Vulpkanin Species Doc #430
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Design
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Gimme feedback, im shit at writing. And I honestly really badly want them in the game :death: |
I don’t really write design docs but it was easy to read/understand. |
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i liked someones suggestion i s aw earlier maybe milon to tie some of their stuff to forensics |
This in my eyes is a hard no, we dont want them to be a secoff species. Also exposing forensics to client might be troublesome (if they arent already) |
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I think the only thing that feels weird from literally all the downstream projects that I think should be mentioned is the sounds. For some reason, most downstreams and as well as the april fools one had no unique scream sounds, it was just human and feels very weird. I feel like if this was to be fully added, we'd need to find a scream sound that's canine like or something. |
Goob uses a fox screaming sound. I'm all up for having one like that |
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I think vulps should be able to tell what reagents are in maints pills and food items as well. It would be a very useful niche to have for any spessman. Now you can sniff out those maints hyperzine pills. Also the species needs a sfx and sprite cleaning. A lot of the hardsuit sprites don't really fit the artstyle and the sfx are goofy or just missing (as in the case of screams). |
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All that is to be fixed when we have it merged and allow people to actually work on the species. I just want some design down so we can have vulps to begin with |
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About whether to give heat resistance or vulnerability to vulps because of fur, they should instead have slower thermal regulation at higher temperatures because they can't sweat (the same could probably be done to moths tbh) |
Thermal regulation is absolutely a mess right now, just recently we only fixed hardsuits not killing people with heat damage |
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Kyo Scar will come back Also add leaping ability for vulpkanin |
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I was thinking of maybe they could get a tempory speed boost after howling (speed boost limited but howl not) and the howl replacing the scream for other races. This would be useful for antag and crew alike, allowing you to get to where you wanna go a little faster, weather your cargo droping a bounty or sci on the prowl for anoms, or a nukie declaring your going in for blood. This would set them apart from other races and is more easily commincated to the player than acute smell. but as ScarKy0 points out they was popular even without any modifcations so I would suggest putting them back in and adding their abilites as its devloped. though they do need a surival box. as during the event they lacked it. |
That was just a bug
IIRC anything combat for species is greatly frowned upon, other than resistances I guess. Its hard to tell |
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Their unique abilities sound great, really a fan of the budget chemgoggles as a concept (Harmony's vulp PR has the same concept which is such a brilliant one) |
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unrelated to the doc but i think vulps look really ugly compared to every other species currently in upstream |
Heat insulation is a blessing and a curse. Sure you might survive a bit more when it gets cold, but when you get set on fire cooling you down will be extremely difficult. Theres also the possibility of taking more heat damage as ive mentioned. |
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I can imagine vulpakin would become a lot like lizards in the regard that they would become an almost 100% upgrade to humans and not really having to play around their downsides while benefiting from the upsides, what is there to combat this? this will be mentioned in the species design doc im fairly sure though so idk |
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I had an idea for another downside if you want one. real furred creatures when made wet struggle with the cold until dry. so you could make it so if attacked with water it drops their temp |
Remind me to chat with you about this once speciesdoc is in as I have some concepts to chat about |
Im not sure how doable this would be, but definitely neef to consider some more downsides |
I will happily listen to some downside ideas, as long as they are pretty simple for now. Ill probably need to update this after the species doc anyways |
I think it can be done, we get the water damages slime code and change the damage to an effect like they eat a chilly |
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Personally I prefer the races to feel more alien. Vox, Diona, and Slime people are a great example of this. I don't think we should add more races that are just "earth creature but anthropomorphic" we already have big bugs and lizards. I feel like vulp would need some really unique ability/downside if it were to be added, cosmetic options are good but races should definately have a solid gameplay aspect. At the very least the current races should be balanced (looking at you, vox and lizard) before adding more imo |
Vulps was very popular on the limited aprils fools event and very popular downstream too, people like dogs/foxes and thats baring in mind that april fool vulps didn't even come with a surival kit putting them at a disadvantage vs everyone else. im personally for returning Vulps as they was during the event and worrying about fleshing them out as we go~ |
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| ### Customizability | ||
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| Vulps, by design, aren't meant to only represent a single canid. Rather instead focusing on being able to fit into several canine-like races by selecting from many diffrent markings. This includes things like ear shapes, tails and fur patterns. |
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Have been working on a sprite/visual design overhaul to back up getting this species merged. Still need to wait on the species doc before doing anything more than noodling tho |
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From the "Current Freezes and PR restrictions" issue:
I don't see why this (by your own admission) not unique species should get to jump the queue here.
These can't both be true, either it's got interesting unique features, or it's not meant to be interesing or unique, From this doc it looks like you're focusing on how it looks, and having a lot of options for that being the unique feature. If it's going to be using the sprites from the april fools branch then "how it looks" is not interesting at all, the april fools vulps were basically fluffy lizard, and lizards already exist. I don't think that new species should be overlapping conceptually or aesthetically with existing ones, and this is just lizard (anthropomorphic animal with a tail) + moth (fur).
Then this barely has a downside, bad thermoregulation does not bring it down enough for better melee damage and being able to see chems.
I honestly don't mind this, and would be pro other species being made to be more like this, with a "base species" and then purely aestetic sub-species. However doing that means it's even more important that the base species is interesting, and adds actual gameplay beyond looking different and one or 2 very minor species traits.
This is barely a feature, every species is expected to have unique sounds.
