dinosaur zone ( New Zone Request)

[Joshex]

We have long requested a dinosaur Zone, but every time we did the paragon studios staff decided not to make it then just named a new enemy something "dinosaurish", "Jurassik" comes to mind. this needs to change.

 

I think the core reason they never did it is because they didn't want to copy other stories of "lost worlds" or  "hot spots" or "dino parks" where dinosaurs remained alive on earth or were brought back to life.

 

so, at the very least we can come up with some ideas of how dinosaurs could have survived on earth and may still survive today, or if we can't do that we could write it off to a parallel dimension where the extinction event never happened and evolution largely stopped.

 

Staying in our own universe: On primal earth there is one place dinosaurs could still exist, a place no one else has ever used in fantasy, Cryptid research on dinosaurs always has one thing in common, they are always found in or around water sources, lakes, rivers, seas, the ocean. Add this to the strange noises scientists and navy have recorded underwater (http://www.messagetoeagle.com/mysterious-unexplained-sounds-coming-from-the-ocean-what-is-really-down-there/) (check out Julia, that sounds like a dino to me, sounds like he's saying "why'd you bother me, I was here first! it's mine! get away!" in grunt language. then the slow down, "yaaaaaaaawwwwwn..") which sound very dinosauric, add that to the scientific fact that the tyrannosaurus rex and many other larger dinosaurs, could not actually run on land or they'd break their bones (this implies they probably spent the majority of their time mostly submerged in water for the added buoyancy). now lets take a look at the animals physiology;

 

they have tiny little brains. and massive torsos. something here should seem amiss if you know a bit about medicine. massive torso means massive lungs. massive lungs means massive amounts of oxygen getting into the blood stream. massive amounts of oxygen in the blood stream would be toxic to such a tiny brain. they'd literally die from breathing on land. but, in the depths of the ocean, there is very little oxygen in the water, so suddenly those massive lungs and that tiny brain make sense together, they'd be a primitive amphibious lung and dinosaurs would live at the bottom of the ocean!

 

90% of the worlds oceans are unexplored. sounds like a perfect fantasy for a Super hero MMO.

 

So then why do we have dinosaur bones on land? you know buried in layers of sediment on the sides of mountains? rock layers are laid down by water. It's very possible that the earth was a water world in the past. That or maybe it was the underwater alien base that fitted the dinos with equipment so they could control their breathing and anti gravity devices so they could walk above water and tried to lead an invasion and were defeated by the ancient humans? but they are building up thier resources to try again? paragons heroes ad the rogue isles alike must unite to stop this menace!

 

By the way conspiracy theorists say the underwater aliens have some sort of connection with the Nazis and have a main base somewhere under Antarctica, some say these "extra terrestrials" are actually "terrestrials" the former ancient people of the earth before us and that they were giants with six fingers and toes and double rows of teeth.. these are all modern conspiracy theories which have yet to be adapted to media. check out the "upsweep" sound in the unexplained sounds under the ocean above, sounds pretty much like a siren on a space ship to me. maybe spring and autumn is their drill practice time? or maybe they launch all fighters at this time?

 

where could they live? the sunken continent "Mu" found in the middle of the pacific ocean. less of a conspiracy theory and looking more like a lost and unknown history, Mu was a continent with it's main mass being close to japan and a tail of mountains stretching like a bridge all the way to south america (giving a possible route for human migration after the ice age) Mu has several ranges of sedimentary mountains called the Mu Alps (I'm not joking this is really a theory and real name) these mountains even today show telltale signs of *Shock* Glaciation. carved out ridges run down their slopes. This would mean they were above water sometime after the ice age when the glaciers started to melt and run down the mountains. but now... the peaks of the mu alps are 2000 meters below sea level. must a been quite the catastrophe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(lost_continent)

 

so, lets say they've got a dome down there a big underwater dome with volcanoes, nazis, giants and UFOs and dinosaurs. sounds like a fun party to crash!

