Huge Female

[OrionPax09]

Okay. I'm a new player, so I don't know everything that there is to know about COH and all of the changes that have been made as fans are now running the game independently of NCSOFT. But I do have an idea for the character creation option.

 

For builds, City of Heroes has three options; Male, Huge, and Female. But I was wondering; would it be possible to add a female version of Huge? You know, for players that would like to build a female character with more bulk? Larger muscles and so on?

[Burk]

As bizarre that there is a huge male but not a huge female, I feel there's little chance they would add it in. That would require a ton of work, both in creating the model and in making enough costume pieces for it to match the other options.

[TemporalVileTerror]

Ideally, from my perspective, making all costume parts (textures and 3D assets) available to all three models would be sufficient.  Creating a whole new model would be more work . . . not that full gender parity wouldn't also be a massive undertaking . . . but one is decidedly less work than the other.

[Hyperstrike]

6 hours ago, Burk said:

As bizarre that there is a huge male but not a huge female, I feel there's little chance they would add it in. That would require a ton of work, both in creating the model and in making enough costume pieces for it to match the other options.

Additionally, creating the animations would be involved as well.

While I'd LOVE it, with a team that's working for free, in their spare time, I don't think we're gonna see it any time soon.

[srmalloy]

Not to mention that 'huge female' was requested for a number of years when the game was live, and nothing ever came of it; if the original devs didn't think it was important enough to devote time to, it's probably not going to be high up on the HC priority tree.

[Slithershot]

I support this suggestion every time it pops up. I support every type of it. Skins, costume pieces, models, etc. 

 

I don't ever expect to see it (partly because it's a lot of work for a small population of muscle girls like myself, and partly because I'm jaded as f--- in general) but it would be so incredibly welcome.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Pizzamurai
stuff

[WanderingAries]

This is likely something to be created about the time that they've cracked the game code to the point that they can create their own Character Creator and modify the core databases without breaking things.

 

So...not IMPOSSIBLE, but quite a bit down the road with current resources.

[Nayeh]

Still waiting for them to remove gender locks on the Patterns. It's so stupid that you can't make a Crop Top for Male or Huge models, or other variants that are on "Male" but aren't on "Huge". It's frustrating.

Edited February 10, 2021 by Nayeh
Edit: Crop Top, Not Tank

[Naomi]

4 hours ago, Nayeh said:

Still waiting for them to remove gender locks on the Patterns. It's so stupid that you can't make a Tank Top for Male or Huge models, or other variants that are on "Male" but aren't on "Huge". It's frustrating.

 

There's no such thing as a "gender lock" really. Costume geometry and their corresponding texture coordinates are inherently different across body types. This means texture stretching, warping or misalignment in a lot of cases. This is less of an issue with Male and Huge compatibility, but still an issue.

 

I don't think there's anyone who would disagree with Huge having access to the full set of Male parts if it were that simple. The reason they've always lagged behind though, is a reason of economics. Huge parts aren't simply male parts being automatically conformed to 'Huge' - they are separate ports done by hand.

 

If there is a list of patterns (or even whole parts, as long as the lists are separated) from Male you would like to see looked at for Huge, I would highly encourage making a separate thread with them.

 

I'm also not sure which tank tops you were referring to, but there is Cybertech 1 available on both Male and Huge.

[Nayeh]

6 minutes ago, Naomi said:

 

There's no such thing as a "gender lock" really. Costume geometry and their corresponding texture coordinates are inherently different across body types. This means texture stretching, warping or misalignment in a lot of cases. This is less of an issue with Male and Huge compatibility, but still an issue.

 

If there is a list of patterns (or even whole parts, as long as the lists are separated) from Male you would like to see looked at for Huge, I would highly encourage making a separate thread with them.

 

Make it so!~ Much stretch.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Nayeh

[TemporalVileTerror]

@Naomi, have you had a chance to read through https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14462-could-we-please-get-these-costume-pieces-moved-from-dev-only ?

There is definitely a bit of a schism in terms of where "good enough" is situated between various players and the Devs.  There no shortage of players who feel quite strongly that if more tools (which includes simply porting existing textures to other models as-is) were available to us for character personalization then it would be better, regardless of concerns such as clipping and texture alignment.

Some enterprising members of the community have demonstrated what's possible if restrictions were lifted:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7386-hyperkreator-a-way-to-make-impossible-costumes/

There are, of course, others who feel differently.  There are players who aren't happy with how much clipping already exists.

 

It may be beneficial to fully articulate, as a member of the Homecoming Dev team, -why- the decisions that have been made have been made.  From the perspective of at least a few players, "ready-to-use" materials are just sitting behind an arbitrary barrier.  We see the potential for creativity, a hallmark feature of City of Heroes from the beginning, being confusingly rebuffed.

