Character Customization

[Gyges]

What information is available on this? For some reason ive seen little discussion on the topic.

Can we expect sliders, portraits or a choice of premade faces and minimal alterations?

If there's one thing modern rpgs have done right, it must be the ways we can customize our characters appearance, deepening the immersion and personalization of the game. If i missed any obvious choices, do tell.

[Shades]

Being isometric even if you were able to create a wonderful face for your character you wouldn't actually be able to see it that close at all in the game. I think it's been established that we're getting portraits like those in the IE games. As for the characters themselves, we know they'll be 3D (but again, they'll be small, expect something more like Temple of Elemental Evil than Dragon Age) and I think we can assume that each race/gender combo will look different.

 

Beyond that it's unclear. I would like to see something like ToEE where you could also adjust your height (I think they had a few different hair styles you could pick too), and being able to alter the body width in a similar way would be handy as well.

[Adhin]

I'd prefer NWN2 like customization, specifically the height and width sliders for body as that let you really mold the character bit closer to what I'd personally want. But I still want painted portraits like the infinity games (minus PST since that was all pre-defined animated face stuff). So yeah, NWN2 like but with snazzy portraits.

 

-edit-

Yeah what Shades basically said before me heh. Body height/width sliders (and maybe body 'type' selecter) would have a bigger impact and, really, I think most RPG's lack that as is when they go balls out on the face customization.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Adhin

[Vargr]

For an isometric game like this I don't think sliders for every feature of the face is needed. As long as we can pick between faces, change skincolor,

eyecolor (might not be needed, depending on how far you can zoom in), hairstyle/color and facial hair/color, along with maybe some other options for flavour,

(tattoos, scarring, maybe earrings), and maybe adjust body type, I'd be happy enough.

 

As a matter of fact, the body type would be the only feature I'd like sliders for. 3 of them. Height, Fat and Muscle.

 

 

(So yeah, what the others' said )

Edited October 8, 2012 by Vargr

[Piccolo]

Something similar to BG would be fine by me... but ideally with more portraits to choose from (and better quality portraits - the portraits in BG were ugly in my opinion).

[Gyges]

Obviously been a long time since i played anything isometric. Body types should a must, most definitely.

[Vargr]

An obese hero would just be hilariously awesome.

 

"Right! Onwards, to glory and riches, and to Deliver this World from Evil!"

 

"...... right after I finish this meal. And dessert."

 

".... and someone brings me a Breastplate-stretcher..."

 

 

 

 

 

(Or is that chestplate....? I forget....)

Edited October 8, 2012 by Vargr

[Semper]

considering that P:E is an isometric game, choosing between different body types (given that they're in), hair and skin color and a portrait should be enough. perhaps different faces could be in too if the camera supports close up zooms - personally i don't care about such stuff. a face gen would be way too much to ask. that's a third party tool and too expensive.

[Jarmo]

Body types would be great, also long hair down to waist with beards to match. Face adjustment would be a wasted effort with the high overhead view.

 

The thing is, there'd need to be either some very clever system in place, or there'd need to be a version of all clothes/armor for all body types.

If the latter, it could mean choosing between body types and adding 5 more creatures. (think fat version of all 378 costumes)

 

Simple height/width scalers should be doable with little effort, if all clothing just stretches with the character.

 

---

Basically... do like in ToEE and you can't go wrong. Pimp it up a bit and you go right.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Jarmo

[RiceMunk]

I've grown to rather dislike the slider-madness that seems to come with modern RPGs. I don't really care about adjusting the tilt of the fourth eyebrow hair on the left eye of my character.

I'd rather just have a bunch of more general features (a couple of body shapes, head-hair configuration and colour etc.) to choose from and then stick a nice little jpeg portrait to represent my character with.

[Vargr]

I've grown to rather dislike the slider-madness that seems to come with modern RPGs. I don't really care about adjusting the tilt of the fourth eyebrow hair on the left eye of my character.

 

Agree with this. Especially when moving one slider moves another, and no matter what you do your character is wearing an expression as if he's about to

start bawling like a baby at any moment.

 

Obviously, some games do it better than others.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Shades & Adhin, well put! And as for obese characters, it would be quite nice to have this choice in this isometric game, since with 3D models that aspect is rather difficult concerning standardizing the rest: animations, weapon models, etc. Here's your chance Obsidian, take it!

