Better Bar Character Graphics

bengreenwood · Post by **bengreenwood** » Sat May 24, 2008 9:22 am

Hi,

I like the graphics when you're docked- the backgrounds are all really cool. But the character graphics aren't quite so good. For example you get like a trader or something, and they look much more basic than the awesome backgrounds.

It'd be nice to have some characters who looked a bit more suited to the backgrounds. In Frontier, they had a system where you saw people at each space station, and their faces were made up of combinations of pre-drawn mouths, eyes etc. This meant that from a pool of like a dozen mouths, eyes ears etc. you could have hundreds of different types of face on there.

So you know, it'd be cool if there was something like that with the people at the bar. And the characters were more in keeping with the style of the backgrounds, too. That'd be awesome. It'd make it really easy to come up with loads of characters for mission storylines, too.

Post by **pyramid** » Sat May 24, 2008 10:17 am

I like the idea of pre-drawn components for fixers. If you come up with some nice references, I think we could get grumbel to draw something for us.

bengreenwood · Post by **bengreenwood** » Sun May 25, 2008 12:51 am

By references do you just mean images such as the ones in Frontier? If so here are a couple, although they're just heads rather than full characters sitting at a bar like we'd need for Vega Strike. Don't mean to be rude or anything, but I think this system works a bit better than having a bar. Having really big images of people's faces looks a lot more impressive than pictures of them sat down. That said maybe there could be an identikit thing with different bodies and big close-ups of the faces, too. So when you speak to someone in the bar, it comes up with a big close-up of their face. That'd be cool. You could also re-use the close-ups for mini-portraits shown next to communication text like in Starcraft/ Homeworld. Something like they did in Wing Commander:

Anyway here are the Frontier pictures. I love the retro style of the faces. Like I said they're all generated by an identikit style process.

Alternately maybe we could do something with a program like Poser? That lets you make images of 3D people really easily. Maybe that could come up with some identikit style facial features we could use?

Post by **pyramid** » Sun May 25, 2008 1:47 am

I also like the big faces in front of me that you get to see in PU (with VS engine!). I think I will "steal" the code from them sometime.

By reference I mean real-life people since this is what grumbel uses as a reference to draw.

Poser would be nice. There are other tools out there too (even open source), but unfortunately the available diversity is not too much and they are lacking different hair and clothing. But definitely a viable idea.

iaindaddy · Post by **iaindaddy** » Sat May 31, 2008 6:29 am

I have a problem with the graphics in the bar too. (Why is it that all the people have no legs?)

I'm sure I could come up with some graphics to use here is someone explained where they should go in the game files.

Also it may give people some ideas on new missions to play.

Having just a face should give room on the screen for the text as, at the moment, mine is just about unreadable.

All the best

Iain

Post by **pyramid** » Sat May 31, 2008 11:41 am

There seems to be no wiki page associated with fixers creation. Feel free to make one under Development#Art-Related.

The fixer images are stored in "/data/sprites/bases/fixers" and the corresponding python code under "data/bases/fixers".

bengreenwood · Post by **bengreenwood** » Sat May 31, 2008 1:41 pm

I was thinking about this. The only problem with the bar/ faces is that well, even if you do have close-up images of people's faces, you won't really be able to integrate them with spoken speech in the future, because you'd need to have all the faces animated. ie Have one generic animation for all speech a la Starcraft. It looked OK in that but still it's a lot of work.

I guess one alternative is to have it all done through the mission selection screen- have audio messages and a profile for each person who leaves a message, which could include a nice big identikit image of their face.

That said you could do both- have profiles in the mission selection screen and animated faces at the bar. It's just that'd it be a lot of work to animate them.

Also maybe you could have people speaking in different languages, that is kind of Sims style gabble, with the text on the screen. It would be really, really cool to have some animated androids or aliens in the bar. If you watch the following clip after 2.05 you should get some basic idea of the kind of thing I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Sx-nGmMok

ksinoti · Post by **ksinoti** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:12 pm

yea! this is a topic i've been thinking about as well. good suggestions.

I think there was some concern previously that the lighting on the fixer wouldn't match all the base backgrounds if the shading got more detailed... but if the detail view was against a solid background as in the Frontier screenshots, I guess that wouldn't matter. although personally i'd like to see it implemented as sort of a zoom in on the particular table the fixer's at.

if the Frontier-style / mr.potato-head component faces are implemented, would that make it easier to animate speech as well? though it would still be a lot of work to get the essential sound shapes for the mouth.

Post by **loki1950** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:34 pm

Welcome ksinoti feel free to jump in anywhere

Enjoy the Choice

bengreenwood · Post by **bengreenwood** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:02 am

Well one option would be to have only aliens/ androids speaking at the bar. Then you could have them speak in a foreign, garbled, sims-style language, with text subtitles. I think doing that would make the lip-sync less of an issue.

Probably sounds weird but I think it would be really cool to have aliens like that. Good close-ups of them would look awesome.

Obviously you'd humans, too though- just in Frontier style identikit images for messages delivered via the mission screen. Then you could have audio messages with them, that'd be awesome.

For an idea of what the aliens could look/ sound like, take a look at the following clip, starting from 7 minutes in. The alien guy's pretty awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXYxwwEz4YE

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Better Bar Character Graphics

Better Bar Character Graphics

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