 

oh wait they do have domes, multiple. one of them is 2miles wide. and apparently it moves along the ocean floor.. https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/03/massive-circular-object-appears-to-move-on-pacific-floor/

 

mission doors anyone?

[Lines]

2 minutes ago, Joshex said:

where could they live? the sunken continent "Mu" found in the middle of the pacific ocean. less of a conspiracy theory and looking more like a lost and unknown history, Mu was a continent with it's main mass being close to japan and a tail of mountains stretching like a bridge all the way to south america (giving a possible route for human migration after the ice age) Mu has several ranges of sedimentary mountains called the Mu Alps (I'm not joking this is really a theory and real name) these mountains even today show telltale signs of *Shock* Glaciation. carved out ridges run down their slopes. This would mean they were above water sometime after the ice age when the glaciers started to melt and run down the mountains. but now... the peaks of the mu alps are 2000 meters below sea level. must a been quite the catastrophe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(lost_continent)

 

It's an awesome and maybe slightly above and beyond the scope of the Homecoming team, but I thought I'd throw it out there that the island of Mu is already in City of Heroes.

[Joshex]

2 minutes ago, Lines said:

 

It's an awesome and maybe slightly above and beyond the scope of the Homecoming team, but I thought I'd throw it out there that the island of Mu is already in City of Heroes.

yeah, island not continent. but yeah I get what you are saying. the continent would be split up into sub zones within the domes. because the rest of it is too deep under water for most heroes or villains to reach. need the domes for people to breathe.

 

there could be 1 main zone and then sub zones which are mission maps and nothing more.

[Greycat]

10 minutes ago, Joshex said:

I think the core reason they never did it is because they didn't want to copy other stories of "lost worlds" or  "hot spots" or "dino parks" where dinosaurs remained alive on earth or were brought back to life.

 

I'd say the core reason is that they didn't or couldn't create the skeletons and animations for anything "dinosaurish." There's nothing that uses "chicken legs" (that reverse knee) - even the "monstrous" legs in the costume creator are basically very oddly shaped boots. I don't think we had four legged skeletons until fairly late in the game (I can't think of any right offhand before beast mastery for masterminds and/or night ward. Even the unused "nemesis horse" didn't have legs - it hovered on four jets.)

 

Scaling's probably also an issue, but I think things can be "big enough" now to give passable dinos if the other issues are dealt with.

[srmalloy]

9 hours ago, Greycat said:

There's nothing that uses "chicken legs" (that reverse knee) - even the "monstrous" legs in the costume creator are basically very oddly shaped boots.

It's not a reversed knee; it's the equivalent of the ankle joint in humans, between the tibiotarsus and tarsometatarsus bones. Birds and other digitigrade animals have knees like plantigrade animals, but many have disproportionately shortened femurs relative to the tibiotarsus, so that the thigh remains close to the body and is not immediately recognizable.

 

 

But you're correct that the rigging for the digitigrade legs pays no attention to an actual digitigrade gait, being plantigrade walking for all leg types.

Edited April 29, 2020 by srmalloy

[Joshex]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

I'd say the core reason is that they didn't or couldn't create the skeletons and animations for anything "dinosaurish." There's nothing that uses "chicken legs" (that reverse knee) - even the "monstrous" legs in the costume creator are basically very oddly shaped boots. I don't think we had four legged skeletons until fairly late in the game (I can't think of any right offhand before beast mastery for masterminds and/or night ward. Even the unused "nemesis horse" didn't have legs - it hovered on four jets.)

 

Scaling's probably also an issue, but I think things can be "big enough" now to give passable dinos if the other issues are dealt with.

I'd buy that too, I know they did have to hire someone to do the monster designs in new Dark Astoria. that was right about the same time as beast mastery so. it's a valid guess.

I know they did make the villain version of the hive in image of isla nubular of jurassic park. but again no dinos.  besides if they did that "I think George Lucas gunna sue somebody" is a phrase that applies here even though it's really "Steven Speilburg gunna sue somebody", but that was never a Movie trope..

