[FD] Plea to let the community make skins.
- Thread starter Sanderson
- Start date
Just as long as I can block the resultant travesties from appearing in my game, I'm all for it.
I think it's a good idea, but it should be limited to the player who has it on their HD. Have it be a "local player skin" option. That, or have it so that it's limited to friends. It would save the amount of filtering required.
FD could make a community store, but it would probably put the guys making the skins out of work.
FD could make a community store, but it would probably put the guys making the skins out of work.
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As I said in another thread, you can count me in.
I have a fair amount of experience with this sort of stuff and would be keen for the opportunity to add something tangible to this game.
If FD supply the UVW mapping templates for each ship everything would go smooth and by the numbers...
I have a fair amount of experience with this sort of stuff and would be keen for the opportunity to add something tangible to this game.
If FD supply the UVW mapping templates for each ship everything would go smooth and by the numbers...
What would be the best is to allow anyone with a paint editor or photoshop to apply their own skins. All FD has to do is keep personal skins toggled off online, where you would only be able to see them. But of course that isn't any fun. The fun comes when you run into someone with a really cool paint job. Just as in real life there is no one telling me how to paint my vehicle. But for the little revenue they get from the sales of such items I don't see any logical excuse for not allowing it when so many other devs have made it possible with their games. If FD is worried about paintjobs that are offensive, then that personal paint job wouldn't be seen by anyone but that person. No excuse there. If they are worried about revenue........ It's still there even if they did open it up and let people personalize their ship on their own.
Rather than doing any work on this issue I'd much rather see them continue adding the promised features instead of the trivial stuff that has no bearing on gameplay.
Larger client download would only occur when you load into an instance and another pilot has that personal skin. Unless of course FD puts in a toggle like many other devs have so you can stop paintjobs from loading, and everyone would have the standard paintjob, unless they have a authorized FD paintjob which would load.
They must work for peanuts at the pricing FD charges for a skin. I'm sure they'll look into something similar to what has been done in Trackmania for cars.... It works well in that game.... but it also comes with a paint booth for your car.
Rather than doing any work on this issue I'd much rather see them continue adding the promised features instead of the trivial stuff that has no bearing on gameplay.
Larger client download would only occur when you load into an instance and another pilot has that personal skin. Unless of course FD puts in a toggle like many other devs have so you can stop paintjobs from loading, and everyone would have the standard paintjob, unless they have a authorized FD paintjob which would load.
They must work for peanuts at the pricing FD charges for a skin. I'm sure they'll look into something similar to what has been done in Trackmania for cars.... It works well in that game.... but it also comes with a paint booth for your car.
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Have FD approve them for quality too, then - they are going to have to render them onto a model to verify non-offensive anyway. Those of us that can make ones that are not travesties might want to put in the effort for an exclusive one. For example if it were possible I'd have a personal decal or a distinctive livery for all my ships - if you see any ship in that distinctive livery or bearing that logo you know it's me before you lock on the scanners. It's not like we'd be messing with anything but the diffuse map (maybe tinting the specular map too but that's all) for the skins. With what I know I can create I'd take the chance of paying the upload fee and FD saying "sorry, this is not good enough" and losing a few quid - it would only inspire me to do better and try again.
Are you working with Frontier Developments on the game? I don't see that special symbol on your posts that denotes your "staff member" status. Due to that, it would seem you have about as much actual knowledge about how the skins are currently handled as I do, i.e. not so much.
My guess? All the currently available skins are already stored in the client, and the details of who has what skin is stored server-side. That's why new skin releases coincide with new patches.
They won't expect clients to download skins on-demand. Not when they spend so much effort keeping network bandwidth usage so low. More server-side resources means higher operating costs, and the Braben Bunch seem to be hellbent on not allowing those to threaten the ongoing economic viability of the game (which is a good thing).
They could always make the skin download/upload process P2P, but that would just result in this:
So all the skins will be stored in the client, which could mean you'll be downloading a growing client binary with ever-increasing numbers of user-submitted skins every time a new patch is released. No thanks.
Given the time taken by some players to download each patch, making those binaries even larger will just result in more whining on the forums ("11 HOURS!?!?!").
This has been discussed. And discussed.
Lot of misinformation.
1. The main issue is in moderation, policing, copyright,etc . Not a model I think FD are interested in even if I would 100% love it.
2. My experience in a couple of thousand hours playing a peer2peer multiplayer with individual skins (Forza1, 2, 3 and 4) (thousands of them and hugely complex) is that it has minimal impact on live performance. Do not know how T10 did it, but even with my crappy internet it was never an issue. What was an issue was ping.
Done in the instancing loading. That is where the issue will pop.
Cheers
Lot of misinformation.
