While we got a lot of different rigs and animation Sets right now, many of them but especally the older ones are quite basic and the game could be improved quite a bit by bringing them up to snuff.
This has happend before, with multiple rigs being added for deep diving early one and most rigs that got semi regular updates got neat new animations on their newer members or in the time new behaviours got introduced, for example howling for Wolfs, but imo they could be overhauled fewer to even out the trivial differences between the members and focusing on more special ones with unique behaviours or new enritchment to highlight what makes them special.
In this thread i want to propose idears for how such updates could look like and hopefully spark discussions on how the behaviour and animation Sets of the animals could be improved and atleast to me their is no better starting points then cats.
With 15 Members in their rank, cats might be the second largest group of users of the same rig after the generic ungulate one snd got steady support, making them a great example for both changes that benefit most to all members of the group aswell as those highlighting specific ones. Ill also include the fossa as a 16. Honorary member as afaik they are on the same rig and would benefit from the more broad changes.
To get started how about a new animation only the amur leopard and fossa chare eventhough all climbing cats could benefit from, their sadly unique resting pose while climbing, where instead of keeping all legs and the tail tucked under them they have a more relaxed pose, letting their tail and their paw hang down.
This very nice animation has no bigger purpose at being locked behind the two then that they didnt bother updating the rest so its the perfect example of the kind of things id like to see retroactivly being added to all sensible members of a rig.
But we can still expand on that.
How about letting cats sleep while climbing and marking suiteable trees and climbing structures as resting places?
Besides making them more unique, this has 3 more graspeable benefits:
1. It gives all cats able to climb an incentive to atleast sometimes do so to fullfill their need to rest.
2. It makes it much more common to actually find a cat laze around in a tree, something they are very known for
3. It just looks cute and is a great little "activity" to see them "perform"
Combined with the prevous change, making cats rest more in general would be a flavorfull and very acurate way to make them more lifelike by (hopefully) just changing a value in the Code.
The next universal change would be extended adult young interaction.
Cats are well known for carrying around their young and it would be an adorable behaviour ingame.
Add an animation or two of the adult grooming or playing with the young aswell and you just made having kittens instantly more rewarding.
For new general enritchment there could be a low and a very high hanging Feeder for the cats to flex their Legs and jump up for a snack, with some special attention to the Tigers and especally the caracal, the cat known for snatching flying birds right out of the air.
Another cool choice would be very large paper boxes for the big cats to lay in and/or destroy.
Keeing with the Tiger, giving it access to the bathing behaviour would just make sense.
Giving them an affity for laying down in shallow water, especally when its hot, would be a very flavorfull addition. Potentially for the jaguar aswell, but idk how much they actually enjoy to just vibe in water.
Another one that would enjoy a new behaviour would be the lions with the chorus, giving their socialness the spotlight as they roar together.
And lastly the cheetah really has been left behind, so giving them access to a unique zipline enritchment to show of their speed would not just be cool but also really change up the way their habitats are built to encorporare a long line for them to Sprint down.
Combined with some touchups like resizing models (even if as far as i know noone got issues with them), a lowerd deep diving requirement and bug fixes like getting our poor Astronaut back down to earth and id call this a successfull revamp of the games cats + fossa, while also Potentially laying the foundation for more behaviour tweaks to come.
Id love to hear what you guys think about this.
Would you like such updates or are you happy with the cats as they are?
And do you perhaps have more idears how to improve the games cats?
Id love to hear ^^
This has happend before, with multiple rigs being added for deep diving early one and most rigs that got semi regular updates got neat new animations on their newer members or in the time new behaviours got introduced, for example howling for Wolfs, but imo they could be overhauled fewer to even out the trivial differences between the members and focusing on more special ones with unique behaviours or new enritchment to highlight what makes them special.
In this thread i want to propose idears for how such updates could look like and hopefully spark discussions on how the behaviour and animation Sets of the animals could be improved and atleast to me their is no better starting points then cats.
With 15 Members in their rank, cats might be the second largest group of users of the same rig after the generic ungulate one snd got steady support, making them a great example for both changes that benefit most to all members of the group aswell as those highlighting specific ones. Ill also include the fossa as a 16. Honorary member as afaik they are on the same rig and would benefit from the more broad changes.
To get started how about a new animation only the amur leopard and fossa chare eventhough all climbing cats could benefit from, their sadly unique resting pose while climbing, where instead of keeping all legs and the tail tucked under them they have a more relaxed pose, letting their tail and their paw hang down.
This very nice animation has no bigger purpose at being locked behind the two then that they didnt bother updating the rest so its the perfect example of the kind of things id like to see retroactivly being added to all sensible members of a rig.
But we can still expand on that.
How about letting cats sleep while climbing and marking suiteable trees and climbing structures as resting places?
Besides making them more unique, this has 3 more graspeable benefits:
1. It gives all cats able to climb an incentive to atleast sometimes do so to fullfill their need to rest.
2. It makes it much more common to actually find a cat laze around in a tree, something they are very known for
3. It just looks cute and is a great little "activity" to see them "perform"
Combined with the prevous change, making cats rest more in general would be a flavorfull and very acurate way to make them more lifelike by (hopefully) just changing a value in the Code.
The next universal change would be extended adult young interaction.
Cats are well known for carrying around their young and it would be an adorable behaviour ingame.
Add an animation or two of the adult grooming or playing with the young aswell and you just made having kittens instantly more rewarding.
For new general enritchment there could be a low and a very high hanging Feeder for the cats to flex their Legs and jump up for a snack, with some special attention to the Tigers and especally the caracal, the cat known for snatching flying birds right out of the air.
Another cool choice would be very large paper boxes for the big cats to lay in and/or destroy.
Keeing with the Tiger, giving it access to the bathing behaviour would just make sense.
Giving them an affity for laying down in shallow water, especally when its hot, would be a very flavorfull addition. Potentially for the jaguar aswell, but idk how much they actually enjoy to just vibe in water.
Another one that would enjoy a new behaviour would be the lions with the chorus, giving their socialness the spotlight as they roar together.
And lastly the cheetah really has been left behind, so giving them access to a unique zipline enritchment to show of their speed would not just be cool but also really change up the way their habitats are built to encorporare a long line for them to Sprint down.
Combined with some touchups like resizing models (even if as far as i know noone got issues with them), a lowerd deep diving requirement and bug fixes like getting our poor Astronaut back down to earth and id call this a successfull revamp of the games cats + fossa, while also Potentially laying the foundation for more behaviour tweaks to come.
Id love to hear what you guys think about this.
Would you like such updates or are you happy with the cats as they are?
And do you perhaps have more idears how to improve the games cats?
Id love to hear ^^
