Yesterday an acquaintance said on Twitter: “I’m pretty unimpressed with the graphics of CO. Jackets and other items look like crap. Only good costume is a sleek one.” (I’m not linking because this person has protected her updates.)
Y’know, she’s absolutely right. In the midst of having great fun making truly outlandish costumes for my Champions, I’d overlooked that the basics are so bad. Look at the Drifter pics in my last post. Look at how his pants drape around his shins. They look bloody awful. His shirt is totally nondescript and boring, too. There weren’t any ‘normal’ looking shirts — he’s wearing (iirc) a t-shirt with a ‘creased’ texture applied. No hats to speak of, either. Doh! Silly me, see comments for how badly I mangled this point.
Cryptic has done a great job with things like wings and other accessories, and if you’re making a spandex-clad Super you’re going to be fine. But if you’re trying to make someone more ‘normal’ looking, you’ll find your options are both limited and pretty bad.
I don’t know if Cryptic can fix this easily: my guess is that there’s more to it than just creating new art assets — there’re physics involved with cloth, after all. But I hope they can.
It was far easier to create a hero I liked the look of in City of Heroes than in Champions. I eventually came up with something pretty cool, but I could have designed three cool CoH characters in the same amount of time.
No hats? I think you might’ve missed the “Hats & Helmets” dropdown for the head, there are seven different cowboy hats (and a further mountie hat, just in case). Time for a visit to the tailor!
WHAT!???
OMG, thank you! I did totally miss that drop down somehow.
Now Drifter can get his cowboy hat. Thank you thank you thank you!
Yeah I did the same thing with the hats until my girlfriend pointed out the dropdowns to me.
Now I have several semi-“normal” looking characters going. Pretty happy with all of them except for the way the dramatic comic-style lighting puts their faces into a bundle of shadows.