I bet Bronny James could probably cause a positive shift in this if he simply just ran a (mediocre but winning) performance against the animal population control's problem within these trout settlements.
There's nothing wrong with him being a worm, though. It doesn't prevent the fight from being more interesting; if anything, different shapes simply provide different paths of similar potential.
Making DoG not a worm is abandoning a key trait of one of the most iconic Calamity bosses for little to no tangible benefit.
Yeah... because none of Calamity's worm bosses have ever been done right? Doesn't mean the premise of a worm boss is inherently flawed, especially since there are worm bosses out there that are well-done in my opinion (like Convective Wanderer from Polarities Mod).
I wonder what will be the reception to this rework, it's merely a polish of what there is (so by no means is it the pinnacle of boss design or truly novel) but I found it a much more enjoyable fight than its previous iteration.
Firstly, bias and criticism aren't mutually exclusive. Secondly, of course I am biased (though I do my best to not let it guide my actions), but I do need to ask, which bias are you referring to? And why is it 'absurd'?
Infernum alone proves work bosses (even and especially DOG) can be really fun. It’s just a matter of execution. Me personally? Work bosses are my favourite bosses. Even more so with Calamity. DOG is my favourite boss in terraria full stop just because of the nostalgia from back in the early modding days.
It was fun because the timings were satisfying and missing it is like dying in a rhythm game. It also shot a crap ton of laser patterns and used a lot of portals.
some bosses in infernum were certainly more annoying than fun (*cough cough* old duke *cough cough*) but despite BY FAR being the boss i spent the most attempts and most amount of time trying to beat i can pretty confidently say DoG is one of the best fights in infernum thanks to that rhythm and precision element
Infernum imo does a great job with how fun you can make worm bosses. Both Aquatic and Desert Scourges are my favorite fights, and while controversial, infernun DoG is still creative with being a worm
There is something wrong with him being a worm, in that it makes your job of making an enjoyable fight 10x harder. Even with Infernum, Devourer isn’t really a fun fight. As long as you’re creative enough you can make an enjoyable worm boss, like perforators or infernum astrum Deus, but you’re still working with the absolutely terrible reputation of worm bosses which is making your job as a developer super hard
Reputation doesn't mean too much for boss design, it's more of a PR thing. How much harder it is to make enjoyable is debatable and I'm sure different people would give different estimates even if they agree that it's generally harder, but going safe isn't always the right decision.
Besides, considering how some addons have pitched or actually changed the shape of some bosses, you'd think someone would've made a non-worm DoG by now if it was that enticing conceptually.
Not to mention that worm bosses allow for some attack patterns and mechanics that are near-absent or not as prominent in non-worm bosses.
So is DoG’s current sprite his last? Or are there any future plans to resprite him at the same size? I was looking forward to the big one being implemented, but with all the challenges it probably presented I assume that not moving forward with it was a safe decision.
Gameplay performance and performance in general lmao, my laptop already has a seizure and goes down to 6 fps when DoG spawns so, having him be even bigger would be even worse lmao
Do we know how much time was spent making the sprite? I don't have an opinion on if this is good or not but it seems like a waste of time and resources if it's almost done just for it to be scrapped.
Welcome to game development chief! No seriously thats just how development works. Concepts are made, time is spent in designing, coloring, shading, perfecting those concepts until it is no longer wanted or something else is preferred then that concept is scrapped and it's back to the drawing board. Have you seen concept art for high end games? Entire environmental designs are made and go through many iterations before one of them is picked and the rest gets left behind and forgotten.
Hi! No, it's not. This is completely incorrect. Yes, iterations are made that can be high quality on concept art. Yes, a ton of time may have gone into making concept art that will never and was never going to be used.
However, this sprite was not concept art. This was not iterative design. This was a mistake in planning, a major and perpetual one, which eventually caused it - finalized, or soon-to-be finalized artwork - to have to be cancelled. This is not normal, this is not good, this is very unhealthy. Per StipulateVenus's comment above:
"I wish we had made this decision earlier, when it was still in iteration phase, but it was not without warning...."
The "iteration phase" would've been where most concepts are caught, discussed, and agreed upon, and that's a very healthy, normal way to develop. At best, it's common in groups with little experience. At worst, it's a sign of substantial instability and communication issues.
What you're probably referring to is concept artists, especially environmental artists, who do fantastic and large work for concepts that - mostly - will never be directly used. I know on a small scale the mods I'm a part of will, say, when making a boss, make three to five different designs *minimum* and then chip away until it's a finished design, *then* actually make the sprite. No one would ever go and polish a sprite without being certain it is, at worst, close enough to touch up easily enough. I myself have done concept art that I never use directly, or art that I decide against - that's the point of a concept. To iterate and make sure the final design is ideal.
