NPCs with faces

[gamingvirtue]

See, that's a fantastic idea, and I personally support that. I'd love to see all of the NPCs have faces.

And even better, when we are able to get up and move around our ships, the same system could be used
to customise our pilots.

Truly, this is gonna be a useful addition on multiple fronts. Consider this supported and repped!

 

[xKilljoyx]

I think that faces here and there would add character. The game is quite sterile in that regard. Commanders are just ships, bulletin boards are just that... Text. And why in heavens name is nobody else required to pilot these massive vessels? No crew, nadda. But then, Rome wasnt built in a day and I know its supposedly "coming". One day... The underlying theme is that this game needs a bit more life. Didnt artwork show people roaming about the station at some point? The planets also look like they're all completely untouched by civilization For me, this emptiness breaks immersion in a big way. I expect space to be empty and bleak, but where there are these massive stations or planets supposedly inhabited by billions, I expect more than what we have.

Just my two credits.

This X 10000000000000000000.
Sterile is the word that comes to mind, or clinical. It is dissapointing to land at these giant stations with (supposedly) millions of people onboard and see absolutely no-one walking around, manning the towers, assisting with cargo etc..

I suggested the points below in another thread but it seems to fit better on this one:

* I would also really like to see some human models in the stations. The complete lack of any life in the game makes it easy to lose perspective. In its current state it is quite easy to forget you're piloting a massive vehicle when everything else around you is massive (stations, other ships, planets, asteroids etc..) Having human models walking around near the landing pad,, moving cargo on/off ships (using a space forklift?) talking with one another, watching ships fly in and land etc...
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*Even something as simple as adding silhouettes to the towers near the stations landing pads could help give a sense of perspective. I would REALLY like to see people occupying the windows on either side of the letterbox entrance to the stations. This would be a great opportunity to allow us players to get up close during our entering/exiting of the station and would help the stations feel more like a busy airport than a vacant parking lot.
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Our brains are programmed to pick out / recognize the human form in a scene and to use this info to establish our sense of scale in an environment. We do this with other things too (typically things we see/ interact with every day, (bicycles, cars, trees, etc..) Other games use objects like these to give a sense of scale, and to give the player a sense of distance travelled, unfortunately due to ED being set in space we don't have the luxury of these particular visual cues, and as such the only really viable scale marker FD have to work with is people/pilots/station workers etc... (an exception would be the stations with palm trees inside them that do help with giving a sense of scale)
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[DocLooshkin]

If they can do it well, then I'd like to see it at some point. If they can't do it well, or can't do it without spending a vast amount of precious dev-time on it, then I'd rather not. My spaceship is the game, not generic twonks giving out their generic missions: they're just a trivial means to an end, of no more significance than the pointless blast-shield that raises and lowers whenever I dock. If they're going to focus on cosmetics, seeing ship interior layouts when making changes to modules, or improvements to the menus, or even just fixing the vibrant skins would all be more helpful, in one way or another. But on balance, I'd prefer to see things that are actually going to affect the core gameplay. NPC faces aren't it.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Obviously it's crucial that they eventually do it. I guess it's a very expensive task (in time and money), I then guess it would appear in a paid expansion, more than probably the "walk in stations" one.

 

[hawkenfox]

It's very necessary even it it's just a place holder with hand drawn artist impression ones for now. Especially the galnet news.

would help to paint a nice "Journalist's style" photo artist impression of the persistent character in game whenever you write

a story, paint a picture too it speaks a thousand words. Would definitely be wave of big welcome from fans and new players.


I am an art student depending on the style of drawing , such can be done up in minutes to a max of 3 hrs ... I suppose it's doable.

 

[Arubeto]

Even something as simple as adding silhouettes to the towers near the stations landing pads could help give a sense of perspective. I would REALLY like to see people occupying the windows on either side of the letterbox entrance to the stations. This would be a great opportunity to allow us players to get up close during our entering/exiting of the station and would help the stations feel more like a busy airport than a vacant parking lot.

Even though I believe player and NPC models or at least faces will come when walking around stations/ships/planets in first person perspective is released with the expansions, this idea of yours to just add silhouettes to the windows in stations, outposts, towers and perhaps capital ships would already go a looong way to improve the feeling of being in a living galaxy. That would be in the same vein as the city lights on the dark side of planets that have been added some time ago: just a cosmetic change, but a very, very welcome one that added a very nice touch to the game - at least for me.

