very nice! definitely looking forward to getting to play with the character creator. ah the possibilities.... :)

Hehe... I wonder what the Nightmare's glorious armor would be categorized as? Certainly not the Brooder or the Goody-Two Shoes.

I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want

notears wrote:

So are textures and costume pieces separate? Cause if I can get that padded armour chest piece without the straps and I can change it's texture to human skin, I can probably make a pretty decent reptilian underbelly for a hulking killer croc type.

Precisely the idea. (And there is one w/o the straps)

Nice can't wait to see the different types of armor choices from medieval to body armor

Clave Dark 5 wrote:

I'm suddenly not so afraid that all the crazy visuals I've proposed for the game will be cut with a "sorry, we'd do that if we could, but..."

Heh, nice! I hadn't thought about the fact that this could be encouraging to MWM team members as well as us players.

The only concern I have arising from this is whether the level of realism in the world and the costumes will require avatar faces to keep up in a way that pushes them into the Uncanny Valley. Looking fwd to seeing how you folks avoid this potential hazard.

Cinnder wrote:

The only concern I have arising from this is whether the level of realism in the world and the costumes will require avatar faces to keep up in a way that pushes them into the Uncanny Valley. Looking fwd to seeing how you folks avoid this potential hazard.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAPpQenRRAc]Uncanny Valley short video[/url]

As far as that goes... its really comes down to how the 3D artist/animators comprehension of facial muscles and how to animate mood/expression changes. And the only time you might see that is probably in Cut Scenes. Not too much while chatting up a contact, as its predominantly Text based lore you will need to read. :)

Side Note: I wonder if MWM wouldnt mind adding a Keyboard shortcut for Copying the chat Text from NPC's (etc..) to the Clipboard... so I can give my eyes a rest and let the Text-To-Speech app grab it from the Clipboard and do its thing? :D
Yea.. you could even give the Option(s) to Wrap the Text in XML with each NPC's Name/Gender/pitch level/etc.
So that a 3rd party Developer can come along and parse it... and that app can even let the user specify the Speech API Voice they want to hear for a number of NPC's. ;)

Sand_Trout wrote:

Will you allow us to sell costumes we've made to other players in exchange for in-game money?

This has been discussed in a few places. I believe the general consensus is that it would be cool, although MWM would have to review and accept all submissions before they become available in the game. Segev, or perhaps DocT, had raised the possibility of requiring a kind of license to make such submissions. The idea is that even if the license cost a token amount ($10 range, maybe?), the risk of losing it should dissuade people from making inappropriate submissions.

Yes. The hope is that the avatar builder will go into beta by the end of the year. As of a week or two ago they were still wrestling with a major technical issue (the character rig/skeleton).

Darth Fez wrote:

Just to be clear, are these merely examples to illustrate what MWM is doing with costumes or are those examples of the art/aesthetic we can expect to see in the game? Like Cinnder, I am not much of a fan of (ultra-) realism in computer games in general and for a superhero game in particular.

We are using super-high quality pieces here to show off the technology, what is possible, only.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Darth Fez wrote:
Just to be clear, are these merely examples to illustrate what MWM is doing with costumes or are those examples of the art/aesthetic we can expect to see in the game? Like Cinnder, I am not much of a fan of (ultra-) realism in computer games in general and for a superhero game in particular.

We are using super-high quality pieces here to show off the technology, what is possible, only.

\o/

That's a relief. Thanks.

Also, from the Facebook page we now know that they're aiming to make the AB available in December (in case 'end of the year' was too vague).

Quote:

The Ballet of Death I am ten foot tall and bullet proof, I have a huge ax dripping from my enemies blood. I can breathe fireballs and lightning bolts come from my eyes. Even without that I can still bloody beached you with a ballet kick. I am a real man and real men were tights. I do not need to hide behind some, sissy, girly boy armor.

Nice job with the armor. I hope we get color sliders to determine the colors of the costume the problem with multiple textures that they do alter the colors when applied with a palette. Sometime we can get away with using a darker or lighter color then the one we had to try to get a match. But usually with CoH the color would not be quite the same sue to the automatic shading of the texture effect.

