Mythic forms?

damzelltrill

I can't remember if in any of the novels there where any Mythic forms (example naga form aliens with a snake tail for legs) other the the Furies. where there any? I'm adding some non-humanoid species to my sto fic crews.

tom61sto

Horta are as about as non-human as you're going to get in canon. Hurq are non-humanoid in STO. 8472/Undine are less humanoid than the vast majority of Star Trek aliens, though still pretty close beyond their three legs and lack of identifiable mouths.

rattler2

Yea... there's really only the Changelings, a couple Xindi species, Undine, and Hortas that I know of that aren't humanoid. Although Changelings can take on humanoid form, they're not naturally humanoid. Don't know what the Hur'q will look like yet so I'm holding off on including them.

But yea... a snake style species might be interesting.

voyagerfan9751

You have to remember, Star Trek is based largely around the TV series. I am pretty sure they didn't even use computer generated ships until DS9. Everything else was basically Models in the vain of the original star wars trilogy.

That level of technology extended to the Aliens as well. Because you had to basically have a human actor play the part of the "Alien" all the aliens were pretty much humanoid. Basically guys in makeup and masks, and even that was rather expensive. Which is why you have so little of them on the show beyond the "Humans with a little bit of makeup".

Fortunately STO isn't as restricted in their technology. So hopefully we get more Non-human NPCs, sadly though, they will probably be enemy species.

spiritborn

actually with non-human NPC unless you want to build everything per NPC, gear is gonna be a problem. Even WoW that has much more resources then STO and all playble races are essentially humanoid and only 1 non-humanoid species have player gear enabled.

Humanoid species (or species that are essentially humanoid) can use all player gear as they're using same 3D rig or very similar rigs. That's why gear on non-humanoid speices is built into the model rather then equipment, which means unique models for each NPC type you see in game.

szerontzur

Not exactly what you're after, but these are probably as close as you're going to get in canon due to the nature of the productions using 'human' actors.

Selay(serpent): http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Selay



Anticans(canine): http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Antican



Jarada(insect): http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Jarada

voyagerfan9751

spiritborn wrote: »

actually with non-human NPC unless you want to build everything per NPC, gear is gonna be a problem. Even WoW that has much more resources then STO and all playble races are essentially humanoid and only 1 non-humanoid species have player gear enabled.

Humanoid species (or species that are essentially humanoid) can use all player gear as they're using same 3D rig or very similar rigs. That's why gear on non-humanoid speices is built into the model rather then equipment, which means unique models for each NPC type you see in game.

Which is pretty standard in MMOs. And why I specifically mentioned NPCs, Because NPCs are typically built from the ground up, they can be non-standard. Which is where you get non-humanoid species like the Undine and Tholians.

But for a Playable species, they need to work with the Uniform/gear system. Which means you can't really deviate too much from the base human model. Even in a game like STO.

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rattler2

Hey... those Vipers are no joke. They can be nasty in XCom! And don't get me started on the Viper King either.

captan2er0

There's a old TOS novel, The First Frontier I believe, that had sentient velociraptors and a few other dinosaurs interacting with Kirk and crew. It's been a while since I've read that, so don't hold me to a tee on that.

Not sure if that's what you're looking for or not though.

therealted

I don't know about the novels (never really got into them), but the animated series has all kindsa crazy beasties to overcompensate for the "humans with lumpy heads" syndrome of the original series. Check out a sample here:

http://www.danhausertrek.com/AnimatedSeries/Lifeforms.html

Edit: But stay away from the Kzinti and the Slavers - they were imported from Larry Niven's writing, and he (or his estate) have become a bit more possessive since.

vetteguy904

if you want non humanoid aliens I recommend watching TAS...

sotsogm

vetteguy904 wrote: »

if you want non humanoid aliens I recommend watching TAS...

Oh, it would be so fantastic to have playable Edosians....

admrenlarreck

I would love a playable Nassat, myself.

dracounguis

I'm no programmer, but I imagine that making a non-humanoid playable race would be a huge nightmare. There is so much human modeling stuff pre-made, they can probably buy a copy of one off the market but would have to build from scratch a model for a truly alien figure.