 

[wstephenson]

My previous comment about hats aside, I agree with what others have said that the ships are the avatars in Elite. I never much liked the bitmap characters in Frontier, and the various aliens in Amiga Elite were just comedy.

I hope that when the FPS comes around, Frontier can come up with a distinctive, highly stylised look for the people, rather than the generic Maya bodysnatchers that populate every other game, even AAA ones like Far Cry, Crysis, GTA or Tomb Raider. In cinematic animation terms, I'd rather see a Belleville Rendezvous than a Disney Pixar, or a left field graphic novel over Marvel/DC.

Otherwise we'll see a horde of players' best synthetic David Brabens skating around stations.

 

[Cosmo]

My previous comment about hats aside, I agree with what others have said that the ships are the avatars in Elite. I never much liked the bitmap characters in Frontier, and the various aliens in Amiga Elite were just comedy.

I hope that when the FPS comes around, Frontier can come up with a distinctive.

The Elite machinima would be much better if we could see pilots inside cockpits. I hope they add more visualization for the NPCs, pilots and celebrities on galnet with a future update such as PowerPlay.

Elite misses the human-element. The factions and characters are all faceless entities.

 

[Arubeto]

My previous comment about hats aside, I agree with what others have said that the ships are the avatars in Elite. I never much liked the bitmap characters in Frontier, and the various aliens in Amiga Elite were just comedy.

I hope that when the FPS comes around, Frontier can come up with a distinctive, highly stylised look for the people, rather than the generic Maya bodysnatchers that populate every other game, even AAA ones like Far Cry, Crysis, GTA or Tomb Raider. In cinematic animation terms, I'd rather see a Belleville Rendezvous than a Disney Pixar, or a left field graphic novel over Marvel/DC.

Otherwise we'll see a horde of players' best synthetic David Brabens skating around stations.

I disagree. Apart from the fact that those bitmap faces in the early Elite games looked goofy, they nonetheless added a lot of atmosphere and personality.

Concerning the "body snatchers": if Elites character models look only half as good as the characters from GTAV, Assassins Creed or Tomb Raider, it would more than suffice. IMHO especially the NPCs walking around in GTAV are great, they give GTA exactly the touch that is missing from Elite: that of a believable, living, breathing, inhabited game world.

I think the problem is less the quality of the character models and more the their variety. Clearly, we don't want the same three NPCs standing around at the same locations in every station (like in early Assassins Creed games), but given a sophisticated character modeling tool - like those I linked in previous posts in this thread - with sufficiently many variables (not just face and hair color, but all kinds of subtle variations of eye/nose/mouth position/size, many different skins tones etc., procedurally generating many different, unique looking characters for all over the galaxy should be totally feasible.

 

[Fosdyke]

Adding those nice features about NPC will be cool and help to make elite more lively.

 

[Winterwalker]

My previous comment about hats aside, I agree with what others have said that the ships are the avatars in Elite. I never much liked the bitmap characters in Frontier, and the various aliens in Amiga Elite were just comedy.

I hope that when the FPS comes around, Frontier can come up with a distinctive, highly stylised look for the people, rather than the generic Maya bodysnatchers that populate every other game, even AAA ones like Far Cry, Crysis, GTA or Tomb Raider. In cinematic animation terms, I'd rather see a Belleville Rendezvous than a Disney Pixar, or a left field graphic novel over Marvel/DC.

Otherwise we'll see a horde of players' best synthetic David Brabens skating around stations.

I agree with this ^^. It would be great to see warty, ugly, skinny, too tall, dumpy short, deranged and sophisticated avatars rather than (just) the heroic look demo'ed in the sig of post #90 above.

Not to denegrate the choice made by that Commander, but as avatars are so often heroic looking, I'd love it if my pirate character can be pale and properly weather beaten, rather than a Jack Sparrow looky-likey.

If given a "make me a man" choice to design our own, the universe may get populated with "Stallone" Dredd characters, as opposed to "Karl Urban" Dredd type people .. who are ultimately much more gritty, realistic and of more interest in the longer term.

Personally I'd also prefer that we don't see "photo-real" (they never are) but a sophisticated characature style, that has more to do with illustrating the Galaxy, than trying to "be" it. Photoreal 3D CG creeps me out.

 

[Arubeto]

Well, it's not much, but I welcome the portraits of leaders in "Powerplay" and the added visible pilots in other ships' cockpits as a nice little step in the right direction! Hopefully this means we will see more visualizations of NPCs (perhaps NPC crews in multicrew ships next?) in the future!

