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Carnival of Shadows Costume Pieces


aethereal

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We've got very credible Carnival of Light costume pieces, but the Carnival of Shadows is different in a number of ways, not just colors.  It'd be great to be able to get the multicolored boots that they wear, or the bandeau-like chestpiece.  I don't know if the two-sticks backpack or the collars are possible, but they'd be nice.  And of course a Carnival of Shadows mask would be great, they're significantly different from the Carnival of Light/War/Vengeance masks.

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The tall boots that the Harlequin enemies wear are also different from the Carnival of Light boots - the Carnival of Shadows version has a curled flourish at the top edge. Those at least should be perfectly possible to port over for player use.

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I believe the live devs explained this way back in the day, but it bears repeating. Older villain groups do not have "costume pieces". They are singular models that were built with everything baked-in. Those are not a pair of boots, they are the legs of a model. That bandeau *is* their chest. The mask? Their face. To give Desdemona and Praetorian Vanessa the same mask they very likely had to have someone take the model and cut it off of her face to create a separate geometry piece, and on both, which use modern models, said mask is noticeably small and kind of out of place looking, because it was made specifically for the head shape of Vanessa's original model. To cut up the model and create a player-usable boot or chest piece would require crazy amounts of work and probably not look nearly as good as you might think it would. Same goes for Vahzilok, Hellions, Skulls (though you'll notice that most of the Skulls got a makeover in i24 with player-available pieces due to them being a focal point of a new arc, possibly signaling that they might be up for an Incarnate boost in the near future, possibly connected to Mot?), and the old COT. As soon as they gave the COT a makeover, they were able to offer those pieces to the players, and the PPD, Imperial Defense Force, Clockwork, Resistance and Carnival of Light/War/Vengeance had pieces made available to players pretty much from the get-go because they were build using the character creator.

 

I have an inkling that the devs intended to go back and makeover a lot of the low level groups, much like they made over Atlas, to ensure that the low level/new player experience looked more modern, and hence allow players to use enemy costume pieces and such. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Carnival of Shadows was high on the list to get a makeover as well, with some plotline involving refugees from the Carnival of War/Vengeance or maybe even a few from Light deciding to join their ranks and bolster their power, leading to a fancy new look for them, and some swanky new costume pieces for us. A "Neo Carnival" mask for Shadows that emulates the Praetorian masks but has it's own sinister look to it would be an easy addition to them, and maybe a few new pieces here and there to reflect the more chaotic nature would have been a cool thing. Likewise, I'd have loved to see a makeover for the Strong Men that gave us a useable bucket helmet for players.

 

As it stands, it's not a simple matter of just "giving us" the pieces, as the "pieces" don't exist. They'd have to surgically disassemble the character models, find a way to make these geometry pieces fit onto player models and scale properly, then figure out how coloration would work, if at all, considering they're rainbow colored to start with. They'd probably have to make them baked-in colors with no color selection affecting it, like multiple other color-locked pieces. It would be quite an undertaking, and if they planned to do it for one group, they'd probably have to do it for pretty much all low-level groups or be bombarded with endless requests for "You did it for X, please do it for Y!"

 

If anything, I think the better approach would be to undertake a makeover of the group, maybe create a few new costume bits that are new to them and make them look unique, then give us most of them so they can still have a few bits and bobs that players don't get to keep them looking distinct, and suddenly we have a great new look for a launch-era group and some spiffy new duds to match them.

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On 12/27/2020 at 10:29 AM, aethereal said:

We've got very credible Carnival of Light costume pieces, but the Carnival of Shadows is different in a number of ways, not just colors.  It'd be great to be able to get the multicolored boots that they wear, or the bandeau-like chestpiece.  I don't know if the two-sticks backpack or the collars are possible, but they'd be nice.  And of course a Carnival of Shadows mask would be great, they're significantly different from the Carnival of Light/War/Vengeance masks.

I would love that backpack!  I had a concept in mind for an ex-Carnival of Whatever (hadn't decided Light or Shadows) but without that backpack I was just so meh on it!

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On 12/27/2020 at 2:06 PM, JKPhage said:

I believe the live devs explained this way back in the day, but it bears repeating. Older villain groups do not have "costume pieces". They are singular models that were built with everything baked-in. Those are not a pair of boots, they are the legs of a model. That bandeau *is* their chest. The mask? Their face. To give Desdemona and Praetorian Vanessa the same mask they very likely had to have someone take the model and cut it off of her face to create a separate geometry piece, and on both, which use modern models, said mask is noticeably small and kind of out of place looking, because it was made specifically for the head shape of Vanessa's original model.

 

This is only partially true. Let me break it down.

 

1: NPCs are only sometimes singular models with everything baked in. More often, they are divided into costume parts the same way PCs are, but those parts don't attach the same way or follow the same logic - examples include the Menders' signature shoulder and belt details, which are all one piece, not a shoulder detail, chest detail, and belt the way it would be for a player. Making them player-usable would require cutting up the geometry to make new parts. Additionally, some NPC costume pieces - even the newer ones - don't fit over the player models without clipping, such as Penelope Yin's boots, or without geometry gaps, such as the Victoria robot chest. However, there are plenty of NPC costume parts, even older ones, that could be made available to players because they demonstrably do fit over the player character models. The Carnival of Shadows boots happen to be one of these OK-to-fit parts - observe a manually edited costume file (which cannot be loaded because the part isn't supposed to be available for players):

 

image.png.c09e8bdd0aebac5f3eb8610b8ffc8f9f.png

 

 

2. Player models also use "baked-in" textures on lots of pieces already, just like the NPCs do. There is fundamentally no difference between a Ring Mistress's bandeau top and a player's Witch Lace chest. NPC models use the same geometry for their basic, close-to-body costume parts as PCs, with very few exceptions, to make it simpler for them to use PC costume textures, and as a result the converse (making those textures available to PCs) is not just plausible but in fact something that has already been done - we didn't have the Carnival of Shadows corset top or bottom back on Live, remember, and we have them now without issue. No, you will not be able to choose more than one customizable color on the Ring Mistress top if it's made available to players, because it would be a Top With Skin and the second color has to be the skin tone, but it's still correctly laid out to use as a texture for existing PC models.

 

 

Paragon Studios gave out a lot of misinformation in the effort to simplify things enough for players without technical knowledge to understand, and it's a very unfortunate thing that we should be correcting.

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On 1/1/2021 at 11:25 AM, ClawsandEffect said:

If we ever get Carnie costume pieces I would like the masks at least made available to male characters. 

Good Effin Lordi, this.

 

why are men denied having a good porcelain mask option? I totally want to make King Baldwin from Kingdom of heaven (or The Leper from Darkest Dungeon)

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9 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

Good Effin Lordi, this.

 

why are men denied having a good porcelain mask option? I totally want to make King Baldwin from Kingdom of heaven (or The Leper from Darkest Dungeon)

 

Because the male and female heads have different geometry. The masks would have to be edited to fit, since they sit so close to the head.

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