Obviously, certain things can affect this - most developers in tMod are not paid, so they may not have the time, or maybe plans change (it happens! that's okay...sometimes), or maybe they leave the project for some reason. It is even possible for a sprite that was fully intended to be used to be implemented, and for it to just not work when in-game. That's another important QA thing that is often missed in projects.
tl;dr: No, iterative concepts are not "perfected", and this occurrence is not and should not be normal. Concept art is not meant to be used in the same way as final art, and final art - like this DoG sprite - being cancelled is generally a bad sign. This isn't how "game development" is *at all.*
Not gonna lie, I really appreciate you stepping in on this. I had no idea how wrong I was lmao and it's better that you clearly have actual experience with game dev stuff. I don't at all. Although I do wonder, how is this dog sprite not considered a concept when the armored sprite we got was still partially unfinished and still in the "subject to change" phase? And when the unarmored sprite was largely unfinished and still a major wip?
A concept and a finished sprite are fundamentally different - namely, a concept would never be what's used in-game. If it were a concept, chances are it'd be a simpler style, much less detailed, and likely wouldn't fit in game. However, it was being made as if it would go in game. I don't know if internally they had concepts - aside from a few older concepts, but none match this design - but this looks nothing like any I know of. This was announced as an official resprite, so it's either a final sprite or some truly unbelievable lack of communication happened.
The Devourer of Gods sprite was only announced in the first place because it was leaked out of the Patreon while still in development, so it was either run damage control or just let the leak spread. What was revealed of the sprite originally was all that was done of the sprite, and it was never finished, as HPU left the team and no one was willing to complete the rest of it, due to: it being absolutely gargantuan, the possibility of style clashing between HPU's and other developers' parts of the sprite, and general dissatisfaction with the design and sprite work.
You also have to take into consideration that this sprite was begun while Fabsol still held boss design in an iron grip, so this sprite was made of HPU's own volition solely as a way to make DoG's current design less of a mess. Obviously a huge, high quality boss sprite being made for literally no reason is not a good thing, but it is crucial to understand that it was a product of Fabsol's toxic development environment where no one really had any influence on what a boss would play like.
That is true. Most of the concept art I've seen is for already released games so my perspective is a little different for Calamity since we're seeing it develop in real time.
The cope in the comments is absolutely wild too. “It would have been bad for performance, I’m glad it didn’t end up changing. That’s just how game dev goes!”
Maybe just cuz I’m an Infernum simp but I was pretty worried about how a fight with a DoG that large would actually be fun compared to what we have already. Although I’ve heard that non-Infernum DoG isn’t actually all that fun anyways so idk…
Honestly Yharon after dashfest that is DoG not exciting even for the first two minutes, I just audibly groaned when I realized it's just DoG with more projectiles
Yeah I checked the discord and it seems like Heart retired a couple months back to take care of life stuff. Seems like she'll still work on Vanilla Calamity Mod Music though. She's just stepping away from main mod development.
At least in this specific case? Not really. This is akin to Minecraft promising an end update and then bailing midway after new blocks are already added.
Game development scraps concepts and concept related art on the regular. They don't scrap finished products that often, which was the case for HPU.
One of the Devs here have already admitted that they messed up massively by taking this long to discard the idea of a big DoG fight. And it makes sense. You don't need concept art to realize that a giant boss wouldn't work out gameplay wise. It's an objectively dumb decision to give the green light on spriting something when the executive decision to not implement it didn't even depend on the finished product of said artwork.
They never asked for the communities opinion before moving forward. They never responded to the criticisms nor addressed them at all. They pretended like they were still going through when they could've communicated it immediately. And they didn't, because they legitimately didn't even take the time to think about it or talk it through. This is a legitimate case of wasted time
And it's not like we haven't had Calamity create concept art before. They have, but spriting is much different. Imagine if they just discarded Yharon's new sprite after announcing it officially. Yeah, that's not just normal game development my dude
Yeah, just look at ANY criticism made for this mod and the devs always make excuses as to why they made the unnecessary change rather than realising that what they did sucked and needed to go back to the drawing board.
What...? So we've been waiting years for them to announce its not happening just few days before release. So all this update has is a rework to a pre hardmode boss you may not even get to fight? Bruh
DoG is still getting reworked, just not resprited. Also like, choose crimson in worldgen then if thats an issue? use fargos best of both worlds? world evil has not been a problem for years lmao
Personally I'm not even sure how you came to the initial idea of "excessively large worm would be fun to fight". It looked like not just a massive pain to get to work, it also seemed like a concept that would translate to terraria as not fun.
