F&Q Part 1
Minor spoilers for Nomai culture below.
What is the context of the setting in the game?
Your clan, like most Nomai clans, has primarily spent its days roaming across the universe, exploring anything and everything that piques their curiosity, flitting from one point of interest to the next. Eventually they come across this particular planet in this particular little solar system. Here, in an attempt to learn every possible thing they can about it, they choose to put down roots and start a little colony. It was never intended to be permanent, the plan being to hop back in the vessel once they’ve explored every nook and cranny of this place, but for one reason or another, they end up staying a little longer than they were expecting…
The clan is small in its early stages. Maybe they’re a new clan, maybe they’re a fractured off piece of a larger clan, maybe there were many more members at one point but something went horribly wrong in the process of trying to settle here. The in-universe justification for that will be your own (though as I write this out, I’m thinking about adding some clan start options for different backstories, so there will be in-game reflections of this, like starting with some dead or missing Nomai, etc.).
I also see the biome you choose for your clan as being the state of the entire planet, similar to how all of Ember Twin is a desert planet, all of Giant’s Deep is a stormy ocean planet, etc.
How will the Nomai look compared to canon?
So in the canon game itself, we really only see two images of the living Nomai beneath their space suits - the of course iconic statues giving us a 3D view of their faces, and some colored murals. From the murals it seems Nomai had one skin tone (potentially all an orange color) on their face and ears and the rest of their bodies were covered in fur (potentially all an off-white color). Since it’s just one mural and we don’t really have any other idea what Nomai looked like as far as diversity goes, it’s hard to discern how they “should” look other than this one image.
Which, let’s be honest, isn’t very fun! And many fans have their own interesting interpretations of the Nomai, usually giving them far more diverse skin and fur colors, different hairstyles, etc. As well as different interpretations on just how their anatomy works, some leaning more into the canon flat-faced alien look, others leaning into a more muzzle-y, goatish appearance.
Stylistically I leaned towards a slightly more goatish appearance in the face, giving them the small hints of a muzzle, while trying to keep everything else mostly in line with canon. They are apparently also sloth-inspired so in addition to referencing the skeletons in game, I took inspiration from sloths for general body shape and fur/skin distribution (which is entirely covered in fur except for the hands and feet).
Here’s a picture of the full spritesheet to start things off:
For those not familiar with clangen, in order from left to right, top to bottom, these are: 3 child sprites, 3 apprentice/adolescent sprites, 6 adult sprites (3 short hair, 3 long hair), 3 elder sprites, 3 paralyzed sprites, 2 sick sprites (1 for adult, 1 for children), and 1 newborn/infant sprite. All the sprites have to fit comfortably within a 200x200 box as that’s the max sprite size clangen can handle without slowing down, so proportions and poses had to be adjusted for what looks best. There’s also additional headshot close ups so face markings can be seen better.
They’re digitigrade with very long arms, very small hands (based on a silly explanation from the designer on why they have such visual based technology), and 4 toed feet, 3 splayed in the front-ish and one in the back for balance, as that’s what their shoes and skeletons looked like to me. They also have little tails, though they aren’t visible in most poses.
All of their horns are fairly identical save for the kids, whose head horns don’t connect in the back, and infants, who only have little stubs for theirs, with fur concealing the ones on their face. They just looked a little silly to me with their horns fully grown in, and I don’t really wanna think about them being born like THAT, so I personally headcannon that they’re born with small, bony buds covered in velvet instead. Over the course of their youth they grow rapidly, and around puberty reach together, fuse in the back, and harden into bone. Infants also have their third eye shut, which I also headcannon opens a little later than the other two.
In the above art they’re depicted in their canon colors just so you can see the vision, but in the game itself they will actually display a wide variety of full body markings, all inspired by goats and antelope, with little distinction between their face and fur. In my mind, the face is actually covered in much shorter fur, like other sleek-coated animals, instead of just skin, so any markings and such naturally carry over. They can also have a variety of white patches layered over atop, again inspired mostly by goats, which this classic white-furred look will be categorized as (so still possible to get a more canon look but not forcing all to look like that).
Here’s a few examples of some markings and colors (Chamoisee, Light Face, Single Colour, Masked, Sable, and Cou Clair), including one that features heterochromia:
Nomai will have clothes generated on top as well, with options both in the Create a Clan screen and Sprite Inspection screens to toggle on and off, so you can see the full body design underneath, in addition to other clangen things like scars and natural accessories.
How will Warrior Cats lore/Clangen mechanics be changed to fit the Nomai?
This will be a bit of a slow process since the animalistic, battle-hungry nature of warrior cats is pretty polar opposite to the advanced, pacifistic nature of Nomai; It basically means changing almost everything about the game. The core of the game will be the same, starting a clan and watching them grow and progress through the years (afterall that’s the whole point of making this a clangen mod), but I’ll be trying to change how specific elements work as we progress through further phases of the mod.
The first changes will be small and mostly cosmetic; changing all mentions of cats to Nomai, kits to kids, den names to more Nomai city sounding things like Medical Center instead of Medicine Den, etc. Role names will be changed to vaguely reflect a ship’s rank structure- Leader to Captain, Deputy to Lieutenant, Medicine Cat to Medic. Warriors will become Clanmates, and Apprentices will stay the same because that actually fits. ::) Same for Mediators and Elders. Loners and Rogues will stay the same, each implying a lone Nomai who split off from their clan, either by choice or exile for being a bad egg.
Kittypets will be… weird, because there isn’t really any sensible thing I can change them to. They’re outsiders who live a drastically different yet pampered life, are often abandoned by the higher beings that take care of them (usually for being sick or injured), and are HEAVILY looked down upon by a lot of clan cats, none of which really aligns with anything Nomai-like. So for now they’ll just… exist. Eventually I want to remove them from the game entirely.
Lifespans will be expanded to be more human-like, but the rate at which time passes and Nomai age will be a little… different. As it is, it takes WAY too long in-game for things to happen if they just age 1 month at a time with human lifespans compared to the much more fast-paced, shorter lived life of a cat. SO, my way of fixing this is to have the rate at which Nomai age be a little faster than the rate time actually passes in game; for every moon that passes in-game, the Nomai will age 3 moons, meaning for every 4 moons that passes in-game, the Nomai will age a year. In universe I explain this discrepancy as the Nomai simply aging like humans in earth years, but in this solar system on this planet, months and years are 3 times as long. Their profiles will show both their ages, in earth years (e.y.) and in-game years (i.g.y.), and of course their files will only go off of in-game moons.
In a similar vein to changing ages, pregnancy will be expanded into 3 moons instead of 2, to fit the earthly 9 month timespan, and the max “litter” (or brood) size will be 3 kids, with 1 or 2 being more common. Relationship value changes and XP ranges have also been adjusted to account for the longer lifespans, so your Nomai don’t have all maxed relationships with each other and fully mastered skill levels by year 4.
There are many other changes I plan to make - changing hunting patrols to gathering patrols so they’re proper herbivores, getting rid of neighboring clans (since that doesn’t really make sense if yours is the only one settled on this planet) and eliminating wars/raids, adding some more roles and things to do with your Nomai to fill the gaps longer lifespans have made between major events, reevaluating how the afterlife system works, etc. - but all that will be further down the road, and I’ll expand on my thought process as we get there.
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Ending this post here because hoo boy it got long.