Izzy wrote:

Cinnder wrote:
The only concern I have arising from this is whether the level of realism in the world and the costumes will require avatar faces to keep up in a way that pushes them into the Uncanny Valley. Looking fwd to seeing how you folks avoid this potential hazard.

Uncanny Valley short video
As far as that goes... its really comes down to how the 3D artist/animators comprehension of facial muscles and how to animate mood/expression changes. And the only time you might see that is probably in Cut Scenes. Not too much while chatting up a contact, as its predominantly Text based lore you will need to read. :)

I'm sure the folks at MWM will be doing their best to avoid the pitfalls of the Uncanny Valley.

For what it's worth I'm somewhat willing to tolerate a bit of the "creepiness" in what Darth Fez calls "ultra-realism" in the latest computer games because I realize the technology will eventually move past the rough edges associated with it. As the Uncanny Valley graph shows once you move past the low point the degree of acceptance/believably in these things shoots rapidly upward. My thinking is that games made in the next 5 or 10 years are just going to have to suffer through some of the growing pains of the Uncanny Valley before we make it through to the other side.

Basically we may be worried about Uncanny Valley issues now but by the time we're playing games based on say things like Unreal Engine 7 or 8 the detail of the tech will be so advanced it'll all be a non-issue at that point.

Pleonast wrote:

I'll also mention that we need to have some control over the lighting in the costume creator. I want to see what my costume looks like in office lights vs full sun vs cloudy day vs twilight vs street lamp.

If I recall correctly, in the Unreal Material/Shader Editor.. if you hold down "L" (for Light) and while held down, you can move the mouse around and the Point light would follow the mouse.
I bet with some effort MWM could play around with that approach and see if they can dim the Directional Light somewhat and brighten the Point light when the user has the L key held down. :)

Ohh, might need a CubeMap for some reflections like the Knights Armor pieces!?! ;D

Talk about your appetite wetter! Well I just looked over all the comments and I'm curious about this technical issue someone mentioned. Is it something that has been overcome yet? Is the character creator still going to be available by the end of the year?

Will we be able to have a guy with wings and still give him a cape?

For all the uncanny valley people, maybe would could see a preview of some faces? Or would that be showing too much at this point?

Anyway, this is like... an amazing update. When you guys said "Wait until you see the next tech update", I had my suspicions, but wow! :D

Can't wait to see the other costume options I remember running the ITF for the first time how many people wanted the Sybil outfits

Darth Fez wrote:

Timothius wrote:
Well I just looked over all the comments and I'm curious about this technical issue someone mentioned. Is it something that has been overcome yet? Is the character creator still going to be available by the end of the year?
They're still working on the technical problem. If they've resolved it they haven't spread the word, yet. For now the December goal for the AB (at least a beta version) still stands.

Thanks for the info! :)

McNum wrote:

Oh dear... as if I didn't spend long enough in City of Heroes' costume editor to get costumes just right. I could spend an entire evening just tweaking costumes and now you do this?

Hell... Even just being able to select surface type (i.e., metallic, shiny leather, leather, shiny cloth, dull cloth, etc.) to change the way that light reflected from the surface for costume pieces would have me tucked away in the tailor shop for weeks; getting to tweak surface textures for closeups, too, is incredible. Amazing what moving up a couple generations of game engine will do.

I was wondering and hoping we could have realistic furs, as per this season's vogue magazine, if you needed references for hoods and such things there are many lovely high resolution options. I know, it does require more mathematics and splicing especially if we want them to be pixar-realistic with longer furs, shorter ones should do okay as they wouldn't be expected to move much, like velvets they would more or less stay in place, but they have a longer light scatter field than satin. I was also wondering about metals and satin.

Metals are shiny, chromatic, they should reflect their brightest color at the correct angle in sunlight or other bright sources of light. Copper, Brass, Steel, Nickle, Glass and Aluminum are most likely to be encountered in an urban setting and they are all extremely reflective. Most games and movies never do this. Satin does the same thing but it's more scattered, instead of a solid flash of light it bends in a distribution over a shoulder. Those dresses with large bits of glitter stuck to them do this as well, but much as an intermediary between both Satin and Metal. Water does the same but again only at the correct angles, too shallow and you just see the ripples of water on the surface of a lake, or the length of a still pool. Too deep and you see into the bottom of your lake, and the marble bottom of your pool. I will point out right now that all knives and blades have a second angle of reflection on them and that is along the cutting edge. If the blade is dull it does not shine when reflected in the light at the correct angle, as if one was using some skill or visual appreciation to appraise it's value.

