New Pet

Hashashin's awakening and succession costume is snake themed, and a few of his awakened skills summon massive snakes. That got me thinking...WHERE TF IS MY SNAKE PET!?

Now, this can be lazily implemented like the monster box, only the mob wouldn't need to be scaled down. If anything, it would likely be increased slightly since snakes are tiny in this game. Or they could make a new unique pet; the kind that get larger/more complex as they go up in tier.

Because I didn't have anything to do today, I sketched out ideas for the pet. There are three color types, like the previous wolf/lynx pet. As you go up in tier, the snake not only gets larger, but gains jewels and gems. The last tier is fully blinged out, including the snake itself, taking on a silver or gold metallic shine...or polished obsidian for the black version. How does a metal or stone cobra move, you ask? Stoping thinking so hard! We have a magic broom, a floating wizard, and a three-headed dog...the rules were thrown out a long time ago.





I'm not done yet though. The only pets that interact with us are cats and birds. Cats will hop up and sit on your horse/wagon, and birds will land on your shoulder when idle. Because why the hell not, go big or go home, I thought it would be cool if the snake did this too.

Before anyone tells me this interaction is too complex to implement, I'm here to tell you it's not. I'm an animator, and I know this can be done rather easily. Simplified, all you would need to do is create a simple path around a cylinder. This cylinder (and subsequently the path around it) then shrinks or grows, depending on the size of the character it is applied to. The cool things about snakes is that their rig is basically a bunch of bones in a line. Attach the head to the starting point of the path, and the rest of the body will follow along as it moves to the top. BOOM, you have a snake that climbs characters now. To make this a bit more complex, you could have it so the path shrinks to fit the hitbox of a character instead of a generic cylinder. Now the snake doesn't clip or path along empty space, but your actual character.

Or make it hella lazy, having the snake poof to your shoulder. I really don't care, I just want a snake on my shoulder already!





Lastly, I sketched out a few of the random emotes that pets get. Honestly there isn't much a snake can do without it getting weird. You'll have to use your imagination here, because actually animating this would have been more work than a simple suggestion is worth.

 

Which is why I gave a suggestion on how to implement it with minimal effort. Speaking as an animator, this can be done in minutes for somebody with skill...or hours if unfamiliar with chain rigs. Either way, this isn't going to take all that long to animate. It also uses the base model of existing cobras in game, so if they skip the player interaction, there's zero animation involved.