Character Creation Options!

[Lamhirh]

customisation in APB is awesome. I really love spending time in ( in te reloaded-beta) and paint my car, and design clothes. Hell i meet guy named harry callahan yesterday, and he was an IDEAL clone of dirty harry. really awesome piece of work on the makers end. This is hovever what som epeople will have against 'overpowered' customisation tools. soon we will have 2 bazillions cloud/sephirot lookalikes. but that is just a matter of policing. in CoH people got randomised alot for ' impersonating' copyrighted heroes/villains

[Cairdeas]

I had a character that looked exactly like Velma and I drove around in a Van painted like the Mystery Machine.

Hilarity Ensued.

But that was in retail. :/ 2 months was not enough time to play for the 75 bucks I paid into that game.

[Nephera]

I had a character that looked exactly like Velma and I drove around in a Van painted like the Mystery Machine.

Hilarity Ensued.

But that was in retail. :/ 2 months was not enough time to play for the 75 bucks I paid into that game.

Ah APB, the only game where you can ride shotgun with Shaquille O'Neal and have a head on collision with the power rangers.

I thankfully didnt have to pay more than box price, someone bought a weapon off me for a month's subscription and furries bought logos from me to pay for the second. Interesting payment system they had set up.

[Randis]

check this out... they even have a slider for the boobies ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WhOTrc5554

[Cairdeas]

APB doesn't actually have Sliders. It has Range Charts.


You can go Up Down, Left or right to change all kinda of variables on one variable.

IE Pressing up left makes you skinny and unmuscular, bottom right makes you fat but muscular top right makes you skinny but muscular and bottom left makes you fat and unmuscular.

[Abriael]

APB's customization is that deep for a reason. There are no more than a maximum of 100 people per instance, allowing a steep increase of the memory footprint for each character. The game simply isn't a full fledged MMORPG, as much as a larger third person shooter.

[Cairdeas]

APB's customization is that deep for a reason. There are no more than a maximum of 100 people per instance, allowing a steep increase of the memory footprint for each character. The game simply isn't a full fledged MMORPG, as much as a larger third person shooter.

Its also running Unreal which can't really take that many people on screen at once.

[Randis]

Yes but APB game mechanic and qualities are of no concern here, its’s not the topic. Fact is however that they have some neat customization options that could inspire. I am not interested in APB as a game at all, my interest here is in FF.
Having different body morphs for a character body is pretty cool and would be possible in a MMO RPG. Same goes for tattoos, and many other things.
Creating new textures for all of your cloths would be overkill of course however designing your own flag for your LS would be realistic.

[Abriael]

Its also running Unreal which can't really take that many people on screen at once.

Technically the engine can, but not with that level of detail. When there were big fights in APB the lag was unbearable even with powerful computers.

If you want to see incredible amounts of customization, then Second Life is the place to look at, with the ability to directly upload textures and 3D models and such. Of course, just as in APB, there's a area-based population limit.

Certain things simply aren't for MMORPGs, until server/networking technology evolves quite a lot.

Having different body morphs for a character body is pretty cool and would be possible in a MMO RPG. Same goes for tattoos, and many other things.

Tattoos increase the memory footprint a LOT if they're done in a vectorial designer like the one in APB. If they're not, and only a limited number of designs is allowed, I'm quite on the fence about their inclusion, considering that it would possibly *increass* the clone effect instead of decreasing it. This without mentioning that considering the fact that FFXIV isn't exactly a "show a lot of skin" MMORPG, their priority isn't exactly high.

Body sliders have the usual problem. The more variations for the body, the more animations need to be generic in order to accomodate them.

Any kind of texture uploading (IE: flags) would require direct moderation (IE: employees that check every file that's uploaded and remove inappropriate content) and even more, server->client downloading (that would increase the data flow, and with that the lag) and that's why MMORPG developrs shy away from it.

[Soukyuu]

Texture uploads are overkill, imho.

I don't see how different body morphs would increase the memory footprint though, since it's just one model in memory with different transformations applied. Storing a scene graph doesn't cost that much and has to be done in case of presets too, just that with variables there are potentially more paths in it.

As for animation, i don't know how a slider system would affect them. But since they motion-captured them for one type of body but still have some presets, maybe it doesn't affect it that much?