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Spider Modding (Possible Mod Ideas)


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So, Skyrim spiders are kind of not scary at all.

Well, unless you have actual arachnophobia, but me, they do creep me a bit but I also find them fascinating.

Thing is, they are supposed to cause that impression, and I was never able to get it from Skyrim.

Maybe it's the fact they die in 1-2 strikes and are not menacing at all, or perhaps that you can find them on the wilderness like they're just a regular bear, which can be messed up if it were real life, but on game it's just meh.

Maybe it's because they went for fluffy tarantula-inspired design instead of hairless, skinny and black for extra creep factor, or even possibly the issue where even in spider caves, there's just a few of them, dungeons can be cleared in a few minutes with no threat at all, and you dont have a real nest where thousands of little offspring hatch from the eggs when the nest is disturbed or the mother is under threat.

Sky ambushes may be the one time where the creepyness was captured right, but other than that, skyrim spiders are just pure meh.

 

I can't pinpoint the exact moment where Skyrim spiders went wrong, but the point here, is I wanted to do something about it.

Other games such as Dark Souls, or even Tomb Raider 2 managed to get them right. And TR2 is as old as it gets, and even with crappy poligons the feel was 1000 times better than what goes on on Skyrim.

 

I know there's plenty of monster mods that add new varieties, and also one called Arachnophobia that IIRC, gave them a paralizing attack and a trapped web escape mechanic, which is fine and dandy, but I wanted something different.

I want to make them menacing but at the same time not annoying. If possible, a project that would be ideally compatible with Arachnophobia (no idea if it can be yet) and I wanted to restore the creep factor when fighting them, but at the same time, make it possible for an experienced hero to come out of a dungeon scared but unharmed.

 

I have a few ideas for this, maybe editing their base stats, maybe making larger and smaller hostile varieties, maybe even making an entirely new model or retexture that looks scarier, maybe making some of them burst into little offspring when killed, maybe simply increasing their numbers by some sort of cloning effect, or I dont know how possible it is, but maybe just making them move a lot faster would increase the creep factor a lot, maybe some of these, maybe all of these, maybe something else.

 

Thing is, I thing I got the skills to make a good spider mod, and I want to do it. But I'm a bit stuck on the concept design, so that's why I thought to make this thread and ask for opinions. What do you guys think about this or do you have any ideas/suggestions? Preferably things that have proven possible as concepts on other mods please... I'd rather not go insane trying to invent new mechanics to modding. Also nothing that requires AI tweaking, cause that's something that I couldn't deal with.

 

I dont know if this mod will be made, I dont know if I'll succeed in making it, but I'm willing to try. But first, I should have a clear concept of what I want, and i could use some opinions.

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As someone with severe arachnophobia, Skyrim spiders are fucking scary! Like, i could totally use a mod that gets rid of them entirely. Not replacers, but eliminated entirely. I can tolerate them kinda and fight them because it's still fictional after all, but i do hate it.

 

You have no idea how glad i am that spiders aren't that huge in real life. Still, the big ones that are real are still scary. I know they have a function in the ecosystem but fuck why do they have to look so scary? Disgusting shit! Nasty!

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I totally get your point. All the dialogues and load screens in Skyrim, even their caves with the human-shaped web sacks, tell a story of dangerous, giant monsters and what do we get? Some antsy huge balloons one can pop on level 3 with a fork and some fire ?

 

I think your idea to alter the base stats is a good head start: definitely faster, a bit more robust (not too much though, they are soft skinned spiders in the end) and maybe take a look at their attacks: I know there are Papyrus functions to get the scale of ObjectReferences, maybe you can tie the intensity of the poison to their size?

Another thing, where I don't know if Arachnophobia offers it: maybe their web spitting could slow you down or even root you? This small thought of being defenceless while the spider comes closer could have some psychological impact.

Oh, and I don'T know how good you are in this, but the sounds are definitely something that needs a rework! They sound like all their joints are rusty :/ 

 

And I really like your idea of small hatchlings coming out of egg sacs if the nest is threatened, 

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4 hours ago, Mister X said:

I totally get your point. All the dialogues and load screens in Skyrim, even their caves with the human-shaped web sacks, tell a story of dangerous, giant monsters and what do we get? Some antsy huge balloons one can pop on level 3 with a fork and some fire ?

