Love Is a Many-Headed Thing, Part VIII
Finally, I bring you what this entire series of blog posts has been promising all along – many heads. Below is the five-headed hydra, composed of 5,576 triangles. It isn’t far from my earlier estimate of how many triangles would make it up, and it’s still less than the number of triangles that went into the blue dragon.
Still, if two heads are better than one, then surely seven heads are better than five.
The seven-headed hydra pictured above is composed of 7,644 triangles, much more than what the blue dragon comprises. Nevertheless, the hydra looks so much more intimidating with an extra pair of fanged mouths that surely two thousand more polygons would be a small price to pay for a boss creature like this.
I won’t go beyond seven heads, though. Anything more would have a good view of its own butt.
By the way, regarding what I said about this hydra not growing any new heads – I may change my mind about that. We’ll see how it goes.
Comments
Then I saw the seven-headed version. You're right, it looks MUCH more threatening.
LOL. My thoughts exactly.
@Eguintir,
No problem. It's very easy to do. I'm sure I can come up with a much better animation tutorial than what I first wrote.
Now I'm scared... time to go look at Hello Kitty or something.
Bearing in mind I have no knowledge of modeling at all: How does this work in game, like when it attacks?
Does a head randomly strike out? or .... I do not even know if my question makes sense.
And I assume that whatever the animation, is the scripting for the attack independant of any such attack animation?
Maybe you can help explain how a model like you have here becomes an active monster in game?
EDIT: Superb by the way!
Thanks,
Lance.
Awww, let me help you. I found a nice Hello Kitty picture here. Very soothing.
@Lance,
The hydra's attack animation will have all heads striking once at the target within approximately 2-4 seconds. As to how it will work in the game will be for Chaos Wielder to determine I guess.
If I were to implement it, each attack would count as five separate rolls to hit, one attack for each head. If the creature is of a sufficiently high level that one head can attack more than once in a round, then all heads should also be able to attack the same number of times. Appropriate modifiers for succeeding attacks will have to apply.
I'm sure there are many ways this can be done. Scripting the attacks is one way. Another way might be to have four Script Hidden creatures attacking the target along with the hydra. These creatures cannot be targeted and can only be killed when the hydra dies.
The attack animations of all creatures in NWN2 are not synchronized with their actual attacks. A PC that can attack many times in a round will still do only one attack animation in that round.
Regardless of how many attacks each head can do in a round, the actual animation will show each head striking only once within that period.
It helps that I've junked the idea of having new heads grow when one is killed. All heads will either be fully functional or dead. This makes it easier for me to animate the hydra.