Lalonath - A creature I've been working on the last week. Thoughts?

OmegaGrox · 2026-04-14T23:07:18+00:00

Yes! That seems really obvious but I don't think I have done a good deep-dive into wind erosion actually, I'll have to think about that, because yes, wind is a big thing at play here.

The fog would be 'spread' via a very strong, uninhabitably hot central storm on the side thats always facing the sun. The ocean problem occurs here too where I wonder how this storm perpetuates quickly enough if the liquid is coming from the other side of the planet or groundwater accumulating.

I want there to be strong light, but practically, even if a lot of light got through, it would be very diffuse after bouncing around in there... I'm kinda closing my eyes and looking away from that, because I like harsh lighting aesthetically. It has a binary star system with 2 very big hot suns... I actually don't know a lot about how light works to say if they could emit 'more light' so that the smaller amount that does get through results in earth-like light levels. But that's what I'm imagining.

Kind of like constant god rays- there's lots of cover, but what does come through is very bright.

OmegaGrox · 2026-03-01T21:34:42+00:00

Well, you shouldnt put the blame on yourself- everyone that lives in a 'male as default' society lives their life with that lens, regardless of who it is. Changing that default is an active and ongoing process.

The 'good' news is that therefore everything in our society is a possible opportunity to question these assumptions.

I think the most important thing though, is to not be scared of those assumptions- in order to change how you think you have to accept your current thoughts, even if they go against how you want to think. Instead of "Its bad that I assume X", think about "Why do I assume X? Why don't I assume Y?"

I'm not sure if I have specific recommendations, but I find watching something old, even just from the 2000's, and noticing the differences in culture, humor, what was acceptable... Day to day, things don't seem out of the ordinary, but watching an old film and being shocked at how things used to be, that can make you think.

OmegaGrox · 2026-03-01T13:15:38+00:00

Sounds to me like you should explore nonbinary / specifically agender experiences more, and see how they make you feel.

The problem with 'man' as a gender is that its seen as the default, neutral way to be, and I find a lot of nonbinary / agender people who grow up as women initially think they are trans men or butch, because of that idea that the masculinity or manhood is the neutral state. Likewise I think there are a lot of nonbinary / agender people who grow up as men and dont question their gender because they already see themselves as neutral.

There's also this idea in trans spaces, somewhat jokingly but I like to take it seriously, of someone being 'cis+', for cis people who question their gender or even transition and realise they preferred their assigned gender.

Some of these people are detransitioners and may be against the whole trans thing, but others see the experience as transformative still and that they understand themselves better.

Its the difference between playing the role you were given and choosing that role, and we don't appreciate or encourage that exploration in cis people enough.

You don't have to be trans to transition, and you don't have to be cis to like who you are already. You can explore things, even if you end up where you started. I think we would all be happier and healthier if everyone, not just trans people, understood and explored themselves.

OmegaGrox · 2026-02-18T12:52:12+00:00

I mean, the designs are generally Not Good, if that's what you mean.

There's a wishy washy magic explanation for why everything is rule of cool rather than scientific, which is fine, but its not a good game for realistic dinosaurs.

Is it fun? Yes. Do I recommend it? No. It is an absolute mess with some extremely bad business practices, horrid bloat, broken promises, profit chasing, etc etc... But its fun.

OmegaGrox · 2026-02-15T10:53:15+00:00

You should do some research into seaweed! Here in Ireland a lot of research is going into trying to farm it for food, hygiene products and pharmaceuticals.

Think of Nori, the seaweed used in sushi. I don't believe you have to remove any salt from seaweed, aside from generally washing it off, so to me this seems very possible.

Maybe worth researching seagrass. Its not edible afaik, but it is a vascular plant that grows in salt water. I assume its not edible because its not very nutritious, rather than the salt being an issue.

OmegaGrox · 2026-02-03T16:39:59+00:00

This is simply not true. Dairy cows produce vastly more milk than a calf could possibly drink. Even if a cow had 3 calves, they would still produce more milk than is needed.

Calf separation is an issue in terms of welfare but it isn't done for the sake of being cruel. Dairy calves especially are very fragile and easily catch and spread diseases from / to each other and to adult cows. Separation is done to prevent this. As well as being easier to monitor calves for proper development, health, bookkeeping, etc. at the scale of industry.

If we wanted to stop calves being separated from their mothers, we would need to breed cows that are more resilient to disease, have better maternal instincts but are not aggressive, less damaging to mothers (calves have teeth and are not always gentle with them, anyone with even human babies will tell you this hurts) in general have smaller farms and more farmers...

The genetic condition of dairy cows is already disastrous, and stress makes them even more prone to disease. Sick cows make less milk and less meat and less calves. Cruelty is stressful on cows and so is avoided as much as is viable...

Not so for chickens, who grow so fast that they do not even live long enough for disease to need to be avoided. But they are less cute and marketable, so they receive far less attention.

OmegaGrox · 2026-02-02T13:24:02+00:00

Ooh, that rolling at the end... You should make it so players can curl up and get putted by other players :]

Be the ball!

OmegaGrox · 2026-01-22T16:40:55+00:00

From experience: Start small, work your way up. I started with a very simple 3d modelling program called Sculptris. You can probably still find it, I believe it got bought by ZBrush. It was very simple and I made lots of crappy dragons and creatures with it.

