rethinking playersprites sexes

[kinwa]

source: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 04&start=0

I know you guys are going to hate me for this... but...

In the real world, plate armor is uni-sexed. There is no male or female versions. Breast would have to bounded up. Armor is and always will be made to force the blow away from the body. Having breast area would not only cause the blows directed in the body, but it would also chafe, badly. Only in a male sexist ideological system does form out do function. Even in archery, women bound the right breast as close to the body as possible.

Even new armor systems show every little diffences.
http://soldiersystems.net/2008/10/page/2/

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/a ... _ap_01.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w24/ ... ge_315.jpg
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:T2Mq ... nt.jpg&t=1
http://www.by-the-sword.com/acatalog/info_4483.html

However, women never wore armour at all back in the day. How do we know whether the breasts would have been noticeable or not on theirs, had they had it? And remember Xena the Warrior Princess?

Although actually, I would agree with you as far as realism goes. But without breasts you can't really tell a male from a female sprite.

This is a fantasy game, not a medieval simulation.

Rule of Cool > Realism.
Flashy > Functional.

And sexy armor is definitely cool and flashy.

i think this is kinda off topic in the original thread, still i wanna say i really enjoyed, what you pointed out, darkwater. so i write it here, hopefully, it won't be deleted or ignored.


if the devs think sexiness is greater than realistics - i would possibly agree - just the question remains: which norm tells what is sexy? and why not having sexy "male" sprites aswell?

but maybe having male and female playersprites at all is too much. having just a unisex playersprite would be great, surely more sexy, less effort for the artists, and, very important, less sexist!

(even better would be the possibility to choose your own bodily characteristics, but it would require some algorythm that draws the sprites depending on the players choice, dunno if that's possible, at least, i think, not easy.)



greetings.

[DarkWater]

ivy, yes and no. To be really, really, really, really honest, it was nearly impossible to afford full plate armor. Only about 1% of the armed force could afford the armor, and only for non combat.

Vast majority of the armor was leather, mail, scale, or lamellar armor. The real fighters of all times that used heavy armor at all used lamellar armor, http://www.fantasy-armor.com/images/armors/AE1424.jpg.

Scale armor, and yes that is a female in there. http://her-sca-blog.com/wp-content/uplo ... -armor.jpg

Old hack and slash mail armor. http://historyshop.piratemerch.com/imag ... _armor.jpg

Mail was the preferred armor of the most best armies of the world.
Vikings prefer heavy cloth, mail, leather armor.
Hannibal Barca prefer linotharox and only used scale during the most heaviest combat.
The mongols used a combo of light cloth to heavy mail.
In all cases, everybody that fought in battle avoided heavy plate armor.

As for women not fighting in combat, the enemy would rape, torture, and kill us just as quick as he would you, why should we stand on the sidelines waiting for it to happen? It was not until the late 18th century that the European population derived this sense of Victorian values. Before that, if you turn your back on a woman in the ancient world, you would find a tip of a sword sticking out of your chest in about 3 seconds. Whole fighting systems where invented by women, including your karate kids training was invented by a woman, including center of balance, fighting dummy, and hand blocking. Thank you, Yim Wing-chun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wo ... n_folklore

Now Crush, in soft fantasy it is true. Guys love to get women into bikini's and metal outfits and prance us around for your delight.
But if we are going to do that then why not just make the bikini and not give us swords?

Or we could choose to have a more realistic approach, http://www.medievalfantasiesco.com/knig ... otK_20.jpg.

Just saying...

Kinwa could we turn this into a poll please?

This is not about normal clothing, but combat armor. So we would still need to have the sprites drawn, just not for armor section.

[Lt. KLAG [24th.KDF]]

Guys love to get women into bikini's and metal outfits and prance us around for your delight.
But if we are going to do that then why not just make the bikini and not give us swords?

Nice ... I proceeded a little memory check-up, and ... my brain cells are still working.

The basic debate probably took flight in the forum somewhere around here :

• Female character sits with legs spread apart?
  breeding reflexions upon butt-to-ground-position complexity
• followed by a refreshing Tank Top fashion moment

There's a bunch of some sort of funny replies there, leading to that evidence :
even in a 2D MMORP such as TMW, you can't deny physical differences between adult male and female characters ...

So, the "bikini aspect" left apart, my personal opinions follow DW's points upon necessary dual [M/F] outfit-sets.

PS :

• hum ... I involved myself in one more "slippery topic" ... again ...

[DarkWater]

• hum ... I involved myself in one more "slippery topic" ... again ...

Hugs, good to have you back, I really missed you.

There is a difference between underwear and full combat armor. Personally I think they should allow you to change the color of your underwear.

But it is really is a question of function. But as crush and poison ivy pointed out. Their version of women fighters are Zena warrior princess.

I prefer real fighters, but that is just me. Oh my, they do not look like women at all!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjDXwiHj ... re=related

In fencing you need to wear a breast protector.

http://shop.fencing.net/Econo_Guard_p/bk-eco.htm

But to be truthful, a lot of them just use a mens chest protector (see video) as it is more comfortable.
http://shop.fencing.net/Master_Guard_p/bk-mg.htm


But I have side tracked we are talking about heavy combat requiring heavy armor. Not light combat requiring plastic.