So If I had to guess, like all real decisions it probably came down to a number of factors, yours included. but now, now we are not burdened by profit expectations of a large for profit company so, time is in our hands to dev what we will, or rather what the devs will allow.

 

I will offer free help (volunteer) if this gets accepted, I can offer 3D modelling and texturing, maybe not rigging or animating though.

 

would like to smash a t-rex's jaw to the ground on a tanker or brute though. or get a team of KB and see a shocked reaction as they go flying... good times imagined for the future.

[PSLAnimal]

Quote

so, at the very least we can come up with some ideas of how dinosaurs could have survived on earth and may still survive today, or if we can't do that we could write it off to a parallel dimension where the extinction event never happened and evolution largely stopped.

 

Dinosaurs have survived on earth and do still survive today.  There are more species of dinosaur alive today than there are species of mammals.

 

We call them birds.

 

And, evolution never stops.  It can't. 

[Rathulfr]

3 minutes ago, PSLAnimal said:

And, evolution never stops.  It can't.

When evolution stops, we all do.

[MTeague]

A dino island would be amusing, both from a Jurassic Park angle, and having Big Mean Stompies the players have to deal with. 

And certainly comic books (and CoH!) are rife with dimensional travel, alternate worlds, time travel, etc.

 

I mean, in a real pinch, they could be Cimeroa'd in, if the real obstacle was some way to lore-wise justify it. 

 

But really, I think the problem is animations, skeletons, and then what do you DO with them?  Why are the heroes going there?  Why are the villains going there?  Are these somehow Devouring Earth Dinosaurs coming out of Eden or the Abyss?  Some hidden creations of Preatorian Hamidon?   What kind of story arcs and missions would involve them?

 

I'd rather see more effort on Moonbases or Lunar Maps (and I'm not actually seriously expecting anything like that for some time... if ever).

 

Still, nothing wrong with adding things to the Giant Pile of "It Would Be Cool If...".

I do wonder at how the HC Devs sift through them all though.  🙂

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

It's not a reversed knee; it's the equivalent of the ankle joint in humans, between the tibiotarsus and tarsometatarsus bones. Birds and other digitigrade animals have knees like plantigrade animals, but many have disproportionately shortened femurs relative to the tibiotarsus, so that the thigh remains close to the body and is not immediately recognizable.

 

 

Dammit jim, I'm a gamer, not a biologist! 🙂

[Joshex]

1 hour ago, PSLAnimal said:

 

Dinosaurs have survived on earth and do still survive today.  There are more species of dinosaur alive today than there are species of mammals.

 

We call them birds.

 

And, evolution never stops.  It can't. 

Except they aren't dinosaurs in the context we are talking about here. No more so than old out-of-touch people are also described as dinosaurs. While it would be nice to see some oversized monster pigeons and seagulls, squirrels and the like messing with paragon city, pigeons with the [pigeon poop] attack power.. they aren't visually stimulating in the same way a 50 ft T-rex is.

 

Spoiler

 

Evolution can stop, genetic walls happen when too many dominant DNA arguments enter the fixed size DNA strand. At this point breeding becomes impossible except with maybe a clone copy in opposite gender (not even other members of the core parent genus can breed with it at this point), or asexually.. even then it'd suffer from lack of genetic diversity and have crippling effects from inbreeding. These "walls" are not real walls, but rather chemical arguments which insist on 1; staying the same, and 2; passing on to offspring. a third consideration is 3: a strand cannot gain extra arguments without those arguments being valid to support some feature of the organism (which is, something we have never observed happening in nature). The reason breeding becomes impossible is because each argument corresponds to a specific aspect of the animal's physical construction. If too many arguments refuse to change naturally, evolution ends or becomes extremely limited in effect slowing down before coming to a grinding halt.. if even hypothetically, this is at least probable in a fantasy environment, but we already see this in real life too. But the point of this thread's mention of a parallel universe is the hypothetical environment in which evolution stops or never existed. As in parallel universe theory there is one universe for every possible possibility.

