OVERHAUL: Latexes (General) [OPEN FOR COMMENT]

[LtxProgrammer]

Entities

• Near Immortality

Canon latexes are nearly immortal. They only die if their core (if they have one) is destroyed, or other ways specified below. The only latex we ever see having "cores" are the Dark Latexes (their mask). However, a latex can be incapacitated by means of crushing them, or dealing sufficient damage to them. A latex who becomes incapacitated would be unable to move or act, and would be rendered in-game as a shapeless puddle of their colors. After some duration, probably an entity attribute, they will reform to their original shape.

• Kinetic damage (e.g. falling, elytra collision, falling blocks) is less damaging

  • Significant kinetic damage will cause them to splat on the surface, stunning them briefly

• Falling into the void will kill them normally

• Puncturing damage (e.g. swords, arrows) is less effective at damaging them

• Fire and shock damage (e.g. fire aspect, TSC weaponry) is more effective at damaging them

• Explosive damage is more effective

• Immune to poison

• Unique Metabolism

One way a latex could die is by running out of energy. A latex entity will get less "nutrition" from "eating" regular food (apples, steak, ...). Their priority would be to transfur entities, which yields high "nutrition."

• Most potions have no effect, neither good or bad.
  • Exceptions include instant effects: healing, harming
• Foods do not apply status effects directly

Latexes instead get status effects from assimilating/transfurring non-latex entities.

• Eye of a Needle

Foxyas has this ability in his mod already, but latexes can "phase through" permeable blocks on command by slipping through the cracks Terminator style. This ability is limited by the latex's core, should it have one. This ability cannot be used if the latex has something else within them or if it is wearing armor or certain accessories. This ability is automatically activated when colliding with a block with enough speed.

Transfur Variants

• Yield Control to Latex

With the now near immortality latexes have, a transfurred player will find it harder to untransfur themselves by means of purposefully dying. This would be an escape menu option to give up control of your transfur variant to an NPC, and respawn untransfurred.

• Destroys Pale Virus

Latexes are immune to the Pale virus since they assimilate the Pale virus cells into more latex biomass.

• Geared Towards Late Game

In canon, the latex TFs assimilate Colin to be "one of them" and loses most of his identity. There is no canon way to survive identity loss in full latex assimilation. Some end-game requirement in Minecraft (or in the mod's progression) should barrier the player from accessing a full latex assimilation without identity loss (dying). Some process in-game that would be similar the canon way to survive assimilation: being nearly dead before it.

• Limited Mid Game

In canon, there exists equipment that fully (mostly) protects the user from full latex assimilation. It is able to create an imperceptible barrier that prevents contact of latex to skin. The user is able to force a latex entity to "suit" them, and is then capable of using their abilities. The user can discard the "worn" latex at any time. The equipment can be overwhelmed by the presence of enough latex, and the user will be assimilated. The equipment itself has limited energy, and the user should beware its' charge. On translucent variants, the player would be visible underneath.

[ZirconEye]

There is no canon way to survive identity loss in full latex assimilation.

There actually might be! The information is very tucked away at the end of the optional minigame bossfight, here's the sequence I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/Qvv2HgquDxM?t=1176

It's a whole hidden cutscene about what happened to Tail after it went on its rampage. Tail gets bombed badly enough that it has to seek out a new host, and it assimilates a nearly dead critter as its new body. (My guess is the critter is a non-latex biological transfur since we see a bunch of them during the minigame boss and they all look pretty solid/non-gooey.)

"Pitiful little guy... Nearing your last breath... I will, to the fullest... put your body to use."

But even after Tail takes full control of the body, after a moment it loses control and the critter takes charge again.

"How can this be? Its consciousness... It is recovering?! Could it be... because a moment ago... It was at the verge of death? Its mind was... not entirely there... due to the blood loss... And so I... Wasn't totally able to... Assimilate its consciousness!"

So, it seems pretty possible that being near dead (plus possibly comatose and/or depriving the brain of oxygen so it shuts down) hinders the identity loss brought on by being transfurred!

[XiaoTDM]

In fact, latex can "assimilate" any non-latex creature, but the term "transfur" only exists in humanoid organisms.

Meaning: Creepers, endermen, and even other animals can be "assimilated", but only humanoids will be "transfurred" and Latex will only actively chase humanoids, and the rest will not be interested in them unless they actively attack them.

As I mentioned in #1253, should latexes be able to tf other non-humanoid mobs?
(Like creepers? Sssss...... BOOM!)

[LtxProgrammer]

From XiaoTDM:

(EN, translated) The current problem is that villagers, zombies, and skeletons will become the same latex humans when they are TFed by latex humans, but they will also become which when they touched the white latex on the wall

My suggestion is to create models for them individually, and divide the latex humans into a larger range (representing all latex creatures that latexized but remain in their original form), perhaps renaming them.

