9 replies to this topic

[Sabre]

A rant about the failures of custom appearence I decided against posting elsewhere. Given that customisation is a large part of IA, I thought it might be of interest to some of you. I like critique, so be sure to let me know what you think.

A favourite form of unlock in alot of games for me is that of custom skins. Be it running around as a land shark in Ratchet, Leons cop outfit in RE4, or making a super bad arse space marine army in Warhammer. Sometimes it's done poorly, like hats in TF2 or any game where armour has a gameplay effect leading to dumb looking guys who are gameplay effective, or cool looking ones who are useless. The biggest problem though, in my mind, is one that is summed up by Halo 3s Hayabusa Armour.

Simply put, for a time, an unusually large number of players used Hayabusa Armour, it's asian ninja style didn't quite fit in with the sci-fi look of Halo (something that wasn't much of a problem for me due to it only appearing in multiplayer) but the main problem was bragging rights. In order to get the armour, you had to find all the hidden skulls. Something that took a degree of dedication and skill. That or a friend who had done it before, or a few hours with a gamefaqs walkthrough.

This led to a bunch of people wearing the armour to show off how 1337 they were, and there was nothing wrong with that, but it led to pretty much every other person wearing it. This attitude was summed up nicely in an episode of Arby n Chief. The problem didn't get much better with Halo Reach. While the time and skill dedication needed to get the armours increased, alot of people made characters to look like 'cool' characters such as Chief or Emile. It also didn't fix the other part of the problem. Colours.

Having a choice of characters and colours is fine. The problem is that some people don't have a basic grasp of colour theory, leading to garish designs, or the far more common black, grey or tan for camoflage. That half second gained by having your guy blend into the wall texture might not seem like much, but in a competitive enviroment, that can be the difference between fragging or being fragged.

In co-op games that seems to be less of an issue. People pick who they want as computers aren't fooled by your colour scheme. There are a few times in games like Sven Co-op where people have chosen characters or colour schemes similar to the enemy that led to me shooting friends in the back of the head by accident. Often times this can be blamed on the player getting shot. If you play a combine soldier in Half Life 2 for example, you can't blame people for shooting you on reflex.

The solutions to these problems are not easy, and are arguably more trouble than they are worth. Overriding character models and colours like in Halo or Counter Strike makes custom characters pointless to begin with. Asking the players to solve the problem is not going to work either. Some people like to match their friends, some like to be unique. The most simple approach is to not allow players to look like the enemies or maps. Why include a combine soldier player skin in Half Life 2 for example? Such a system could limit the players options.

Whatever the solution. Locking stuff away behind a skill wall is not how to do it. Having any of it give a player advantage, no matter how small, is not a way to do it. There are lots of wrongs that I didn't cover, such as face sliders. Getting it right is tough, but to some it is well worth the effort.

It will be interesting to see how IA does it, and how it handles themeatic consistancey.

[ScrooLewse]

Excellent essay. You make great points with solid evidence and I agree with most of what you said.

Ugly palettes can be fixed by letting them pick their primary color then picking secondary and tietary colors for them. Color-based cheating can be avoided by either locking the colors useful for camo or making your game's palette bright and colorful.

[Sabre]

ScrooLewse, on 06 March 2012 - 02:12 AM, said:

Excellent essay. You make great points with solid evidence and I agree with most of what you said.

Ugly palettes can be fixed by letting them pick their primary color then picking secondary and tietary colors for them. Color-based cheating can be avoided by either locking the colors useful for camo or making your game's palette bright and colorful.

Thank you.
I didn't think much of it myself, hence why I didn't post it at the place I usually post these things. It kind of meandered about with little point and no solutions to the problem.

The problem with the secondary colours being picked is that you lose alot of options. Let's say I picked blue, and I want the secondary to be white, but instead it's gold.

I think the camo colours would work, but it would mean alot of work to implement a system that locks out and automatically changes colour based on the map. It's doible, but is it really worth the effort? Would you rather spend a few days making that system, or fix bugs and balence elsewhere?

[A1win]

With Pawn World Markers, any kind of camouflage on the GPs would not be an issue, because the OP would always see their outline (or perhaps some other effect) no matter what the color of their character was. Even if the GPs weren't able to customize their colors, they might still be able to camouflage themselves in certain parts of a map if they weren't somehow highlighted for the OP, who views them from relatively far away.

[WAXT]

A1win, on 06 March 2012 - 05:44 AM, said:

With Pawn World Markers, any kind of camouflage on the GPs would not be an issue, because the OP would always see their outline (or perhaps some other effect) no matter what the color of their character was. Even if the GPs weren't able to customize their colors, they might still be able to camouflage themselves in certain parts of a map if they weren't somehow highlighted for the OP, who views them from relatively far away.

What about the Infiltrator?

[AndY]

WAXT, on 06 March 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

What about the Infiltrator?

That's a special case.

[ScrooLewse]

Sabre, on 06 March 2012 - 04:44 AM, said:

The problem with the secondary colours being picked is that you lose alot of options. Let's say I picked blue, and I want the secondary to be white, but instead it's gold.

I think the camo colours would work, but it would mean alot of work to implement a system that locks out and automatically changes colour based on the map. It's doible, but is it really worth the effort? Would you rather spend a few days making that system, or fix bugs and balence elsewhere?

How we lock-down the saturation and brightness and 'suggest' complementing colors by automatically painting the complements on their character while they put on the primary? They can change it if they want, and people only get gaudy color schemes if they specifically CHOOSE to be gaudy and eye-searing.

As for camo-colors, I meant lock them out of the most common colors for your all your levels. Like if I had a game with a gray, steely palette, then I would lock players out of the grays and low-saturation colors. They can still go brown if they want to, even if I have a level with a lot of brown dirt and hilly farmland in it.

Plus, the whole Pawn World Markers remedies the situation for this game.

[Sabre]

A1win, on 06 March 2012 - 05:44 AM, said:

With Pawn World Markers, any kind of camouflage on the GPs would not be an issue, because the OP would always see their outline (or perhaps some other effect) no matter what the color of their character was. Even if the GPs weren't able to customize their colors, they might still be able to camouflage themselves in certain parts of a map if they weren't somehow highlighted for the OP, who views them from relatively far away.

I thought the OP units were custom too?

ScrooLewse, on 06 March 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

How we lock-down the saturation and brightness and 'suggest' complementing colors by automatically painting the complements on their character while they put on the primary? They can change it if they want, and people only get gaudy color schemes if they specifically CHOOSE to be gaudy and eye-searing.

As for camo-colors, I meant lock them out of the most common colors for your all your levels. Like if I had a game with a gray, steely palette, then I would lock players out of the grays and low-saturation colors. They can still go brown if they want to, even if I have a level with a lot of brown dirt and hilly farmland in it.

Plus, the whole Pawn World Markers remedies the situation for this game.

Maybe. But wouldn't it be easier to have preset colour schemes to choose from, and then full custom if you want that? Again, I'm saying this not knowing how the game will look or play, so I could be talking crap at this point.

[AndY]

Sabre, on 07 March 2012 - 02:14 AM, said:

I thought the OP units were custom too?

Your loadout of units will be custom, but not the units themselves (except for maybe one colour).

[ScrooLewse]

Sabre, on 07 March 2012 - 02:14 AM, said:

Maybe. But wouldn't it be easier to have preset colour schemes to choose from, and then full custom if you want that? Again, I'm saying this not knowing how the game will look or play, so I could be talking crap at this point.

That, too.
Also, at this point I'm pretty sure we're all talking crap. Except AndY. He's on the inside of the dev circle. (Though even at that, things can change pretty fast at this stage in dev.)