Adding a Fat slider

So are we talking about location/slot specific fat slides?

If that is true, count me!

Hey folks

I read over this topic again and made note of everyone that has signed and all the issues that people brought up as well as the responces for them. The one that hasn't got a lot of attention is the clipping issue.

But first I think a lot of the problems come from calling it a "Fat Slider". So if we call it something more generic like a "Bulk Slider" a lot of the problems go away.

King Pin isn't fat, but he is bulky and would need a bulk slider to correctly make him.
A Robot isn't "Fat" but can be bulky to give it more of a army tank like appearance.

So... let's call this "Adding a Bulk Slider"

I still don't think its that big of a deal if there is clipping. And this isn't my opinion, its the dev's. Let's look at the clipping issues already in and live in CoX

Huge body + bows - The string for the bow goes right through the arm
Hair + Glasses - With some combinations there is hair going in and out of different things
Capes + Back Flip - I can get my hero's leg punched through the cape sometimes
MM Robots + emotes - Ever get your Assault Bot to <em invent> or Drum? Its way off center and looks silly.

I'm sure there's a whole list of clipping issues with combinations of costume pieces.

So clipping hasn't stopped them before from releaseing new content, so why would it stop them now from a 'bulk' slider?


I'm also trying to get a list of all the characters that are bulk/fat from comic books and probably from other media as well that would fit into the CoX universe. Here's what I have so far, please let me know if I've missed any

Super Heroes

Big Bertah - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._June_2005.jpg
The Blob - http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/1...blob_super.jpg
Mojo - http://burnallzombies.files.wordpres...men_ep-241.jpg
Frog - http://badgerthegnome.files.wordpres.../12/frog01.jpg
Harry Leiland -http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__T6BfLHtlB...rry+Leland.jpg
Control Freak - http://www.freewebs.com/ermthegreat/68%20CF%201.jpg
King Pin - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-Kingpinm.png
Nite Owl - http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...01/NiteOwl.PNG
Mr Incredible - http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.ya...incredible.jpg
The Penguin - http://www.pollsb.com/photos/o/30302...an_returns.jpg
Doctor Octopus - http://www.marveldirectory.com/pictu...toroctopus.gif
Mega Boy - from the movie Zoom
Speed - from the movie Sky High

Other Media

Coop - http://www.vegalleries.com/cartoonnetwork/MegasXLR.jpg
PO THE OBLITERATOR - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcd...bot_shortfilms

Video Game Characters

Mario - http://electexiles.files.wordpress.c...09/mario-2.jpg
Luigi - http://www.mariowiki.com/images/thum...Basket_ML3.jpg
Midbus - http://www.mariowiki.com/images/thum...etabossML3.jpg
Hungry Luma - http://www.mariowiki.com/images/d/d6/HungryLuma.png

Fatman - http://mgs3.bonusweb.cz/mgs2/pix/postavy/Fatman.jpg
Dr. Robotnik - http://www.overtimecomedy.com/wp-con...r_robotnik.gif
Roach - http://static.gamesradar.com/images/...icle_image.jpg
Rufus - http://o.aolcdn.com/gd-media/galleries/467/Rufus.jpg
Yangus - http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0...ngus_large.jpg
Look I made my bear gut, battle axe wielding drawf barbarian - http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/...arf_slayer.jpg

Fat Admirers aka Chubby Chasers
Deadpool - http://media.photobucket.com/image/d...bs.jpg%3Fo%3D2

I think we can safely say:

1) There's plenty of comic book justification for having a "bulk" slider in this game.
2) There's enough people who've suggested this over the years to make it a legitimate player desire.

But the real problem for the Devs boils down to the hardwired limitations of the player character models. The Devs have told us that they are just about at the limit of what they can do to allow for player customization of the body shapes. This is why it's been so hard for them to give us backpack/quiver/scabbard options for our backs because they lack the "connection points" to make it work.

They're likely at the point where to do a bulk slider properly it'd almost be easier for them to scrap the entire character model and animation system and start over from scratch. The chances of -that- happening anytime soon are quite probably nil. At this point we'd more likely see this happen in CoH2 than in this game.

Who knows: the Devs might be able to pull another miracle out of the hat of this aging game engine and manage to give us a bulk slider. But let's just say I'm certainly not going to be holding my breath for it.

