Possible Solution to Asymmetrical Patterns

[Herotu]

Chest/Leg patterns seem to be limited to symmetrical patterns. Would it be feasible to split them into two separate halves in the same way Gloves and Boots were recently split? So left/right?

 

This would then allow new patterns to be made with asymmetry.

[Redlynne]

Chest and Leg pieces are ONE piece ... not two.

If anything, I'd expect to see Shoulders be the next costume part(s) to enable asymmetry.

[Herotu]

I'm not making a prediction, I'm making a suggestion.

 

 

... but if I were to make a prediction, I'd agree with you.

 

  

43 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

Chest and Leg pieces are ONE piece ... not two.

That's a very important point, thanks. The suggestion does mean making the patterns into a left and a right that probably have an "invisible" other side. I don't know if it's possible to overlay one pattern on another. It seems a big job, but hey why are we even here?

Edited May 5, 2020 by Herotu

[Redlynne]

44 minutes ago, Herotu said:

It seems a big job, but hey why are we even here?

To tell an all volunteer unpaid staff to ... ???

 

/em significant look

[Herotu]

  

4 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

To tell an all volunteer unpaid staff to ... ???

 

/em significant look

 

 

I actively mod and publish (in this and other games). I do my part for players. And I understand the difference between "telling" and "suggesting".

 

Unlike some, apparently.

Edited May 5, 2020 by Herotu

[Redlynne]

10 minutes ago, Herotu said:

 I actively mod and publish (in this and other games). I do my part for players. And I understand the difference between "telling" and "suggesting".

 

Unlike some, apparently.

Riiiiiiiight ...

 

As Max Headroom once (somewhat famously) said ... "Asking is just polite demanding."

[Herotu]

 

38 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

Riiiiiiiight ...

 

As Max Headroom once (somewhat famously) said ... "Asking is just polite demanding."

Go and post this trash in someone else's suggestion thread. There's a whole subforum for you to have a crack at.

[Menelruin]

4 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Riiiiiiiight ...

 

As Max Headroom once (somewhat famously) said ... "Asking is just polite demanding."

So why does this subforum even exist? 

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Herotu said:

Chest/Leg patterns seem to be limited to symmetrical patterns. Would it be feasible to split them into two separate halves in the same way Gloves and Boots were recently split? So left/right?

They're not left and right halves; they're one half, which is mirrored on the other side. That's why asymmetrical chest and leg pieces don't work -- the costume models only have data for one side of the chest/legs; there's no place in the database to store the information for the other side of the body. It would take a character database redesign to add the 'other half' fields to do this -- and then all of the UI changes to handle it.

[Herotu]

3 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

They're not left and right halves; they're one half, which is mirrored on the other side. That's why asymmetrical chest and leg pieces don't work -- the costume models only have data for one side of the chest/legs; there's no place in the database to store the information for the other side of the body. It would take a character database redesign to add the 'other half' fields to do this -- and then all of the UI changes to handle it.

THIS is how to do a great reply. Thanks a lot, @srmalloy.

[Lines]

(Edit; Ignore, forgot we were talking about textures. Which, yes, are definitely mirrored. )

Edited May 5, 2020 by Lines

[Redlynne]

3 hours ago, Herotu said:

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

They're not left and right halves; they're one half, which is mirrored on the other side. That's why asymmetrical chest and leg pieces don't work -- the costume models only have data for one side of the chest/legs; there's no place in the database to store the information for the other side of the body. It would take a character database redesign to add the 'other half' fields to do this -- and then all of the UI changes to handle it.

THIS is how to do a great reply. Thanks a lot, @srmalloy.

It also happens to be the first answer you were given.  And I quote ...

9 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Chest and Leg pieces are ONE piece ... not two.

 

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, Redlynne said:

It also happens to be the first answer you were given.  And I quote ...

 

It's also an incomplete answer that doesn't explain why the current costume model can't have asymmetrical patterns on the chest and legs.

[Herotu]

What I've taken from the ... various replies is that it's possible despite all the provocative and snarky comments.

[srmalloy]

It is technically feasible to do, in that it's possible to make the code changes to the character model database structure and the rendering engine to allow it to work. It would impose a performance hit on the game engine, although I can't say offhand to what degree. However, given the limited development resources, I believe that the effort that would be needed would be better expended in other directions.

 

[Redlynne]

 

3 hours ago, Herotu said:

What I've taken from the ... various replies is that it's possible despite all the provocative and snarky comments.

Anything is possible ... with enough Time, Tools and Tech Manuals.

 

What you're completely ignoring at every opportunity is whether what you're trying to do or propose is in any meaningful way PRACTICAL ... to which the answer has been a resounding, emphatic and repeated NO ... and yet you continue to cling to your belief in magical thinking while playing the victim card as flagrantly as possible.

 

[Herotu]

23 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

 

Anything is possible ... with enough Time, Tools and Tech Manuals.

 

What you're completely ignoring at every opportunity is whether what you're trying to do or propose is in any meaningful way PRACTICAL ... to which the answer has been a resounding, emphatic and repeated NO ... and yet you continue to cling to your belief in magical thinking while playing the victim card as flagrantly as possible.

 

You're not getting a rise out of me. I still think you're a nice person.

