Mother Mayhem Info Up on GR Site

Sounds realistic to me!

I would be willing to bet it's Malaise. The two do have a history in this universe, after all.

Although it's probably just a continuity error to have a younger Shalice and older Hamidon, since it's a parallel Earth one can always handwave it away as things happening in different order. That's the rationale for a number of parallel world and/or alternate history stories in other superhero universes. Marvel's 1602, for instance, where current heroes appeared 4 centuries before they did in the mainline universe. DC created "hypertime" to explain how sometimes characters like Superman are first active in the 1940s and sometimes appears on the scene in 1999. Everything else is the same except for the date.

I admit it's a slightly cheesy way to account for both modern stories and classic tales, but that's kind of what one has to do for such long-running properties. I find it best to ignore that sort of thing as it becomes impossible to rationalize.

Hopefully there will be some in-game rationale for why things occurred on such vastly different time frames, yet led to the creation of specific characters. I really doubt there will be, but it would be nice. Hamidon might be easier to explain, since there doesn't seem to be a lot of specific info about him floating around. Maybe in Paragon Prime he became the giant monster in his 70s, while on Praetorian Earth he did so in his 20s. Whatever the trigger was just happened a few decades earlier. (There's probably some canon lore I couldn't find, but a quick search didn't turn up anything.)

Regardless of the skill and merit of the great classic comic artists, one has to keep in mind that certain 'comic staples' - one of which is the 'body-paint costumes' - exist because of time constraints in the old days. These guys were cranking out comic pages at light speed, and the form-fitting outfits that fit every millimeter of the character's form was a matter of ease and time. Granted, it was also because it showed off those heroic forms better, but as GG's post showed, that can be done while still not over-simplifying.

mostly human?? we clearly read different comic books then. you stay away from my robots, gargoyles, dragons and werewolves thank you very much

I agreed. But at the same time, I don't think the form-fitting outfits have to go away, and I don't think it means lazy/lousy artist.

And their universe as well. The Praetorian version you face in Maria Jenkin's missions is described as a "patient" of Mother Mayhem's, even gaining her favor.

I don't think we can take what the Maria Jenkins arc has been saying as any sort of idea how the Praetoria storyline is going to play out now.

The look to be retconning the whole thing imo.

Actually, while some are debatable, two of your examples in particular:





are essentially identical in fundamental style to the way CoH renders tights or "skin" tops on female chests. The first one has the same contour-following top that can only be achieved in real life by having it painted on. It also has almost the same amount of "separation" that seems to bother you so much (which is also not proper to call "unrealistic" given the wide variety of breast shapes).

Stargirl's top is literally painted on. Except for the small creases and rolled up edge at the bottom, its actually even more unrealistically contour-following than CoH tops are. Her breasts jut out in a manner entirely inconsistent with spandex, and more consistent with latex body paint.

Really, I think this is a matter of being primed to find fault and not being disappointed. Especially because while the two above are unambiguously flawed in the same way you think most tops with skin are flawed, a third (ms marvel) is questionable, because the way its drawn the shadows clearly show that the material is not stretched across the chest in a typical ("realistic") manner, but follows substantial cleavage. The Batgirl image has the same problem: the *bat* seems to be stretched across in a relatively flat surface, but the shadows don't follow that contour, suggesting that the *costume* is following her cleavage and the yellow bat is essentially pasted on top. That's almost half of the examples you offered to show the correct way of doing it, doing it exactly the way CoH's models do it.

In any case, of rather more importance to this type of thing is that until the game engine implements some serious tessellation, there are not enough polygons in the models to make realistic shapes, and that creates some really, *really* bad silhouettes at certain viewing angles. Especially at chest slider values above one third of maximum.

Indeed, an no discussion of Mother Mayhem's massive psychic powers.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Well... you beat the official announcement by 8 minutes!

That would be the exact reason I only mentioned their Primal Earth connection, actually.

It's about the way it goes when Golden Girl really gets rolling in a thread.

Indeed. If people start demanding more realistic costumes in comics there's going to be a lot more nudity as said costumes are shot/sliced/burned off. Though, I suppose that would be one way to get more female super heroes...

It's possible the Devs just lost track of their own lore. That's happened before.

Remember the whole "Hamidon as extradimensional entity" flap?

Alternatively, Praetorian Shalice might have been pulling the body-stealing schtick even earlier than we thought.

(Anyone else really prefer "Little Miss Mayhem" to "Mother Mayhem"? I sure do ...)

While it's better than current, those don't exactly look "normal". More like a bad Hollywood boob job.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

Well i took both of them out on the same date once...i woke up the next morning with boot tracks on mah back(thanks Mother Mayhem), smelled of Channel #5(thanks Sister) and mah head felt like i had been drinking champagne in the desert all night ...that being said i'll never take them both out for Bingo night at the VFW again

...and yes they are hawt in person...no photoshop needed!

Not all of them

But they've manged to get that nice natural chest look with the new Mother Mayhem model, so it must be possible to give us a similar look with the current engine.

Superheroes and spandex go together - but that's no reason not to show realistic fabric physics on their outfits.

Realistically the general solution might be for a new art asset for female models called perhaps "Tights 2" that is tights only, not tights and skin and has a singular panel of fabric bridging the cleavage canyon. I know I'd definitely use this for many of my more modest femmes.

And in the case of wanting to show some skin, we'll need to rely upon a handful of custom geometries that make good use of textures as the witches top and MM's new top both do. In this case I suppose a few more tops for variety of designs would be welcome, especially if they blend with skirts well and can be used to fake evening dresses.

But I know I'd get much more mileage out of the "Tights 2" option I describe above.

It is. Just don't go so huge or use the right costume pieces.

Like fabric that realisticly burned off when put on fire.

The 'separation' is actually not unrealistic; if not constrained by clothing, breasts do not point 'forward' from a woman's chest; lines drawn from the center of the base of each breast out through the nipples will angle out from directly forward somewhere loosely around 30°. It is the constraints of clothing that cause them to point forward (and one of the mistakes bad artists make is to have them pointing forward without something holding them that way).

Of course, the CoX skintight costume pieces must be made with a fine mesh of braided spider silk or aramid fiber to provide sufficient support in all directions to keep female characters' breasts from Gainaxing all over the place or requiring the devs to implement Jiggle Physics. I concede that it would be nice to have a choice for each of the skintight chest parts between skin-conforming and 'real material' styles; as it is now, the only way to get that effect across the chest is to use the 'armored' upper body type, which severely restricts the available costume pieces. But that's something to throw at the art department; I think it would take a different torso mesh (the game already does it for the 'armored' upper body types, so that's not a huge issue in itself) and all of the chest symbols would need to be checked to determine whether they need to be remapped, repositioned, or redesigned to work on that mesh.