Another thing about lighting, at dawn the sun gives out warm orange colors, in the afternoon it becomes a golden yellow, and by dusk it's red and purple in it's sunset light.

The moon by contrast is more of a calming blue soft light.

Oh and quick introduction :) I'm Diana Smith but you can call me Skaldi, 22 years online gaming experience, 20 years of game suggestion experience, 7 years doing the same for various American companies.

Also for characters who have fur. ^_^

I support PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals)! I like Leather for Jackets and Belts and Shoes. My sheepskin slippers, with the fleece on the inside, are the most wonderful gift I ever got for me feet.

And there are rare and endangered creatures out there, that should not be killed-off, just because their parts are attractive.

There's nothing wrong with the 'Ethical Treatment of Animals', except that many of the People involved don't bother to learn anything about the animals. They aren't cute and cuddly.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Sweet_Miss_Skaldi wrote:

Sorry, didn't mean to start a debate for people on whether to fur or not to fur.

You certainly didn't start this debate in general. I think we're just pointing out the cynical fact that people will find almost anything to complain about if given half a chance.

Ironically having to consider the "question" of fur in a game like this is only possible now due to the technology for rendering realistic looking fur in computer graphics. As little as 5 or 10 years ago you couldn't even generate reasonable looking hair/fur in games so we didn't have to worry about silliness like this.

I suppose the folks at MWM could choose to avoid letting us have anything that would look like fur-based clothing for fears of upsetting people in a "virtual" world but ultimately I hope that isn't the case. I might not be personally interested in fur clothing for my characters but I support having as much clothing option freedom as possible. As soon as you start censoring things for esoteric philosophical reasons you open up the slippery slope for all sorts of items to be restricted for all sorts of subjective non-engineering based reasons.

Have no fear there. I have plans.

Dr. Poole was right! You're an ox AND a moron!

(Oscar, anyone?)

CoyoteShaman

I got started, in another topic and then I realized I'd gone off topic again so I clipped out the clothing part of my post and here it is!

I remember when I played Archae (another mud) for a while, then they closed for maintence for a few years but I teamed up with someone who could submit clothing patterns to QC, and I actually designed a pink scarf with white and red alternating hearts woven into the end, and a couple of other things along that theme and they were approved into the game immediately no wait time at all. They said I had good taste or something :) The very limiting part of Archae was that the number of pre-set items were just that they were pre-set basic things like gloves, scarf, hat, but you couldn't specify 'mitten' or 'wings' or anything specific like that, and you couldn't embroider craft something you had just made. Embroider craft items had to be NPC purchased, which I really felt just through another limitation on the player. You can have enchanted embroidery crafted clothes but it has to be from the NPC, or you can have beautiful decorative custom clothing but it can never be enchanted. I was disapointed because the next class I wanted to play was a wizard with a very fancied up robe and then get it embroidery enchanted with a good protection spell so I could wear it in combat as if armor.

Dragonrealms did eventually code in enchanted embroidery but you couldn't ever make your own decorative clothing within a week, in Dragonrealms system it was pay up $50 have a personal event and get all the clothing customization you want up to 20 items, they would code it from scratch themselves and it would be fully decorated but it had to be something again from an NPC shop. The other alternative Dragonrealms gave was they would have an event with an Alterer, and the Alterer could change the look of any item in the game, but again long lines and waiting all day for something nice. In that I greatly appreciate CoX and CoT, make it yourself, and enchantments are your powers. But what I'm asking for I guess is embroidered patterns and beads that you can find and then place as you want on your costume? Hearts, stars, moons, crescents, snowflakes, bells, teardrops, animals, cat's eyes, gems, pearls, diamonds, jingle bells, wings, quarter notes, spoons, outlined triangles, squares, hearts, stars, teardrops, circles, round badges, numbers, and of course you have to be able to color them individually! Okay it's past 5 am I need to sleep.

Dream Big!