(CN, original) 目前的问题是，村民，僵尸，骷髅这些生物被胶液人类同化后会变成相同的胶液人类，但是它们接触墙上的白色胶液也会变成胶液人类.
我的建议是单独为他们创建模型，并且将胶液人类划分到一个更大的范围内（表示所有胶液化但是保留原形的胶液生物），或许需要重新命名。

[LtxProgrammer]

It would seem that maybe the "latex human transfur" is rather the latex just assimilating Colin without any other modifications. The implementation in the mod should be rethought.

As I mentioned in #1253, should latexes be able to tf other non-humanoid mobs?
(Like creepers? Sssss...... BOOM!)

I had thought about it a few times before, should there be latexes of vanilla mobs? It would open a window of opportunity to design anthro TFs of those mobs. I had also considered if this content should exist as a seperate mod or not.

[LtxProgrammer]

There is no canon way to survive identity loss in full latex assimilation.

There actually might be! The information is very tucked away at the end of the optional minigame bossfight, here's the sequence I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/Qvv2HgquDxM?t=1176

It's a whole hidden cutscene about what happened to Tail after it went on its rampage. Tail gets bombed badly enough that it has to seek out a new host, and it assimilates a nearly dead critter as its new body. (My guess is the critter is a non-latex biological transfur since we see a bunch of them during the minigame boss and they all look pretty solid/non-gooey.)

"Pitiful little guy... Nearing your last breath... I will, to the fullest... put your body to use."

But even after Tail takes full control of the body, after a moment it loses control and the critter takes charge again.

"How can this be? Its consciousness... It is recovering?! Could it be... because a moment ago... It was at the verge of death? Its mind was... not entirely there... due to the blood loss... And so I... Wasn't totally able to... Assimilate its consciousness!"

So, it seems pretty possible that being near dead (plus possibly comatose and/or depriving the brain of oxygen so it shuts down) hinders the identity loss brought on by being transfurred!

Interesting, though I remain uncertain how this should be accomplished in the mod.

[ZirconEye]

Interesting, though I remain uncertain how this should be accomplished in the mod.

Maybe to transfur safely a player has to be on half a heart and be under some sort of debuff?

I had thought about it a few times before, should there be latexes of vanilla mobs? It would open a window of opportunity to design anthro TFs of those mobs.

There is an incredibly talented artist on furaffinity called Puppetmaster13u who's already designed some amazing Changed-style anthropomorphic versions of Minecraft mobs! Here's a few examples from the height charts they've drawn: 1 2 3
And some other great designs that don't have references yet: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

I wonder if it'd be possible to reach out to them and ask if they're open to their designs being used for the mod?

[LtxProgrammer]

Maybe to transfur safely a player has to be on half a heart and be under some sort of debuff?

The player is capable of the same actions (fighting, running, etc.) at both 20 HP and at 1 HP, and is then treated completely dead at 0 HP. Defining an almost dead state for the player is not ideal in vanilla Minecraft. I also don't want to make getting a transfur too free (without cheats). Players in the know could just fall a calculated height and then run to the nearest latex for a free transfur. But it could also be a neat accidental discovery; some player fighting to their last breath gets dealt the final blow by a latex only to realize they didn't die to the transfur. In these two examples, the first player's intent was to be transfurred, and the second's was to survive. If there was a way to differentiate that in the mod, then I would explore these means of safe TF. I do want the player to be able to pick their latex transfur, but I don't want that to happen 5 minutes into a new world.

There is an incredibly talented artist on furaffinity called Puppetmaster13u who's already designed some amazing Changed-style anthropomorphic versions of Minecraft mobs! Here's a few examples from the height charts they've drawn: 1 2 3
And some other great designs that don't have references yet: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

I wonder if it'd be possible to reach out to them and ask if they're open to their designs being used for the mod?

Thank you for sharing their work. I've now looked through their work and they've got quite creative interpretations of what certain mobs + latex + human could look like, namely: skeleton variants, ghasts, guardians, blazes, creepers. I'll see of my capability to model a handful, and I'll reach out to them.

[ZirconEye]

Fingers crossed! I agree, their designs for the more human/humanoid mobs are really unique. The illagers are my favorites honestly, I love how they redesigned a very human-like mob into a pretty cool wolfman/goblin critter! I'm also a big fan of how they went with taurs for some of the quadrupedal mobs (skeleton horse, ravager, ragdoll cat, creeper etc) to increase the diversity of different latex types. The creeper design in particular does a really good job of redesigning a pretty unconventional creature into something that works in the Changed universe.