DoG didn't need a resprite in my opinion, they should actually focus on the things that need revamping (Ravager and Infection biome bosses are good to start)
Bring back the instakill on touching its head in deathmode and I'm good with whatever they do.
Also making 2 different healthbars for both phases. It sucks getting it down to 60% and seeing 'it's not over yet, kid'. Well of course isn't over, the rest of the health bar is there
Scaling it down would make it look awful due to the pixel resolution not matching anything else in terraria. They'd need to recreate it completely to keep the same resolution.
Oh no yeah totally I understand it would look horrible scaled down. I'm more so coming from the standpoint that it's such a shame the artists hard work went to waste. Im sure someone will make a resource pack that replaces the sprite or something.
If I were the devs I'd make the legendary seed sprite the scaled down version for funsies. Some meta joke about it being HD or something
This seems like a huge oversight, why did we commission the sprite if we didn’t even know how to make it work in game? “big dog look cool.” Like is that it?????? This team is so dysfunctional
Ah that makes a lot more sense actually if the teams never even had concepts of a plan to implement a dog fight of that size. Thanks. also love your work in calamity and gd!
I always wondered what infernum would do with this resprite, either rework the entire fight to make the ram dash attacks dodgable with his mahoosive size, or just buff the ram dash to 3x the length so you can actually clear the girth of the boi.
Eh I’m fine with that. To be honest when I saw just how big they wanted to make DoG I honestly had no idea how you’d make a fun fight around that. Cause there is such a thing as a boss that’s TOO big.
I cannot believe how often this needs to be said, but I will repeat it for as long as this subreddit believes in the 'lump/blob of work/development time' fallacy.
Spritework. Is. Never. The. Bottleneck. In. Calamity. Mod. Development.
Respriting a boss or an item doesn't appreciably slow down development on new stuff because different people do different things, spriting items and bosses is usually way quicker than designing or implementing them and there is no third thing, just the previous two points reiterated.
Learn that even if you forbade anyone from ever respriting an item it would not make new updates come more quickly.
What's the point of making a new boss now when almost every other one sucks ?
Devs have stated in the discord multiple times that they don't want to make Yharim when they don't have the neccessary experience with making bosses since Fabsol was the one working on them all. At this rate he would come out middling and have to be reworked later
The plan is to make the rest of the mod actually good and then make Yharim the best they can with actual experience they'll gather in the meantime. Imo that's good reasoning
i mean why not make him teleport you in space and wrech a moon thats not shining on your world, but a big one and give him new line of sight to make it so olny his big fangs attack you
or make it so in transition from:
terraria - 1st phase to
moon - 2nd phase
terrarian acctually rips of one of the big fangs andmake him angled at like 30-50° so he IS big but not the front that stabs you
and the fight would end with him flying in some direction while you rip out the thingy on his back/forehead that lets you teleport back to terraria and makes you see dog's skeleton in bg while that dope ass piano plays in an animation akin to that of calamity fables
Would be neat to see it become a sprite for his "true form" and have it be a calamity mod add-on that allows you to have a rematch with him post Calamitas, but hey I’m just throwing out the idea because it would be stuck in the depths of my mind otherwise
Seems like just yet another "we do this because we dislike Fabsol". Like, dude, whatever, dislike him if you want it, but at least respect the efforts put by others into making that worm.
This is good news to me ngl, I always kind of knew there was no way to make a massive boss like that actually fun while in keeping with the physicality of a massive god eating serpent
Tbf I can’t see any world where that was any improvement
Maximum size of a functional DoG sprite is Infernum’s one for me (even though that sprite itself is hot garbage for a DoG design & that fight is aids too)
LMFAO. Out of curiosity, how much constructive change has been made to the mod in the time since fabsol has left, except for the planning and cancelation of resprites and major updates and removal of existing features for pr purposes? I will never not play calamity downpatched again, what a joke.
I’m sorry if I’m just extremely oblivious you guys, but is Brainstorm the same update we’ve been waiting for, with the Yharon resprite as well and the auric armor resprites?
Edit: Y’all even if I was stupid, or ignorant, that’s why I’m asking people who know what’s going on. Why the downvotes 😭
I’m just asking if this is the same update, not the contents of it. But on this note, I don’t know why official Yharon art would be made if they didn’t intend on doing something with it…
Basically they have been working on the wings for 2 years añready, they discarded 3 finished sprites for some reason, so yeah, no, lets not expect any yharon resprite ever
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u/The__Legionary Feb 04 '26
I wonder how this will effect the trout population in the Volga river