Introducing the basilisk
In today's article, let's look at the basilisk!
Some time ago, we made public the concept art for the basilisk. Now we've gotten to modeling it! You can thank the modeling talents of a new artist to join our team, Cupside. As you can tell, he is doing a fantastic job of modeling the finer details, and at the current stage he's retopologizing it from the high-poly sculpt to the low-poly one you see in-game. After that, he'll unwrap the model and give it some nice textures. The color scheme of the new basilisk can be roughly determined from the art made by Khaos for it. Once that's all done, it'll be animated and you'll all get to see it in-game.
With its position as the second alien in the hierarchy of alien forms, the basilisk is meant to be between the dretch and marauder in appearance. Considering that the dretch maximizes the insectoid traits and that the marauder is an even blend of insect features and reptilian ones, our basilisk can be seen as either a heavily insectoid reptile in appearance, or perhaps an insect with a slightly reptilian body plan. Although the claws were originally intended to be scythe-like, we instead decided to go with a more mantis-like appearance to them, which we feel suits the model more.
Once we get to the point of animating this terrifying creature, you can expect the front arms to be used to grab things while it slowly bites you to death. Of course, that doesn't mean that the basilisk is immune to our gameplay progress, as it is sure to change from its classic Tremulous gameplay. After all, we've added a pounce to the dretch on the development server, and we're investigating different movement types for the other aliens as well, including the basilisk itself. Rather than its current blend of various roles, you can likely expect it to be more of a stealthy assassin, dashing out from the shadows to assault its prey, only to quietly retreat afterwards, content with its latest catch.