[Character Mod] Wabbit the Bunny Queen

[Zackreaver]

 

What I have here is a very WIP character that I quite possibly have over scoped on design concepts.

 

The character is fully playable and has unique art.  But the mod is set to friends only as there are lots of particular details that need fine tuning.

 

So much over scoping that the character has been in a theoretical limbo for quite some time.

 

HOWEVER, EVER SINCE THAT RECENT STREAM.

the name Wabbit is in danger...

 

As nice as it would be to see Klei make a "Wabbit" if that actually does become a thing, the mention of that name made me dig this project up and bring to public attention.

 

This mod project is what got me into modding.  To make a long story short, a friend of mine is a huge fan of rabbits, to the point where whenever she plays Don't Starve she usually sets the world's rabbit count to lots and runs around squealing at the sight of all the rabbits.  What got me interested is the concept that she never harms rabbits, I wondered if such a thing could be done without horribly crippling yourself.

 

Sure enough, I was definately able to survive in the game without having to resort to killing rabbits for food!  However, there was pretty much no character in the don't starve roster that rewarded this type of playstyle.  And my friends favorite character was Willow, and Willow HATES rabbits (irony).

 

 

 

The idea behind this character is to create a rewarding playstyle for someone who not only doesn't want to harm rabbits, but must protect them instead.

 

Additionally, synergy with the Bunnymen was pretty much a must, so I decided that Bunnymen shouldn't feel hatred towards Wabbit for carrying meat in her hands (They trust her, they know she's not a murderer)

 

What this allows is for Wabbit to be a very follower centralized character, being able to maintain both bunnymen and pigmen equally as effective without the immediate drawbacks.

 

Because of the follower focus, Wabbit has a very low amount of health (only 100 with 20/40/60 death penalty) along with 50% less damage (Same as wendy)

This makes the character dependant on followers to handle combat situations as opposed to handling them herself.

 

I have a current ongoing experiment ever since the woodie update, I decided to give her night vision (to my friends request) but the way it functions is very strict, it only triggers when the character enters darkness, and Charlie still attacks her even though she has night vision (Maybe charlie doesn't like Wabbit for some reason?) But this makes the character still dependant on light sources, but can function a little better when running in the dark.

 

 

The biggest obstacle I've been trying to tackle however, is how the rabbit's interact with Wabbit.  Wabbit does not scare rabbits from walking next to them, and can easily tame them so they can be picked up.  However the first thing that crossed my mind, is players doing this to give rabbits to other players to use for food.  That just doesn't fit the characters theme at all, and feels VERY cruel >.<.

 

I have 2 ideas to help prevent this behavior though, the first is Wabbit loses a little bit of sanity, if one of her rabbit followers dies.  It has to be a follower that was following Wabbit, so if someone kills a rabbit somewhere else, she won't mind.  Additionally, rather than punish other players for killing her rabbits, I decided on a type of gift system that the rabbit will have so long as Wabbit keeps them alive.

 

 

Here is how the gift system works, as long as Wabbit has at least 1 follower, they will give a gift, the gift quality changes depending on how many rabbits are following Wabbit.  And if any of the rabbits following Wabbit end up being killed, all of the rabbits run away and never return (literally, they vanish, poof).  This means that unless Wabbit can successfully protect the rabbit followers from danger (And avoid catcoons at all costs) She has to recruit new follower rabbits and start all over.

 

 

 

This is the current build I have for her.  Additionally, before the caves update occured, I gave her the ability to instantly be able to build a rabbit house and an improved farm, allowing her to immediately have agriculture along with a personal guardian to protect it.

 

Currently, the rabbit gift system is very difficult to balance.  Unlike catcoons, rabbits are very plentiful, and they don't have a limited number of lives.  Additionally, no matter what I set the numbers too, the gifts either feel too rare or too generous.

 

I'd love some feedback on what someone thinks of the idea as a whole.

 

Here's some WIP screenshots.

http://imgur.com/a/xzfRd

We did something unique with the torso and gave her a gown, so she has no legs.  We wanted to be different, it proved to be a pain though, as sometimes the lower part of the gown doesn't always match up with the upper part, so it looks really wierd when she walks.  It can probably be fixed though.

The arms still have a little bit of work needed on them, mostly resizing of images for the upper arm so they connect seamlessly.

 

 

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention is Wabbit is effectively capable of eating grass.  I did this to help address the difficulty in obtaining a replenishable food source, especially when berries become far less reliable with winter coming.

