Anyone modding combat sprites?

[EchoFourDelta]

Halo saw fit to give the chicks female profiles, with the apparent caveat that all female Spartans apparently have incredibly shapely asses.

(We're looking at you, Halo: Reach)

[Ishantil]

Mmmmm...power armor ass.

[EchoFourDelta]

Seriously, though. Hang a bunch of armor off of a woman that she's had sized appropriately so that she doesn't look like a little kid playing dress up? You can damn sure tell it's a woman. The "Oh, no way, females look enough like males you can't tell at all" was the developers bullshitting some rationale to play off why the females look exactly like males in the battlescape. Even if you were looking at something that covered the entire body, unless you're completely blind, you've probably noticed at some point in your life that males and females have considerably different shapes, and move differently.

Edited September 1, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[WalrusJones]

All these references to Halo are just flying over my head.

[GizmoGomez]

All these references to Halo are just flying over my head.

Sadness. Halo is a beautiful game with a dang good storyline. Go play it some time.

They're right, though, female armor looks different from male armor. In fact, the US military is testing female versions of the supposedly unisex (read: male-specific) uniforms and body armor. Good day for female soldiers (and sailors, and airmen (women?), etc etc etc).

[Elydo]

The first female spartan they modeled was for that cameo in... one of the Dead or Alives I think. And they really went out of their way to present what an armoured and enhanced (read: built) female would look like. Net result, ever-so-slightly more curvy around the limbs and a slightly fuller chestplate. Nothing blatant, but you'd notice something different from a male stood next to her.

[EchoFourDelta]

They actually took a far more different route for the actual canon appearances in Halo: Reach and Halo 4, though, and one that's a good deal more realistic; you simply can't armor up a female identically to a male without destroying their hips and back.

Sticking most females in armor made for a male squishes their breasts up and can make it difficult to breathe when worn properly (read: snugly), and the material where it rides above the shoulders beside the neck are usually a good deal too wide, reducing the degree of freedom and ease with which they can move their arms. The vests themselves are another issue on their own: if they do loosen them so they can breathe normally and so their chest isn't so cramped, it typically rides too low and puts a massive amount of stress on their hips and lower back.

Either way, you have armor made for males dangling around a female's frame, or armor sized and designed for the female body type where you can equally clearly tell it's a female.

[Ishantil]

For powered armor, you would wear a link suit that has various connecitons to nerves and such. On top of that, you would wear an adjustable harness suit which would have to be customized for the person. The powered armor would then enclose the person inside these other two things.

This would allow you to standardize the shell somewhat.

[Osvir]

Looking into it real quick in "\Steam\steamapps\common\Xenonauts\assets\units\xenonaut"

I see that

A) They are all .png files

B) There's a TON of em

C) Trial-and-Error Coloring attempt with GIMP at "\Steam\steamapps\common\Xenonauts\assets\units\xenonaut\armour.basic\weapon.rifle" using the very first one "burstshoot_e" (copy+pasted it and put it into a placeholder "Backup" folder): Success!

You can also paint in GIMP so you could use the existent Soldiers as a "template".

[Name]

Dame that soldier is fabulous....

[Camador]

The main issue with the armors I see is the basic armor where the differences in portrait and sprite are totally blatant. I don't think you'd need to change the skin color of a sprite so much as to make a sprite that doesn't show too much skin in battle. This helps to make things a hell of a lot more believable for the higher-tier armors. Of course designing an entirely new sprite is a lot of work to be done, but simpler, to coding specific sprites to specific skin colors, maybe.

[Osvir]

Dame that soldier is fabulous....

A more serious attempt (been working on it for like 3 hours). I haven't even finished the first sprite

Zoomed In:

[Picture]

Zoomed Out (100%):

[Picture]

I'm also curious if anyone would want to do a joint project in an attempt to make a full sprite set.

