But seriously, don't call all of them Octavius, that's a first name, not the name of a species. What if
fish were named Dave? Sounds stupid doesn't it. You wouldn't want to eat a plate of Dave.
I've been working on Octavius for quite a while actually. Not straight, but I've been working on it on and off. Back in around March or April-ish, I stumbled on a plugin that made rigging Motor6D welds easier. For those unaware, those are the welds that keep your arms, legs, and head attached to your player. Unlike regular welds, Motor6D welds can be detected and manipulated in ROBLOX's official animation plugin. After tinkering with the plugin for a few minutes, I began making a proof of concept AI using a custom rig: the screaming duck. I then had an idea to make an unorthodox zoo and fill it up with some dumb things we rigged and animated. BlazerC and his brother Rhysmon would make the models, MisterObvious would animated them once they were rigged, and I did all the magic scripting. We pumped out a bunch of stupid creatures (there was even a grazing refrigerator), for a solid month or so, until I had family come over from out of the country, which brought development to a halt. One of these creatures was the Biggerhead legs (which is what the original file calls it). Its shape and movement was inspired by the game "Daddy/ Dad's Long Legs", with a lot less of the frustration of making it walk. We thought the idea of it hiding inside its own head would be hilarious, so we made it so, along with the idea of it having a chance to just get up and leave the Zoo.
Fast forward about 4 months later, Aurarus sent me an instant message asking if I can make strange, unorthodox creatures. I then told him I had pretty much done a whole smorgasbord of what he's asking. When I showed him and Archaic our little project, they immediately grew to love Octavius and exclaimed the need to use it for One Piece Online.
After a good amount of time, I finally began to slowly work on the AI, which will eventually be in the game and have a chance to spawn on islands.
In order to accommodate to the island terrain of OPO, and by that I mean not falling into the water, I had to improve its path finding. I made my own path finding system for checking if the desired path would make Octavius sink or take a heavy fall. It constantly looks for walkable paths until it can find a path that matches the criteria.
In addition to just wandering around, Octavius will hide when there's players nearby. They can be very shy when around something they don't know. They'll retract their legs into their heads, which isn't really hiding but you get the idea. If the player sticks around too long, Octavius gets impatient and just sprints away hoping you won't follow it. Though, they do find a liking to certain people and can easily be tricked into being your friend.
Octavius is super social, and will get excited when a friend is nearby. Octavius will begin walking towards a friendly face to greet it. Octavius also loves to talk to others of his kind, but only for a few seconds.
Okay now I'm going to stop calling it Octavius and start referring to the species as a whole and I'll be using pronouns such as it and they. The reason being is because they can actually be fertile. When they spawn, they have a 50% chance to be male and a 50% to be female. When female, the AI will check every second if it can give birth. These odds are 1/2500 every second. I don't wanna spoil much of what happens when these things have kids, all you gotta know is they need a momma and the momma needs them.
You don't want to know what happens next.
I hope a name for them develops organically overtime, where the species name is just whatever the people start to call it.
The reason for them to be in OPO is for adventure. Aurarus couldn't emphasize the importance of adventure enough to me. All the things I was tasked to do so far were pertaining to exploration and giving reason to set sail. He wanted things that'd drag a player's attention while out at sea and to pursue anomalies that appear from a distance, events and entities that do not reward the player for finding, rather granting them the experience of having witnessed such a strange and unique encounter. The kind of stuff that'd make the player tell their story proceeded by the audience believing the player is insane and lying.
I SAW A BUNCH OF REFRIGERATORS GRAZING WANO I SWEAR IM NOT CRAZY IT CAN HAPPEN!!!!!"
If only there were a reason to add it. I would get that fridge in OPO in a heartbeat. Maybe roaming refrigerators are how we get people out into the sea.