 

[Arubeto]

Ok, it's not much, but at least David Braben seems to agree with the idea that "richer" (not "rich" as in having more credits, mind you!) NPCs are desirable:

Dear Cmdr Braben,

first of all huge thank you for for all the memories from the nineties. Growing up with all the Elite's is something I'll always remember.

Just to ask can we expect to have the pictures of mission agents soon. Like in the olden days of Elite:



It would add to immersion a lot. A few welcome text lines would also be great.

Finally I would just like to add my voice for a "Clan Tag". Our group is growing and in big pvp battles we need a way to know who is who (especially when fighting alongside allied clans in a 3-4 wing battles) It would increase the visibility of people who want it and it would be a badge of honour to represent the clan with dignity.

Many thanks.

Cmdr MJC and lads from BIG.

Oh yes please. A wall of text is so soulless

Hopefully you can see the game is getting richer over time. The images of the Powers (yes, I know they're not in the beta yet, but we're saving them for the release), do help add what I think you are looking for.

Sadly, David Braben is just too damn good at answering the question without actually answering it.

His statement could mean "yes, we plan to enrich NPCs. The images of Powers are just the first step!"

But in the worst case, it could also be interpreted as "We did our job with the images of Powers, now you guys should be happy. That's all you gonna get."

 

[Arubeto]

It hasn't been specifically stated in todays EGX panel or Newsletter, but holy moly does the new "Commander Creator" look cool! (video at 22:31, in case the time-specific youtube link doesn't work)

[video=youtube_share;3Em7TLwFifE]https://youtu.be/3Em7TLwFifE?t=1351[/video]

Now, those 3D character models look absolutely fabulous, totally up to the high graphical standard of ED, IMHO.

If we now get confirmation that FD will use this create character creation tool to build random or persistent NPCs, that would be even better, but for now I am extremely happy with the news we got today about being able to create our own commanders in game!

Really great new feature! After petitioning so long for faces in game, your announcement today is really appreciated!

Thank you, FD

 

[wstephenson]

But where are the 34th century hats - did the off-world millinery industry die since FE2?

 

[Arubeto]

I am really looking forward to seeing the Character creator in action! There is so much potential here!

The first of the following pictures is an official announcement image for "multicrew". I still hope we'll get NPC crews, too! Would be awesome to get something like in the the picture without the need to first find people willing to come aboard my ship.

The second picture is a mockup courtesy of commander Fosdyke (found in post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=222681&page=5&p=3402550#post3402550), showing how character models created with the character creator could be used in a crew and wingmember "hiring" screen. Looks very cool, IHMO!

The third picture is also a mockup, shows how faces could lend mission givers some personality in the bulletin board and was linked by CMDR Pazmino (post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=223282&page=10&p=3410306#post3410306), originally stemming from a reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...dded_a_few_characters_to_local_missions_just/). Very awesome, too, if you ask me!

[IMGUR]KBQFU[/IMGUR]

I think these are some great examples of the potential of the character creator! Lets hope it will indeed be put use to provide NPCs with faces and won't be restricted to players!

 

[VAN LORD]

I don't want to see fake plastic faces.

+1 Draw a SMILE on the visor.

 

[VAN LORD]

There is so much potential here!

Here's what it will be possible to hire pilots and crew, that I once knew. And that's about it to pay them, this is new. It's cool, severely cool. You only have to supply them with air, water and food.

 

[Arubeto]

Looks like we have our first proper NPC with a face!

Todd 'The Blaster' McQuinn was just announced in the latest newsletter (#113):

I, for one, really like the character style for which FD is going! This is exactly what ED needed to let the galaxy come to life, IMHO!

 

[Fosdyke]

Looks like we have our first proper NPC with a face!

Todd 'The Blaster' McQuinn was just announced in the latest newsletter (#113):

http://hosting.zaonce.net/elite/new...01602_26/982b40dc23bde11349ad01005b4d7249.jpg

I, for one, really like the character style for which FD is going! This is exactly what ED needed to let the galaxy come to life, IMHO!

That's what Elite needs, exactly. FD goes definitely in the right direction. Really enjoyable
Faction representatives will be certainly great too.

I think we will get some variety too on the faces

View attachment 105334View attachment 105335

A more aged version of Todd, more experienced, hair tend to be brown-grey ones.

View attachment 105337