EDIT: Maybe a little bit more exciting than the above pictures:

Copy+Paste the body part I made (some of the sprites need a lil bit touch-up, good to know I won't need to do every piece individually):

[Picture]

2nd EDIT:

Here's a tip for anyone else, when I've gotten further on this guy I'll make a proper thread about it but for now, here you go:

[Picture]

This makes most of the work much faster, as you can just copy+paste it on every sprite.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Osvir

[TrashMan]

Heh... Nice one Oswir.

I see you mockup telents aren't wasted only on Eternity.

[a333]

Oh, someone decided to draw bazillion sprites by hand?

It's actually looking good, Osvir. But i'm afraid that sheer volume of work will kill you.

Several dozens of japanese animators - that's what we need.

[Osvir]

Oh, someone decided to draw bazillion sprites by hand?

It's actually looking good, Osvir. But i'm afraid that sheer volume of work will kill you.

Several dozens of japanese animators - that's what we need.

Not necessarily. If you read my post above, I can actually draw 1 arm and then copy+paste it to most of the same variants ("crouch_e" torso can be copied and pasted to almost all other "_e" variants, say, "idle_e" or some of the "grenade_e").

I'm still going to have to draw a lot of different "parts", but I'm not going to have to draw each single one of the sprites in the some ~3500 .png files.

If I take my time with 40 of those .png's from "armour.basic/none" I'd get most parts for all movements (crouch, death, vault, idle, run) that I can copy and paste to the rest of the sprites.

[Maltavius]

Ok, I might be a bit late to this discussion but...

Wouldn't this be WAY easier with a palette shift?

Just draw the skin-tones in magenta and then palette shift for different skin colors?

[a333]

I'm still going to have to draw a lot of different "parts", but I'm not going to have to draw each single one of the sprites in the some ~3500 .png files.

If I take my time with 40 of those .png's from "armour.basic/none" I'd get most parts for all movements (crouch, death, vault, idle, run) that I can copy and paste to the rest of the sprites.

Of course, this will improve the situation, but it's still tremendous amount of work. Also, some sprites involve complex animations, and copypaste will not help there.

It's not impossible, of course, as i plan to do some spritemodding myself, albeit in smaller scale.

[Gorlom]

Ok, I might be a bit late to this discussion but...

Wouldn't this be WAY easier with a palette shift?

Just draw the skin-tones in magenta and then palette shift for different skin colors?

I think the game engine can't handle that. It is a very crappy game engine that got discontinued by the makers earlier in Xenonauts development.

[a333]

Seriously, though. Hang a bunch of armor off of a woman that she's had sized appropriately so that she doesn't look like a little kid playing dress up? You can damn sure tell it's a woman. The "Oh, no way, females look enough like males you can't tell at all" was the developers bullshitting some rationale to play off why the females look exactly like males in the battlescape. Even if you were looking at something that covered the entire body, unless you're completely blind, you've probably noticed at some point in your life that males and females have considerably different shapes, and move differently.

Oh well?

And more:

[Gorlom]

Oh well?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2699[/ATTACH]

And more:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2700[/ATTACH]

obviously those are kids playing dressup!

[Maltavius]

I think the game engine can't handle that. It is a very crappy game engine that got discontinued by the makers earlier in Xenonauts development.

Well that's crap...

Maybe they should have a chat with the Zomboid developers about using their engine?

After they release 1.0 with this engine it might be worth it.

Although I'm not sure they use the same isometric rendering

[a333]

Engine replacement will cause the release date to fly away for another year. Or more.

Make the most from this engine and use something better in the next game would be the most logical way.

[Anon_Spartan]

I tried to read as much of the thread as I could but seriously....does anyone lurk at all? This topic gets covered so much. You can't just modify the game like Skyrim. Everything is completely different.

Also I imagine over 16000 sprites just for white and black men and women would not end well.

[Maltavius]

Well that's what I'm saying, release the game and then change the engine (if it's worth it). Only for a palette shift doesn't make it worth it though.

[outer]

Is it possible for one to create new characters, without certain animations? Like If I created a set of sprites for some heavy powerarmor, one that didnt run, vault, or crouch, just walked, shoots and dies - sorta like the panzerkleins from silent storm?

[video=youtube;-Shg1eGvYyU]