New Monster or Boss Concept

Ive been doing some custom animations for my next skin and am starting to get pretty familiar with 3d max so Ive been thinking about attempting to make an invasion monster to test out my 3d / scripting skills. Right now Ive still probably got about a month to go on the skin so Ive got some time to plan this out a bit and was wondering what ideas you all had as far as abilities for the monster and what it could look like.

Things to consider about the model.

It needs to be 2000 polys or less so it cant be super complicated. (1500 - 2000 polys is about quake 3's level of detail)

I can do plenty of effects with the textures but they can eat up more memory than the model itself after a couple of passes.

As far as the coding goes I'll do my best but I get lost pretty easily since I have no experience (yet) with java or c++, not to mention documentation for the game is hard to find when you need it.

if you need someone to sketch a cool beast out lemme know. im a spiffy artist.

im all for the boss concept..

How about something along the lines of Vulcan from the nvidia demo? Kind of a cross between titan and warlord, with a fire engulfed body. Actually, it would look alot like a Balrog.

i think it's kind of important at this point to ask what Dru thinks, especially if you want this on the DC server. If it's a definite no, you might choose not to spend as much time on it. if it depends how good it ends up being that could be a motivation etc. i'm sure you could come up with a good end product though

as for the general idea, i think while size (hit points/shield) matter, intelligence should be more important. i'm more scared of shield nalis than the titans. and i'm mostly killed by warlords (i don't know if anyone will agree). so that's would be stuff to think about.

as far as design goes, i think one of the best creature designs are the infernos from warcraft. without the green fire they could be a good place start, not very complicated either;

http://img154.exs.cx/img154/8939/inferno0ak.jpg

Sounds like a good idea. I just want to say that the Warlord is only 511 polys, so 2000 might be a little too much. And I think it would look the best if the texture wasn't too detailed, nor the mesh. If it looks great, 1500 polys, it won't blend in well with the regular monsters and it'll look strange.

plus the infernoes are awesome. do it

Sketches / pics would be great (be a plus if they are in fron / side view for the modeling )

As for the poly count I may make a lower one but with UT2007 coming I was thinking that 1500 - 2000 would be a good range. (still just a guess though) And since it appears there will be no skaarj (or gen mokia) the Invasion gametype will probably have to be made for it by someone, and since I believe atari is no longer part of the franchise putting skaarj from the UT titles they published coul possibly get people in trouble (don't quote me though

Anyway even if I finished before UT2007 Druid has kept the monsters strictly to Sator's pack which also helps keep the game so balanced, so I really don't think we would see it on the DC server. (maybe when we go to UT2007 invasion though.. maybe)

[looks at inferno link] hmmm I coul probably have some fun with that... Elemental Golems... modeling it might even be fairly simple..

Oh, I thought this was for Ut2004

If it's for UT2007, go overboard!

Just one thing, though. You might want to wait a bit, because 2007 will have a different modeling system. The artist makes a very high poly model, a low poly model, and the bump map is taken from the high poly and put onto the low poly for the realism...

Yep normal mapping will be great. I'll see if I can't get a model for a golem/inferno rigged up to the titan skeleton and get it into UT2004 as I don't think it would be that hard. Probably make it 3/4 of the health & shield and about 1/2 the damage/size (just a bit bigger than a player) then work on a couple different damage types so there can be a few varieties (idonthinkicanspell)

Possible varieties (even though there are skaarj with some of these)

Fire (of course): Would through either fire or fiery (noicantspell) rocks that would cause fire damage (like poison weapons sortof)

Ice: hmmm freezing....

Metal/Iron/Gold: More health would be the hardest of them

A quik pic at what I was able to do so far. I'll probably need to remake most of it but this one ended up with 572 polys so I think I'll go ahead with trying to make one for UT2004 before working on any 2007 stuff.

(note I unraped the UV's but didnt actually make a skin for it just sort of a rough idea of the basic shape right now)

Only 527 polys so far? It could be 50k and run fine... maya or 3ds?

3ds max 8.

50k polys would probably be ok for a map but for ut2004 the player models are about 3000 or so. All the invasion monsters are around 500 or so. By the time you get 15 or so monsters on the map it adds up, especially if they are throwing rocks at you

Yes it shows, havent you ever been the last one on a titan wave... or worse the last one on vehicle invasion on a titan wave *Shivers*

Sorry, I was under the impression that the boss would be fought by itself

I'm thinking this will end up more like a monster than a boss. I wouldnt know where to begin with the code for a boss. It might even need some code to get the games AI to work with it.