Exactly this

 

Ok, so... I have yet to to some "market investigation" to see what's out there; specifically trying out Arachnophobia myself, since I only ever read the description (And wasn't too keen on getting paralized and kidnapped each time I went to a spider dungeon -> Not that I disagree with the idea, I just dont want to be annoyed when playing)

but provided that works well enough, next step would be trying to build something that hopefully integrates with or without that mod and then basically changes stats (that's probably the tricky part since difficulty change mods can alter those a lot) increase speed, changes the way poison works and adds spawn mechanics for extra little creepers somehow. And the part that I wanna try out is maybe making a new model. I'm thinking something skinny, with less hair and more caparace, and possibly in grey tones because "frostbite" doesnt scream "black" or even "brown" to me. Makes sense that giant snow spiders would mimic better with the snow to be the horrors they're supposed to be.

Well at least that's a concept already...

 

Sounds... I didn't really want to mess with those. I think I could change a few sounds, but first I'd need something suitable to replace them since I'm no sound editor.

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Alright... I'm currently working on a dungeon mod, so this spider thing is kind of a lateral idea I have almost not yet touched.

But I did mess with spiders on 2 sections of my dungeon, and I think I already managed to make them creepier than Bethesda ?

 

And that's just using 2 tricks alone which all relate to dungeon narrative.

You get into this dark room where there's almost no lights and the lights there are are very very small.

There's more smaller spiders than big ones, and I tried to hide them all as opposed to "walking into a giant cave and seeing a big spider right at first sight"

I'm also using a trick to disable them and enable/trigger them for sneak attacks hopefully when the playir is facing back to them.

Unfortunately this is only my area since I'm the designer here, none of that can be applied to the entirety of Skyrim unless I were to redesign every spider encoounter in the game, which I'm not.

 

What can be carried over however, is the second tweak I made.

Since I was learning about navmeshing, noticed you need navmeshing to make enemies move or else they derp our hard. The problem is spiders radius is a lot larger than what it should be, considering they're supposed to be creatures that live and move in dark holes. So I tweaked the skeleton size values to trick the game into thinking they are smaller and can in fact move in tight corridors.

After testing I can say that was a HUGE improvement on the creep factor, though I'm still unaware of the inevitable side consequences.

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I had already

On 11/20/2020 at 1:10 AM, Tiress said:

Arachnid Brutality + Absolute Arachnophobia + Faster Frostbite Spiders is what I went with. Had to get rid of it eventually as I just freaked out and paused the game most of the time I saw them swarming me.

 

To me the ones with skinnier legs and bigger body are more creepy. And harder to see. Making them even more creepy.

 

Long legs add to creepiness too:

 

  Hide contents

main-qimg-76bfaf53ebe93ffcfdac1e7d1ab88d

 

i Installed already the first 2 to my game. I play add the momement with the ll Arachnaphobiamod where you get ensnared into a web and if you dont ... you get the point muahahaha i life this creepfactor :D

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Maybe you should download WIld World, and then you'll see absolute *gangbangs* of spiders congregating and roaming the world. X_X Plenty of mods that can increase their poison/lethality as well. Considering you can't block their poison shots.... I find them to be the most  dangerous thing besides trolls in the wild. XD

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7 hours ago, MonVert said:

Maybe you should download WIld World, and then you'll see absolute *gangbangs* of spiders congregating and roaming the world. X_X Plenty of mods that can increase their poison/lethality as well. Considering you can't block their poison shots.... I find them to be the most  dangerous thing besides trolls in the wild. XD

Dont get me wrong, my goal is not to make them "the most dangeous enemy in the game" not populate the world with hordes of them, I just want them to regain the sense of threat they're supposed to have like... you wouldn't enter a dragon lair unprepared "in real life", much less a spider lair, not because one is dangerous and the other is not, but because both are, but spiders creep you more. On the vanilla game, a lvl 20 player literally has nothing to fear from spiders (as I've also noticed they arent even leveled as other enemies, once you reach level cap, a lvl 14 spider is the greatest possible threat you'll ever get)

 

Anyway, posting importan question here since a lot of it depends on it:

DOES ANYBODY KNOW ABOUT DUNGEON BUILDING AND ENEMY ENCOUNTER AI?

 

I sure could use the help, since I'm learning the ropes about it and there's a lot that can be done with vanilla assets, like ambushes, patrols, linking references etc, and I feel I barely know 1% of the possibilities. I want to understand enamy behavior and AI in order to make things as I want em to be.

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38 minutes ago, Myst42 said:

DOES ANYBODY KNOW ABOUT DUNGEON BUILDING AND ENEMY ENCOUNTER AI?

This would be the personhttps://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/3591326 to ask their dungeons are amazing. They are an active modder and I know they have helped others with mods.

