Insectoïds Art A classic forest-type insectoïd. More artsAn insectoïd that may appear in the tentacle planet. A rare Ice insectoïd. Can live at very minus zero temperatures. An old insectoïd, covered with metal spikes, in agressive posture. Presentation Insectoïds are a race of insects that lives in the foreign corners of the galaxy. They are small and vicious creatures that likes to catch the uncautious travellers in their highly evolved traps. They can turn themselves into block of whatever material they looks like, and build structure out of their own bodies. I°) Description 1°) Habitat & food Insectoïds usualy crawl in the close to deep underground of planets. They build gallery that can spread over several millions of feets, sometimes spreading under the whole planet. These galleries are usually large enough for almost any animal to walk inside. They are completly empty, as the information and nutriments passes directly through the walls, and the walls are constitued of insectoïd themselves. At the very center of the colony, there is usually a deep chasm, spreading almost to the center of the planet. It is currently not known what is it for, but scientist accord to say that insectoïds retrieve heat from this structure, and then spread it through the "roots" of the colony. Even if it's an exeptional phenomen, insectoïds are also able to build tower-like structure, with height that can reach 2 to 3 kilometers. Those tower emits gamma ray, and are believed to serve as antenna, so insecoïds colony can commincate from planets to planets. The galleries usually serves as trap for uncautious travellers of animals. When something try to walk inside these gallery, it is felt by all the insectoïds. They waits until the creature is far enough in the tunnel, and then disassemble and surround the lonely critter, kills it, and eat it. Just to reassemble a few moment later, leaving not clue of what had just happened. Insectoïds can eat almost anything. When they are in their extended form, they can attack and eat any animal, whatever size it is. When they are in their static form, they feed much more like plants. They extract nutriment from the ground they are, convert it and use it as food for them, and for the other insectoïds they are attached to. When in static form, they can behave like roots, spreading nutriment through their body, to aliment their assembled friends, so they can also duplicate. Insecoïds tends to extract not only nutriments from the ground, they can also "digest" metal and other material, to increase their resitance, or their furtivity. A common fact is to dig for metal, just to see that the ore is surrounded by insectoïds, feasting on the mineral, hardening their body with chunks of metal, and spreading it in the whole colony though the giant roots they made. 2°) Anatomy and morphology A typical insectoïd is about 80cm long, and 50cm height. Although their size is roughly the same for each individual, their weight can vary largely, depending on the ground they live. While forest-type insectoïds usually weight around 40kg, stone-type can weight up to 100 kg. Their legs increase in proportion to support their weight. Their speed also vary, depending of the material they are made of. They can run from 20 up to 60 km/h for some specimen. Their jump height is always pretty impressive, as their legs are really powerfull. A medium weight insectoïds can jump up to 4-5 meters. When digging, insectoïds use both their mandibles ands their legs to remove dirt or to break stone. Insectoïds are able to take advantages of the planet inner components. Adventurers have reported acid, icy and even fire like insectoïds, with hot radiating minerals on their body. The head of an insectoïd contains his brain, his mandibles, and the system able to emit infrasound. When they are in extended form, they communicate with infrasound, while when they are in static form, they communicate through neural signal emitted by their head, and passing by their legs to spread accross the network of connected insectoïds. The mandibles are used to dig gallery, as they are one of the hardest part of their body. They can also be used as weapons when they feel threaten. Insectoïd vision is not really good,and they prefer to rely on their very sentsitive legs to feel vibrations. Also, their brain doesn't need rest, so they can be active at any time of the day. The body of insectoïds is composed of two part, the chest wich contains the organs for circulation, and breathing, and the stomach which contains organs for digestion. The stomach also contains stock of processed material, that can be used by the body in times of need (like for example iron, so they can harden themselve when needed). When in their static form the necessary oxygen is absorbed by the top most insectoïd, and spread to the bottom most ones. The most interesting part of insectoïds are their legs. The top of their back legs, as well as the bottom of their fore legs are covered with little hole. These hole contains one of the most sofisticated organs of their body: