Sorry for the long absence! I am still wishing to contribute

[Evarchart]

Hello!

How are you all doing? I hope the game is going well and I hope you're keeping busy in other aspects of life too :)

I am sorry I have been so quiet after my initial burst of creativity regarding the facial generation artwork. I am still very keen to fulfil my promise to draw the assets for Pioneer (if you've not found anyone else?).
The sheer number of seperate assets is daunting, this is certain but I really want to draw them for you. As you may have guessed from my earlier posts I enjoy drawing the uniforms and the techy stuff...and with this in mind I thought I'd share with you a second police uniform design I worked on this morning.

[impaktor]

We've been silently hoping you still had us in your thoughts. Every week I see new players come by IRC thanking the community for the game but also complaining about the ugly faces.

I'm really ecstatic about how awesome your art looks. I just love it! Even if you claim they're "sketches" or "work samples", I think they all look drop dead gorgeous and ready for prompt inclusion into the game. But I guess you have your artistic pride and don't want to send us stuff you consider "half done".

Anyway, come by IRC if you're bored in that gallery/museum? you worked in and want to have a chat.

Also, there's been work done in the code base for facegen. We* should now be closer to implementing a separate tool for you to play around with the various assets, as well as the possibility to flip through noses/eyes/etc. separately in the game, to compose your own face. The code restructure was done here: #3180, but on the player side there is no notable change for now.

*"We" should be read as jpab/fluffyfreak. :)

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you in any way, and welcome back! We're thrilled to see you here again!

[Evarchart]

Hey Impaktor!

Lately I have been thinking more and more about this actually, mainly because of the Elite Dangerous stuff I have seen. I keep looking at how it's best for me to tackle the asset list and it looks like a case of (I know it's obvious but) getting home and drawing a face here, a nose there or more when the mood is good. :)

Also, I am aware this looks like a power ranger haha, the helmet motif can be changed etc, as can the ranking and damage markings. I don't know how these would be implimented in-game? Maybe variants...

I am stoked you're working on a facegen style program! :O
Players being able to generate their own profiles are important in a game like this :)

I shall indeed stop by the IRC sometime soon :D

[impaktor]

I am stoked you're working on a facegen style program! :O

Development halted/didn't quite start since jpab and fluffyfreak didn't know if you still was here. We have a separate tool for playing around with 3D models of ships/buildings and this helps the modellers tremendously so I think the idea was to have something similar for facegen with 2D assets.

Also, when re-reading the link in my first reply I saw some things that might be of interest to you (if you haven't read it yourself by now), such as: "The number of parts provided for males and females no longer has to match."

[Zefram]

Welcome back.

Your face art looks really nice. I hope to see it in action one day. :)

[Evarchart]

I really want to just get stuck right in and generate a caucasian male/female set of assets so you can drop them into the game with me expanding the races as time goes on (I won't lie, that asset list is daunting, it's enough to scare off any artist).
So that's what I am going to aim to do, create a full set of caucasian assets M/F and a few uniforms, outfits, doodads, tattoos etc and fire those over to you so noobies don't have nightmares with the current facegens ;)

As you know, I am really keen to start creating Android assets as well as pirate style assets. This will be on-going over a few years I am sure. I hope my art style doesn't change much! :D Luckily it appears to be consistent with my previous work so that's a good thing.

If you programming wizards are able to create a profile pic generator within the game so players can choose the way they look that will be incredible.

Thanks for the positive feedback and warm welcome back, it's been a busy old year. :)

[FluffyFreak]

Welcome back Everchart :)

I did take a look a couple of times at rewriting the character builder but it was a nightmare, thankfully JPab saw what I was doing and took it upon himself to fix the problems I was having!
Now I just have to find some time to try and make it work and allow you to customise it.

Until then the randomise button is your friend ;) do let us know if there's anything we can actually do to speed up getting things into the game, and don't be afraid to do it as a mod with repeated assets whilst you're developing it.

Andy

[Evarchart]

Hehe! Nice one Fluffyfreak!

I am aiming to complete a full set of caucasian male and some female assets so they can just replace what is currently in the game just so new people have a more friendly face to look upon ;)

When I have a set with enough diversity I will send them over for you to *hopefully* include. I will post w.i.ps if people wish to see what kind of concoctions my assets are throwing out in-game...I am working really hard to make them look as nice as possible.
I can't wait to get stuck into the more exotic things further down the line, like pirates/unsavoury types etc...also the techy stuff, provided my style doesn't go too off on a tangent...I am sure nozmajner will guide me with his trusty eye :) :)

[impaktor]

I was thinking, we could plant a little Easter egg in Pioneer of the form that if it's 25/12 (in-game date), all characters wear a Santa hat. So once every 1/365 landings you see this delightful Christmas spirit of the station personnel.

It's far better than that bear suit we now have which isn't even a proper Easter egg, it's just there with all other assets, with the same chance of being used as any other asset.

[nozmajner]

@Evarchart: Just a bit of nagging. :) We haven't heard about you in a while and I'm curious of you are still wish to contribute those pretty faces you are working on?