The Mana World Forums

It was good that the "female" hairstyles were added, but it's not good at all that the hairstyles are restricted to the different genders. I don't like the "female" hairstyles very much, the "male" ones are more cute, and I think that some guys would like to have longer hair, for example.

I suggest that all the hairstyles are made available for all characters, regardless of gender, so that we don't have to change gender just to get the hairstyle we want.

I dont like to see a girl with a mohawk...

EJlol wrote:I dont like to see a girl with a mohawk...

Or a boy with pigtails.

I think a sprite should have the freedom to look the way they want to, in most countries people have the right to express there self; why not on TMW.

That's just a matter of taste. I think girls look fine in mohawk. And why shouldn't a boy be able to have pigtails if he wants to? Besides, it's very unrealistic that it's not even possible. I've heard of games where male characters can't wear dresses, and that's just silly in my opinion. There's nothing in the male anatomy that makes wearing a dress impossible. And there's certainly nothing in male or female anatomy that makes certain hairstyles impossible to get.

If you're going to go with the male's wearing dresses thing, you're right. In real-life, a man can wear a dress. In fact, I know some men who do it regularly.

The point here is that the male and female sprite sheets are DIFFERENT. Which means that if you were going to design a female piece of armor but you wanted it to be able to be worn by a male, you'd have to draw TWO sprite sheets each with the animation for walking, attacking and so on. You're proposing somebody do double the work -- not going to happen.

And I hate to break out the MapleStory references again, but they are very succesfull yet they have clearly separate hair and clothing styles. (ugh... I need to take a shower now... )

leeor_net wrote:The point here is that the male and female sprite sheets are DIFFERENT. Which means that if you were going to design a female piece of armor but you wanted it to be able to be worn by a male, you'd have to draw TWO sprite sheets each with the animation for walking, attacking and so on. You're proposing somebody do double the work -- not going to happen.

That doesn't apply to hair (or hat/head items, though they could have gender specific options). Besides, every sprite needs both or half the characters can't use it anyways.

In the previous version both genders had the same hair options, so I doubt that it would be that difficult to change this.

About boys with pigtails by the way, maybe they want to be indians.

leeor_net wrote:If you're going to go with the male's wearing dresses thing, you're right. In real-life, a man can wear a dress. In fact, I know some men who do it regularly.

The point here is that the male and female sprite sheets are DIFFERENT. Which means that if you were going to design a female piece of armor but you wanted it to be able to be worn by a male, you'd have to draw TWO sprite sheets each with the animation for walking, attacking and so on. You're proposing somebody do double the work -- not going to happen.

And I hate to break out the MapleStory references again, but they are very succesfull yet they have clearly separate hair and clothing styles. (ugh... I need to take a shower now... )

Except it already IS happening. We pixel artists already make two versions of shirts/pants/armor: one for males and one for females. Hair is on a separate layer from the playerset so there is no technical restriction. So far, in the playerset, both male and females have the same size head. As such it would be very very simple to make female hairsets usable on males and vice versa. This has nothing to do with more work for us, it's just a matter of cultural taste: most people in the "west" think that males shouldn't have long hair, and females short hair.

Yes the male and female sprites are stored in different files, however the .xml files are almost identical. If you wanted to, you could delete the male hairstyles and rename the female hair styles in their place. Voila! Instant males with female hairstyles. As I said before, it is not a technical limitation, as the fix is extremely easy to do. It is more a cultural thing.

Most people in the west? I don't think I know anyone who has such old-fashioned ideas. I really think that many people would like to have all the options. Those who don't like short hair on girls and so on can just keep to the traditional styles. I mean, if people can have axes in their heads... How can a hairstyle be so upsetting compared to that?

Vink wrote:Most people in the west? I don't think I know anyone who has such old-fashioned ideas. I really think that many people would like to have all the options. Those who don't like short hair on girls and so on can just keep to the traditional styles. I mean, if people can have axes in their heads... How can a hairstyle be so upsetting compared to that?

Well, personally, I agree with you. But I am not an admin nor do I have access to the server, so aside from providing a user-hack that will produce the same effect, I cannot help.

Oh, I see. Hope the right people will read this thread then.

As the problem really brings no artistic or technical difficulty, I’ll add my own wishes to change this, so everyone — regardless of their gender — can choose their own cut.

I think this is important from a global perspective, free/open games like this one are played all over the world, by people from different cultures and different sets of minds and prejudices. Myself I am Western guy with long hair, and here where I live it really isn’t something strange. Here and now, some things are considered “sacred” to a specific gender, and “lethal” to another. But then again, in another time and/or place, the very same thing would never be seen as belonging to a certain gender.

Whatever anyone (me included) think about this, I find that the more individualizing options an RPG offers, the more I enjoy the game. So, I humbly suggest, generalize where ever you feel you can/want.

Anyway, thanks for all the great art this far! <3

For those who want to use a male/female hairset, are impatient, and are using the SVN; there is a very simple fix. Open up your data/graphics/sprites folder. Find the hairstyle.xml files. Open up the xml file and look near the top. You should see a line something like this:

<imageset name="base" src="graphics/sprites/hairstyle4-female.png|W" width="40" height="40" />

Replace female with male, or male with female. It should now look like this:

<imageset name="base" src="graphics/sprites/hairstyle4-male.png|W" width="40" height="40" />

Save the file and try it out! Also, there are several hairstyle files. You may need to edit all of them for it to work properly.

It would be simpler to change the association in data/items.xml.