1. The main issue is in moderation, policing, copyright,etc . Not a model I think FD are interested in even if I would 100% love it.
2. My experience in a couple of thousand hours playing a peer2peer multiplayer with individual skins (Forza1, 2, 3 and 4) (thousands of them and hugely complex) is that it has minimal impact on live performance. Do not know how T10 did it, but even with my crappy internet it was never an issue. What was an issue was ping.
Done in the instancing loading. That is where the issue will pop.
Cheers
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I'm not to keen on the idea of skins, what I would prefer is a set of patterns and then we choose the colours for the different parts. Far more freedom to customise your ships when you control 2 or 3 colours in combination.
Of course you could still have the community design the patterns, but colours should be dynamic, and even purchasable like we do in MWO. Pirahna games make a killing from selling colours over there, great micro transaction that is completely in the hands of the customer.
Of course you could still have the community design the patterns, but colours should be dynamic, and even purchasable like we do in MWO. Pirahna games make a killing from selling colours over there, great micro transaction that is completely in the hands of the customer.
Looking at the skins available of which I have bought several. I'm not convinced that the textures are traditional UV mapped bitmap skins. Many have hard non antialiased edges and look more like they were created with some kind of vector painting tool. It's particularly noticeable with the decals.
Otherwise I'd be all for a War Thunder approach to skinning. Where they run monthly and event based competitions and integrate the best skins and decals into the main game. Since everything is UV mapped bitmaps they also have basic placement, scale, rotation, double sided and mirror tools. So people can be quite creative with decals and make designs that are more than the sum of their parts.
Otherwise I'd be all for a War Thunder approach to skinning. Where they run monthly and event based competitions and integrate the best skins and decals into the main game. Since everything is UV mapped bitmaps they also have basic placement, scale, rotation, double sided and mirror tools. So people can be quite creative with decals and make designs that are more than the sum of their parts.
A model similar to WT's would probably work quite well for ED, i agree.
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What was FD's reply? Or was this their reply?
I'd love this, but I could see two blockers to this:
1. Rude skins (err pardon the minor pun) and
2. Having to propagate all user-skins to all clients so we can all 'enjoy' them
Both of which are solved by the user-created skin only ever appearing in that user's game. The rest of us see the 'vanilla #1' default skin for whichever craft they are in.
Everyone's happy, and no in-game policing needed.
After-which we can all post our ship-selfies until our minds explode!
1. Rude skins (err pardon the minor pun) and
2. Having to propagate all user-skins to all clients so we can all 'enjoy' them
Both of which are solved by the user-created skin only ever appearing in that user's game. The rest of us see the 'vanilla #1' default skin for whichever craft they are in.
Everyone's happy, and no in-game policing needed.
After-which we can all post our ship-selfies until our minds explode!
+1 to this idea!
All for this, and a bit more. How about a base color, and three levels of predefined patterns possibilities that can be translated and rotated. Bandwidth? When a new ship shows up, you're transmitted the layer pattern numbers that are already on your client, the colors, and the pattern translation numbers. That's like less than 25 bytes. Add a few decals, there's a few more bytes.
Yes, but it's proably about 4 bytes to specify the current skins and decals for a ship. And they don't need to have any rotation/translation/colour/scaling/shearing/etc operations performed on them. Less overhead all round.
Voted yes, but then I did suggest this (and more) months back: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=66993&highlight=
I do hope FDev somehow include the community talent that's availableHow feasible would it be for FDev to in the future provide some Official creativity templates and/or tools so that the more talented in the ED community can design and build some artwork and models for inclusion in-game? Not for me, I'm an awful artist!
Designs are submitted via the forum (jpg), filtered (for breach of rules and/or lack of quality) by the community & mods, and chosen for inclusion every month via competition. Winning submitters receive prestige from the community via the newsletters for their excellent contributions, said designs* could be purchased by other CMDRs in the ED-store, and the submitters could possibly receive ED-store credit or similar based on their designs' sales.
There are a few CMDRs who want to have a chance to see their own artwork on ships, and there's certainly talent out there.
I assume FDev are using creativity tools to preview their designs; later down the line can we see cut down versions of these for the artists/modders to play with?
Design field suggestions:Artwork (via templates provided by FDev for each model?):
[*=1]Ship skins*
[*=1]Bobbleheads! (model required)*
[*=1]Ship dashboard skins*
[*=1]Station module skins
[*=1]Advertising board skins (not sure whether it'd be taken up, but hey)Model (need to be very high detail; assuming professional software tools required?):
Thoughts?
[*=1]Bobbleheads! (skin required)*
[*=1]Ships
[*=1]Station modules
[*=1]Ship wreckage
[*=1]Comets, asteroids & other space objects
[*=1]Weapons