[samesun]

What if we just went the as far with the man gear as we do with the lady gear and offer codpieces? and the lady equivilant could be something totally dark ages and inappropriate like chastity belts. (no, spiders dont drop keys to these)

[Lt. KLAG [24th.KDF]]

Well ... sounds like the continuous "Chivalry" falsification of the 11th century "Knighthood" social reality is still strong nowadays ...
According to DW, if you are slightly familiar to medieval social context and/or cold weapons practice, it's valuable to adopt a wealthy [M/F] approach in Role/Fantasy interests.

A short graphic demonstration of [M/F] "reductive approaches" :

• ( Miss-Warrior-1901actively supporting War Campaign Efforts ... )

• (... don't get me wrong : I'm a huge fan of F.Frazetta graphic art ! )

So it might be a smart idea to conduct a "feminine" artwork upon the "feminine" half-part of outfit-sets (kinky, but not too much ...).

For my part, I consider the actual "Jean-chaps for Male Warriors" situation to be rather ... particular ...

[DarkWater]

In both cases we are moving away from the idea of only for heavy armor. I am not talking about normal clothing, which I am fine with. I am talking about heavy armor.

[kinwa]

and i was talking about something more fundamental. but no one seems to care, so sexism is an important part of the game. quoad erat demonstrandum.

[skipy]

what about the Gladiatrix ....100 A.D. ?

--------------skipy

[Lt. KLAG [24th.KDF]]

If the devs think sexiness is greater than realistics - i would possibly agree - just the question remains:
which norm tells what is sexy? and why not having sexy "male" sprites aswell?

and i was talking about something more fundamental. but no one seems to care, so sexism is an important part of the game.
quoad erat demonstrandum.

I believe you are not alone, when walking on the sliding rope of Heroïc Fantasy specific Erotic aspects :
a correct balance is essential.

Since it's a matter of personal tastes and references, as far as I am concerned, I tend to support player-sets to be "appealing" without making us look like "porn-stars in armored under-wears" ...

So maybe a more "feminine touch" could bring a reasonable balance into the graph development work ...

"Non vestimentum virum ornat, sed vir vestimentum"

[mistergrey]

To be honest, I see no issue with the playersets, or the male/female versions of clothing/armor. Yes, DW is right that it is unrealistic. It is also true that in a game, most people prefer looks over realism.

Now, no offense, but this topic seems completely unnecessary. I only say this because... if we were to start going for realism, there are surely more pressing things to be changed. For example: My male sprite has freaking six pack abs just about. As does everyone else's. And all girls' bodies look the same. To me, the fact that we're all white people in great shape is something that would merit changing before debating whether or not female versions of armor are sexist for not being realistic (and, to add to that, most of the women seem to prefer these looks).

I'm not complaining about those things either - I know the playersets don't make themselves, and there are plenty of things being worked on without trying to make every skin color, body weight, etc for our sprites, not to mention reworking items to fit around our possibly fat guts LOL. Just pointing that out, since these are likely to be the arguments or reasons you'd hear for not working on your request/opinion: "We have more pressing things to work on" or "this is a game, we're going for fun/fashion > realism in combat".

[Big Crunch]

I want a fat character

[DarkWater]

To be honest, I see no issue with the playersets, or the male/female versions of clothing/armor. Yes, DW is right that it is unrealistic. It is also true that in a game, most people prefer looks over realism...Now, no offense, but this topic seems completely unnecessary. I only say this because... if we were to start going for realism, there are surely more pressing things to be changed...I'm not complaining about those things either - I know the playersets don't make themselves,.

In the original topic I was pointing out that realism would save time in sprite creation. Save time, nothing else.

Unisex armor would reduce the number of drawn sprites for armor in half, save a lot of man/women hours, and even be more realistic. I seriously doubt that they will do it, nor if I want it done anyway; I was just pointing out that you could shove through twice the amount of armor if it was unisexed.

The original argument was about getting more equipment into the game faster. I am not talking about normal cloths, which have to be sexed anyway, just armor.

Hate to keep repeating myself, but some people seem to have missed the point.

[skipy]

To be honest, I see no issue with the playersets, or the male/female versions of clothing/armor. Yes, DW is right that it is unrealistic. It is also true that in a game, most people prefer looks over realism...Now, no offense, but this topic seems completely unnecessary. I only say this because... if we were to start going for realism, there are surely more pressing things to be changed...I'm not complaining about those things either - I know the playersets don't make themselves,.

In the original topic I was pointing out that realism would save time in sprite creation. Save time, nothing else.

Unisex armor would reduce the number of drawn sprites for armor in half, save a lot of man/women hours, and even be more realistic. I seriously doubt that they will do it, nor if I want it done anyway; I was just pointing out that you could shove through twice the amount of armor if it was unisexed.

The original argument was about getting more equipment into the game faster. I am not talking about normal cloths, which have to be sexed anyway, just armor.

Hate to keep repeating myself, but some people seem to have missed the point.

i see what your saying ....and would have to disagree ...your idea would work if there was only 1 sprite shape
for both sexs..(and there is 2)....try to put female boots on a male sprite(not going to work or fit)..

theres other ways to make armor easyer to pixel..
...1 idea im playing around with is saveing the small parts that can be re-used on more then one thing(shoulder-plates,neck-line/caller,knee-pads and so on... 1 of the hardest things i have found doing equipment is "placement/fitting"..where one thing starts and a other thing ends...i use the equipment thats already there to help with the fitting this also help mach colors.....i think most games do work like this....

but the most helpful way to make thing go easyer is to work together and keep our EGO in check....

well its what i think---------------------------skipy