it looks like a retractable tentacle but it is much more than this. It can extract components from almost any material. Insectoïds use it to eat and to extract mineral to improve they chitin shell. What is certainly the most interesting fact is that these tentacle are responsible for the communication, when they are in their static form, it can pass nutriments, as well as neural signal so insectoïds can speak and eat, even when static. At the bottom of their legs, one can see a very hard chitin blade. This blade can serve as knife, both to attack, and to split hard rocks. The bottom most part of their leg is also really hard, so they can use it as a weapon, or as a pickaxe. Their legs are also very effective damper, so they take little to no damage when falling, even at full speed. Insectoïds are able to shrunk themselves into almost rectangular shape, and assemble together to build large structures. Many uncautious traveller have died, surrounded by a swarm of crawling insects that just fell from what they thought was the ceiling of the cavern they where explorating. Other have died starving in the monstruous maze they have built. Here are some little animations: 3°) Reproduction and life Insectoïds have no apparent gender, and so they doesn't mate to reproduce themselves. Instead, when they are in their static form, they can split much more like a cell, reproducing an entity that is a clone of themselves. The splitting process lasts a few days, depending on the nutrimental richness of the ground they are attached to. Typically, an insectoïd lives several years, sometimes ten, when in extended form. When they are in static form, they can live much longer, but it's not known exactly how many years, because they can divide when in static form, so dead ones are replaced by new one, and it is very rare to see a dead insectoïds. They are usually reprocessed by the others, feeding them. Young individuals are usually hardly recognizable from elders, because all insectoïds have the same size, and as they split to reproduce, there is no children. One can distinguish between young and old, mainly by the color of their chitin shell. As older have had access to better material, their shell is usually covered with more hard metal, or more adapted colors. Insecoïds aren't really difficult to kill when young, because their chitin shell didn't have the time to recolt enough material to harden. Their most vulnerable part is the top of their head, which they usually protect using their fore leg and their mandibles. II°) Civilisation 1°) History No one know where or when the insectoïds appeared in this galaxy. Reports on their existence spans over hundreds of years. It is usually said that they have arrived with the first settlers , hidden in their spacecrafts. When insectoïds land on a planet, the process of infestation usually follow the same three steps. During the first months, insectoïd (there can be only one), bury himself in a place deep enough, close to a nutritionally rich ground. Then he begin to clone himself. This process takes a few days but the number of individual increase exponentially so after a few weeks, an insectoïds may have duplicated into more than thousands. The assembled-insectoïd root goes deeper and deeper in the ground, in order to capt the heat from the planet. Once the center of the colony has been created, the second step begins. During this next step (that can spans over centuries), the colony extends his roots under the ground of the planet, collecting more and more nutriments through their roots, eventually killing any resistance, either animal or vegetal. This step can take really long time, and close to the end of this step, one can be the witness of those giant towers, growing on the surface of the planet. The last step is close. During the last steps the colony which has spread accross the whole planets has now enough energy and components to move on. The insectoïds roots retracts and gather in some points. There, the insectoïds assemble in a sort of ellipsoïd structure, and begin to levitates. No one actually understand how they can achieve this, and many scientist has died trying to understand it. Once the structure levitates, the spacecraft-like ships quit the gravitational attraction of the planet, and fly to another ones. During the last step, Insectoïds can creates hundreds of those structure, increasing their footprint in the galaxy. 