Please get rid of the huge 80s eyeglasses. At least the flannel shirts are gone already :geek:

The clothes could actually be tinted runtime so you could add grayscale versions of every clothes image for future use.

Backgrounds would be probably better if it was just some gradient or gradient-like plain image. Most of the backgrounds are too obviously real world.

There's still one flannel shirt left in there 😉

I'm not sure what you mean by "gradient or gradient-like plain image" could you give an example please? I'm not too keen on the idea of having plain backgrounds, as I think that would be even less convincing than real world backgrounds. If you can find some more believeble backgrounds, I would be very happy to include them though.

I take it, it's the aviators you don't like. I'll replace them with something more futuristic.

I can't even begin to suggest how awesome the 1980s were.

http://franklinwpierce.tumblr.com/post/ ... -me-bonnie

I sent you a PM to this effect. I think race 1 and race 2 need work. As far as I can tell, race 1 are a straight copy of race 0, and race 2 are simply a recoloured version of race 0. It would be better if they actually had some asian, african or other features.

You are right regarding the mouth, nose and hair sets but the most distinguishing part: the eyes are a completely different set for each race. The race 2 eyes are made up of african american actors/singers and race 1 eyes are all asian actors. I cut corners with the rest just to reduce the amount of time needed for the task. It would take literally hundreds of hours to make every single piece unique, unfortunately. To be honest I have taken the project as far I can in that department and apart from cleaning up the parts the aren't working properly, I won't be adding much more. I love doing this but I can't justify spending the amount of time needed to create the variety that it is capable of.

If anyone would like to contribute though, I would be more than happy to write up a tutorial on how to do the "face transplants" as I like to call them. It's very tricky at first but easy to get the hang of if you have photo editing experience.

Please keep the suggestions coming! I am especially interested in accessory, clothing and hair ideas. I went for a rather outlandish approach for the last update. Should I keep making weird stuff or start with more generic futureistic stuff?

Both options have merit. If you stick doing weird stuff, it can take your inspiration and creativity in many new directions, on the other hand if you stick with generic stuff, you can perfect it and improve its overall quality. The choice is yours, but I would suggest a bit of both with a bias toward to the wonderful and weird. In any case Subzeroplainzero, I think your doing a great job so far <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

I did think the teddy suit was perhaps pushing the "weird" side a little far, but it made me laugh so I left it in :lol:. But yes, both sides are great - while realism and professionalism have their places, the game should also show a bit of the personalities of the people that created it. If I land somewhere and I find a person wearing something utterly ridiculous and have a bit of a chuckle, that's a good thing 🙂

Totally agree with this, I've yet to encounter the teddy suit but I'm looking forward too it!

😆 😆 😆 Armor/uniforms aren't used yet, but we'll see where we can slot that teddy suit in. Perhaps give it a really low chance to create a mental patient who'll offer you about £3 to fly him to the center of the galaxy 😆

Yes why not! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_lol.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /> <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_lol.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' />

The faces appear "drawn" while the backgrounds are obviously photographs. This is incoherent and draws attention from the face to the background.

If there are no other backgrounds I'd rather just have gradients (of any colour):

R.E. Backgrounds, I agree to some extent, but I like these backgrounds:

[attachment=812:background_1.png]

And all of the other factory type backgrounds as well as most of the ones Brian photographed.

Its the newer ones that look out of place IMO, but thats because they are mainly office backgrounds, useful for missions but not so for spacestation interiors.

The way I look at it though is that not everyone's going to be stood in a factory or warehouse when talking on their com devices. These people probably have homes to go to 😛

I'm sure there is some compromise we can achieve though. Perhaps I could apply some filters to the backgrounds to make them fit the style of the faces more. I'm not keen on the gradient thing as it seems a bit of a step back. We had black backgrounds before and myself and s2odan agreed that backgrounds with detail look a lot better.

how about throwing in as many as we can come up with and fine tuning can take place over time as far as the backgrounds go

That would probably be quite effective. Also once we have seperate faces for the various professions, we can also seperate out the backgrounds so a factory/shipyard worker would have those backgrounds and an office worker would have the relevant ones.

I think this could be worth trying. But not only for clothes but most if not all parts.

We had a discussion about this on IRC earlier today and it could give a lot more variation to colours. Also it means we can easily add in some sci-fi blue human/aliens 😉

So not only would the seed be used to select every part, but also its colouring, such as skin colour or hair/eye colour.

Further down the line when we have crew and wingmen, we can use those same numbers to generate simple background descriptions for people, sort of like how the planetary descriptions are genned now. 🙂

We were kind of doing that, but I suppose now some backgrounds don't fit with others, but once we have specific backgrounds for different situations it will probably be ok.

Just blur them.

Sounds good to me. I'll do just that then 🙂

You should also use a flexible color filter over the whole picture in the end (after the faces have been generated). Like looking through a slightly blue (or red or green or whatever you like ;)) colored window. This should give the backgrounds a little more "sci-fi" atmosphere and let the faces appear in the correct light. This combined with the blurry backgrounds should really do the trick here.

Otherwise, sometimes less is more: Completely black and white with noise filter over it would be great, or why not black and white with blue (a little bit like star wars holograms)?

Just some thoughts 🙂

We originally intended for an overlay of some kind. I played around with this style for a bit-

It's a bit repetetive for my liking but with some tweeking I think it could work quite well. It also captures the cheesy 80s style futuristic technology feel. What do you reckon?

I only have imput on the art side though as I have zero programming knowledge, but I'll see what s2odan thinks 🙂

That 'bad connection' noise might work if you're communicating with a distant ship, but in station I think we'll do better than that in 3200. 🙂 Anyway I had to post this because it made me laugh. You do come up with some interesting combinations![attachment=843:Milan.jpg]

Yes that's a great idea Marcel, distance or proximity to an intense radio source (like a Gas Giant or Star), during re-entry procedures or even line of sight would disrupt communications. Yes it is a small detail but it is also one that increases immersion in the game. 🙂

Might feel weird if there's some animated stuff (analog noise in year 3200? ;)) on top of the image, when the image itself will never move. And instead of flashing "video link" text it could just show the character's name/title.

So we're generally agreed that a we don't want interference unless video linking with another ship in space etc. I'm looking forward to that being implemented! Responses to SOS signals and so on would be cool, along with the ablity to pirate and demand civs to release their cargo. Or even ask directions a bit like in the x series.

@marcel haha she's a good one. I think it's generating a nice mix of freaks and normals at the moment. It's probably veering more in the freak direction, but with a bit more fixing, tweeking, and content, it'll be really good 🙂