Jan 2020
43 / 76
Jan 2020
Jan 2020
Iris-Grimoire
Jan '20
NickRowler

I stand corrected. Though, that really depends on how important the character is. If it's a full on story mode you really can't transplant a rig, like the other poster said, but if it's just to populate a world with people doing random actions, everyone is probably going to look unnatural to begin with, so it's a little harder to talk about difficulty there. It keeps going from a general subject and back to that specific company's problem of playable characters, so I think a lot of people in the thread are making arguments that don't always direct to each other even if they're right.

And yeah, not breaking joints ends up looking meh especially in games with a heavier melee focus. Everyone jokes that Bayonetta doesn't move like a normal person with the 8 heads height, but that platinum polish wouldn't be as satisfying if the combos just had her doing normal punches and kicks instead of defying gravity to jab, which is also assisted by very big effects and smashing sounds.

DokiDokiTsuna
Jan '20

...Oh dear...well, this blew up...
Damn, now I wish I could've been here for this, but I was busy freaking out about school (not working, just freaking out).

However, being late to the party never stopped me before. ;] * cracks knuckles *

...I genuinely don't think you understood a word I said. ._.
But, to answer to your weird question/accusation: YES, I recognize that people are different everywhere. That was literally my point.

Which is why I said that arguing that your female model REQUIRES all these extra animations because "realism" and because "women don't__" doesn't make any sense.

Funny how that works...

One video from one group of people naming their own reasons (which could totally be legit) does not disprove my whole argument.
That's like saying because one person killed in self defense, my criticism of murders should be retracted.

A. We don't?
B. Aaand just like that, this argument has collapsed. '_'

This is just my opinion, but: nah, art can totally be offensive. ^^ The whole point of expressing yourself in art is to reach other people's feelings and affect them with your work.

Well, guess what? Sometimes you affect people negatively. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Whether their particular source of offense is "warranted" or not really depends on the era and culture, but no matter where or when you are, not everyone is gonna look at what you do and go "wow I really hate this but y'know artistic freedom GREAT JOB BUDDY!!1!"

As a critically thinking creative, I took offense to some other creatives' actions and gave the reasons why. I think everyone should have the freedom to do that.

Anatomy is NOT a social construct, but it IS based on averages. And once you've learned basic scientific reading comprehension, you realize that 'average' automatically means 'not everyone'.

Not every woman's pelvis is 'wider' enough to make a dramatic difference in the way they walk. And even if it is, sometimes their body fat distribution makes it hard to tell (thigh gaps are not nearly as prevalent as media would have you believe).

And take this with a grain of salt, but from my personal experience in people-watching, the 'dramatic difference' is really not that dramatic to begin with. Like, if you saw someone walking towards you from 200 ft away, I doubt you could tell if they were male or female simply by the way their body moved. The differences are very subtle, so much so that if you were to just give everyone the same walk cycle I don't think you'd catch hell for it. 9_9

To be honest, I think 90% of what people imagine is "the female walk" is actually just the result of wearing heels, which actually DO change the way you walk dramatically and noticeably. They push your butt out, force you onto your toes, make you lift your knees and swing your hips to compensate, all that. But (a) women don't always wear heels (crazy, I know) and (b) if men wear heels, their gaits should change similarly...just food for thought.

That wasn't my argument. ._. What I was saying was, if you really can't be bothered to do your homework or just flat out don't care, why not just admit it, or even stay silent, rather than make up a bunch of pseudo-intellectual BS to "prove" to everyone that you shouldn't be expected to care.

TAMAnnoyingThe Cow
Jan '20
NickRowler

As a large Brest women I can say that the one accurate thing about that run is the arms up to hold your balloons. They need more support that bras are made for unfortunately. That’s pretty much the only time the anime ballon Physics at least feel accurate. XD

AVXP
Jan '20
DokiDokiTsuna

It was from the developers of the game.
A better source than the rep you sampled to inspire this thread.

Epic Fail! Kotaku & PC Gamer Try Shame Escape From Tarkov Developer (Ends Badly For Them)

There's more to this story.
And still the bigger issue is freedom of the creator.