As far as spiders I think variants of them would add to it... I mean some real small as to maybe see in home as a random encounter because seeing one in your house changes everything.

Argiope_aurantia.jpg.48d55dd47170f63254dfee8ee01c2497.jpg

These are not dangerous but walking into a web with these guys is next level freak out.

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9 hours ago, Myst42 said:

Unfortunately this is only my area since I'm the designer here, none of that can be applied to the entirety of Skyrim unless I were to redesign every spider encoounter in the game, which I'm not.

You could achieve a similar effect by increasing the visual distortion effect of their spit. That way even in normal light conditions if the player is not careful, vision will be impaired. I remember Requiem had a very strong visual effect for the spider spit (and I think it stacks so it gets worse as you're swarmed by multiple spiders). And there is room for counterplay, like getting resistance to poison, dodging the spit attack, using a cure poison potion/spell, etc. If you could make the spider movement erratic or less predictable (editing combat styles maybe? idk really) then not being able to see would be even worse. Now, if you can give spiders an ability which spawns more spiders while the player is poisoned/blind that would be wicked. Remember og Jurassic Park with the little spitting dinosaur?

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OK... I'm actually making a dungeon mod these days, but on the way, I've started to improve spiders along the way since I'm giving this dungeon 2 spider areas.

An interesting thing I just developed is AI tricks. IE, vanilla spiders usually attack player on sight or get triggered from staged ambushes.

I'm using a different trick to make reactive spiders with aggro radius. See one thing you see in nature is that spiders dont just attack their prey, they wait for em to fall into their trap and sometimes you can even see them waiting at the center of their web.

 

So I gave them small aggro radiuses and set their AI to helps nobody. So that way you dont fight just one and then the entire colony aggroes you. That has it's moment and place but I found working your way though numerous ambushes works better and at the end you get the "grand finale" where the entire hive retaliates.

 

I'm not so sure how many of these changes can be applyable to vanilla spider encounters.

Took me a while to get the hang of AI management though. To the date I still cant quite get why when I tried to edit AI behavior on vanilla spider edits, it didn't work and I had to use a giant and turn it into spider variants to make it work lel

 

Spoiler

enb 2020_11_27 21_33_49_61.jpgScreenShot9.jpgenb 2020_11_28 10_50_22_13.jpg

The saddest part about vanilla is the complete lack of leveled lists for such a common enemy. You see draugr that keep up growing more and more dangerous at least up to 50 level cap iirc. Spiders never change. small ones will always be lvl1 and giants will alwats be lvl 16.

 

Leveling in general is kind of a stupíd idea that got too popular and literally everyone uses it, but if you are going to use leveling in your game, the game should be consistent with it, not just forget about certain elements.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

I think what would be required to make spiders scarier would be a completely new skeleton with new meshes and textures... I would actually make them look more fluffy... like those fusafusaproject mod. I think the ones in skyrim look too "crusty". They would need a completely new movement system... the way they move in skyrim is just kinda goofy -- also their movement sounds in skyrim are wayy too loud, I think they would be scarier if they were almost unhearable. The way spiders move are a big part of what makes them scary -- it's like they stick to the surface with they legs and they kind of just "bend" around corners when moving around them. Every step a spider takes seems calculated and perfect -- meanwhile skyrim spiders are just sliding like Michael Jackson...

Spiders in Skyrim don't hide enough... you know that feel, when you see one spider leg poking from a corner and when you realize it's a spider you just get the shivers? Maybe spiders in skyrim need to be (maybe not all) a little smaller... the environment where they show up would need to be redesigned so they get varied and immersive hiding spots -- would be cool, if the areas before they ambush you would be mostly webless and suspiciously empty, with no other alive creatures... the environment should be designed in a way so that you walk in on their webs and actually get caught in them (it bugs me, that their webs pose no threat in vanilla skyrim), and past that point everything is actually full of webs.

Spiders shouldn't be too tanky, but their poison very dangerous. Also maybe there should be different types that are good at different things, like jumping, web-making, strong fangs and poison, swarming... all with new and smarter a.i. and real tactics.

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48 minutes ago, TellMeWhereIsGandalf said:

Maybe spiders in skyrim need to be (maybe not all) a little smaller...