The most essential factor in the Superhero and Comic book connection is that Comic-books are NOT all about Superheroes. I learned about this in university to find that back when comics first started out there were LOADS of different premises going on, from comedy to drama, from very real life situations to horror and fantasy. Comicbooks are a medium.

When superhero comics first came out, they happen to sell marginally better than other genres, people jumped on this and start making loads of superhero comicbooks to the point that making any other genre wasn't worth producing because of a lack of sales.

All because it sold a little better then other genres.

And although City of Heroes is marketed to be about superheroes, it also claims to be bringing comicbooks to life, so why isn't there nothing but tights and capes in the character creator? Because City of Heroes, being the comicbook universe that is in, is able to tap into the MEDIUM of comicbooks. Why else do you think groups like the Circle of Thorns can exist in a game that also has the Freedom Phalanx and Rikti invaders?

City of Heroes is probably one of the few MMOs out there that you can do ANYTHING and it won't completely ruin the universe it's set in. They could dip in the fantasy genre, the sci-fi genre or even horror, drama, comedy and so on.

And that's probably what I like most about City of Heroes, it CAN be anything I want it to be, at least in terms of my characters and AE arcs. No other MMO gives that much thematic freedom.

I have a hard time believing that they "CAN'T" and the Ultra mode alreadly makes it look like CoH2! :P

My background is programming, so looking at it from a programmer's point of view but without seeing the code itself, this is what I see;

They already have all the tools that they would need to do it built into the engine already. In order to calculate the waist of a toon from the sliders, they have a base+waist+Physique. I see no reason why they can't have base+waist+Physique+bulk.

Of course the calculations are much more elabrate then that

They have the ability to modify a point on the model with 2 sliders simotaniously that also gives different points a scaling factor depending on their location.

So why can't they add a 3rd slider into that math?

I could probably do it in a day or two and about a 4-5 days to polish it.

So the only problem that I could see is the fact that there are more calculations going on when the engine loads a model. An additional math problem, per point on a model could really add up when someone wants to load say... Atlas Park with a 100mil costume contest going on!

Unless the code is built like a house of cards and any attempt to add or change it would break it entirely. So if they have the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality with it, then that could stop it as well. But again, that can be fixed if it needed to be. Some other update might need to edit it and then hopefully they can add in the bulk slider when they do everything else.

Then the only thing that is really holding this back would be computing power of the lower end PCs. This I can understand why they wouldn't add it in, because adding a bulk slider wouldn't be worth cutting out how ever many paying customers.

But again... This is all just speculation unless I could see the code....

So I remain hopeful for this addition. As technology advances, and lower end PCs are slowly worked out, hopefully then. They can have it on!



Cheers

I'd love to see a wider range of body slider options. Fat superheroes are cool in my book.

Clipping be damned. There are already plenty of options that clip. If you have Glam hair and wear a cloak, better put it up in a ponytail. Neck chains clip through some jacket collars on male and female models. Some belts clip on wide-hipped characters.

Its partly up to the player to choose a set of options that wont clip badly.

If adding another slider isn't the option, Zamuel has given me an idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zamuel You may be dangerously stepping upon a few "standards of beauty" issues. While outright fat characters generally aren't considered attractive, there's far more options in real life than the borderline anorexic ideals that often get portrayed. In a way that's the whole premise of the song "Baby Got Back". Plus, if you want to use the Greek god argument, women were portrayed as generally thicker in art back then than most modern artistic portrayals. To the OP's suggestion, especially in light of a recent dev comment, I'd say we should argue for the ability to adjust the sliders up and down slightly more than our current minimums and maximums.

Baby Got Back talks about a woman who's measurements are 36-24-36. This is actually fairly doable with CoX as is. However if you listen to the lyrics of Whole Lotta Rosie by AC/DC, they talk about a woman who's measurements are 42-39-56 and is 19 stone.

That is a woman that you cannot make in CoX which probably has made AC/DC cry.

However, an increase in the range of the current sliders would make a lot of options availible to us, without destorying any exsisting code in the CoX engine.

I eagerly await feedback!

Hiro Nakamura and Detective Parkman ARE TOO superheroes. Fat slider FTW.