Hey thank you @SquidSalsa !

this is a lot better than tje ingame model, it fits much better as a fishy creature

@Forwarduntodawn and @zwaiyzu ,

Thank you both for the kind words. I'm glad it does its job, while not triggering arachnophobia in people. <3

Replaced arachnophobia with...cyclopsiphobia...? Amazing art, still terrifying to spot in the dark through a skylight whilst sinking to the ground.

i dont have many hours in this game and didnt know the latcher was a thing until now, when i decided to look up what creatures i can hit with a toy hammer (abyss creatures)
im severely arachnophobic and holy god i think im gonna have nightmares

youre my hero cause i could not continue the game knowing i might encounter a latcher (or i'd outright delete it from the game myself)

@Aleksander Drako

I apologize for being late-- but thank you very much! I'm glad you like it <3

For something you said that you made within a day it looks amazing!

Hehe it's no problem. I'm glad I can help people :)

Man im glad i asked for this that one day, seems to just be a positive for the baro community. Very good job, general

@Your Local Protogen

Aw, thank you! I'm surprised so many people like it, but I'm glad I can make a difference to people who really need it :) Makes me want to create more!

This is such a genuine and amazing mod. You may as well be a saint to the barotrauma community for creating a vanilla-friendly replacement for something that can make people uncomfortable

Thank you, @MozarteanChaos. I love that I managed to succeed the original design of the Latcher in most people's eyes. Concept art & 3D modelling are my passion, so that means the world to me.

To talk design details, it didn't make sense to me that the Latcher was spider themed. I really liked the eyes and the hair, but the legs? No. It didn't seem like it fit in the world of Barotrauma, and for the animation, it looked like having a squiddy theme would have been better. Especially because it was called the Latcher. Attaching to your ship like a Kraken and then dragging it deep would have been so much cooler.
If I had more time, I would have done that. But I couldn't, so instead I made it more frog-like since it attached to the ship with its tongue.
For how most horror works, you're scared of the suspense, what's to come. As soon as you know what a creature is, you get relief from that and it stops becoming scary. So keeping it fresh is important; and I'm glad I could fill that role.

honestly, i tend not to react strongly to horror designs that're just Ooo It's A Weirdly Shaped Animal, so neither the original latcher nor this one is particularly scary to me - at least in isolation, i haven't played the game yet so maybe they're a lot scarier in person - but i think this one does a better job of being unnerving.
the original leans pretty heavily on "ooo it has too many eyes and too many legs", which... i mean, in general it clearly works, but it doesn't work too well on a guy who finds arachnids and centipedes cute. this thing, though? with one giant, staring eye, and a vaguely humanoid but distinctly Not Human shape? hell yeah (mildly unsettled)

to put it another way, your arachnophobia-friendly mod also works for people with the approximate opposite of arachnophobia, for almost the exact opposite reasons. good stuff lmao

Add more eyes, like alot more and atleast 8 legs

@PER1CH Not in a bad way, I hope?

it scares me better than original one

@Nyx (She/Her) Since this is a completely new creature and is intended to completely override the Latcher, it re-iterates the sound files in Cyclopslatcher.xml via using overrides.
I think it should be fine with a boss music override, though... running it before this mod should work? However, if it doesn't, please let me know and I can do a compatibility patch tomorrow that should allow the override for that to take place.
Thank you for the good question :]

I'm assuming the latter, just interested in if it will work with one of the boss music mods

quick question, does this touch the actual creature file or is it just a texture overwrite

seriously great art!!

@ˢᵃˡᵗSandia ^Д^)/ Bahahah, thanks again!

You're very right, Coelacanth fins would probably work better to keep it more fish like, but I also wanted to keep some Latcher gangliness in there. Maybe I could do something with Coelacanth fins later!

naaah! props to you! you truly made a horrible design!! (in the good way) it looks like a lamprey but horrible! also the fins would be better as "coelacanth" fins (i dont remember the classification) since it has "arms like fins" but thats just a detail for cohesion with real fishes

@ˢᵃˡᵗSandia ^Д^)/ Aw, thank you! That means a lot to me <3

im not arachnophobic but this deesign is waaay better than the other... i hate how non fitting it is!

@MsMohexon That's the plan! I'll do some research about ichthyophobia later and draw up some stuff for it later.

Perhaps it wold be wise to make the ichtyophobic latcher a seperate mod when it happens?

@Pizza Man That would make sense. I could maybe see if this would be something that'd be able to be done? Just by adding an individual spawn file that was exactly the same as the Latcher. The game can check between the two and decide on one or the other. I'd just have to figure out how the spawning works.

@valveworshipper I would love to! However, I admit, I'm not familiar with the extent to which ichthyophobia manifests in most people, mainly because I don't know anybody who has it personally. This would be something interesting to survey in the future... maybe I'll make a discussion post asking about the changes I could do to the Latcher, if you wouldn't mind critiquing and giving me advice about that.

@general I believe Endymion means like... An RNG roll for it to either be this or the original? Though, I could be wrong on that.

now make an ichthyophobic & arachnophobic friendly latcher

@Endymion In what way? Like a button to change its appearance upon spawning, or introduced as a separate mob alongside the original latcher?

Looks scarier

If there was a way for it to pick between this and the original upon spawning that'd be sick. I assume that's not possible though.

fish o phobia

So... You gave it balls

well this has certainly made me view the community in a good light!

@Eldershire @uberdrück I mean... I would try to do this, but the project scope of that would be massive and I don't have time to work on something like that. If I tried I'd probably get carpal tunnel in my wrist.

Real talk, though, I give you the best of luck, uberdrück. That seems like an unfortunate phobia to have while playing Barotrauma.

@uberdrück You need a mod that replaces the rest of the creatures with spiders then.

Is there a new phobia for this beast xd all jokes aside good job

Chill out i only asked. dont get this serious

As an ichthyophobe, I find this terrifying.

Well, it wouldn't hurt to put it in there anyway.

i thought it would be obvious, anyone who fears creates with legs...like spiderman, lol... it makes latcher look like a fish, so they dont have to deal with it.

Thank you for letting me know though. I updated the description

@Orbit It replaces the Latcher.

it literally replaces the latcher, thats it

desc says nothing about it

plz explain what this does

разве смысл игры не в том, что она должна пугать? зачем делать и так не страшного монстра похожим на машонку с плавниками?

@Neuro Yes, I remember you from the Reddit page.

I agree, a simple texture replace for client side would likely have been the better course of action. However, I did want to remove some joints and sprites from the Latcher. And since MsMohexon was fine downloading mods to replace the Latcher look, I just decided to recreate it. It also gave me more freedom as an artist to do whatever I wanted with the Latcher. I really didn't expect this mod to get as much attention as it did, it was really just put on the workshop for ease of downloading for them (but I'm glad people enjoy it!)

A texture replacer doesn't sound TOO hard and something I can do when I have more free time, but I can't guarantee if it won't trigger the same kind of response because of the triple jointed, two pairs of legs that it'll have. When I do get around to it though, I'll package it in the files and update the mod page so people know and can grab the sprite for themselves.

do you remember the name "creesader"?

good job, it doesnt look too detailed while still maintaining its vanilla look. though i would recommend something that people can simply replace their client-side textures with, so it is possible to join any server without needing a dedicated mod that needs the host to bother adding it to their game (too much work).