Costume Pieces that are oddly single gender (a thread)

[TransHero]

So i am not sure how hard/ easy it is to adjust costume pieces  to fit the other body shape(s), but I noticed this when I went to recreate one of my heroes back in the day, but Femme (I wanted to transition that character along with me), and for the life of me could not locate a particular costume piece, then I went to the male body and found it, so (if it's even possible) I'd like to see some of the single gender costume options be made available to all three body types (Honestly I wouldn't mind all pieces being available across all body types but that could represent a hassle).

 

I'll start with the Roman Sybil belt and the Barbarian cuffs and belt

[Forager]

I think the Watcher collar for the trench coat is like this. I remember not being able to choose it for a female character.

[mechahamham]

The pieces that bother me most in this regard are the various hairstyles. There's very little reason to restrict styles to male or female models. I'd like to see most, if not all the styles unlocked across all three character models.

[Snarky]

I would love to see more costume options.  If porting single gender pieces to everyone increases our choices?  Huzzah!   Everytime i go to a costume contest that has serious competition I am amazed how they took a combo of pieces and made something that transcends.   Put me down as a Hell Yes!

[Cobalt Arachne]

Unfortunately, Homecoming currently lacks the capability to port costume geometry across body types due to a lack of tooling/add-in compatibility with modern 3D software (Blendr), nor any development staff proficient in the old legacy software (3DSMax) that the original plug-in is compatible with to convert into City of Heroes' proprietary 3D format.
Due to this we don't have a way to work with any models that requires animation data, such as costume pieces...

We're looking to recruit people who might help us change that, though! If you know anybody who might be interested in helping us out, direct them to this thread!

[mechahamham]

3 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Unfortunately, Homecoming currently lacks the capability to port costume geometry across body types due to a lack of tooling/add-in compatibility with modern 3D software (Blendr), nor any development staff proficient in the old legacy software (3DSMax) that the original plug-in is compatible with to convert into City of Heroes' proprietary 3D format.

 

It kills me that there's not more infrastructure out there to retrofit legacy animation workflows into Blender, but those old 3D packages were ZEALOUS about copy protection and vendor lock-in.

 

Blender is kinda like Inkscape. It found a narrow, painfully empty niche to fill, and then filled it with style and precision. In Inkscape's case, it was 2D vector graphics, just right when a huge part of the web NEEDED an open source vector graphics package. It took the SVG format and worked miracles. In Blender's case, we're still fighting to get all the old, crappy, horribly locked-down 3D stuff working with it.

[RikOz]

Anybody else ever looked at that Sibyl belt and thought, "I'm gonna impale myself on that thing if I try to bend over!"

[Rudra]

34 minutes ago, RikOz said:

Anybody else ever looked at that Sibyl belt and thought, "I'm gonna impale myself on that thing if I try to bend over!"

YES!!!!! Oh so very much yes! Thank you! I was afraid I was the only one! 😆😆😆

Edited Sunday at 10:58 PM by Rudra

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, RikOz said:

Anybody else ever looked at that Sibyl belt and thought, "I'm gonna impale myself on that thing if I try to bend over!"

Right up there with the Ascension, Sinister Plates, Spiked Pauldron, and Organic Armor shoulder pieces, which all seem to be designed to either puncture your eardrums or pierce your ears if you reached for something over your head.

[Rudra]

Just now, srmalloy said:

Right up there with the Ascension, Sinister Plates, Spiked Pauldron, and Organic Armor shoulder pieces, which all seem to be designed to either puncture your eardrums or pierce your ears if you reached for something over your head.

Yep. It's why I don't use some of the shoulder options. Can't get over the self-inflicted injuries those pieces would entail. Please bear in mind that I have no qualms over other players using them and am not advocating for the removal or replacement of any costume pieces, but sometimes when I see another character running around using them, I cringe and hope their characters never do anything that would harm themselves. (In the case of the Sybil belt? I merely hope it is a soft leather or cloth colored to look like metal so it can bend with their bodies. Unless they wear them to force themselves to always be ramrod straight during the day?)

[Fade]

Cobalt Arachne gives a good reason why porting models between the body types isn't as easy as people assume. On the other hand, there's some low-hanging fruit in the area of textures. Many textures are designed to work with multiple models, but are limited to specific body types - for example, the "Athletic Shorts", "Belly Tee Long" and "Belly Tee Short" patterns would work perfectly fine on Male and Huge body types, but simply aren't allowed by the game.

 

You can see for yourself that those patterns look fine on those body types if you save a costume file, edit the right line (in this case, changing the Texture2 line highlighted in my first image to another texture name the game can recognize), and attempt to load it in the game. The preview in the costume file load screen will show a valid-looking model, but will require you to "fix" the costume because it doesn't recognize those patterns for those body types. These are textures that already exist in-game and I think the only work required is to make the proper registry entries, but I don't know anything about how that works so I could be mistaken.

 

I think many of the patterns designed for the Female body would work perfectly fine on Male or Huge bodies, and it would be great if we could get some proliferation on that front. There are fewer options that are available to Male body type that aren't available on Female body type (the only one that comes to mind is "Stripe 4" for upper body on Male, which is missing from both Female and Huge bodies for no reason that I can see). Some might look a bit strange depending on your own sensibilities, so I think it might take some developer time to go through the possible additions to pick and choose which ones are appropriate.

 

 

Unrelated to the specific topic at hand, but along the same lines as the rest of this post - the Thigh High boots for Female body type could be made to work with any texture (or almost any, again depending on where your specific tolerances lie) that works with the Stiletto boot model. This isn't about proliferating costume pieces across different body types though, so I'll try not to pull focus away from that topic right now.

Edited yesterday at 03:51 AM by Fade
Editing formatting for legibility

[Tiger Shadow]

How about porting the Venus symbol to men, and the Mars symbol to women. It seems weird to gender lock these, seeing as how female martians have been around since pulp sci-fi was invented.

[RikOz]

54 minutes ago, Tiger Shadow said:

How about porting the Venus symbol to men, and the Mars symbol to women. It seems weird to gender lock these, seeing as how female martians have been around since pulp sci-fi was invented.

I've been annoyed by this for years. Among my alts, I created a small, all-female SG called "Solar Angels". The leader represents the sun, and the other nine members each represent a planet in our solar system. They all have their respective planetary symbol on their chests ... except for Ms. Mars. Who is an actual Martian.

[Alchemystic]

While not specifically the same costume items, the Mk-VI Victoria, BCU and War Walker all have functional parts that correspond to the female, male and huge body types, meaning that it at least has some precedent being ported to players with there being availability for all character models.

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Alchemystic