Why shouldn't it? Vox added an entirely new way of playing, and encouraged interactions between people who weren't playing vox. There is no "variety in gameplay" here, and it isn't a particularly unique appearance either, at least not with the april fools sprites. I don't see this adding anything to the overall "feel" of the game. When voxes were added you had people building vox boxes, and interacting with atmos to get more nitrogen. They were arguably the main force behind the supercooled gas meta for atmos techs. Functionally, this feels on the same level as adding a new roundstart jumpsuit for passengers. I don't see why it deserves to skip the feature freeze. |
One day people will realize i'm not trying to skip the queue and just trying to have something for when the freeze gets lifted |
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Anyways this doc is severely outdated and I will tackle updating it at some point. |
I would prefer current species to get a touch of love before adding any new ones. My Lizard has a unique scream and laugh, but what about the cough? It has no cough. No sigh. Etc. It doesn't even play the human soundbytes, just, silence... Slimes have the issue of internal storage being clunky. Dwarves are just short human, basically no unique features that makes them stand out. There should be a defined standard for species, and most of the current species probably don't really live up to that standard yet. I think we should spearhead tackling that issue, and then we will have better guidelines and a roadmap for adding new species. |
I believe that the proper species template doc is being worked on to address these issues. I know dwarves specifically are the subject of much debate because they are currently just short humans. |
Good! Then that work should be finished, and have time to settle so we can gauge how effective it was. THEN we should worry about adding new species. |
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Work on other species can be done at any time by anyone, recently voxes got a new feature. |
True, but Vulps are done, Dwarves are my main race but they are not done and thats okay. No need to hold up something finished as something else needs work. |
Dwarves should just be a customization option on humans, in my opinion, maybe Vulp should be like that too? I think new races should give some actual variety in how you interact with the world. Putting dwarfism and... Vulp? (Maybe?) as traits for human customization to signify they are mostly just humans. This idea would need more work if it would be done I think. My brain puts races into 3 tiers, based on the differences in gameplay from humans: Human adjacent(Just humans in different shapes, more bonus then deficit): Lizards, Dwarves, Vulps, Arachnid I think moving away from human-adjacent type species or merging them into humans would be the best if possible. It's not bad to have options, but the options should be more than just cosmetic for races(in my opinion) The other option to merging them with humans is to provide some kind of major downside or rework to how most branches do it to make playing it different from playing humans. Instead of a blank resistance to cold or weak temperature regulation, make it so it's significantly harder for them to cool down. They would suffer more in the heat but it would give them a lot of thermal protection with cold environments. The chemical identification is cool, but maybe it applies a small amount of the chemical to the Vulp when they identify them due to more fumes entering their body (idk, think everyone else whafts the scent, Vulp do a full SNNNIIFFFF). I don't think this is enough to make them unique, though; it just makes the abilities they would have a little more interesting. Making Vulp, in some way, not just human with some extra stuff tacked on should be a goal right? They are dog people, maybe they can't run as fast unless they are on all fours, slower movement speed but you can go on all fours to go a little faster than everyone else at the cost of only having one hand(mouth). Or maybe play more into the nose thing, make it so if they try to walk over a strong-smelling chemical on the ground its too much for them and it stops them from walking over it. |
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Updated to reflect the PR. Unfortunately I'm not a writer. |
Focused on removing stuff that was either superfluous to the design doc, actually unable to be merged (e.g. colourblindness), and made sure to add their diet, which for some reason was missing from the proposal (but I can't imagine Scar intends for them to have an omnivore diet??)
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A discussion regarding the document has been opened at https://forum.spacestation14.com/t/vulpkanin-species/22868 |
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Can we just merge Lizards, Vulps, and Felinids (Khajits or Tabaxi or whatever) into some generic anthropomorphic animal with tail species? They're not super visually distinctive from each other, and functionally fluffy dog tail VS slender cat tail VS scaled lizard tail can be a marking difference. Also this leaves room for other anthropomorphic expansions like fish. Fish tail marking. I also wouldn't mind a merge of Humans and Dwarves (and Elves if you consider them distinct) for that matter. I just think all the anthropomorphic species are gonna be super similar when we get down to it so I thought I would throw it out there. I'm imagining a world where you have a species that has a tail, ears/horns, tail drag, meat diet, slash unarmed attacks, and maybe some temperature considerations as a generic species here with TONS of mix and match customizations for markings and hues. |
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What are the plans for this species color-wise? Personally I think that they would fit the general aesthetic of the game and feel more "natural" if their fur color was limited to typical canine colorations. You could still do some crazy colors, but it would be via markings. It would feel weird for me to try to carry on a conversation with a ball of fluff thats like 3 different bright colors from head to toe. Basically, I feel like the species would feel more grounded in reality if you limited bright colors to parts that could have been easily dyed. Such as the tip of their tail, on their head, ear tips, simple stripes, etc. Just thought I'd mention this here, I suspect I may be in the minority of opinions though. |
Personally I have no plans to change it, at least not initially. |
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Design doc discussion moved to https://forum.spacestation14.com/t/vulpkanin-species-doc-docs-430/22917 |
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By the power granted to me by the majority vote on the vote. I declare this document merged :godo: |
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definetly well-balanced, no self-insert and mary-sue-go-to species. instamerge all of this, remove every other specie. |
20 participants
This design document is meant to introduce the Vulpkanin species, which was lately tested during our april fools event. They are also a rather popular pick on several downstreams.
They are not meant to be an extremely unique species, but rather an interesting addition players can choose.