Weekly bestiary log, entry 1
Since I literally cannot think of anything else besides this project in my free time I've decided to share more about my favorite part of designing this game so far: the enemies.
As I've noted, so far I'm using free marketplace assets for nearly everything. But I've been finding ways to modify them so much that the designs still have a fairly unique look. So in this series we're going to take a look at some (or maybe all?) of the ~100 different enemy types I've created so far along with some in-universe details about them and a few tidbits about how I designed them.
Aeronautilus (aero+nautilus) is simply the result of me wanting more flying enemies and having access to a kraken skeletal mesh. As you'll see the kraken got a lot of use mainly due to the tentacles but I felt the shell part needed to shine, and once I noticed that one of the coral meshes kinda looked like a helicopter blade the rest fell into place. I added some coral swords to some of the tentacle sockets to help add a sense of "swing" to its attack animation, otherwise it looked a bit silly. Credit to Suswave on Famiboards for helping me come up with the name.
This guy is one of my favorites. I took a crocodile skeletal mesh, turned it into a static mesh, edited that static mesh with a plugin to remove every portion except the head, attached the head to the head socket of a Large skeletal mesh character, then searched for a suitable weapon to give him, and when I saw I had a guitar club the name "croc star" immediately fell into place. All I had to do then was create a reptile skin material (I believe the base was an asphalt material of which I altered the base color, specularity and roughness) and give him some leather clothes befitting a rocker. Croc on!
This guy was the result of my fondness for pig puns. Once I got hold of a witch hat model I knew I wanted to make this. It was a simple task of attaching that model to his head, sticking two wands where the tusks would go and making a blue colored pig skin material. Voila.
This came about because I desperately wanted more plant/nature based enemies and tried to figure out which of the models I had access to looked best with an oak bark material skin. This model happened to have a gun so I replaced that with a branch (branch gun in use) and gave her another much larger branch to beat people up with.
Flying eyes and beholders are a staple of this genre so I definitely needed my own. Enter the kraken mesh which had just the tentacles (she's animations thereof) that I needed. Sticking an eye on top was not at all difficult, and the only remaining step was finding a good laser particle simulation which was not terribly tough either. And we have a lovely little horrific monstrosity!
Bonus creature!
Zebrarian: A barbarian with a fondness for books amalgamated with a zebra. Many zebras were roaming Mican at the time of the Amalgam Anomaly, and a number happened to live near the Barbarian lands in the Eastern mountains. After fusion, these barbarians felt persecuted by their own more savage tribes as well as the more typically civilized people of the cities, and so they remained in solitude, ever desiring to better themselves in one capacity or another.
Supposedly straight out of Bojack Horseman, this resulted from my desire to find some sort of enemy to slap a Zebra head onto. It actually took a lot longer than I would've thought to find something satisfactory but this works quite well, and the pun helps. The glasses are something I actually made myself, just 6 cylinders and a sphere slapped together in about 5 minutes.
Well, I'm not sure why my text is suddenly small and italic (EDIT: or is it?) but I hope you enjoyed this first entry! As always please leave any comments/concerns/criticisms below and let me know overall what you think. One man projects like this thrive off of feedback.
I hope to do these weekly, or semi-weekly, so look forward for the next update soon!
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