2°) Society The insectoïd society is really cooperative. The individual doesn't have room there. Every insectoïd is only a part of the colony, and that's it. There is not leader, no matriarch. Instead, the more insectoïds there are in a colony, the more it is resistant and intelligent. Each individual share its own konledge with the rest of the group, and everyone is then more educated, and more reactive, and even stronger, as they have access to better material for their body. 3°) War Insectoïds never fight each other, but they can engage war with other evolved species if the competition for food force them to do so. As they are weak alone, they usually move in swarm of thousands. They can build offensive structure to destroy a civilization. But usually they just try to outnumber the opponent, eating them and their struture altogether. They are particulary vicious creatures that likes to build evolved trap to kill enemy. For example they can build bridge, and when an enemy step on it, they disassemble so the creature fall to death. They also like to let enemies walk inside their gallery, and then fall on him from the ceiling to kill him. Insectoïds are also capable of imitating a civilization building, so uncautious adenturers can be fooled to walk inside what he thought was a restaurant, just to find out that he was the meal. III°) Game relative facts 1°) Rumors It is said that not only they are capable of building gallery and caverns underground, but they also can build large cities on the ground. But every time adventurers try to spot such cities, they just disapear little time after, with no clue. A vastly accepted belief is that when they are in their static form, they can live for hundreds of years. It seems that when assembled together, they are much more like a root, that can extract nutriment from the ground directly, and spread it to their neighboor. This rumors has been checked several times, when vast colonies of insectoïds just appeared after settlers has arrived on a planet that was monitored for hundreds of years. 2°) Insertion in the game The insectoïds could be packed by bunch of 10 - 20, creating some sort of structure (a bridge, a cavern, a building). They can also be found around ore, while depleating the vein. Player will encounter them on planets that are mostly at the edges of the galaxy. They can live on almost any types of planets, and their colors may vary, depending on the planet components. They aren't difficult to kill one by one, but they always appears in large groups, so they can be harmfull if one doesn't take caution. There may be some particulary hard insectoïds, on planets that have lots of quality ore, like titanium. Game variation are almost infinite, as you can vary their color, the components they are made of. Which will create different fighting units. Some exemple: A forest type, which will hide and release spore from their back to attack, along with the traditional claw + mandible. A icy type, which will freeze the player while attacking A heavy type, made out of plain granit, which will walk slowly, and be resistant, eventually trying to hit the player by falling on it. A light type, made of composite materials, it can run really fast and retreat before being hit. Here is an attempt to see what they could look like in-game: 3°) Loot They can loot any type of ore (depending what they are made of), because their abdomen can pile unused ore. They can also loot (although rarely) a tentacle from their leg. Those tentacle can serve as extracting ore, or sucking life, maybe to be combined to create powerfull weapon. They also can loot chitin chunk, that can be used to craft armors, of differents style, depending of the type of chitin (metal, dirt, stone, gold ...)
The pixel art is good, I don't know what's to criticize. Also the idea is original, but maybe a little bit hard to convert into the game, since they have to dynamically shape landscape objects and stuff. But other than that, nice one.
Updated. Thanks for the critics. Regarding the difficulty to add it to the game, as I was thinking starbound will have the same world basic principle as terraria, I thought it would not be that hard to add it to the game. Maybe not as whole part of the world, but just add a small bunch of insectoïds blocks during maps generation would be cool. Like for making a thick bridge over a deep chasm, players try to walk and it and just fall with the insectoïds deep in the ground. Regarding the sprites, I'm trying to make an animated squarre/ unsquarre animation. I will upload it soon.
I hope ^^. I have sketched a little animation, showing the squarring thing. I will upload better pictures latter.
reilly likeing this idea. i'd hate to think i'd found and NPC village and go in to buy supplies, only to find out that the building wanted to eat me. if they can turn into blocks, wouldn't that bean that they can be mined?
Didn't thought of that possibility, that would be cool! Edit: I made a new sprite to show what they look like. I will remake the crappy animation when I have time. Edit2: I will upload new arts of different types of insectoïds depending on the planet they live
Added new sprites for the currently available planet type shown in the preview. I'll add more information about society and living in a next update. Enjoy!
Updated and reformatted the whole description part. I've put AuraKnight idea in the description (shame on me :whistle: )
Shouldn't insects have six legs? Isn't that their whole shtick? Looks good though, I like anything that adapts to it's environs.
They... Must be hidden somewhere . Thanks for the feedback. I love the way you put it. Maybe you can sprinkle a little of the replicator from stargate too.