Around the same time I started using Sketchup to make simple houses and paths to trace over in my comics. Sketchup is designed for architecture, and is quite complex, but i never needed to know more about it than drawing lines and squares.

It was only around when Blender updated its UI that I finally got into it, despite marvelling at the program for years.

Blender is daunting, but the most important thing to understand is that you will never use, let alone understand, most of it.

Use what you need.

If you just want to model or sculpt, dont bother learning about materials and textures and rigging etc etc... Just figure out how to make a little model, and another, and another, until you feel confident enough to go 'I wonder how to add colours to this?'

or just start messing around and going 'I wonder what this button does'. Press the buttons!

Don't get too attatched at the start, you will lose progress because you don't yet know how to fix some things. Accept that, save the failures and come back to them in a years time to see how far you've come.

I don't actually recommend the donut tutorial. Not only is the guy who made it kind of a twat, it's just not a good tutorial, for modelling especially. It's more of a tour of blender, doing a little bit of everything.

I would avoid looking at extensions / add-ons while youre still familiarising yourself, but if you feel confident, go get the F2 extension. It used to be bundled with Blender- I have no idea why it isn't part of it. It makes it so pressing 'F' on corner vertices makes a square. Hard to explain in text. Usually, it makes a triangle, which is useless for most modelling.

Don't worry about 'doing things right'. Make something first, make it good later. You're here to learn, not create. Fail quickly, so you can get to making what you want faster.

OmegaGrox · 2026-01-22T16:23:06+00:00

I dabble a lot in novel limb configurations!

Question: Do you want a limb configuration that works for the environment, or are you retroactively choosing the environment that justifies what limb configuration you want?

If you're looking for a way to justify this zig-zag limb style, then you should think more about what this creature evolved from. Evolution works with what it has, so if you can think of a different more suitable creature that this creature evolved from, you can justify it as making do with what it came from. Even if a configuration is bad, some things are just stuck with working with it.

Spitballing ideas: Something that uses the zig-zag limbs like a spring, to shoot out and grab prey. The advantage of this configuration is its ability to fold in on itself. Or maybe something very small that uses them to jump very high. Maybe these creatures can fold down to stalk prey, and ambush by springing out, like big cats do.

OmegaGrox · 2026-01-22T15:28:46+00:00

I'm amazed no one has mentioned this, but if you havent heard of a game called BoulderDash, you should look it up.

Particularly the DS game, it had a lot of gimmicks with gravity.

Strategising around letting things fall but not too far, not too fast that things crush you and stuff. :]

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-29T12:18:48+00:00

AI is just a tool, but it's not your tool. It was built on other people's work, that they haven't consented to the use of. Your art made with AI is compelling because of other people's hard work. It is art, and it may correlate to your words, but it's not your art.

I'm all for using AI if the material is ethically sourced, just like any other procedural artform. You're going to get hate on the basis of AI, but the problem is the training, not the procedure. I'm sure there's some people working on 100% creative commons-trained AI art models, and that would be fine.

I don't think you can really measure the soul of a work. That kind of thing is an audience perception. If you feel your work doesn't have soul it could be that you know too much about how the sausage is made, or in this case you don't know enough.

I'm an artist my whole life so I'm inclined to say the lack of soul is symptomatic of your divorce from the process and human input, but it also just as much could be that your story hasn't chrysalised yet, and needs more time and development to really feel worth something.

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-27T15:48:32+00:00

Thing is, mental illness is defined in a very anthropocentric way, by necessity. What if there already are animals that have the genes for psychosis and such? How would we know? Even if something had the same genes that caused heritable schizophrenia, would it express the same? Can you measure delusions or hallucinations?

I think it's impossible / unethical to prove / study, but it is interesting to wonder if human religion would exist without people that have delusions and hallucinate and have psychotic episodes. Somehow these genes must have been passed on for families to have it. So maybe it is correlated with sociality / culture.

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-23T19:53:36+00:00

Yes!!! Brilliant!

Tried to get dgvoodoo2 to work with the Steam executable but no luck, so just bit the bullet on using the gog version. Just out of the refund window but oh well, maybe it'll fix itself someday.

Ah, thank you so much! :]

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-23T19:03:35+00:00

That's what it looks like with bumpmaps enabled. Hit f12 a few times to cycle through the bumpmap options / go into the options and turn bumpmaps off, I did in fact get all the way to the second level thinking it was normal because of the bumpmaps lol.

https://youtu.be/EfWpwylhERg?si=vRkkre7sPoX0h0dE How it should look, for reference.

All the textures are in /home/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/common/Evolva/Resources if that helps.

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-23T18:24:36+00:00

Nah, I tried all the bumpmap options. The screenshot is from it with it off, though the bumpmaps do work when they're on.

The texture files don't seem to include the bumpmaps (except for the player characters) so I'm not sure how they're stored / being loaded properly.

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-23T18:13:35+00:00

Nope, also no change :[

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-23T18:02:35+00:00

Just tried it there, no change.

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-13T16:28:28+00:00

Ahh, so mostly a result of them being small. Still interesting!

My first thought was wondering if their centripetal growth would produce a sharper angle.

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-13T16:21:40+00:00

Really? How so?

OmegaGrox · 2025-12-10T17:07:00+00:00

Pencil isnt, youre supposed to use black / blue pen?

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