[Tiger Shadow]

Would it be possible to add female face (and possibly hairstyle) options to the huge model? You'd still be stuck with male costumes, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.

[Grouchybeast]

2 hours ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

It may be beneficial to fully articulate, as a member of the Homecoming Dev team, -why- the decisions that have been made have been made.  From the perspective of at least a few players, "ready-to-use" materials are just sitting behind an arbitrary barrier.  We see the potential for creativity, a hallmark feature of City of Heroes from the beginning, being confusingly rebuffed.

There's already a recommended post on the thread you linked that explains why the devs have made those decisions.  The fact that people don't like the explanations don't mean they haven't been given, more than once.

[Naomi]

2 hours ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

@Naomi, have you had a chance to read through https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14462-could-we-please-get-these-costume-pieces-moved-from-dev-only ?

There is definitely a bit of a schism in terms of where "good enough" is situated between various players and the Devs.  There no shortage of players who feel quite strongly that if more tools (which includes simply porting existing textures to other models as-is) were available to us for character personalization then it would be better, regardless of concerns such as clipping and texture alignment.

Some enterprising members of the community have demonstrated what's possible if restrictions were lifted:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7386-hyperkreator-a-way-to-make-impossible-costumes/

There are, of course, others who feel differently.  There are players who aren't happy with how much clipping already exists.

 

It may be beneficial to fully articulate, as a member of the Homecoming Dev team, -why- the decisions that have been made have been made.  From the perspective of at least a few players, "ready-to-use" materials are just sitting behind an arbitrary barrier.  We see the potential for creativity, a hallmark feature of City of Heroes from the beginning, being confusingly rebuffed.

 

Responding to all of this in-depth would probably be better in a separate write-up elsewhere on the forums, but the shorter version is that after reading that first thread, @Jimmy pretty much covered how I also feel, and I would just be repeating "but we actually want to put the time into doing it right instead of just mass-enabling stuff and hoping for the best".

 

For every topic of players passing on issues of quality control (because they think the issue is minor), there are topics such as the following:
https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/25017-color-mapping-mismatch-bodysuit-muscled-matte-f-costume-piece/ or direct conversations with people expressing their concerns related to QA.

 

There's also no one-size-fits-all answer to every item on a wish list. A devonly part is devonly for a reason, but they're not all the same reason. It might not even be a visual issue at all.

 

Re: hyperkreator:

 

See "mass enabling things".. tons of problems behind the scenes. This isn't the same dress, and something I quickly threw together, but like the above post, it's not showing you the whole picture of what's wrong (ignoring the fact the second of the two is not a tank top and has nothing to do with what was asked for, my point about coordinates still stands):

 

 

 

If I have a hand in any modification, change, addition or bug fix, these results would simply not be acceptable to me (on a personal level, and not by any directive given to me or that I have given to anyone else).

 

It's not as easy as flipping a switch sometimes to meet the height of the bar, and often that comes down to time and the work involved. What Jimmy means when he says "doing it right" might be the point of contention you'd like more clarity on, but like I mentioned, it comes down to having to address every item individually (for any feature in the whole game, not just costume parts).

 

 

 

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Tiger Shadow said:

Would it be possible to add female face (and possibly hairstyle) options to the huge model? You'd still be stuck with male costumes, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.

You would also want to have a toggle associated with the Huge body type that controlled the character gender for purposes of selecting pronouns in game dialogs, which makes things more complicated. Although the value of such a toggle could control whether you got the male or female head options like face and hair style.

[thunderforce]

4 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

You would also want to have a toggle associated with the Huge body type that controlled the character gender for purposes of selecting pronouns in game dialogs, which makes things more complicated. Although the value of such a toggle could control whether you got the male or female head options like face and hair style.

Don't tie 'em to each other. Let players (with all three body types) pick male or female pronouns in character customisation [1]; let players pick any voice. (You can already do some pretty good skinny-female costumes using stuff like the Circle bottoms on the Male body... except when you jump the UGH UGH UGH is a bit dissonant.)

 

[1] Yes, there's an obvious stretch goal here, but this wouldn't require any extra NPC dialogue, badge names, etc...

[Nayeh]

Cool. So you chose a clippy costume piece to fit a typical blanket response narrative, knowing full and well that there are numerous female options (quite a few of the ones that are moreso older patterns) that would work across Male and Huge models. There are already several costume pieces that perform the same scar-tissue appearance or gouges in-game (such as stretching out shoulder and chest sliders) and it's really up to the player to make it appear seamless with costume choices (Such as the zombie hands on a different bare-torso selection).

