Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

MultiLife · 2019-02-06 18:27:40

Thanks, I love this stuff too!

I personally like the mix and match genetics more, as it'd be a random mixture every time you load in - a very lootbox/surprise egg moment of fun (to me). I like the idea of not having any clue on what you'll end up looking like, and the fanart that could ensue - subtle and not so subtle differences of characters would colour them more as actual people from around the world (like their players are) than classes from a selection. But yes, I can see that it wasn't built for genetics and mixing. However, if eyes and mouths matched in their position, expressions would look better too - right now sad expression clips to jaw and looks pretty ridiculous and looks wonky on some faces.

It's not like the full package character approach doesn't work or is not as good, it's a preference question. A pool of cosmetics would in my mind be easier to make more and more diverse while full package characters are much less versatile. It's true that full packages act more like game characters though, and can act as mascots or recognizable parts of a game.

Maybe when we get to 100 characters (or around that number) it will feel more like genetic lottery, but I can't help but wish it was an actual genetic lottery! There is just something really intriguing there, vanity RNG. But yes if one would go with genetic lottery, a lot would need to be rehauled, redesigned and programmed for it.

MultiLife · 2019-02-06 18:31:40

Another thing regarding fanart - I am actually rather discouraged to draw the same guy again once I drew them already. I lived some cool lives as the curly haired man and the bob cut girl, but when I draw fanart of these four different lives (with these two skins), it looks like they are the same people I'm drawing. If it was so that in the other life the guy was a man with curly black hair and with different shaped eyes, I'd be way more interested to draw both guys and both lives as they already have some differences to work with - and exaggerate their differences to ensure they have their own identities.

Like let's say bob cut girl Lila lived a dangerous hunting life. I draw the hunter girl Lila with her bob cut and some clothes she wore. She has a serious face and that's who she was as a person.
Then I draw bob cut girl Opal who was a village teacher and had many fans. I draw her with her clothes too.
Then I look at the two, and well. It looks like Lila and Opal are the same girl with different phases of her life. I want to keep true to the original design of the characters but I can't exaggerate much to make them more different but not too far from the original.
Now let's say two more artists live a cool life as bob cut girl. They draw their hippie bob cut girl and their supermom bob cut girl. Again, it looks like the same girl and she is always doing something else, my bob cut girls feel less and less special. If all of those girls had different eyes, hair details and some cool little quirks like beauty marks to them, they'd be totally different people with identities straight off the bat.

Last edited by MultiLife (2019-02-06 21:04:18)

Anshin · 2019-02-07 12:53:03

jasonrohrer wrote:

Love this stuff!
Here's the problem:
The characters are currently hand-made. I draw eyes, scan the eyes in, and then hand-place the eyes in the best possible position, relative to the mouth, head, hair, etc.
Furthermore, there are multiple stages to the eyes, mouth, and hair, for the various stages of life, that are all tied together (but they are different sprites). Each of these usually needs to be placed and adjusted by hand to get it to look right (so the "elderly eyes" line up with the "young eyes" and don't visually "jump" when the age transition happens, while also being positioned well relative to the elderly mouth and hair).
And beyond just position, I also hand-draw the parts of the character to go together. The one with curly hair has kinda crazy eyes and a flat mouth to go with it (gives her a kind of Salad Fingers vibe). Those go together. And the hair color, and eye shape, etc, also are drawn intentionally to go along with the skin tone. I think about each character as a whole package.
Yes, it's possible to procedurally mix and match these things, like Mr. Potato Head. But they simply won't look as good as the hand-made characters, for all of the above reasons.
Also... I think there is actually something special about the specific characters, and there being a fixed number of them (currently 18, more coming soon). You can get to know them. You can fan art them. You can name them in your mind (blondie, elvis, braids, etc).
As I keep adding more (my goal is 100 eventually, but no promises), there will be more and more variety, and less and less seeing the same characters repeat, while still keeping each character unique and recognizable.

If I wanted a proc-genned character system (like Mewgenics), I would have designed the whole character engine differently (whole banks of eyes, whole banks of hair, etc). Instead, I decided to hand-draw specific characters, and have a whole lot of them.

