Shem:- I already started work on a War Drik based on that piece of art you've posted... It went HIDEOUSLY wrong. It became grotesquely rubbish, I mean, not just bad but really TERRIBLE. So I gave up trying to animate a creature that was as broad as it was long, has no legs worth a damn yet is supposed to be able to flail and swipe with its paws (?!) and started on the Mekillot instead.
I did think about making some sort of cargo-wagon sort of thing to be pulled behind one or two Mekillots but that raises the question of animating the finished composite so that when the creatures turn, the wagon follows logically rather than swinging about like an extension of their tails and it...
becomes complicated. Unfortunately, I know I'm not going to have time to hit all the animation issues with big bricks, especially given that I'm none too good at complex custom animations anyway.
ALSO, by the time you've got a pair of 30-35 foot Creature models hauling a 50 foot plus trailer around, they take up so much space that they're going to have SERIOUS practical limitations in any normal Area in a Module. You can only create an Area up to 32x32 Tiles at maximum. One PHoD Mekillot is over 2 Tiles in length, add two Mekillots abreast plus a wagon such as the one in the art (above the Drik) and you've got a composite "Creature" model of about 4 or 5 Tiles wide by at least 7 Tiles in length.
Add to that the fact that they won't even remotely fit through any narrow canyon or anything, won't go around
any corner without several hundred yards of walkable space all around, PLUS the fact that if there's any kind of sand dune, small rock, etc, in the Mekillots' path that either one of them has to rise to go over, the wagon behind them will levitate freakishly when they do so. And they
get stuck a lot... Which means you'd be limited to using the "Mekillots plus Wagon" model to huge Areas of nothing but completely flat, open Tiles which would be distinctly boring.
In other words, it just didn't seem a practical undertaking within the constraints of NWN. That's why I went back to my completely bloody awful War Drik and thought about transposing the rider onto the Mekillot, simply as a means of denoting the beast as "domesticated". I'll probably carry on with that plan anyway, since I've got a use for it in my own Modules, (assuming I ever get around to doing the Modules I have in mind).
In terms of scale, that's a standard-sized Human woman in the WIP image, standing about as close to the Mekillot's front leg as she can. That gives a rough size guide to anyone wanting to build "conveyances" of any sort to be pulled by the beasts. But as to linking the Mekillot(s) to wagons, it's definitely going to be a big animation issue, unless someone has a cunning plan I haven't thought of. If anyone does have any blistering ideas on how to make a Mekillot caravan a viable reality in NWN, given the above problems, I'd be interested to hear them.
EDIT:- I could do THREE versions of the Mekillot without recourse to having them pulling stuff...
1:- Standard Wild Mekillot
2:- Caravan Mekillot with Guardsman rider
3:- Caravan Mekillot with Cargo
(The Cargo version would simply have piles of crates, sacks, etc heaped on its back (something like the Pack Ox models on a huge scale). Several of these, with a few of the Guard version flanking them, plus assorted other NPC's alongside (perhaps some on Draygoth's Crodlu mounts) could make up a trade caravan that might actually be able to follow waypoints and scripts and navigate an Area without getting stuck. Maybe.) It's the best shot at a fully-fledged Athas caravan (which can actually move about) that I can think of within the framework of NWN - and what I can do between poking fibreglass Dinosaurs with pointed sticks).
Modifié par PLUSH HYENA of DOOM, 14 décembre 2013 - 04:28 .
