No female soldiers? Aww come on... you know you want to add them =)

[Gwenydd]

Great game that really captures the essence of X-com and is tons of fun to play. But please, add some female soldiers.

Pretty please with alenium on top?

Gwen

[Gorlom]

Gwenydd: Its posible to modd them in. Oracle1990 has a thread about it where he is makeing female soldier models. (or maybe im mixing it up with the standard female soldiers thread?)

The reason the devs has given as to why they aren't going to include it in the regular release is because every unit is sprite based. It's a completly new image for every weapon, armour, way the unit is faceing and animation. 8 weapons x 4 tiers x ~8 armours x 8 directions x 10+ animations = around 20 500 sprites as a rough estemate. (and thats not even takeing into account that an animation takes more then just one sprite) That's a pretty huge workload for something noncrutial.

We would all love to have the female soldiers included, although it would delay the game a lot and probably cost a pretty penny.

Other threads on the topic:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/166-Female-Soldiers

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1401-Fan-art-Mod-stand-alone-demo

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/181-How-much-work-is-the-sprite-animation-thing

The last thread answers the why ALOT better then I did

Edited May 3, 2012 by Gorlom

[IceVamp]

Yup. Would be nice to have them in. Hopefully Chris makes enough money from the game and kickstarter and stuff, that after he's gotten his Aston Martin, he'll make a female soldier dlc.

[Chris]

It's something I *might* consider as an optional option if the Kickstarter goes well. It'd just be female soldier names and portraits, with no new battlefield sprites, but we'll see.

[The New Romance]

It's something I *might* consider as an optional option if the Kickstarter goes well. It'd just be female soldier names and portraits, with no new battlefield sprites, but we'll see.

That would be awesome. The sprites wouldn't look that different anyway.

[Gauddlike]

It's something I *might* consider as an optional option if the Kickstarter goes well. It'd just be female soldier names and portraits, with no new battlefield sprites, but we'll see.

I've mentioned before that I personally would prefer them not to be there rather than a half done job.

Using the same ground combat sprites would just look odd.

There might not be much difference but there would need to be some.

That sort of approach just feels like a bad mod.

[Gorlom]

How about including them as unused assets (like the soviet guns?) so that they can be modded in by those that either don't care about useing male models or by those that can make their own female sprites? (Oracle1990 I'm looking at you)

[thothkins]

Agree with Gorlom. I'd much rather have the option. Personally, I can live without seeing a difference in the sprites, just to have the variety in the soldier options.

[Gauddlike]

Yeah I can see why the option would be nice.

I think it would detract from the game for me to have an obviously half done feature though.

If I am going to get attached to my troops then I don't want to be looking at them and being annoyed by a niggling little thing like that.

If it was a release feature I would probably mod it out to avoid that.

Not because I don't think female troops would be a nice addition, just because I would be put off by the ground sprite issue.

[FranTorres]

Is it so hard to remake the sprites to get females soldiers? It would be a really nice addition to the game.

[Gorlom]

Frantorrs: it requires that you alter 100 000s of sprites. Number of weapons, times the number of armours, times the number of directions soldiers can face, times the number of animations per soldier ingame times the avrage number of sprites per animation.

That racks up quite quickly to huge numbers.

I imagine it's not particularly hard, but the workload is enormus.

[Buzzles]

I'm gonna ask an odd question chaps, but have you actually seen a picture of a frontline female soldier?

They're nigh on indistinguishable from blokes from the back and side thanks to the uniforms, body armour and equipment+webbing. It's only from the front when you can see their face you can tell. You can't tell the difference if they cover their face (gasmasks, bandanas etc...).

If anything, if Chris and the rest of Goldhawk want to go the whole hog, apart from the Baseview images and the portraits, they'd only really need to make new sprites for Basic and possibly Jackal armour. That's it. Wolf and the latter ones cover so much of the body you wouldn't be able to tell.

Food for thought.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Buzzles

[thothkins]

Of course, there is already a woman in the game.

There's a lady who hands the generals their briefing folders at the end of every month.

[oracle1990]

This will be ingame graphic size:

Basic armour, my female Basic armour

Jackal armour, my female Jackal armour

Wolf armour, my female Wolf armour

Is it worth all the work?

[Gorlom]

There seems to be a different tilt on the female wolfarmour model? at least compared to the basic and jackal? are we seeing that from the front instead of the isometric angle in the game?

[oracle1990]

There seems to be a different tilt on the female wolfarmour model? at least compared to the basic and jackal? are we seeing that from the front instead of the isometric angle in the game?

You are correct. On Wolf armour I have used a 21 degree angle. On the other I have used a standard 35 degree angle.

In this I used 35 degrees:

[The New Romance]

Oracle, I hadn't seen your take on the Wolf armour up until now, but I have to give you a Wow!. While the first two are nice, they are a little too dissimilar from the male models, but the Wolf armour really shows that you are able to "get there" pretty nicely even in an alpha fanmod.

[thothkins]

yup, I was also particularly taken with the wolf armour. Good work

[Mandabar]

Ok, I think that if Chris can due to kickstarter or whatever, That doing female soliders is easily feasible.

As far as I remember from xcom, you could barely tell which solider was male vs female anyways except for the death scream and base view. Oh the haircut. Bleh yeah that was the difference, Guile vs Ponytail.

So, I might be forgetting how male the ingame sprites are. But I think we can get away with female baseview characters and portraits/names. And the death screams of course.

Can't not have the death screams...

[Gauddlike]

Take a look at the links in the second post of this thread, that should give you some idea.

[oracle1990]

Oracle, I hadn't seen your take on the Wolf armour up until now, but I have to give you a Wow!. While the first two are nice, they are a little too dissimilar from the male models, but the Wolf armour really shows that you are able to "get there" pretty nicely even in an alpha fanmod.

[oracle1990]

Just messing around with the colors...:

Larger version:

Edited May 4, 2012 by oracle1990

[oracle1990]

[Jean-Luc]

These look pretty good, a great improvement since when you started.

[radister]

Now that look amazing!!

Nothing brightens up the battlefield more then a woman carrying a gun

would make me work that much harder to keep them alive.

send the men out first in to the battlezone!