The Mana World Forums

BY GOD I WILL ANSWER THAT QUESTION!... Uhm... well, I don't know what kind of helmets you wear... But if I'd wear my favorite helmet it would make may smile invisible on that scale, yes.

I think the whole point about popping up an emotion icon instead of animating a smile as realistic as possible, is to make the emotion clearly visible and communicate an understandable emotion. Also, when you look at any anime, major deformations are often used to show emotions. In comparison the heads by neoriceisgood show only very little change, resulting in hard to see (hidden below helm or simply easy to miss in the corner of your eye) and in some cases hard to understand emotions.

Hence I think the icons Modanung was working on would still be most suitable for the purpose, though possibly their size could be reduced a bit.

Making things smaller is easy, making things larger is another thing.

Modanung wrote:Making things smaller is easy, making things larger is another thing.

Yes, I'd say keep the size I just noted we may want to make them smaller but I don't mean you should start producing them smaller. We can decide at which size to use them later, I guess it could depend on the usage like they'd be like half that size when used on forums eventually.

Modanung wrote:Has anyone thought about how to deal with helmets in combiniation with these smileys then?

My suggestion:

Layer1: Player body sprite.
Layer2: Smiley/eyes
Layer3: Hair
Layer4+: Clothes

Note that hair is one of those things that will probably need to have two variations for each hairset - one normal, and one mashed down by a helmet, which would be drawn under the helmet.

Bjørn wrote:I think the whole point about popping up an emotion icon instead of animating a smile as realistic as possible, is to make the emotion clearly visible and communicate an understandable emotion. Also, when you look at any anime, major deformations are often used to show emotions. In comparison the heads by neoriceisgood show only very little change, resulting in hard to see (hidden below helm or simply easy to miss in the corner of your eye) and in some cases hard to understand emotions.

Hence I think the icons Modanung was working on would still be most suitable for the purpose, though possibly their size could be reduced a bit.

Suggestion: do both.

"It's the best of both worlds..." - Lo Pan

Jetryl wrote:Suggestion: do both.

At first I thought it was a nice idea, having the face show an expression and a funny emoticon over his head. I was just thinking that it heavily depends on which grade of customization we want to achieve.

I personally like the idea of having different "textures" for the faces, as Kinetic showed, and maybe changing eyes color could be nice as well (I want white eyes ). The second one is not a problem if using the same technique as for coloring equipments, we could have any color we want, without drawing additional frames. About facial emoticons, well that's another story, we will have to draw the same emoticon for every face type, for every direction (except NORTH), for every frame (if they're animated)

Ok I realize is not that much trouble, but having slow progression on the art development we should consider it...

Jetryl wrote:Note that hair is one of those things that will probably need to have two variations for each hairset - one normal, and one mashed down by a helmet, which would be drawn under the helmet.

I couldn't figure out why that would be necessary, can you please provide an example?

I guess while hair styles are kept below a certain height (ElvenProgrammer looks at Modanung), drawing the hat on top of them shouldn't be a trouble.

Sorry If I misunderstood what you were saying

Well everyone is free to implement it and commit if they want to.

Elven Programmer wrote:

Jetryl wrote:Note that hair is one of those things that will probably need to have two variations for each hairset - one normal, and one mashed down by a helmet, which would be drawn under the helmet.

I couldn't figure out why that would be necessary, can you please provide an example?

I guess while hair styles are kept below a certain height (ElvenProgrammer looks at Modanung), drawing the hat on top of them shouldn't be a trouble.

Sorry If I misunderstood what you were saying

Jetryl, I meant considering the smileys. Yet I agree on the hair.
I thought of in in a different way though. With every hairstyle you could define wether it is long or short (or middle length). Short hair just won't be drawn if you're wearing a helmet. Hair defined as being long will be replaced by the long-hair-with-helmet hairstyle, that way you'll see hair coming from under the back of the helmet.
We could also define a middle length with which you'll see just a bit of hair sticking from under the helmet.
That wall it'll just be like 1-2 extra (and simple) hairstyles.

ElvenProgrammer, why would you even draw the hair when you're wearing a helmet? Don't tell me you don't want afrostyle but you do want variable skintones.

Just a quick idea, if we want to implement both and expression of emotion is expressed by face than it could be probably more interesting have a symbol over his head more than a face showing again the same expression. I was
thinking in particular at those you can find in anime:

DROP



#


and many others such an beating heart, broken heart, waterfalls when crying, black smoke and whatever you can think on

I myself never liked the drop on the persons head. I know its to show emotion but I never liked it.

I agree, I personally don't like the drop or "#" on the persons face.

I have a different idea for showing emotions. What if there was a small (maybe medium) size face next to each line of chat a user types in the chat window. It would need to be large enough to show emotion. However, the face could always be displayed without a helmet on or any other obstructions, and since the face would always be oriented towards the screen, only one frame would need to be drawn for each emotion (unless they were animated), there wouldn't be an issue with the direction the player is facing.

The emotion could be set with a drop down listbox or something... just a preliminary idea.

Maybe someone could create a mockup to illustrate the idea.

This way it will work only with the player you're talking to, you cannot see other people expressing emotions...

I like the way it is shown now. Only it shouldn't be behind the tekst people are saying.

Elven Programmer wrote:This way it will work only with the player you're talking to, you cannot see other people expressing emotions...

Why would it only work with the player your talking to? Can't you see all of the chat (except messages directed to a specific person) in the chat window? Anything that is said out loud, which I would venture to say is 90+ percent of all messages would be visible to everyone; at least on the same map or in proximity, depending upon how it is eventually handled.

Messages directed to a specific person would have the advantage of allowing emotions to be expressed discreetly to another player.