Facegen concept ideas

[Evarchart]

I am doing my best for you guys, I really am. Currently I get 1 hour of art time a day...and that's if I am not half asleep from work. That's enough time to draw a nostril...if I am lucky.
I want to do caucasian male facial assets and then expand to caucasian female assets. Not the full 20, as it currently stands, but 10 of each so at least you have something less scary to look at...I plan to put together a .zip of assets that can just be copied to replace existing assets in the game (my .zip will replace ALL assets so therefore there's no messing around and then all in-game faces with be generated out of my assets).

Please be patient...those nice assets are coming, just as soon as I am physically able to provide them.

Thanks for your kind words there Clausimu

[Evarchart]

Thinking about this now...and I am thinking of spending a weekend getting together what I have already go along with some VERY rough placeholder assets so people can download them and replace the current facegen with mine as some sort of mod maybe, until I have the proper facegen assets together for my proposal for inclusion in future updates.
Hopefully this is a decent compromise :)

[FluffyFreak]

Yeah a mod would be a good way to give people a sense of the look things will take :)

[impaktor]

@charlieg Please note that this thread is 1,5 years old, thus this is a long term project, and +1 year project time is not strange in pioneer. Evarchart deserves a huge pat on the back up for staying with us that long and working, alone, on this. A person that talented certainly doesn't lack opportunities to invest them elsewhere.

some VERY rough placeholder assets

Well, what you previously called "rough/work in progress", looks pretty damned brilliant to me. Looking forward to it.

I am doing my best for you guys, I really am.

We're very thankful for the time and effort you're investing. Take your time, and make sure you're having fun doing it, maybe draw some clothes, helmets, armor, robots, or whatever you enjoy when you're tired of all the repetitive faces?

@Evarchart note that the number of asset types don't have to match, so there can be different number of noses and eyes, or hair, for instance. I think the current assets do match in numbers because the old code required it. (Also, the latest downloadable windows version (November 9th) of pioneer is broken, older version here)

I suspect mods are used by the "regular" pioneer-players who are already used to the atrocities of the Facegen. They would sure be happy with a mod. It would be so sweet to have these faces in master. But for that I guess at least 5-10 faces of each gender would be needed. Then we can just add more after that.

[Evarchart]

Thankyou impaktor, I really appreciate those words.

I have decided to definately put together a replacement file of assets so you can just download them and paste the over the current ones, I will duplicate the .pngs that i have done so it won't break the current game's facegen...it should just slot in. :)
I will then add to it over time when I get time off work or a day off etc. I f***king LOVE Pioneer, and I love getting to spend some time on it, I love how a small team have come together to create something so enjoyable and when I offered to help I meant it, I meant to draw every face and eye and nostril and I still mean it after all this time, one day I'll sit back knowing that every space pilot that downloads and plays this game won't be having the living piss scared out of him by that facegen.
I will sort of miss them.

:D

[nozmajner]

I second everything what impaktor said, and I'm eagerly waiting for these faces.
Usually I get fed up with the current abonimations and ramp myself up to start doing some simpler but passable repalcement, but usually when I mention this, someone pinga you, and you show some new and great stuff, and my steam settles. :)

[charlieg]

Sorry Evarchart, I didn't mean to come across as pushy. As somebody who has blogged about open source games for years, I'm well aware of really cool features / mods that got half way and then, usually due to the kind of real life pressures you allude to, things go silent and get forgotten about as life arrows in a different direction.

At least if there was something concrete (something more than previews) to toy around with, then at least there is the potential for the effort to live on past your own involvement should you simply not have time to work on it. Or you may find that people being able to play with it in-game and give you feedback motivates you further. Or you may even use it to get a [better?] job!

[FluffyFreak]

Nice blog! And I see you've covered Pioneer before, those were some good looking terrains early on. I'm not 100% sure what happened to the terrain system but it rarely produces such drastic stuff anymore... it also has less bug and use 1/10th of the ram though... swings and roundabouts :D

[charlieg]

Yeah, this article was a good one although I didn't write that one (it was contributed).