teleporting and stealth. In the past I've used the 'Panda' shoulder pet colored orange and white to indicate him in his hamster form riding around on the shoulders of other characters.

We don't have a rodent skeleton or rodentine animations yet... bristle nose, comb whiskers, stand on hind legs, etc... Also, while most rodent skeletons are fairly similar, a hamster MODEL would require significant deformation of a mouse or rat skeleton to get the appropriate proportions.

Also, travel speed would need to be taken into account. Is an animal that's 1/20th the size of a human going to be able to run at the same speed as one?

Is an animal 1/20th the size of a human going to have a human-size hit box so that teammates can at least try to select him during a melee battle?


Shinx: Sonic/Devices blaster

Shinx is a wildcat genetically engineered on distant world populated by both humans and talking animals.

I made a version of Shinx during the Going Rogue beta (I think...) using the existing animal heads, clawed hands, and digitigrade feet. However, the proportions were all wrong. He wasn't a cat standing on its hind-legs like he was supposed to be. I wanted something a lot more like:

When he runs, he's supposed to run on all fours. When he fights, he's supposed to stand on his hind legs to use his attacks.

Also, I wanted him to use something like the Council's sonic rifle for his sonic attacks. When he ran, it would be slung along his side, but then when he attacks, he'll pull it up and target enemies with it.

That's a pretty far cry from animals' animations being limited to claws and bites.

Some tall orders, I know, but I have no doubts that the Paragon developers and artists are up to the task.


What do you want from animal models, especially if you play one as a PC?

I would expect them to be like Khelds. they all look the same and have only one powerset. I would think they would allow color and maybe a pattern.

I'm thinking melee attack powerset. Cannot be used with shield defense or ninjitsu powerset.

so you could buy the Cat powerset. Choose Lion, Tiger, Panther look. Go with Willpower or another defense set. And have your brute.

If they gave us player characters that could look like Puss in Boots, very soon we'd have players clamoring for player characters that could look like Carmelita Fox...



This game is getting more Furry all the time...

Coming up with an animation set (with matching animation times) for a new body rig for all the existing powersets seems unlikely... even if you omitted all weapon-based sets (sword, shield, etc.)

... and then, of course, we'd have the people clamoring for costume option equality between all the rigs, like we see with male/female/huge already (I only half kid- you know SOMEONE will bring it up)


---
I do think that a "savage lands" type of zone would be a great way to showcase the various alternate-walking rigs (along with the critter pack and the rumored reptile critter pack II) A 4-legged / shapeshifter "epic archetype" that's tied to such a zone would be a great way to tie it all together.

I wouldn't mind having the dog/cat run with the 4 legged rig over the beast run myself but eh I doubt they will change it

Are those first two sparkledogs? Please tell me they're not sparkledogs!

*after looking up what the hell that stupid meme even is*

How could the second be a sparkle dog? It's *ONE* color with practically no extra design besides it being a black wolf with a chain and bracelets. Unless you think animals can't have accessories, I guess I'd better throw my lab's spiked collar away...

Since people started morphing into animals?

Why do these things have to be explained, exactly?

One observation: I do believe Shinx is the name of a fourth-generation Electric type Pokemon.

Also, you obviously didn't look up any sparkledogs of the goth variety. Those ones are also very dark and very black, and also very moody and sometimes seen with sharp things. It's only the multicolored sparkledogs that are seen with iPods and sometimes having wings.

Indeed. The panther stealth power will be totally controllable by a player.

For everyone else who didn't bother to look it up. Imagine two years from now, the streets of Paragon City are littered with fancy talking canines trailing sparkly rainbow streaks behind them, and they all generally look like this:



Maybe Furries aren't the worst thing that could happen?

I think they just need to keep in mind the T rating when doing anything furry. We cannot even post a picture of a real dead horse here so a lot of that furry action would be banned.