 

The image posted was using the 'Heart Plus' pattern on a 'Huge' model from a rare image I captured when my character creation screen glitched.

It is not 'Bridal' (a newer costume model), as demonstrated on your 'Male'.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Nayeh

[TemporalVileTerror]

Thank you for the time and care of your response, @Naomi, it's appreciated.

You mentioned that this thread might not be the ideal place to do an in-depth write up, so I'll try not to thread-jack any further here.  But is there perhaps a place you feel would be a more appropriate venue for continued discussion of the points you brought up?

 

 

For the original topic; I really, really like @Tiger Shadow and @thunderforce's respective solutions, and I hope they're suitably feasible for implementation.

[Monos King]

4 hours ago, Nayeh said:

Cool. So you chose a clippy costume piece to fit a typical blanket response narrative, knowing full and well that there are numerous female options (quite a few of the ones that are moreso older patterns) that would work across Male and Huge models.

I'm pretty sure you both overlooked the actual explanation and then also proceeded to assume bad faith of the devs. That's not how we do things. Quit defaulting to aggression and leave it at suggestions and concerns.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Thank you for the time and care of your response, @Naomi, it's appreciated.

You mentioned that this thread might not be the ideal place to do an in-depth write up, so I'll try not to thread-jack any further here.  But is there perhaps a place you feel would be a more appropriate venue for continued discussion of the points you brought up?

 

 

For the original topic; I really, really like @Tiger Shadow and @thunderforce's respective solutions, and I hope they're suitably feasible for implementation.

Yes.  The feedback is great.  Even if it means the suggestion is more difficult than many assume. 

[Hyperstrike]

On 2/8/2021 at 9:27 AM, srmalloy said:

Not to mention that 'huge female' was requested for a number of years when the game was live, and nothing ever came of it; if the original devs didn't think it was important enough to devote time to, it's probably not going to be high up on the HC priority tree.

It's not that they didn't think it was important enough.

It's that they could devote a huge amount of time and resources to one thing.

Or they could deliver a lot of other, smaller things.

[Naomi]

6 hours ago, Nayeh said:

Cool. So you chose a clippy costume piece to fit a typical blanket response narrative, knowing full and well that there are numerous female options (quite a few of the ones that are moreso older patterns) that would work across Male and Huge models. There are already several costume pieces that perform the same scar-tissue appearance or gouges in-game (such as stretching out shoulder and chest sliders) and it's really up to the player to make it appear seamless with costume choices (Such as the zombie hands on a different bare-torso selection).

 

The image posted was using the 'Heart Plus' pattern on a 'Huge' model from a rare image I captured when my character creation screen glitched.

It is not 'Bridal' (a newer costume model), as demonstrated on your 'Male'.

 

First of all, you implied you were asking for tanktops to be ported to HUGE models from MALE models. I do not know which patterns specifically you wanted, but since I'm aware HUGE doesn't have every MALE part, I was willing to look at spending some time porting them over.

 

For the record, MALE and HUGE do have tanktops, which is the only thing you specified.

 

After asking you for a list, your response is a blurry screen capture of a FEMALE corset (Hearts Plus) on a MALE costume (not HUGE), which isn't what you originally asked for at all.

 

Costume patterns are inherently separated into three body types for technical reasons explained repeatedly here and elsewhere. Texture coordinates are not the same, nor are the underlying base textures.

 

Reworking these to adhere to a standard present throughout the game as well as my own isn't cheap on time.

 

Regarding my posted screenshots to give you a visual example for why FEM -> MALE texture ports are different, I had intended to use Heart Plus, but at a passing glance of your screenshot, I hadn't realized it was the wrong one, which is my mistake. Regardless, it's irrelevant which part I chose, as 100% of the female patterns exhibit the issues I circled in yellow, the most consistent being that the underlying texture behind the pattern is the female base skin texture.

 

Anyone can test and preview patterns like this by copying the Texture1 and Texture2 name from a female .costume file, and pasting it into a male/huge .costume file on the appropriate part (or any part for that matter if you just want to have fun trying different textures in the game on costumes), and clicking Load costume after you save it.

 

I also don't understand the apparent hostility.

 

[Nayeh]

I have been arguing for Crop Tops (Female armor patterns with belly exposed) but mistakenly mentioned Tank Top in the original post.

 

Edited February 10, 2021 by Nayeh

[twozerofoxtrot]

Yeah but you blew your chances when you came back at the devs the way you did. Time to chalk this one up as an "L."

 

 

 

The title of this response could be "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" or alternatively, "You have no power here!"

[Nayeh]

Note: Hands are "Monstrous" to show the not so seamless scar appearance that can be viewed across normal combinations of costume design.

Edited February 10, 2021 by Nayeh