Anyone modding combat sprites?

[ThatSwoleGuy]

Hey guys, I'm new around this forum and I have been doing some searching and I can't find any mods that give females combat sprites, is there not one in existence?

[GizmoGomez]

No, there is not. Because the sprites are all 2D images, and every soldier, with every weapon, with every armor, in every position, doing every possible thing has to have several sprites for each of them (hundreds of sprites, it's crazy) it'd be incredibly difficult and time intensive to make female sprites. One reasoning was that under body armor you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference anyway, but I still wish we could have more sprite variety. Also, I just noticed (I knew about it earlier, but it just became very apparent) that the black guys in my squad have clearly white skin in the ground combat. Now, I'm not going off on an "anti-racism" tirade here, but I wish it wasn't so hard to "fix that". Honestly, I couldn't care less about the actual races involved (everyone, including the white guys, could be depicted as black in the GC and I'd not have an issue "racially speaking") but it just looks off from a design point of view.

[WalrusJones]

Making new combat sprites for a single weapon, on each of the five-six armors, is nigh impossible for a casual modder.

Making it for a suit of armor, for every weapon in the game... *Shivers*

[Max_Caine]

Wouldn't armour even as early as Jackal hide the sex of the squaddie anyway? Exactly how are you going to tell who has boobs under a thick layer of armour?

[WalrusJones]

Reinforced plates protecting the most important attribute of humanity!

Obviously, the aliens have only come to get rid of our inefficient, and pointless mammaries, as evidenced by their lack of such features.

Thus, we need to armor them further, as they will be the first thing aliens to shoot at.

The post invasion earth is actually quite a nice place, global warming has been stopped, the ozone patched, cancer is at all time lows, and food is at all time highs.

However, when people are out of sight of one another, they frown remembering the wonder they lost in 1979, groping their generic, manly chests.

[GizmoGomez]

Ha, right.

Max is correct, however; any kind of armor would hide the "female figures and features", like breasts, longer hair, etc.

[WalrusJones]

Pretty much.

But, I had to take the chance to see if I could get a laugh.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

I don't wish for scantily clad soldiers I would just like for my combat sprites to represent the soldier, I think it's very feasible, the skin color is something that bugs me as well, wouldn't doing skin color be as simple as a recolor ? Aside from that I think it would be cool if someone modded in a female sprite for the basic xenonaut without any special armor, as I said before it's not about fap material, it's more about the break in my immersion when I notice the combat sprite is not the character.

The point that you can't see a woman's figure under armor anyway stands quite well but I still think it would add great flavor if someone made a basic female xeno sprite as well as recolors for xenos of various races, if I knew how to mess with sprites I might try it my self.

[Jsleezy]

I don't wish for scantily clad soldiers I would just like for my combat sprites to represent the soldier, I think it's very feasible, the skin color is something that bugs me as well, wouldn't doing skin color be as simple as a recolor ? Aside from that I think it would be cool if someone modded in a female sprite for the basic xenonaut without any special armor, as I said before it's not about fap material, it's more about the break in my immersion when I notice the combat sprite is not the character.

The point that you can't see a woman's figure under armor anyway stands quite well but I still think it would add great flavor if someone made a basic female xeno sprite as well as recolors for xenos of various races, if I knew how to mess with sprites I might try it my self.

Yes, the recoloring would be pretty simple and time consuming but not impossible. What I'm wondering is isn't all that stuff hard-coded? Would it even be possible to say in the code what specific sprites to use since right now I'm pretty sure they are all pulled from the same sprite source.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

Aye I was thinking about that as well, I really hope the devs make it possible even if they don't do it them selves for lack of time, it'd be nice really. I feel it would be simple for them to make it possible for us plebs to mod sprites to specific troops.

[Max_Caine]

It could be modded in, theoretically. It would be a wee bit clunky, though, and have some unexpected side-effects. You could make a new armour type. Call it... basicarmourwoman, say, and provided you have all the sprites and have properly accounted for it in the XML, basciarmourwoman could be assigned as an armour type to women in the equipment screen. However, this armour type could also be added to men as well so if you fancied it, your Manly Men could change sex at a whim.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

That sounds like a good workaround for the hard code.

[Ol' Stinky]

The annoying part with that approach is that when it's time to manufacture armour, you have to manufacture specific sets of armour. And if someone gets injured, that means you might have to spend money buying a new set of armour for the replacement. The more different sets you create via modding, the more irritating it becomes...

Maybe the devs could be persuaded to make a hook for a more elegant approach if someone comes up with a female version of the sprites or a black guy edit.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

Well they could be infinite in number easily I would think no?

