Looking for a Modder.

Development Modding ARK: Survival Evolved
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1

Ok, so here’s the skinny. I have a tall order of things I want to do, and no clue how to start.

  1. Almost a total overhaul of the Ark Character models. I want to add something that lets you adjust your survivors face way better. A set of sliders that will let you adjust your Cheakbones(Prominence and position), eyebrows(width angle and depth), eyes(Size angle and depth), lip(thickness and mouth width). and Nose(angle length and width).
    A proper height slider that will Increase/decrease the scale of your survivor. adding or subtracting up to 12 inches to/from their height.
    A list of hair styles to choose from.
    and a slider that takes your player from the jacked/ripped default to a softer less defined/average look. so people can choose to have a 6pack, a beer belly, or something in between.

  2. A separate Playable race of tiny folk. they would be 1/12th the size of the default humans(assuming the default human male model is 6 foot even, then these people would be 6 inches tall at default) and suffer a significant penalty to their starting stats, BUT would level up like twice as fast(So they would either get double exp for everything they do, or each level would just cost half exp), so they would be able to get the better tech MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than their larger stronger counterparts. and everything they build cost only half the building mats…

  3. Another separate race of of Giant folk that are 4 times larger than the humans(again, if the default human male is 6 feet tall, then that would make these giants 24 feet tall at default). they would stat with quadruple physical stats, but level up at half speed(so they would get only half exp that humans get, or their levels would just cost twice the exp). and because everything they build is larger scale everything they build would cost double building mats.

Thoughts? is this even doable? lol

ATTENTION!This post was the rough first draft. you can see the slimmed down Revised version of what i want further down the page.
Please reserve your judgment and do not comment until you have read the revised version.ATTENTION!
Thank you…

2

So, that’s a no then?.. XD

3

Im honestly not even sure if it’s possible to edit the playerpawn like that. Even if it was, it wouln’t be a small task by any means. It would also have to be first in the load order since it’s adjusting the player pawn. With that being said, i don’t think any modder or player would touch it with a 10ft pole simply for looks. People run dinos mods, difficulty mods, etc in their first load slot.

4

I would be looking to run it as a private dedicated server, so anyone that’s using it would have it in their first slot. I have heard that there’s a way to set a Mod up to be ran o just a specific server.

I’m planning to pay a modder to do this to make it worth their time.

5

Is this doable? Yes.
But i don’t think you realize how much work would be involved even building out one of those points. That’s more like a multi person project and would involve skills from different disciplines.
Ideas are plenty but actually making them work with the DevKit takes someone who is really commited. Im quite experienced with the kit but even then something like this would take a lot of time, not even counting the art that you would need.

6

And then there is a good chance that when version 1.0 is released in 2027 being able to alter the player character in game will be possible anyway :smiley:

7

That’s what I’m hopeful for actually.

8

Then be patient young grasshopper

9

Hmmm… Ok. so I was thinking about parts 2 and 3 and thought. What if it was an Item that made a player into one of those two races? Like a piece of food that the Admin can spawn in that makes a player have those effects?

I mean, Effects in this game already happen(like poison), so it would be working off a probably less complicated existing mechanic rather than messing with the Spawn-ins. then we just set the effects of the food to to what we want them to be. Like changing the scale of the player model(and the POV), adjusting their stats appropriately, and any of the other things that apply to that race as defined in the OP that are doable, then set the time that the effects last for to some redickulous number like 36,135 days or something. lol

That’s probably the easier rout…

And again, i would be paying the modder once we talked about it, figured out everything that’s doable, and how much time/effort it would take. we would be able to discuss a price.

10

The easiest route would to leave the player pawn alone completely…lol…that’s why you see 0 mods that do this kind of thing; it’s possible but it’s over-the-top complicated. Your best route would to have a set of equip-able armor or something that gives you the visual you’re looking for.

11

that’s similar to what i was suggesting in my last post. we make a fruit that when you eat it, it makes the changes that i wanted to the existing character rather than set up some kind of spawn-in thing.

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If you are willing to shrink the scope down to what’s doable without additional art and can live with some of the possible sideeffects of scaling the player that might not be worked around, send me a pm and we can see if we can work something out.

13

Mezzow is one of the best modders around. If anyone can do it, he’s your guy.

14

That’s good to know. :smiley:

15

April of 2017 and this job is still on the table for anyone that’s interested.