[ArchVileTerror]

A potential workaround that wouldn't require changes be made to the existing models or textures would be to add an additional "half layer" to the right side of the torso/legs.  This would definitely hit performance, and there might be some annoying stuttering if it can't be deployed "just right" . . . but yup!  It's possible.

 

And I'd support it as a good addition.

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, ArchVileTerror said:

A potential workaround that wouldn't require changes be made to the existing models or textures would be to add an additional "half layer" to the right side of the torso/legs.  This would definitely hit performance, and there might be some annoying stuttering if it can't be deployed "just right" . . . but yup!  It's possible.

 

And I'd support it as a good addition.

Aargh. "Add a 'half layer' to the other side of the torso/legs" as if it were a SMOP (Small Matter Of Programming). Change the costume pieces database to allow for torso and leg patterns that have both left and right halves. Change the character costume database to allow for these as well. Change the character rendering code to recognize a two-sided chest/leg pattern so that it knows to render it differently from the one-sided patterns. Change associated code affected by the changes, like the demorecord code, which immediately breaks all existing demorecord files, making them unable to be played back, or the costume save/load functions, which either breaks every single saved costume file or requires more changes to be able to recognize and appropriately handle both old and new costume files. Then comes all the art work, where the tools for developing patterns for costume pieces have to be changed to allow creation of patterns that have left and right sides, before any work can be done on actually creating the art for these new patterns, and because these will be separate left and right halves in the database, not single whole-body patterns, every single one will need to be tested against the range of body scaling to ensure that they render properly, feeding back to the game client code for changes there if pattern changes can't fix the problem.

 

[Lines]

Are you sure the patterns are added by the game engine (like decals?) and not mapped directly to the models, srmalloy?

 

I do wonder if you're overthinking it and whether an additional pattern layer is actually out of the question.

 

One of those things, I'd need to see the models to know. I wonder if anyone has managed to get under the hood with them yet.

[ArchVileTerror]

It wasn't my intent to suggest it was a small undertaking.  I was only attempting to illustrate that there are multiple potential solutions to any single problem, and not all of those solutions have the same types of front and back issues of their own.

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Lines said:

Are you sure the patterns are added by the game engine (like decals?) and not mapped directly to the models, srmalloy?

Everything is rendered by the game engine. The world, the characters, the NPCs, the power visuals, etc.

 

Back during live, there was interest in exporting character models from CoH, either to use in other rendering tools or for something like the arrangement Blizzard has with FigurePrints to 3D print color figurines of players' characters. Unfortunately, CoH's character models are just the shell of the body, with (if I'm remembering the accounts of people who were trying to make it work) some annoying glitches in the saved polygon data that had to be cleaned up by hand, with the textures of the patterns overlaid on the model. Now that the code's available to look at, though, I suspect that it would be possible to get all of the model data and the surface patterns without requiring manual cleanup (if someone hasn't done it already).

 

But it doesn't change that the surface textures and patterns are overlaid on a relatively low-polygon character model.

[Lines]

28 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Everything is rendered by the game engine. The world, the characters, the NPCs, the power visuals, etc.

 

Back during live, there was interest in exporting character models from CoH, either to use in other rendering tools or for something like the arrangement Blizzard has with FigurePrints to 3D print color figurines of players' characters. Unfortunately, CoH's character models are just the shell of the body, with (if I'm remembering the accounts of people who were trying to make it work) some annoying glitches in the saved polygon data that had to be cleaned up by hand, with the textures of the patterns overlaid on the model. Now that the code's available to look at, though, I suspect that it would be possible to get all of the model data and the surface patterns without requiring manual cleanup (if someone hasn't done it already).

 

But it doesn't change that the surface textures and patterns are overlaid on a relatively low-polygon character model.

The rendering is a different thing, that's more like the method that draws it locally on the screen rather than the mechanism that applies and locates textures. Usually, particularly in games of that era, textures are mapped to a channel that belongs to the model. If the patterns are applied to the game as decal-style things (which is totally possible, but I kinda doubt it), then it might have virtually nothing to do with the model. The difference between the two is very substantial.

 

But yeah, I've only heard bizarre things about CoH's character models and a quick look at OuroDev doesn't seem to have any light on progress there, I dunno if Homecoming have managed to dig into it.

 

The success with 3D printing before was done with a kinda 3D screenshot thing called OGLE, which piggybacks the rendering engine and captures 3D data after the fact. Which sadly doesn't help us as it would be either missing or reinterpreting any texture mapping.

[srmalloy]

IIRC, the only things that are applied to the character as decals are some of the chest detail entries -- all of the symbols, Greek letters, etc. -- basically, all of the 'flat' decorations. Anything that's 3D is additional geometry on top of the base character model.

[Aberrant]

9 hours ago, srmalloy said:

IIRC, the only things that are applied to the character as decals are some of the chest detail entries -- all of the symbols, Greek letters, etc. -- basically, all of the 'flat' decorations. Anything that's 3D is additional geometry on top of the base character model.

Even then chest details aren't decals. In CoH as I understand it chest emblems are just an additional square piece of geometry hovering in front of the chest that deforms based on your chest slider settings, the texture of which is replaced when you change symbol. This is why they sometimes clip with other character meshes like jackets depending on your chest slider. It's particularly poorly fitting on the female rig for obvious reasons. Every chest detail is a model attached to the chest attachment point, even the 2d symbols, it's just that the symbols and letters all use the same piece of geometry. 

Edited May 8, 2020 by Aberrant