Any chance of different outfits?

Octave

Green Slime
Hats are cool and all, but even Ragnarok Online had different outfits based on your class.
Any chance of having some variety besides the scarf sweater pant combo?
 

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
This is unfortunately unlikely, given that Fred is our single animator and he'd have to redo all(!) character animations for each piece of new armor :( (We currently have over 150 unique character animations, and many of those took more than a full work day to complete, just to give you an idea of the workload we're talking about)

In a perfect world we'd of course include it, but in this case we traded armor customization for many much more detailed and smooth animations!
 

Octave

Green Slime
Wouldn't you just be able to recolor or alter the animations that already exist? Or is that just too much to ask? :p
 

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
You can't just "alter" the animations a little and hope it'll look good, if you want them to be as fluid as they are now. Also, even if we only altered the shirt, for example, it would still mean we need to redraw that part 4-20 times per animation (once per frame). That's the sad part of 2D-animation I'm afraid :(
 
I think it'd be cool if some of the armour did show up on the character, but it sucks it'll take up so much time for you guys. Keep doing what you're doing, and maybe add the new animations after you've finished the main game?
 

Fred

Developer
Staff member
This is probably the one feature people have been asking about the most, and since it is purely cosmetically animations it all falls on my table.
I think it's hard for people to grasp how much work even a slight modification of the sprite would involve, so I decied to count the amount of frames the main character sprite has right now. I ended up with 1365 unique frames, which includes all facing directions (down, up and the sides). Since the game is still in beta, there's still a lot of animations missing, so the final number of frames would probably end up closer to 2000.

Doing a modification to the sprite means modifying all of the hand made 1365 frames, one by one. It is possible, of course, but it is incredibly time consuming.
Adding armors and other visible gear is also tricky because of the way I have constructed the sprites. The body does a lot of twisting and turning, meaning you could not just place a static armor sprite on the character and have it look good. You would have to actually animate the armor sprite itself, which also would be extremely time consuming, especially considering you would probably need to make hundreds of different gears.

When we started this project I chose to focus more on detailed and fluid animations than customization, because of my love for well animated games. A game like Terraria for example has taken the other route, with very simple clip doll animations that opens up the doors for very easy customization. You can't have both, without having a huge team behind you and/or a lot of cash. Neither of which we have at the moment!

I'm not saying different body types or character modifications are out of the question, but it will probably be the very last thing I add to the game.
Hopefully this clears things up a bit. I would love to have this feature in the game myself, but I would also like this game to come out before I turn 60 ;D
 
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Graylen

Green Slime
Just want to say I've so far adored your animations, and can't wait to see what you'll bring us in the future.
 

Raeden

Rabby
This has cleared up a lot of my questions. I was going to make a thread asking about this.. I'd really love to have a different body look (the current one is fine I'd just like others as well). I appreciate the work that you're doing and I do think animation quality is a greater priority than customization. Ah well hah. Maybe someday!
 

Purrbidden

Giga Slime
Was just about to make a thread on this, but after reading.
I understand more now.
Yeah, it'd be nice, but not worth all the extra work to add onto what you lovelies are already doing.
If I was fully experienced in the field, I'd offer to lend a hand. (Still learning with classes.)
 

Poring

Rabby
i have an ideal, maybe we can have a work shop ? like ... all the players who willing to help can take part in making the game better, for this topic maybe the devs can give out the raw(or maybe something similar) of all the movement of the character, then the players can edit on the ... things the devs gave out. then the players send back to the devs for aprroval ? like dota 2 ... sounds ... possible ?
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
The idea is pretty neat, but do you think that someone really wants to make all those animation for every piece of clothing?
 

Cheynas

Rabby
Well, a less drawing-intensive but more programming-intensive solution could be to have certain items alter the colourscheme of your character...

Equip the Scarecrow's Scarf and your own scarf becomes red.
Equip the Phaseman's Boots and your pants/boots become metal-blue.
etc. etc.

Though, as said, it becomes a heavier programming task as opposed to a graphical task... but it'd be a shortcut to making you 'see' your equipment.


The public workshop is also a decent idea, though it would require the devs (or an unlucky intern) to review every single suggestion... which could add up quickly as the game gets more publicity.
( And nothing says publicity than 'a chance to put your creations in a game' I think )
 

Poring

Rabby
well, it just an idea, it may be improved, and i never said that one person do one outfit, players can work as a group, and specially it have to be those who are willing to help. Just take the script translating for example, a fully translated game doesn't come from 1 person (if it does that one person is awsome), and not everyone can do it, have to be the ones that willing to do ... right :D ???
 

NiQo

Green Slime
Well I don't know has anyone suggested this yet, but what if instead of making every armor in the game visible on the character, we would have costumes instead. They don't have to give any stats or anything only cosmetic. Also this way there is not so much work to do. You guys can add little by little more costumes in the game for eye candy (Maybe some rare drop costumes).
 

Fred

Developer
Staff member
I've talked about this before in other threads, which I can't seem to find (maybe one of the slick mods can help me?).

Basically, any change that involves changes to the characters appearens will be such a tremendous amount of work for me that it just dosen't seem worth it or even viable. There are over 1000+ frames for the main character alone which all would have to be hand animted because of the way I've constructed the sprites.

I agree that it would be dope with costumes, but I don't see this happening anytime soon :(
 
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