Minecraft Modification: Sun Idol Espeon WIP GIF

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This simple GIF represents over three weeks of coding during my four week summer vacation before classes start (which is today; very angry about it).

Sun Idol Espeon is a reference to one of my favorite games ever, Rise of Legends, specifically the Sun units of the Cuotl faction. Although named after the Sun Idol unit, Sun Idol Espeon uses other themes such as the wings of the Sun God Xil. In game play, I hope to add several of Xil's moves, particularly Blinding Armor and Mirror Image. I would love to add Burning Beams but I don't know how well that will go. Sun Blast will be substituted by Sun Idol Espeon's ultimate move, "Baptism of Fire."

A very sinister move planned the Espeon is "Ignite," a reference is a League of Legends spell. At this time, it is planned the Espeon will cast the move when the player's health falls to two hearts or lower. It will set the player on fire for long period of time and nullify buffs such as Potion of Regeneration and Golden Apple (if I can make that happen).

Many of the attacks will use the Blaze's fireballs. The attack intended to go with this animation you see above is "Ember," a shotgun blast of fireballs. Normally, if the player has Potion of Fire Resistance on, that makes them fully immune to Blaze fireballs. I intend to make Sun Idol Espeon to watch for that. If it detects the target is immune to fire (including wet), it will switch to Ghast fireballs instead.

About the animation coding, this was very difficult to make. There are no programs out there to do the animations for you while staying faithful to Minecraft's code. If you want a certain animation, you have to know the math to make it happen and know how to program the math. In this case, not only do I have to know the math for the animation, I also have to design the math so the model smoothly transitions from the idle animation to the action animation.

The wings was a really cool concept I got inspiration from below:

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Ikareon is my favorite fake Eeveelution by those two artists. There are a LOT of Eevee's in their Eevees Nightmare project. Definitely check it out here: pitch-black-crow.deviantart.co…

Now Ikareon wasn't some random inspiration choice because I liked it. It had a very Okami-ish feel to it. When Sun Idol Espeon was originally conceived, it was actually called "Clay Destroyer Espeon," making it part of the Clay Army. People familiar with my mod, Disciples of Corruption, know the Clay Figures are based on Okami's, which bear visual resemblance to the high tech Moon Tribe. In the end I decided I had too many Clay Figures already, especially after the addition of the Full Moon mobs, Clay Shinx and Clay Luxio, I decided to switch the theme to the Cuotl faction.

In the mod, I call the overall theme, "Mystic Tech" and use the references interchangeably: StarCraft II's Protoss/Xel'naga, Rise of Legends' Cuotl, and Okami's Moon Tribe.

You can view the current released version of the modification here: www.minecraftforum.net/forums/…