little improvements in the portraits?

[Enravota]

As long as you can stack multiple transparent images on top of each other, you should be able to create different skin pigmentation. I'll illustrate with a very, very crude mockup:



You may be able to create a couple simple tint layers to make characters lighter or darker. I can't say for sure if this is a viable method until I can take a closer look at the graphics files for CK2--I'm sure there will be some complications...

That is actually quite nice solution, with the only down side of changing the eyes as well. It would require more than one "shade" overlay as not all faces would have the same outline (different ears and cheeks etc.).

 

[minispace]

Yes, those issues would probably make it more complicated to pull off. All of the variations in facial silhouette would increase the number of overlay combinations. Artists with more time on their hands could also give people different types of freckles, scars, beauty marks, warts, etc. along with the base tint.

As for the eyes, you could always reduce the tint's opacity over them so they don't get too dark, or maybe you can render the eyes over the tint layer, but below the sunglasses layer

 

[SlyEcho]

Why not use the same mechanic that is used for hair and eye color?

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Because this would simply lead to all the races looking the same apart from the colour. Different races have different shapes to parts of their faces and bodies. Subtle differences in some cases, but there nonetheless. After all, to take it to an extreme, imagine just blacking up a picture of a white scandinavian to fill in for a black african.

 

[Nick B II]

Why not use the same mechanic that is used for hair and eye color?

Because there is no mechanic for hair and eye color.

Your eyes are selected by the precise tga-file a certain digit of the DNA points to. There's a chance kids get their mother's eyes, their father's eyes, some other ancestors eyes, or get a mutation.

The layer-on-skin thing might work. And it would be a lot easier to implement in the existing game-engine then anything else that's been proposed. Getting the right layers for the right portraits is not gonna be easy, tho.

But even that's not really doable in two weeks.

@Lyndworm:
Depends on the region of Africa. Somalis have physical features that are pretty close to Swedes. The major non-color difference between a Somali face and a Scandinavian face is probably hair.

Nick

 

[Captain Gars]

How come this is so difficult to understand?

Currently skin color is determined somehow like this in the character file

IF culture = Maghreb THEN skin_color = brown

and you'd just change it to

IF mother_skincolor = brown THEN skin_color = brown

It's not magic.

The only magical thing in this thread is your solution above...

This reminds me of a joke. Someone calls a photo studio and asks "can you remove a hat on a picture?" the clerk says "sure, what kind of haircut do you want the person to have?" and the client replies "can't you see when you remove the hat?".

That's funny, because it's true.

 

[unmerged(30939)]

I've played around with the Sengoku portrait files and the image data is all full 32bit ARGB. I would think the CK2 files would also be like this so I don't see why semi-transparent layers wouldn't be possible.

 

[unmerged(436829)]

The only magical thing in this thread is your solution above...

You have my permission to use it if you put my name in the credits

 

[InnocentIII]

Sorry if this is OT, but nobody's saying that if an individual moves from one court to another that their look changes, right? I'm not sure I got the technical discussion of how things are done in CK2 or at least Sengoku.

<hoping for hot Arab princess bride>
<don't want a frumpy goth or Mathilda-look-alike-without-the-land showing up instead>

Reminder: only 14 more days to completely change the portrait art!

 

[Willem IV]

I would pay for a DLC that handles minispace's solution. you could have a DNA modifier of it, and mixing it with the parents. a child can have any color within the range of both parents. a 10 paleness father and a 6 paleness mother could have a 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 paleness kid.

 

[Nick B II]

Sorry if this is OT, but nobody's saying that if an individual moves from one court to another that their look changes, right? I'm not sure I got the technical discussion of how things are done in CK2 or at least Sengoku.

<hoping for hot Arab princess bride>
<don't want a frumpy goth or Mathilda-look-alike-without-the-land showing up instead>

Reminder: only 14 more days to completely change the portrait art!

From what I understand race is determined entirely by culture.

So as long as your hot Arab Princess does not acculturate she'll still use the Arab portraits.

If, OTOH, you manage o get her to your Court when she's 15, and you make a Welsh chick with great stats her guardian, she could change culture. Then she'd magically morph white.

Nick

 

[Jia Xu]

From what I understand race is determined entirely by culture. So as long as your hot Arab Princess does not acculturate she'll still use the Arab portraits. If, OTOH, you manage o get her to your Court when she's 15, and you make a Welsh chick with great stats her guardian, she could change culture. Then she'd magically morph white. Nick

Really? Really?

Captain Gars, please say this isn't so!

 

[Maginor]

Really? Really?

Captain Gars, please say this isn't so!

From all the previews I have seen, this is how it works.

 

[Jia Xu]

From all the previews I have seen, this is how it works.

Maybe we can guilt them into changing it using liberal PC attacks. Are there any British Muslims here who can claim to be really offended by the notion that any Arab who subscribes to English culture must be a white person underneath?

 

[InnocentIII]

If, OTOH, you manage o get her to your Court when she's 15, and you make a Welsh chick with great stats her guardian, she could change culture. Then she'd magically morph white.

You make me sad.

 

[Nick B II]

You make me sad.

Then don't make a Welsh chick your Arab hotties tutor.

Culture changes in CK2 aren't that hard to avoid if you really want to.

Nick

 

[Jia Xu]

Culture is a social construct. It shouldn't be linked to physical, biological characteristics. Why would PI put so much effort into the DNA system and then get lazy when it comes to race?

 

[Virginian Gent]

I haven't been following too closely but this thread seems to imply that the Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards will all be pasty and the same complexion as English. Is that so?

 

[Nimic]

From what I understand race is determined entirely by culture.

So as long as your hot Arab Princess does not acculturate she'll still use the Arab portraits.

If, OTOH, you manage o get her to your Court when she's 15, and you make a Welsh chick with great stats her guardian, she could change culture. Then she'd magically morph white.

Nick

Wait.. really? That's actually pretty damn ridiculous. If this happens (or rather, when this happens), it will be incredibly immersion breaking. I realize it might not be an easy thing to fix at all, and seems like a relatively inconsequential issue... but with the immersion aspect in mind, this is one of the things you would think they would try to really get right.

 

[Gwyn ap Nud]

minispace's method, I think, works really well, and can be easily improved on by, say, adding eyes and clothes and stuff, after, so that they aren't coloured by the tint. An example layering system being
basic head shape/silhouette + ears/nose/chin/cheeks/brow + skin colour tinting + eyes/hair/facial hair/mouth/eyebrows/anything you don't want tinted + clothes + accessories. All of which, of course, would be inheritable, clothes and accessories aside. Clothes and accessories could be changed depending on culture, but the rest should be straight inheritance matrices.