Imagine a mighty monk with some weightyness!

[MinotaurWarrior]

It really depends on the level of graphical detail they're going for, which we just don't know at this point.

[Jarmo]

it would be quite nice to have this choice in this isometric game, since with 3D models that aspect is rather difficult concerning standardizing the rest:

 

The characters will be 3D in Eternity.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Kiitos, Jarmo, for pointing that out! My bad, what I meant was that multi-component vector models that can be zoomed in 3D areas are a hazzle in that regard, whereas smaller models give the devs much more freedom and flexibility in the weight department for animations and weapon models and such.

[Jaesun]

Something similar to the IE games is fine by me.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I actually am in the minority in this one in that I want a lot of customization in my appearance. I don't want myself to ever feel like I'm going to run into my twin 4 times as I progress through the game and NPC's look like me but with maybe different clothes. I don't want 2 million players playing the game and 94% of us all have the same portrait, because we're all unique people. Its not 20 yrs ago when they had like 1MB to store graphic info & it was take it or leave it. It's ok to do something like that with portraits if you never see your hero, but they should have a plethora of choices now a days, unless they're really planning on having a ton of loot & we never see our hero. Which reminds me, I hope there's an option to wear vanity gear or hide pieces of armor like my helm.

[Amentep]

I loved the way Troika's TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL did it.

 

You could adjust height within the racial type's height limits, hairstyles and hair color, skin tone within racial type and of course gender and race altered the look as well.

 

It made for characters who could look different from one another despite being the same race and class and was generally noticeable from the isometric view.

[Bill Gates' Son]

I can understand if there won't be that many facial options, but I think things like a variety of hairstyles, skin tones, and height and body weight(within limits) should be used. I would like my in game character character to look somewhat like my character portrait.

 

I'm really hoping characters look detailed when the game comes out. Isometric games use less GPU power than 3d games, so compared to say....Wasteland 2, character models can look more detailed without using as much GPU power.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Bill Gates' Son

[arrowhead]

Something like ToEE and allow the use of custom portraits.

[JediMB]

I think it would be cool if we could choose between traditional hand-drawn portraits or customizable 3D portraits for our characters.

 

But I suppose implementing a character customization system might be more work than it's worth. Still, I'll cross my fingers.

[Osvir]

Colors of the cloth's. No dye mechanic in-game that you have to buy please.

 

I loved the Baldur's Gate simplicity of just changing the colors. Apart from that I kind of do want to see some hair customization, then I'm all good. Perhaps a set of 3 different "basic models" for each class/race/gender.

 

What I mean is... in BG we got this and I would kind of prefer this (<my suggestion to be>):

* Human M/F Warrior (x3)

* Human M/F Mage (x3)

* Human M/F Rogue (x3)

* 4 Color Modifications, Hair-, Skin-, 2xClothing Palette's (I would love to see this taken just a small step further, where you can change the color of helmets and armors. In BG you could only change the basic "No Equipment" parts of the character model clothes)

 

EDIT: I would love to see some sort of "Wolfenstein" thing with the portrait's. The more damage you take, the more scarified and such they could get.

edited: correcting myself

Edited October 8, 2012 by Osvir

[ogrezilla]

It doesn't need to be anything crazy, but I don't want every human male to be the same guy with different hair color. But some basic options like skin color, beards and a few hair styles would be good. The things you can actually notice from an isometric view. I don't care about changing my eyebrows.

Edited October 8, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Amentep]

That's why I liked TOEE's character creation. Add the ability to create thin / fat characters and you've got a fairly robust system from an isometric view, IMO.

[Osvir]

I feel as if the isometric viewpoint is underrated. Check out Shadowgrounds (A good shooter, a bit amateurish but still good, made by the same developers that made Trine). Look at Diablo 3.

 

There is also "Alien Swarm" on Steam (free). Alien Breed 1, 2, 3 as well. There is a lot of things that can be done with the graphical style today, and I think you will notice more about the details than you think here in the forums, and I'm sure Obsidian already knows this so it'll probably be taken into account.

 

I don't care about changing my eyebrows.

 

This is one of those things that would be pointless to customize, unless there is going to be "zoomed in conversations". I still don't want to rule it out entirely though. Simplicity in this area whichever way it goes (more char customization vs less char customization)

Edited October 8, 2012 by Osvir