 

They are too high. They dont need to be smaller in general, the issue is theyre standing almost upright

 

- Make their legs bend more and maybe even make them longer, so that the body is more on the ground. Frostbite Spiders look like a 8 legged Ballerinas, not like a Spider

That alone will make the Spider 5 times as scary 

 

- The Chelicerae should either be more fluffy or smaller, maybe both but in general, Spiders with big chelics usually have them covered completely in fur (the chelics are the upper part of the mouth, the part above the actual fang)

- The legs should be more fluffy

- eyes bigger

- also spiders dont have eyebrows, wtf is this:

image.png.75baafa979b05827d5b86032276ead60.png

The head just looks straight up deformed, the position of the eyes also doesnt make all too much sense, Im unsure if the forstbite spider even has 8 eyes or if its just the 5 frontal ones

 

- a Spider that tries to threaten you stands up on 4 legs, not 6. The front 2 legs are for .. my english just died

Its important for their sense of touch, a spider doesnt use them to threaten someone or so. If a spider wants to threaten you it stands on 4 legs and lifts the frontal 4 up in the sky to look bigger. Thats another thing a frostbite spider cant do because of the ballerina posture

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/13/2020 at 8:45 PM, Myst42 said:

Exactly this

 

Ok, so... I have yet to to some "market investigation" to see what's out there; specifically trying out Arachnophobia myself, since I only ever read the description (And wasn't too keen on getting paralized and kidnapped each time I went to a spider dungeon -> Not that I disagree with the idea, I just dont want to be annoyed when playing)

but provided that works well enough, next step would be trying to build something that hopefully integrates with or without that mod and then basically changes stats (that's probably the tricky part since difficulty change mods can alter those a lot) increase speed, changes the way poison works and adds spawn mechanics for extra little creepers somehow. And the part that I wanna try out is maybe making a new model. I'm thinking something skinny, with less hair and more caparace, and possibly in grey tones because "frostbite" doesnt scream "black" or even "brown" to me.

 

 

I'm just throwing in this out there.
From TVTROPES

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim

 

"Genius Bonus

  • Frostbite Spiders: One wonders why they deal regular poison damage, instead of frost damage. Well, you know what happens when you get a severe enough case of frostbite? Necrosisexternal_link.gif. You know what else causes necrosis? Brown recluse venomexternal_link.gif."

WARNING: THE LINKS OF NECROSIS AND BROWN RECLUSE VENOM HAVE VERY VERY VERY STRONG ACTUAL REAL LIFE PICTURES!

 

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  • 2 months later...

ugliest spieder you've ever seen

Spoiler

Kind, Schminke, Spider Man, Gesicht

 

Ugh that was disgusting, sry.

 

Yeah I'm dreaming of a spider mod too. Unfortunately my modding skills are low to zero.  What I can do is textures and I have lots of ideas of course.

 

I thought myself start the mod with simple things collection and add more and more over time becoming a perfect spider diorama:

-update spider AI like u mentioned with low aggro radius, she "tarns and waits", others go hunt etc.

-add spells like paralyze, illusion etc. There are so many spell mods.

-sythesis of lots of mods and mod features out there that would fit. Million ideas here

-add textures and meshes to spiders, webs, items etc.

-create some lore around with books e.g.

-try to make spiders walk on walls and ceiling, love that idea. They would hide in trees then, in caves you run aroud spooked always watching in every corner of the room.

-try make them detect light so their AI tells them to seek dark places

-create human-spider-, human-animal- and human-plant-hybrids

-create a story where kynareth priestess tries to cure you, therefore you'll have to obey her treatments in an abbey-like cell where she does a million experiments on you

-there is also that priestess' daughter who is special through spider attack and crazy mother, in end of story you'll adopt her

-the father is...

-add athmo like fog, music, dreep sounds,loading screens

-make a spider follower with style like controlling you like a marionette, thrilling you with bondage and so on

-story is u go insane over arachnophobia (hallucinations, dreams and stuff) and search heal in kynareth temple where u meet the priestess who is insane on the one hand and on the other hand secretly in the spider sect which has creepy folks allover tamriel to ressurect the old spider empire, even older than dragons

-dragons have shouts, spiders have eye magic like the guys in naruto anime. therefore they have 8 of them. PC may learn that in storyline like shouts

 

and much much more

 

See, this is more than one person can handle even with lots of skill and time. It ends up in a dlc-sized supermod. This is why noone did it yet.

Would make more sense to cooperate and merge ressources.

How to?

Create a framework where every single modder dreaming of spider stuff can implement modules? Or recruit all interested and most capables of the team overlook the creating process? Still thinking about while I finish 2 other heavy projects. Thx for creating that topic for now. (Plz don't use my stuff without involving me, that would make me sad af.)

 

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