Better Monster and Sublocation art.

[Troglodyte]

This has been bugging me for a while now, you battle a monster named " Giant Crawling Ivy Mass" and there's a picture of a featureless green cube. Mocking you.

This kind of thing get's really annoying when your exploring a Sublocation described as a "Gigantic glistening underground Glacier" While staring at a picture of an abandoned dungeon with cobwebs hanging from the walls. You get the idea.

It would make the game much more fun if you got an individualized picture of the Sublocation or monster, "Charging Wild Skycalaw Mountain Goat herd" should get a picture of just that, a charging wild goat herd with oversized horns and the Skyclaw Mountains in the background, instead of a red lizard claw with a background of rock.

Really, you just need a few guys that are good at drawing, Problem solved.

I know that most of the Sub's already have individual pictures, I'm just arguing for the monsters to get the same (And fix the few Sub's that don't have individualized pics while your at it)

Thanks.

[DarkVisor]

Getting more workers would mean starting to charge a monthly fee, instead of just the current system of donations

[greenlady]

I remember way back someone suggesting that players submit art for the individual monsters, as a way of jazzing up the pics a bit. What about it, devs ? there must be some fantasy art inclined artists amongst this lot, it would save doing the work yourselves and players would get a lot of satisfaction out of it ?

[Banzai]

We decided when making this game that we could either have a few monsters and get artwork done for them all, or have a lot of monsters and get some generic artwork done which kinda gets the point across.

Given we have over 16,000 different monsters in the game currently, you can see we went with option B.

It's simply not possible for us to get that much artwork done with the resources at our disposal And getting free stuff is all well and good but it takes a lot of time to manage all the artists and if its being done for free, their attention and dedication kinda drops off pretty quickly most of the time.

[QTChi]

Aye. There is something else we can use...that is free and it is our imaginations... You will realize, a lot of players who are in DT tend to have their own illusions on how a battle is played out... or how a sublocation really looks like... and just how bad that monster's breath is.

If the monster is "Crawling Ivy," then ignore the green cube and imagine a luscious, green weed with beautiful brown tendrils that curl across its heavy body just seconds before the center gapes open to swallow you whole...

Or you can stare at the green cube.
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Free art... I do recall a thread awhile back where people posted their own renditions of monsters. I wonder where that went...hmm...

[greenlady]

Well. That told me, didn't it. I actually am not bothered whether the artwork is updated or not, but obviously some people are, I recalled an old thread where there was discussion of players contributing artwork and thought I would make a suggestion. A positive suggestion that would promote player involvement, satisfy those that wanted updated graphics and keep the costs down ( even if not free then perhaps payment in credits would have been acceptable). Oh well.

As a FYI I am well versed in using my imagination. I have long preferred simple workable graphics and better gameplay to flashy graphics and laggy bugged games with quite frankly underdeveloped gameplay. I've also spent considerable time and what is left of my patience in the help channels of two other text based games trying to explain to people who log in and go " hey carnt u see ur guy walkin arund, this is not liek runscape this game is borin an it suks 111!!! " that they too can exercise their imaginations and it can pay very pleasant dividends to those willing to put even the smallest bit of effort into it.

[RolandGunner]

I'm all for imagination... but an ever expanding catalog of art is great as well...


If you really want to use your imagination, then there is no need for Dragon Tavern at all... just sit in a dark room, and imagine playing dragon tavern... You can even give yourself extra AP's if you want to get crazy.....

If we can agree that Dragon Tavern does a very good job of walking that fine line between sitting in your closet yelling 52, 25, 45, 89, 99, 23, 12... I Win... and a fully interactive first person MMORPG...... then the question is how much "art" do we need to help keep our imaginations racing?...

I have no talent at all myself, but it would be cool if users would "donate" art... Just have a forum where they could leave art with what ever disclaimer and legal has to be done for DT to be able to use them... Even if some didn't make it into the game.... it would be fun looking at what people came up with...

I enjoy my own imagination, but sometimes it's cool to explore others imaginations as well....

[DarkVisor]

If you have some artwork, make a thread and post it, if DT likes it, and finds it appropriate, they might use it

Maybe other players can also vote on whether it should or should not be added

[Troglodyte]

I apologize if I came across as some ignorant troll, I had no idea there were so many monsters (16,000? I was thinking more like 200!) and I understand fully how many ways attempting to individualize that many critters could go wrong.

I DO think that submitting art is a good idea, if you announced you were taking art submissions you would be flooded with thousands of Emails and have your pick of the litter!

P.S: Anybody know what the art submission thread was called?

[Chon]

I like the hand drawn style of the art used by DT though maybe the basic monster type art etc could be more animated.

from this



to something like this


This is a low quality gif I threw together so you see what I mean

there's a much better flash version here, open it in a new window and resize the window down to see it in it's original small size (Can't embed in forums and set size)