Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[elf-fondling human]

Hm...I'll be watching this, looks very interesting.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, even in humans, there's a gradient between having very light hair (all the way to nearly white) all the way down to black hair, and the in-between areas have a gradient between brown/blonde and red for a fairly wide range of hair colors, even if it's only about 1/6th of all possible colors on the color wheel. 

So, basically, what's the size of the wedge you want to draw?

When talking about river snakes or desert snakes, though, it is worth mentioning that serpentine bodies are generally fairly decent at being amphibious - sea snakes are evolved almost entirely for swimming, and look eel-like, but a regular snake can be a fairly good swimmer, they just need to avoid cold areas. 

Serpents and reptiles in general, however, have an advantage in deserts because their lower metabolisms (thanks to cold blood) mean they use less calories regulating body temperature, which means they eat less food, and they don't sweat and breathe slower while resting, so they respirate less air back into the atmosphere. 

Serpents are also prodigious tree-climbers and rock-climbers, thanks to the good grip their bodies can give them.  They can adapt well to vertical environments like mountains and cliffs as well as trees or rainforests, and can ford creeks and rivers well.

Basically, you can find a snake anywhere it's warm enough for a reptile to survive.

A sentient humanoid creature tends to become much more generalized and adaptable than their more specialized kin - apes are localized in jungles, but humans are everywhere.  A serpentine race would probably be comfortable anywhere that doesn't freeze, and it makes a huge deal of sense for a desert creature to go underground - less overpowering sunlight, underground is the only place to find water, and in colder areas, it's even warmer underground at night than it is on the surface.  If they took to being underground (like the snakemen in the game already), then they could spread almost anywhere, just so long as they avoid the surface during freezing temperatures.  (Real snakes in temperate climates find underground burrows and hibernate away the winter.)


Anyway, I was mostly testing out the palette swaps...

I'm not sure I actually like the miko with that color of blue hair, myself, honestly.    I like the darker colors with the miko outfit, but the blue-gray doesn't go as well with the red. I think I like the dark purple most, honestly. 



Here's a set of going around the whole color wheel.  Some are "natural" colors, like faded blue/purples, while some are bright, bold blues for contrast.  The middle far left, for example, is pure yellow compared to the sort of dirty blondes next to and above it. 

The third on the top row is a "natural" hair color, dark auburn, while the top right looks almost the same, but is just a dark pure red. 

The top left, by the way, is the base color I'm using now.  (A peasant with the shading removed to make palette swapping easier.)

Taking the middle row from the third to the fifth, these are all yellow-greens that get darker and bluer/less yellow.  Fifth is a desaturated darker green, while sixth is a pure green for contrast.  Seventh and eighth on the row are a light and dark "moss green" that is blueish.

Working back from the bottom row, the eighth from the left (far right) is a dark green, while the seventh is a dark teal.  There's a blue-green sixth, then fifth is pure blue, while the fourth is that color blue you said you liked in the miko, which has slight purple tints and is desaturated.    Then there is a dark purple-blue in third, a light purple in second, and the bottom left is a red-purple "wine red" color.

So basically, pick how light-to-dark the scale and hair colors go, what percentage of the color wheel they take up, and how desaturated their hair and scales can be.

[Girlinhat]

The wine red, dark green (near the middle) and third and fourth purple ones, right before the blue, look pretty good.  The blues look pretty cool to, but, eh, I think I'll let you pick the specific colors XP

Also, I've already planned on their heat requirements.  The caravan is active in summer, and they're made to prefer mountains and any tropics.  I may throw in a religious sphere for fire, but I don't think that's needed.

[NW_Kohaku]

There used to be colddam points, but it seems like they were taken out in the jump to 31.01, so instead we have insulation (and I guess it just goes towards homeotherm?), so I guess you can make nagas more vulnerable to cold by taking away some fat thickness, and making sure that they only have hair on top of their heads.  (I don't think scales insulate.)

Be careful about making them mountain-based, or they won't live anywhere but in mountains, the way that goblins and dwarves are currently landlocked. 

Also, looking at tokens... Even if you have nagas come from eggs, they'd still need to be born at a size about the same size as an egg, anyway, which means baby-sized.

Also, some snakes give live birth the way that mammals do.  Mainly, ones that live in colder climates, where eggs would die of cold.  There's also an in-between state, where snakes have eggs, but they don't lay them, and they hatch inside the womb.  Either way, at birth or at hatching, they are nowhere near their full adult sizes (and at the time that an egg is laid, the baby-to-be is probably not much more than a zygote).


So, um, anyway, about colors, I guess that means you're leaning towards a slice of the color wheel from red to green along the cool half of the spectrum.  You seem to like the darker colors of the ones I picked, but I can't get too dark, or they don't show up well against the dark greys or blacks.  So I guess there's going to be a limited range of how light the colors go. 