 

Originally I just made grass an available food source that provided very little hunger, but that got wierd as grass is rather large.  Also grass is far too easy to obtain considering it would be a non-perishable food source.

 

One attempt I made to fix this was by making the grass perishable, but when it fully perish's, instead of becoming rot, it's food type is just changed from GRASS to WOOD (which it normally was wood so woodie can eat it)

But this ended up bothering alot of people cause they kept thinking their grass was going to rot.

 

Finally I decided instead, whenever Wabbit harvests grass from grass tufts, she gets a unique food source that only she can eat.  It's the same as eating grass theoretically, but she only gets it from harvesting the grass herself, and it also perish's very quickly.  I call it bunny chow cause it sounded funny.

 

Oh and I also forgot to mention this, she gets a little better stats recovered from eating raw carrots.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Zackreaver

[Toros]

I think you've a concept that you can go in a lot of different directions with, and having a follower-based character is interesting.  As an aside, I never interact with bunnies at all anymore until I'm getting a prestihatitator.  Earmuffs aren't great, and I prefer to get my morsels from bird traps.

 

With any design though, we should limit complexity as much as possible, and make the character as intuitive as possible to play.

 

Follower AI in don't starve is generally not very good, and followers in general aren't a great use of resources with the exception of rock lobsters, so I think the degree of weakness you've given her is a little excessive, and I'd be more inclined to hit her in other areas.

 

 

Lore-wise, the underground bunnymen and the jackalopes on the surface are very different species with very different habits.  The surface dwellers are diurnal, and the underground ones are nocturnal.  It would probably be a cleaner design if you focused on one or the other, the way webber is clearly part of the surface variety.

 

In terms of implementation, the easiest way to ensure that she does not eat the bunnies is to make her a vegetarian, and have carrots be more beneficial for her to cultivate and eat than for other characters.

 

For what the surface rabbit followers offer, I believe the best solution is to have them provide small amounts of poop, that can then be recombined into manure.  It would be fitting for a rabbit character in DS to grow a lot of carrots, and having localized poop production (and rabbits generate a lot of poop, and rabbit poop has quite high levels of nitrogen) all fits into a playstyle where you're guarding your little poop factories.  During the winter that saves people having to travel quite as far for beefalo poop or chopping wood, and the rest of the time excess can turn into extra dragonfruit/carrots.

 

If she is vegetarian, winter is going to be tough even having normal stats.  She'll probably want her own dedicated food supplies, in the form of dragonfruit and/or raw carrots.  (Carrots could provide sanity bonus for her)

 

I don't think that it's necessary to give her night vision if she's taking more after the surface bunnies, but if you did I would have an initial circle of vision and have it shrink as charlie gets closer.  Charlie appears to attack only intelligent creatures at night, and the more robust the mind (higher the max sanity) the worse position you're in once you're low.  It also gives good visual feedback to players that the light is not going to hold Charlie off.

 

For an intelligent character with nightvision, it would be plausible that charlie would "press in" before she struck.  It's not ordinary shadow, so it wouldn't follow ordinary physics.

 

Especially now that caves are in, I would probably tighten her focus to just bunnies and bunnymen.  You could give her a beard function that she could periodically shave to acquire bunny puffs.  This would allow her to slowly build hutches without having to harm one of her friends, similar to how webber does. It would be easy to tune as well.

 

That's just my thoughts on it.  Best of luck in whatever you decide!

[Zackreaver]

Very amazing feedback toros.  Funny enough poop was a recommended item from one of my friends, but putting it that way, it does very much fit in her vegetarian farm based style of play.

 

I still feel like the reduced health and damage are appropriate however, rabbits are fragile, though they make up for it by being nimble.  She does have another benefit of moving a little faster at night.

 

The "follower based" portion is entirely with the fact that bunnymen don't aggro her while she carries meat.  So it's alot easier to get bunnymen AND pigmen followers without the need to recruit pigmen first and hide the meat afterwards.  So inherently she just has an easier time obtaining them.

 

I was considering giving her a "ranged 0 damage weapon" that would be used to issue order's to followers, similar to how in single player simply starting the attack makes followers charge forth.

 

As for the thing with charlie, it sounds really cool but I'll have to look in to see if I can even do that.  I'm utilizing the same night vision component that woodie and the molehat uses, so I might not be able to give that conveyance.  However, charlie still gives the audio signal to attack, and Wabbit still reacts to it.  I'll experiment with it a little more and see what I prefer.  The night vision was kind of just added in to try things out.

 

Edit: OH RIGHT, I forgot to mention a particular feature she had involving grass, I'll edit the main post.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Zackreaver