 

Basically it's like choosing an archetype, first you have a wide range of choices, but once you're set, next it's on to power sets, one you choose that and register a respec is the best you can do. can't change AT or powersets. but in DNA with dominant arguments, it's more like each subsequent respec allows you to change 1 less slot every 1 go and one less power every 10 goes.. eventually maybe you can only change your last gained slots or power. even worse imagine that after 100 respecs some of your enhancements are now locked in and can't be unslotted or respeced. the amount of change becomes less and less. Evolution stagnates.

If you wish to continue this discussion please do so in PM, this thread is not the place for it. this thread is talking about fantasy and hypothetical situations for inclusion in a videogame environment which is loosely referencing reality. Much in the same way that Statesman is a fictional character based loosely on a real person's face and maybe personality but the super powers and story and situations around that character and thus the entire character as presented in game is entirely fantasy, fiction and hypothetical.

Any conspiracy theory or ancient runes or texts, myths and legends are valid reference points in such fiction. They can and have been incorporated in many ways.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

A dino island would be amusing, both from a Jurassic Park angle, and having Big Mean Stompies the players have to deal with. 

And certainly comic books (and CoH!) are rife with dimensional travel, alternate worlds, time travel, etc.

 

I mean, in a real pinch, they could be Cimeroa'd in, if the real obstacle was some way to lore-wise justify it. 

 

But really, I think the problem is animations, skeletons, and then what do you DO with them?  Why are the heroes going there?  Why are the villains going there?  Are these somehow Devouring Earth Dinosaurs coming out of Eden or the Abyss?  Some hidden creations of Preatorian Hamidon?   What kind of story arcs and missions would involve them?

 

I'd rather see more effort on Moonbases or Lunar Maps (and I'm not actually seriously expecting anything like that for some time... if ever).

 

Still, nothing wrong with adding things to the Giant Pile of "It Would Be Cool If...".

I do wonder at how the HC Devs sift through them all though.  🙂

why cimerora them in when we can build the lore tie-ins? why are the heroes and villains going there? yadda yadda make some story for how a villain group there or in paragon wants to do a dinosaur invasion of atlas park and grandville and or how that group doesn't play nice OR how they can be exploited and stolen from..

are these devouring earth? we've seen enough of those... I mean big mean reptiles with claws and teeth and tails. Doesn't mean that the DE couldn't get ahold of some dinos and modify and outfit them though!

 

what kinda story arcs? good question, define:
Magic
Mutation
Science
Technology
Natural

fairly easy with a wild imagination 😛

Edited April 29, 2020 by Joshex

[Joshex]

Magic origin dino; a spirit of a long dead dino was recovered with with the help of a time record stabilizing tome which allowed them to peice together one whole dinosaur spirit from the decay of the netherworld or limbo. using magic stones and fossils and reptile blood and a giants heart they were able to summon the spirit to a new and improved form.

Mutation: Chickensaurus-rex genetic reversion. Oops .. it got loose. .. oh crap.. he didn't! nemesis got ahold of him!?

 

Science: this new chemical element allows us to heal even fossilized stones by filling in the gaps and creating cellular structures to mimic what would be necessary to run the organism, we have begun testing this on recently extinct species that could benefit the ecosystem and oh no supervillains are here to steal it and what dino fossils! NOOOOOO!

 

Technology: Techasaurus rex.

Natural: yep.. thats a dino. amazing it's still alive and unevolved after all this time, lets take it back and show it off in the circus, what could go wrong with that?

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Joshex said:

why cimerora them in when we can build the lore tie-ins? why are the heroes and villains going there? yadda yadda make some story for how a villain group there or in paragon wants to do a dinosaur invasion of atlas park and grandville and or how that group doesn't play nice OR how they can be exploited and stolen from..