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All this is 100% possible!
That first line, sums it up. No clue.
You have no idea what you are asking for, a full redesign of the entire character setup is a full redesign of the meshes in ALL aspects. All those morph targets will need to be redone (for all armors, weapons, animations, etc etc etc). I mean, you are literally asking “i want to redesign ark, and, i wont be helping, and its a free gig”. Correct?
Even creating new races and such, your going to need to redo all the armors and everything. This “idea” is going to take a LONG time. I mean seriously long. You need ppl that can create models, morph targets, physics assets, and, then, redo all of Wildcards to adapt … haha…
I like the idea, just, you are asking for more then you know on this.

17

To reiterate what the others have said most of this is possible, but you would probably have to pay out $1,000’s to get it done, The ARK Dev Kit isn’t like Skyrim’s, you can’t just play around in Nifscope, click a few boxes and have a new race.

Picture it this way if Skyrim’s Creation Kit is a Ferrari, the ARK’s Dev Kit is a Ford Pinto. There is a reason wildcard hasn’t fixed the character gen, it’s going to take 100’s of hours to fix. You would literally need an entire design team, from artists, to modelers, an animator or two, and someone who is a badass with C++.

18

Not only did this post have me nearly fall out of my chair in laughter …
but its 100% correct. All. Of. It.

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I know its a VERY TALL ORDER. Mezzow and I were talking about all this in PMs. He explained a lot of things too me and I’ve actually scaled the the whole thing back quite a bit.

What we decided upon was to just focus on making the race of giants first.
The way we decided to do that is to have a special berry that can only be spawned in by a Server mod. When you eat it, it scales your model up to the same height as a dinogate(x6 I believe) and buffs your stats appropriately(x6).
YES, we will have to rework the animations, scale up movement speed, and resize/fit the weapons/tools to fit the giants hands, but the giant sized building parts are out the window.

Heres the full breakdown…

The Macro-Berries:
It scales you to x6(if you’re using the default model that should make you as tall as a DinoGate)
it applies a x6 buff to your Physical stats(Health, Stamina, Weight, Melee damage, and Fortitude).
it will have to do something to your movement speed so you ground covered matches up with your walking/running animation(so you don’t look like you’re running on a treadmill)
It will mark all saddles in your engrams somehow so you can tell “Ok, if i choose to learn that, it will only be for the good of the tribe as I’m just too big to ride a rapter without teabagging it to death.”
it will also make it so that it cost x3 exp per level, and applies the x2 multiplier to any stats you boost per level. (Example: if you boost a stat and would normally get +10 added to that stat you would NOW get +20)
it gives you a base(naked) Armor rating of 200.

Armor:
I’m not going to worry about armor ATM. Theres a lot that would need to be done like resizing, refitting, and boosting their Protection stats. IF we do any Armors now it would only be Cloth and Desert, as it would be nice to not be naked, and you kinda need the desert clothing to aid your survival in Scorched earth.
When we do, it will only be cloth, Hide, Desert, Chiton, Fur, and Flack.

Weapons/tools
The weapons/tools are a must. they would need to be scaled up and fitted properly, and cost the players x6 to build. No guns though. just the melee weapons, the slingshot, the bow, the arrows(stone and metal and Narkos).
Maybe the crossbow. probably later.

Building:
As stated above, we decided to scrap the Giant scale building parts all together. because first off there’s a lot of them, and secondly we would have to rework the Snap-points, we’ll just make them stack normal sized walls and use the DinoGate as a door, so because of the berries, and the fact that the giant players would need to build so many many many more walls and foundations just to have a home, we wont need to mess with the cost of building mats or engram cost.
Furniture on the other hand. We would have to talk about that and play it all by ear.
PERSONALLY, I would like to have all the furniture(sleeping bag, Chair, bed, table, containers, and torches) and crafting stations(smithy, forge, and mortar and pestle) scaled up, but I would also like if my chickens started laying golden eggs… Some things just aren’t in the cards, man. lol

Attacking:
Attacking stays pretty much the same.
I would like to add a stomp attack, BUT I would need an animator(for other players, and players in third person to see), and someone that could 3D modeled a male and female leg, so I’m putting a pin in that for a later addition.

Player/Dino interacting:
Riding dinos that are smaller than an Allosaurus is gone, so there’s a ton of saddles that aren’t needed anymore.
and I would like to have a pickup option for your fellow tribe buddies to sit on your shoulder(like the Compies, and those Pikachu looking things from scorched earth can)

Lastly. I never said I wanted anyone to do this for me out of the goodness of their heart. lol
This is a lot of work, and Work deserves PAY…

20

Anyway, yeah… that’s the job in a nuttshell. its there for anyone that wants it…