Either way some dev support on this would be worthwhile imo.

[GizmoGomez]

I have no idea how they would be able to tie the randomly chosen character portraits to a certain sprite set. They could do it, I'm sure, I just don't know how they would go about it.

One of the biggest things, really the biggest thing, in the way of adding female sprites and black sprites is the fact that it would add tons of artist work to recolor so many images, which would probably cost money. I mean, it's not as simple as a paint bucket job, you'd have to hand paint each image to look good.

Also, as a part of the female soldier idea, would they get longer hair? Or can we just assume that they put up their hair under their helmets?

[ThatSwoleGuy]

I would assume their hair is short enough to not be seen beyond their helmet, military cut and all.

I really wouldn't mind at all if they don't create the sprites for the reasons you and the others have stated but I think it would be a shame if the code for it wasn't created at all and modders couldn't do it.

[cspruce]

I've been modding combat sprites quite a bit, but I can't show you anything at the moment. It is possible and it is time consuming. You have a few options: 1) If you are good at painting or with corel draw it's easy if you utilize a wacom tablet. 2) I have made a crude template that I use to make characters quickly, I'd suggest you doing this for anyone who wants to attempt this feat.

[WalrusJones]

However, this armour type could also be added to men as well so if you fancied it, your Manly Men could change sex at a whim.

It sounds like an excellent way to protest the harsh alien assault in an attempt to take away our mammaries!

[ThatSwoleGuy]

I don't have a tablet, is it possible to do this by mouse and keyboard?

[Antr4cite]

I don't have a tablet, is it possible to do this by mouse and keyboard?

I think this tutorial may help you: http://swordandarrow.ucoz.com/index/adding_a_new_unit_to_the_game/0-31

[WalrusJones]

To be fair, All my swords and knives look like shock batons currently.

If you back down from it, nobody will ever blame you.

However, much applause is deserved if you do succeed.

I wish you luck.

Edited August 1, 2013 by WalrusJones
Edited to be less rude.

[Zekram Bogg]

As I see it, one thing that would be helpful here is to figure out the software they used to make the sprites in the first place. Do we know what that is (total newb here).

I mean I just opened the asset files and yeah, modding the sprites is totally do-able, but it'd be by hand and a LOT of painstaking work to do that way. Making black and brown soldiers would be the easiest mod here, it's just going to require a lot of recoloring work, and a bit of programming to link the appropriate sprite pack to the correct soldier.

On the one hand for the workload though, adding female soldiers is really only necessary for the basic armor set since like everyone said, the other armors cover everything up, so it'd only really need to be done well once. There's that at least. Though if you wanted to start adding in black, brown and asian women, that's another set of recolors.

Personally, I'd like to see some battle damage sprite sets, but man . . . so much work.

[EchoFourDelta]

Well, if you actually look at the characters in the battlescape... they have a completely male profile. Like, there's no mistaking that they're all dudes. Chicks in armor don't look different because of hair under a helmet or breasts under armor. There's usually a fairly obvious differential in body shape, even when they're wearing a bunch of bullet-stopper. Like... spend a few minutes staring at a bunch of males and females standing around in armor, and you can spot the difference a mile away.

Edited August 31, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[WalrusJones]

As I see it, one thing that would be helpful here is to figure out the software they used to make the sprites in the first place. Do we know what that is (total newb here).

I mean I just opened the asset files and yeah, modding the sprites is totally do-able, but it'd be by hand and a LOT of painstaking work to do that way. Making black and brown soldiers would be the easiest mod here, it's just going to require a lot of recoloring work, and a bit of programming to link the appropriate sprite pack to the correct soldier.

On the one hand for the workload though, adding female soldiers is really only necessary for the basic armor set since like everyone said, the other armors cover everything up, so it'd only really need to be done well once. There's that at least. Though if you wanted to start adding in black, brown and asian women, that's another set of recolors.

Personally, I'd like to see some battle damage sprite sets, but man . . . so much work.

You can find videos of the original 3D renders being animated (These were exported to sprite sheets.)

[Zekram Bogg]

Well, if you actually look at the characters in the battlescape... they have a completely male profile. Like, there's no mistaking that they're all dudes. Chicks in armor don't look different because of hair under a helmet or breasts under armor. There's usually a fairly obvious differential in body shape, even when they're wearing a bunch of bullet-stopper. Like... spend a few minutes staring at a bunch of males and females standing around in armor, and you can spot the difference a mile away.

So you're saying that Halo lied to us all when they represented female Spartans as just "slightly shorter" people in mech suits?

For shame.

But yeah, true. Still I think if you could get female basic armor done, suspension of disbelief would probably work for the rest.