Also, do you want to do a palette of skin/underscale colors? I could do the whole ecru to dark peach thing that the game does, if you so choose.


EDIT: Oh, and while we're at it, should certain colors indicate certain social status? I.E. purple-haired/scaled nobles?  Is green a "commoner color"?

[Girlinhat]

Well, I also like eggs, and I was waiting for the .19 release when I could do this properly   I'll probably leave heat damage alone until it gets a bit more detail on it, because temperature and creatures don't interact well at the moment.

Yeah, darker reds and blues sound good, and for skin I already said to use "healthy tan" but the fair skin you're using looks good too.  You can do a full palette if you really want, but I think soft white skin will work.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, eggs will be interesting, if potentially buggy (you have to make sure mothers don't eat the eggs that have live children in them... unless you're for some pretty radical forms of contraception in naga society).  Still, I think a hatchling should probably be baby-sized for a while after hatching, so having it go egg->baby->child->adult would still be called for.  (Hatchlings can't be any bigger than the egg they fit inside, after all.)

As for skin color, I did the nobles and miko paler than the others, but I can fudge things a little more tan if you like.

[Girlinhat]

I'm mostly going to forbid egg stockpiles to solve that   You have to do the same thing for animal eggs.  But yeah, a baby state may be good.  And a baby could be bigger than the egg, assuming it grew quickly!  Either way, probably a baby state, because it seems like civilized creatures have weaker babies.  A lamb or gazette will drop out of the womb and start running, humans are... not so much.

Skin color looks good, I'm not quite as worried about that, as long as it fits the look.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yeah, but it's just you forbidding the stockpiles - it's a player rule you'd have to follow.  Plus there's no reason for a female not to eat her own eggs if they were never fertilized.  Eggs are highly concentrated pools of nutrients, and you can't just throw that many nutrients away if you aren't going to be using them for reproduction - eating them to take those nutrients back in is the only thing that really makes sense. 

(In fact, several creatures do similar things: Spiders eat their own webs if they become damaged or have to move, for example.  The silk in a web represents about 1/3 of their total body weight, and is made of precious protiens that are expensive to synthesize, so abandoning a web completely is just out of the question, they'd starve after losing one or two webs, no matter how well-fed they are.)


... anyway, I did my presentation... somehow... now I just have a paper to write... due tomorrow... on something I haven't read yet.

But that's something that isn't due until tommorow, and I'm tired, so screw it, I'm painting nagas.

[Girlinhat]

Not to mention the various things that happen to placentas...  I know what you mean, and I agree, but it's a coding issue.  We're not yet able to specify "do not harvest baby eggs" so we do as best we can!  Although for this -particular- culture, who values fertility and lust, they probably wouldn't casually eat eggs.  They'd be more likely to decorate, preserve, and/or sell an egg, or perform a ritual-style preparation for eating, and both of these actions will be specified in their own reactions.

[NW_Kohaku]

Speaking of which, you haven't been too specific in the details of what you envision nagas to be, socially.  (As my eyebrow arches at the mention of "lust".)

Because of my abortive attempt at making the lamia sub-race, and re-enkindled enjoyment of some of these special races, I'd like to participate further in this mod if you'll have me.  (If nothing else, I guess I could just use the motivation to go back to the lamia in my own mod.)  The things you've been talking about in the thread about materials and tissues, and the desire for a graphics pack, all point to this being a potentially quite ambitious project.  It's all on how much you want to share, though - I completely understand the desire to go it alone (well, other than the sprites, alone).

I'm also not quite sure what different sprites we'll need, here.  Do you want me to just copy all the tokens and sprites on the Phoebus sheet for dwarves?  I've never done a graphics pack before, so I'm not at all familiar with how to make one. 

I guess that means I also need to make a drunk.  I'm guessing naga do that by downing whole bottles of wine (What?! Beer?!  Nothing but top shelf for nagas!) while reclining on those Roman-style couches with only one side.  That might be hard to draw in sixteen pixels, though, so maybe they'll just be lounging their head on their own coils while tipping back a bottle.


Also, speaking of what I'm guessing you were going to do when asking about tissues and materials...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, I'm going to start working on how much I can mess with making a lamia for now.

I want to make a smaller "lower body", and then make an "upper tail" and "lower tail" set of parts, which have much larger proportions relative to the rest of the body than is mentioned in the Snakeman-style body type...

This means I'm building a custom body type.

The problem is that I don't think Toady allows for organs to be divided among any parts besides those with UPPERBODY and LOWERBODY tags...

It's also unfortunate, but thanks to a lack of any real way to deal with non-humanoid body types, it seems you can wear shoes on a tail... I can't really do much about it until Toady gives it some attention.

