Creature Mod idea - dinosaurs!

[reptiellover1995]

I got inspired by after I saw the Ankylosaurus on a planet last night, and thought, "what if we brought real, accurate dinosaurs to Starfield?"

 

I'm a paleontologist IRL and have made digital models of dozens of species of dinosaur, including Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, and many others (including a new species I discovered that will be published in a few months). Many of them don't have fine details (ie scales/feathers), but the only work would really be getting the models detailed and animated, then importing into the game.

 

Since the full creation kit isn't out yet (as far as I know), I imagine adding entire new models/animations isn't possible, but I figured I'd post the idea in case anyone would be interested. I don't have any modding experience, but I can provide the models. Several of them are fully detailed and have textures, normals, and detail maps, but many do not. It would definitely be cool at the end to walk on a planet only to see a 40-foot long T. rex! Or a nearly 100' Alamosaurus!

[zanity]

QUOTE- but the only work would really be getting the models detailed and animated

 

Well that's OK then- nothing your amateur modder would find difficult. After all it's either do a free mod for Nexus, or work at ILM or Rhythm and Hues (and which famous writer/director does "Hues" pun off?).

 

Beth isn't exactly known for the quality of its animation, or indeed ability to work with properly animated rigs. Have you seen how the followers 'run' in this game. Before No man's Sky released, they had promotional videos promising the type of quality dinosaur models you dream of. When the actual game released, people literally died from laughing at the 'creatures' in the game. And that game is light years ahead of Starfield in populating true planets.

 

Maybe you could have a museum with static creatures. But there are games already available that have animated well modeled dinosaurs- and one is even an open world survival game. If you don't know of them, go look on Steam.

 

Starfield has a poor renderer, so is very limited in how well it can display advanced models. It has a poor lighting model- as witnessed in all those videos mocking the game for 'ugly' faces. It has a poor scripting system and a poor animation system. The best mods will live well within these technical limitations. Flight of fancy mods just won't play well with this engine, unfortunately. Remember Beth games have never even had vehicles because the land geometry is primitive and non-functional to a quite remarkable degree. Even bipeds walk very badly over the land as a result, and the system is tailored for walking bipeds.

 

Starfield has excited the imagination of many many people. And on a computer anything seems possible to those without technical awareness of the history and limitations of a game engine. But Starfield is based on prehistoric code that was never state-of-the-art (or even properly coded) in the first place. It looked best in Fallout 3 (against what other game coders were doing at the time). Today the engine is an humiliating joke. Many AAA devs far more skilled than Beth have an issue maintaining their own engines, and have jumped to Unreal 5 as an answer to this problem.

 

You could easily import your dinosaur models, and rig them for animation, in Unreal 5. And render them to amazing visual fidelity. All of us should pray for a successor to Beth that copies their open world and moddable formula, but does so with great code, no agenda, and the use of the Unreal 5 engine. Sadly, despite Beth's amazing commercial success, no-one has chosen to copy their open world business model. CDPR promised to do so with Witcher 3, but the game, great as it was, veered in a very different direction technically, and was never moddable to any proper degree.