Do both -- have a TF/SF or trial that revolves around an even more ambitious plan. For example, the Oranbegans work out a ritual to go back into trackless prehistory and set up a failsafe that would be under the location where the Mu set up their tap into the portal in the Tower and short-circuit their attempt to hijack it (it being camouflaged as a confluence of ley lines to make its location attractive for siting the Mu's attempts). The heros/villains have to follow the Oranbegans into the past and stop the creation of this failsafe or pervert it to become a power tap for Arachnos. The TF/SF succeeds, sort of, and the failsafe detonates, creating a wave in time that swaps a section of the modern world with a part of the world from millions of years in the past, resulting in the appearance of new land from the distant past.

 

Now, with fragmented Oranbegan artifacts scattered across the land, there are expeditions from both heros and villains to recover the artifacts, find out more about what they are supposed to do, investigate the wild life, etc., with the trail of exploration for Oranbegan artifacts leading up to another TF/SF to find and recover the damaged but still powered relic the Oranbegans intended to use to sabotage the Mu. The zone could then have dinosaurs, Oranbegan structures in the open air and underground,  with both Oranbega and Mu fighting to take/retake artifacts, and with careful enough design, the final TF/SF could be built to allow for siding with the Oranbegans, the Mu, or denying them both their goal.

[Grouchybeast]

7 hours ago, MTeague said:

But really, I think the problem is animations, skeletons, and then what do you DO with them? 

We're going to tame them and ride them like very large, very toothy ponies, of course.  What else would be the point of putting dinosaurs in the game, if not to race them the length of Steel Canyon while yelling YEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!

[Joshex]

On 4/30/2020 at 12:16 AM, Grouchybeast said:

We're going to tame them and ride them like very large, very toothy ponies, of course.  What else would be the point of putting dinosaurs in the game, if not to race them the length of Steel Canyon while yelling YEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!

mounts. super vehicles. yeah I've had that idea before, but it'd be a lot of work to implement it. still I have to agree with you. t-rex, triceratops ankylosaurus stegasaurus all valid chaos causers on the streets. don't mind me I'm just blocking traffic with my brontosaurus, he's out for walkies.

[DekayXxX]

Dinosaurs are a must.

 

Dinosaur zone.

 

Dinosaur MM.

 

Dinosaur Lore Pets.

 

Make it happen.

[Joshex]

16 hours ago, DekayXxX said:

Dinosaurs are a must.

 

Dinosaur zone.

 

Dinosaur MM.

 

Dinosaur Lore Pets.

 

Make it happen.

all in good time, bt we need to rally more support behind the idea.

whatever story or situation we get dinos in, first we need to get the devs interested in it, they'll be more inclined to consider putting in the effort the more players are interested, so tell your friends.

 

to be truthful, for parallel universe ideas I can't help thinking about Turok's Lost Valley.

But for us it'd be a world effected by several Paragon groups. yeah there'd be dinos as the world's basis, probably giant poisonous maneating plants too. then, well, ancient tribal peoples, probably some Banished Pantheon and Circle of Thorns, and the rikti invasion would have been a partial success. partial as in, they would have invaded successfully but probably not liked what they saw, so there'd probably be a rikti outpost and the mothership would have moved on. Shivans would have invaded but probably been eaten by the poisonous man eating plants (possible answer for fixing Galaxy City). Circle and Banished pantheon and a few unlucky people would have gotten there through portals (some intentional, and some random rifts in dimension that a hapless paragonian stumbled through as they took a shortcut down a dark alley on some fateful night).

 

Nictus, They need intelligent lifeforms so, if the banished pantheon and circle came later, that would imply there were no valid hosts for the nictus 2000 years ago and they probably would have glanced over earth and passed up the opportunity.

 

Could have some unique groups to the area other than just dinos. but lets focus on the reptiles first.

 

Edit: hamidon, probably would'nt have had to reason to come about. besides as far as I know the monster used to be human. so hamidon probably wouldn't be there. doesn;t mean the paragon hamidon wont try to get there.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Joshex