I'm really hoping you change your mind. The very fact that people have come up with specific names for specific sprites underlines the problem. They've become stereotypes and it's counterproductive to the idea that each life is truly unique. Over time it really drains the game of it's "wow factor" and becomes stale to be the same person over and over. All the effort of your hand made characters deserve expansion. It adds so much to the game to see exponentially more variations of humanity, exponentially more variations of YOUR WORK! If you make 100 individual characters, and interchange the faces x bodies x hair that becomes 1,000,000 possibilities! Those sample sprites on page one look fantastic! Please let your people blossom into their full potential. Genetics is fun!

Thumbs up for Mewgenics... may Edmund McMillen ever finish the game.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-07 15:56:23

Well, one idea is to connect the "face" together as a package (these eyes always go with this mouth).

But even there, there's a problem. The shape of character's hair varies a lot, and I'm constantly adjusting the position of the eyes (and thus the mouth) relative to the bangs, part, or whatever. And on Men, then there's the beard too (which would have to be part of the face package in order to line up with the mouth, but then wouldn't make sense with different hair (red beard on black hair).

I think the emot mouths are anchored where the mouth is supposed to go, so yes, it won't always line up right.

And I worry that that type of "clipping" would be rampant in a proc-genned character system, unless the possibility space of each part was dramatically reigned in (the eyes are never bigger than W, the mouth never bigger than V). This results in all the characters looking kinda "same-ish", with nothing too crazy (like really big eyes, really high-set eyes, or a mouth that almost touches the eyes, or a squished, tiny face).

For comparison, consider the head and body system, which IS "Mr. Potato Head" in that everyone has the same body and head (potato) with only variation on skin tone. Everyone is the same height. Same arms/legs. Same walk.

Why is this?

So that the proc-genned parts of the game can work properly and always look good, namely clothing and object held positions. Clothing is mix-and-match. It always has to cover the body. Therefor, the body always needs to be exactly the same size and in the same position. Thus, no wide bodies or long bodies (because they'd stick out from under the coat, for example, and look awful).

There are other effectively-proc-genned parts of the game that are pretty craptastic (like the way two random items look on tiles next to each other, or the way a whole floor full of random items looks, an awful grid).

But I don't really want the entire game to have a craptastic "thrown together" look.

Also, the advent of new characters in the game has always been a pretty big deal in the community.... there would be none of that if it was just a basket of parts. "Jason just added new eyes and new hair today?"

I get how it's currently boring. I think with 100, it won't be so much.

jasonrohrer · 2019-02-07 16:04:12

Actually, for /SAD, the sad mouth is always in the same pos (so it doesn't ever stick out from the face), and the only ones it currently looks awful for are the guys with mustaches. For the beards, it looks okay, b/c the beard covers it up anyway.

But yeah, I HATE the way it looks for the mustaches.... Angry mouth has the same clash with mustaches. I may tweak the position forward a bit (which will make mustaches look better, but all the other SAD faces look worse).

It will never be perfect, though...

Can you imagine the "bug reports" about proc-genned characters that had weird feature overlaps?

MultiLife · 2019-02-07 16:25:23

Ooh if you ever need April Fools update ideas, do the crazy mixed faces! Women with beards, men with lush lashes! And it would be really crazy and clunky looking!

Last edited by MultiLife (2019-02-07 16:29:42)

InSpace · 2019-02-07 16:30:34

Aww, I love this, i'd go with mix and match rather than the same prefixed one all the time. It would give every life an even more unique feel!

I vote for genetics instead of premade

Galafalachida · 2019-12-04 05:38:53

jasonrohrer wrote:

As I keep adding more (my goal is 100 eventually, but no promises), there will be more and more variety, and less and less seeing the same characters repeat, while still keeping each character unique and recognizable.

YESSSSSSS!!
Someday, someday.
Ill wait for it! >:)

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2019-02-06 18:27:40

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#27 2019-02-06 18:31:40

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#28 2019-02-07 12:53:03

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#29 2019-02-07 15:56:23

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#30 2019-02-07 16:04:12

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#31 2019-02-07 16:25:23

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#32 2019-02-07 16:30:34

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

#33 2019-12-04 05:38:53

Re: Fun with genetics! (Pictures involved! UPDATED 2019)

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