I have some leftover code on that, by the by, although it may not be of terribly much help if you have an idea of what you want to do already.

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I made a drunk... As I feared, 16 pixels just isn't enough space to really do something I'm truly satisfied with, but I at least managed to convey the notion that she's sort of drinking herself into a coma and slumped in a pile on the floor.

Spoiler: Concept in pencil this time (click to show/hide)

[Girlinhat]

I'm not sure what a drunk technically is, though.  The wiki article talks about the act of being drunk for a Dwarf.  I'm not entirely sure that a drunk sprite is needed, because all I do know is that they're in adventure mode somewhere...

I don't mind getting help on the project, and it will be quiet the project.  As for "lust", my definition for them is "a sensual, strong race."  Not exactly roman-style debauchery, but more of an innate acknowledgment of the more sensual things and respect for love.  Whereas humans might wake up, bathe, dress, go to the dining hall, then work, a naga might wake up, bathe in the river, grab a drink, put on a toga, and head to work.  "Less concerned with modesty" is also fitting.  There's a big respect for childbirthing as well, so there's various traditions and ceremonies around what to do with fertilized and unfertilized eggs.

I've already dabbled with body forms.  I mostly gave them a tail but no [STANCE] token, so they can always move.  I think this is fitting, because it would be really hard to stop a snake from moving without killing it.  After all, if you cut off half the tail, the other half will just wiggle a bit more.  Thus, no shoes, because there's no [STANCE].  They're also significantly larger than other races, so they can't actually wear things.  I've got them with scales on the lower body and tail (or maybe just the tail, I think) and I haven't done it yet, but I know you can put organs in different body parts, like how brains are located in the head.  It'd be pretty easy to define a custom set of organs spread across upper and lower body.  In this case, your "upper tail" and "lower tail" would be "lower body" and "tail".

As for number of sprites, basically one for each profession, weapon, weaponlord, and whatever nobles work their way into the picture.

[NW_Kohaku]

Drunks are only found in adventure mode (although with taverns in fortress mode, this may change), and are the guys who hang around bars waiting for adventurers to talk them into being their cannon fodder.  (With nagas, though, be careful about just how "pickled" you allow them to become.)

On snakes: A snake of the size of a naga/lamia would have to move by a different means than most smaller snakes, as the sideways "wiggle" form of slithering would be ineffective for something as massive as a humanoid sperpent.  Most small snakes can slither by pushing themselves off against the loose dirt on the ground, but a large snake is so massive that it shoves the dirt away from it, instead of itself away from the dirt. 

They'd have to use Rectilinear Motion, where two opposing sets of muscles are used.  In essence, it works like an inchworm where most of the body never bunches up - the snake rests on its outer treads, and pulls the inner treads forwards, then rests on the inner treads, and pulls its outer treads forwards. 

It basically winds up looking to outside observers as the muscles of the snake rippling slightly while the snake just glides forward without the slither motion.

Rectilinear motion is less efficient than most other forms of serpentine motion, however.  Snake Locomotion page on wikipedia.

[Girlinhat]

I'm not so overly worried with movement type, I was just going to have them slither along like a small snake and mark that as "suspension of disbelief" because the alternative is to make them rather slow, it seems.  These are also intelligent beings, so let's just say "they're smart enough to know how to slither".  It also doesn't really matter, because the specifics of movement aren't defined.  When you define a single tail as [STANCE] the game could make them slither, make them bounce like a pogo stick, or make them jet-propelled from that one limb.  There's no [WALK] or [SLITHER] token, so movement type is up for the player to determine from the limbs used in context.

[NW_Kohaku]

Boa constrictors aren't slow, it's just "inefficient" movement - that means it takes up more energy to move than the other forms.  Actually, it probably is slower in terms of relative speed to the size of the creature, but a large snake can still move pretty fast when it wants to, even using rectilinear movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU3CWXDQ5rs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEto1-ZTbd4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHgLXX2mi7U&feature=related  (Near the end, especially, you see the difference in how it moves forward)

Anyway, yeah, there's nothing you can really program in, but it's fun to watch and think about.  Of course, rectilinear motion would mean that the serpentine body could generally be shorter than it would otherwise have to be - a fatter, shorter tail with more muscle, rather than the really long, thin tails. 

A really bulbous humanoid section of the body would be hard to support - unless you have the shorter, fatter type of body, you'd need something like a 50-foot body length, which is just unmanageably huge. 

Speaking of which, how large are you thinking that the nagas will be, anyway?  Assuming about a 3-foot torso and head length, I've been drawing about a 12-foot length naga in the icons, even deflating the head.  That's assuming it was made somewhat more short than it should be if it was to fit onto the 16x16 pixel size. 

You've said that nagas are large, but is that large in the human less-than-half of their bodies, or are their humanoid portions larger than human, as well?