Facegen concept ideas

[FluffyFreak]

That police officer looks very intimidating! Good job! I'll take a look at the Personal Information screen tomorrow to see about adding buttons to cycle through the various face components.
Not done much with the UI but it might be a good break from what I'm currently struggling with.

[Evarchart]

I have in mind to create several police styles that fit in with the various factions and their whole 'vibe'. I have a more utopian design in mind for the less totalitarian factions. I am drawing these inbetween drawing noses and eyes because there are so many I am starting to dream about them now.

[FluffyFreak]

Just a heads-up to keep you informed:

I've had a look into doing the face part settings stuff. It'll take a bit of work, maybe a couple of weeks since I do this in my lunchbreak/evenings when I get time.
There's nothing especially complex about it, I just don't want to break everything ;)

[Evarchart]

Great stuff. It will take me a very long time to get all the basic assets drawn up anyways. It occurred to me that an idea I had hoped for might be a lot more work (for both of us) than I originally thought, I had hoped to change eye-colour and also toggle facial hair but because the jaws of the males are so varied I would need 10 styles per chin for example, but I would have to redraw them for each chin. Eye colour might be impossible as the eyeball would have to be placed down first and the eyeskin layer placed above it...maybe it's something we could do in the distant future? I'll structure my eye .psd's in photoshop to account for this should it ever be a possibility but for now I'll create the standard facegen assets with a view to expanding them at a later date.

[Evarchart]

Faces are starting to look diverse...ooops, the ears are bleeding skin tone, I will have to neaten them up

[torham2234]

This is wonderful progress.
For me, the most off putting thing in pioneer atm are the horrible disfigured mutant faces that stare at me on every station...

[Evarchart]

Thankyou!
I am pretty stoked by how they are coming out, it's still a TON of work though and I just wish i could take a couple of months off work just to get them completed.
As I have mentioned in IRC chat before, once the basics are created then I can get onto uniforms and all the other good stuff...it's exciting for sure :)

[DraQ]

This stuff is really nice.

Maybe we could make the suit for the player depend on their ship?

A fighter or other minimal habitability ship without much safety measures against hull breach would show Player fully suited up, larger, single ship craft could have the player casual looking, while large multi-crewed ship would show player in uniform.
Maybe it could be overriden by planet's habitability when landed.

Similarly we could have NPC crew suit depend on their preferred profession.

Regarding horrible, disfigured mutant faces - well, yeah. A partial solution before Pioneer gets some less temporary art assets would be making them smaller, lowering resolution at which they're displayed.

BTW: Are there any plans for alien species characters?

[Evarchart]

I'm really pleased with how these are coming out, I am currently drawing them at the same resolution in my own style as the existing assets as they scale up and down nice and cleanly. I really like your suit idea, I wonder if that would be easy to program. Suits and things are really fun to draw.

I have mentioned that I would seek to draw droids/robots, sort of star warsy kind of things but In my own style. There has been talk of the possibility of drawing alien races too but because I have to draw so many assets it could take months just to create an alien set of graphics. That doesn't mean I don't want to, on the contrary, I would love to.
I have always drawn faces, humans/robots and aliens and I always wanted them in a game like this (I was even planning my own) but after playing pioneer and seeing the potential of the game I put myself forward for the job. I can't wait to finish a caucasian male set so I can test them out, I will kinda hate seeing the mutants go because there's a certain charm to them and Scott Manley's reaction to them is just hilarious.

[impaktor]

...but because I have to draw so many assets it could take months just to create an alien set of graphics

Meh, they all look the same.

As I discussed with Evarchart on IRC, we can always put aliens a bit out from the core systems, meaning only hard core pioneer players, who venture out on discovery missions will discover them. They might need a faction, if they inhabit multiple systems. I think this is a sound initial approach, since integrating aliens further into the game play starts adding the workload where it might not give so much, like you might want the aliens to have their own ships, cities, space ports etc. and back story etc.

Maybe we could make the suit for the player depend on their ship?

I've already seen Evarchart draw one space suit. I was thinking when you talk to someone in deep space, like your own crew, or another ship (not yet in the game), they might wear it.

@FluffyFreak
Right now (correct me if I'm wrong) we can ask to get a face of gender male/female and police/civilian but nothing else? Would be great with finer control like:

• - Alien
  - normal human civilian Male (some bearded) / Female
  - Military/Police of faction X (of rank high/medium/low?)
  - In space suit
  - Pirate/scarred person with worn clothes
  - robot/droid

I don't know how much is possible right now other than the first two and a half on the list above. Would putting pirates/anarchists as separate "race" be using the code in a way it wasn't meant to? One might want cyborgs to wear "normal" civilian clothes, just different faces.