Griffons, Griffawns, Gryphons…Dude, Where’s my Carpet?

So not everyone is enamored with the Flying Gryphons. Shock!

There has been discussion on the EQ2 Forums about the appearance of Flying Mounts, their origin, and when we might see either our existing flying-type mounts (carpets, hovering clouds, discs, and a selection of flying horses) become flyable as appearance flying mounts, or new flying mounts added as quests. At least on that last question, it appears it is only a matter of time. I’ve personally enjoyed flying on my 2 gryphons (I’m also working on the tradeskill one — although it seems we must repeat the 5 day training of our tradeskill mounts even after getting our adventure mount), as well as the  NCC1701A flying saucer pod racer C.R.A.S.H. Pad tinkered flying appearance mount.

First, there is the question of whether they are in fact griffons, gryphons, etc. or some other breed altogether. Dave “covic” Brown gave us the low down:

Well how it started out was that we needed to make a flying type griffon mount. So I named the files griffon but wanted to create something unique. I was looking at Hawks, and other predatory birds when making the bird part, then wanted to make the body more lizard like, not lion like other griffons. The lizard skin actually stretches over the wings so the first part of the wing has no feathers. I was also looking at the patterns on the dragon creatures in Avatar.

The griffon also had to fit in velious, so the white one with the blue spec was the first one made. He needed to blend with his environment to be a predator in Velious. Also people asked about the protruding chest bone. I was looking at bird skeletons at the La Brea Tar pits in LA when I thought of this. If you look at a bird rib cage they have a bone called a keel or something like that protrudes from the chest..

http://www.birdwatching-bliss.com/images/bird_skeleton.jpg

My idea was that maybe through evolution this bone stuck out like a horn so the griffin could use it to dive through the ice of Velious when hunting for fish. So the griffon could tuck its head and dive through ice with that reinforced beak and chest bone. That’s why the beak is wider at the tip to break the ice and protect his face. All his feet are the same because I didn’t want it to look like two animals stuck together but a species in itself. After all that’s what the common griffon everyone knows is. Its an eagle with a lion coming out of its booty.

I try to have logical reasons for the designs of all my creatures but it all comes back to fantasy and imagination in the end.

And as astute observers have noted, according to covic, the Boreal tradeskill mount choice is based on a Puffin:

the artist based that off of a snow puffin.

Sometimes we look to nature for ideas which can boggle the imagination.  But there are birds colored that way.  I have passes to the san diego zoo and will take my wife and kids down just take pictures for ideas for our game.  They have some pretty crazy looking animals.

Soresha found and posted this image:

As for choices other than Gryphons and the Aether flying appearance mount which was available on March 1st in the Destiny of Velious 12th day event, EQ2 animator extraordinaire ttobey had this to say:

We haven’t had time to start doing any appearance flying mounts yet (besides the aether thing). To get a new monster flying it has to be added to a text file. The file has 15-20 new states and an animation has to be plugged into every state, even if that animation, ie.. carpet_fly_idle , is the only animation used. Then after adjusting the mount.vdl, I have to go into every player mount text file and add the corresponding states there. It takes time, but I’m sure new things will be on the way.

So clearly, at some point down the road, either our existing mounts like flying carpets, clouds, floating discs, nightmare horses, will become flyable, or new mounts (or perhaps upgrade quests) will be added just for that purpose.