[CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells.

[Todd Mitchell]

Arg: I'm getting quoted out of context as a rabble rouser here.  For the
record, I am not advocating making hundreds of custom player faces for each
weapon/armour/race combination, or of dumping in single or two directional
faces into the player arch list.

>
     
      > > I think this is a good idea.  If we got rid of the class/race
     
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      > > face distinction and made a set of  choosable arches for each
     
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      > > race (with some overlap when body types are similar).  Need a
     
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      > > few more pictures here and there (some more elves, trolls,
     
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      > > a halfling in full battle armour...maybe even a couple
     
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      > > different dragon types, but they would be useful to reuse
     
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      > > for npc's as well. It would be easier to have players pick
     
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      > > from one big larger set, but I wouldn't want to see fireborn
     
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      > > picking a halfling face, or a dwarf looking like a troll...
     
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      >
     
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      This is mostly a matter of available art. The current system
     
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      was chosen simply out of practical reasons: Player animations
     
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      for classes exist only in humanoid shape. Due to the
     
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      lack of non-humanoid class faces, such races must stick
     
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      with their default race face.
     
     
I suggest either dropping the class faces altogether and sticking with the
current racial faces, or making the proper four directional faces to cover a
variety of generic types for each race (heavy armoured, robed, lightly
weaponed).  Most of the class faces can double up for now and a new arch
could use the same face.  As new graphics get done, the arch can be changed
to use a new animation.
BTW, Is there a reason that player faces aren't animated?

A reason I'm not for allowing players to choose any arch they want it just
versimilitude, perhaps this is not a good enough reason.  I like the roll
playing and emmersive aspects of games and if you play an elf you should
look like an elf.  Then I can go 'hmm an troll, I don't like trolls' instead
of 'hmmm another game player with a crazy getup on'.  Again this is just a
matter of taste.

>
     
      Extending the system would be nice - But it doesn't make
     
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      a lot of sense while there is no art to support that.
     
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      For a player animation you need faces in all four
     
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      directions. You cannot just copy monster images because
     
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      they don't support those directional facings.
     
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      Of course one could argue: Let's just make the change,
     
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      then people will automatically draw the art to support it.
     
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      I don't have a problem with that philosophy, but past
     
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      experience has shown that it doesn't work.
     
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      I'd rather try to collect art before doing the
     
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      change - then people might be better motivated to draw
     
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      something, as they are eager to get the new feature.
     
     
I agree, but I think we can jumpstart it a bit by making the arches,
planning out a direction to go and reusing some of the faces for the moment.
We can, for example, make arch for elf-warrior (reuse paladin face) elf
magician (reuse a mage face) and elf adventurer (regular elf face) and say
there is the elf race choices.  There will still be blanks, but it will let
us know what needs to be drawn first.  Then someone can actually work on a
new face for the elf-warrior without holding up the parade.  I think first
off it would be good to make some alternate direction images for the less
human body type races - say like the dwarf priest and dwarf mage images.

That is if this is what we want to do.  Planning is everything.