Thankfully, a lot of their designs seem like they'd work pretty well with existing body types/animations in the Changed mod. Most of them are standard humanoid latexes, but there's quite a few that fit already existing molds too.
Ex; Crow for the bird or wyvern like latex (chickens, parrots, bats and phantoms), Stiger, bee or squid dog for the multi-armed latex (endermite, silverfish, spiders, fireflies and sniffers) Dragons for the winged latex (vexes and allays), sharks or mermaid sharks for the fish-like aquatics (salmon, guardians, tadpoles and drowned) and ofc taurs for the taur latex (ravager, ragdoll cat, skeleton horses and creepers.) We've even got another partial transfur and a pup one from the red foxes!

There's definitely some nonstandard ones too (ghast in particular probably needs an entirely new leg type) but so many of them fitting well into already finished model types/animation sets is pretty encouraging imo!

[Foxyas]

Maybe to transfur safely a player has to be on half a heart and be under some sort of debuff?

The player is capable of the same actions (fighting, running, etc.) at both 20 HP and at 1 HP, and is then treated completely dead at 0 HP. Defining an almost dead state for the player is not ideal in vanilla Minecraft. I also don't want to make getting a transfur too free (without cheats). Players in the know could just fall a calculated height and then run to the nearest latex for a free transfur. But it could also be a neat accidental discovery; some player fighting to their last breath gets dealt the final blow by a latex only to realize they didn't die to the transfur. In these two examples, the first player's intent was to be transfurred, and the second's was to survive. If there was a way to differentiate that in the mod, then I would explore these means of safe TF. I do want the player to be able to pick their latex transfur, but I don't want that to happen 5 minutes into a new world.

There is an incredibly talented artist on furaffinity called Puppetmaster13u who's already designed some amazing Changed-style anthropomorphic versions of Minecraft mobs! Here's a few examples from the height charts they've drawn: 1 2 3
And some other great designs that don't have references yet: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
I wonder if it'd be possible to reach out to them and ask if they're open to their designs being used for the mod?

Thank you for sharing their work. I've now looked through their work and they've got quite creative interpretations of what certain mobs + latex + human could look like, namely: skeleton variants, ghasts, guardians, blazes, creepers. I'll see of my capability to model a handful, and I'll reach out to them.

I think you could use combat tracking to determine if the player was taking damage from "combat" sources (Latexes/Zombies/etc). But of course, it would still be possible to manipulate the damage, but we can't simply predict something that players will always find a way around. whoever we can make it "way arounds" have a bit of sense on it.

[ZirconEye]

The player is capable of the same actions (fighting, running, etc.) at both 20 HP and at 1 HP, and is then treated completely dead at 0 HP. Defining an almost dead state for the player is not ideal in vanilla Minecraft. I also don't want to make getting a transfur too free (without cheats). Players in the know could just fall a calculated height and then run to the nearest latex for a free transfur. But it could also be a neat accidental discovery; some player fighting to their last breath gets dealt the final blow by a latex only to realize they didn't die to the transfur. In these two examples, the first player's intent was to be transfurred, and the second's was to survive. If there was a way to differentiate that in the mod, then I would explore these means of safe TF. I do want the player to be able to pick their latex transfur, but I don't want that to happen 5 minutes into a new world.

I think you could use combat tracking to determine if the player was taking damage from "combat" sources (Latexes/Zombies/etc). But of course, it would still be possible to manipulate the damage, but we can't simply predict something that players will always find a way around. whoever we can make it "way arounds" have a bit of sense on it.

These are all really good points. I think some kind of secondary condition(s) should need to be met before a player can be safely transfurred in combat to make this harder to exploit. Players will probably exploit it anyway, but hopefully it doesn't end up being TOO easy.

Just brainstorming off the top of my head here; maybe under specific circumstances, instead of dying at 0 hearts in combat the player instead gets a short "adrenaline" buff (speed + strength) so they can try to escape death, but after the "adrenaline" wears off they're left at half a heart with a VERY severe "last breath" debuff (slowness + blindness + weakness + mining fatigue) during which they can be safely transfurred? To keep both the "adrenaline"/"last breath" effects from being too annoying, if the player heals at all they should instantly end (so if the player eats/uses a potion it ends immediately since the player's no longer at death's door)

I have no idea what circumstances would trigger this, though. One of them could be that the player needs to be starving/at 0 hunger so they can't heal naturally, but that still might be too easy to do at the beginning of a playthrough. Maybe to trigger all this they need to be under some kind of "transfur resistance" buff the player can make by crafting a complicated syringe recipe, so it's locked to late-game in the mod's progression since they'll need the right crafting block/materials to make it?

[spacedan228]

the ideas are pretty interesting, it'd be nice though if there were options to revert certain features to how they work in current versions, e.g. how transfurring works, safe tf on critical hp, potion effects, or just making the whole thing optional, as i think most people are fine with how things work currently in terms of resistances, reviving, and so on