Skip to the good part

Epic Fail! Kotaku & PC Gamer Try Shame Escape From Tarkov Developer (Ends Badly For Them)
DokiDokiTsuna
Jan '20

There's just one problem with that...I wasn't referring to any specific game. Many of the arguments I saw that inspired this thread were, but I was not. =/

So, yeah. One video from one group of people naming their own reasons does not disprove my whole GENERAL argument.

AVXP
Jan '20

lol. okay then...

Who is saying that and who said that?

DokiDokiTsuna
Jan '20

No one, obviously! It's a hypothetical example of a bogus explanation based on all of the ones that I've seen, the ones that I JUST SAID l used to form this GENERAL argument.

Dude, if you prefer to believe that I'm lying, fine, but I feel I should warn you that you're gonna have a hard time proving it. When I want to call out a specific writer, or the creative team responsible for a specific body of work, I do it. I've done it before, several times.

The reason I didn't do it here is because I simply DO NOT HAVE that information. This is an opinion piece, nothing more. You can accept that, or you can continue looking for things that aren't there.

AVXP
Jan '20

lol

At least we agree on one thing today.

CarltonIsaac
Jan '20
DokiDokiTsuna

Yes, that happens to everyone. It is then up to the person affected to either ignore that or throw an attention seeking hissy fit. That depends entirely on the maturity level of each individual.

LordVincent
Jan '20

I mean it does also depend on other things relevant to the situation. If we are talking about a depiction that puts a group of people back in terms of the rights, freedom and respect they earn from people at large, then it's not just a matter of choosing to either ignore it or be "immature".

Let's not forget certain attitudes are straight up dangerous. Women are being harrassed, injured or killed every day for not giving men what they want. Writing and depiction that leaves the image of women being a package of sex, nurture and childbearing on a pair of legs contributes to this because men learn to believe it is what they are owed, and thus believe themselves to be justified in treating women horribly should they reject them.

This doesn't mean independent artists are personally responsible for every bad thing a woman has to withstand!!! But if someone raises the concern over a certain depiction on behalf of all the suffering that it may contribute to, then I wouldn't call that immature.

Whether an artist that cares about the issue should change their approach to female characters or not also depends on a case by case basis, someone being upset or calling things problematic doesn't automatically mean a depiction is bad or problematic. It's worth having a discussion about it if the concern is raised, and there is no one size fits all answer. For example in the cat woman/batman example you could argue that parts of the depiction were justified. Her exaggerated walk does after all resemble the sway and movements of a proud and cunning cat. But if every woman in the game walks like that... well, that's a problem.

wrentemple
Jan '20

Delaney spells it out incredibly well.

Mostly a case of blend-shapes and re-targeting animation.
With todays tools it's not quite the gargantuan task it's been made out to be.

This is a case of the Devs writing up a macho-male power fantasy type game and then trying to justify that instead of just admitting they didn't, or didn't want to write women into the game.

Personality/character specific animation is certainly a thing, Gender specific is most definitely not(or needn't be).
And in the kind of game this discussion stemmed from, it'd make no sense to differentiate.

user400
Jan '20

"Incredibly well" aren't the words I'd use. :unamused:
It was an angry holier-than-thou rant that assumed everyone has access to the same resources as whoever she's been working with.

wrentemple
Jan '20

Holier-than-thou maybe, but...
The thread mentions all of the low-cost, readily available alternatives.
(or one of the lrt's does)
So no, she really doesn't. The whole point is the resources are readily available.
(The responses were over-blown, as always on twitter, but the dev statement was poorly-worded. People immediately related it to the Ubisoft crap some years back)

But I've been informed this isn't a Tarkov based topic, so I'm not here to argue the toss.

My thoughts on animating specifically(something I was trained in[3D])
Gendered animation is poopy, however, we're all so pre-disposed to seeing certain movements and mannerisms as masculine or feminine BECAUSE of animation ahah

The old Disney classics, and 2D animation in general, really did a number on us.
Every man was a puffed up dorito, and every woman was always on a cat-walk.
(An exaggeration to be sure, but something that slowly and steadily built up biases)

In recent years the trend has shifted somewhat.
Mo-cap especially, has shown us that men and women move pretty much then same way unless trained to move in a specific manner.
You could re-target simple mocap animations between men and women and not know the difference
Habits and mannerisms should build the walk, not what's between your legs.

Conscious iterations on shape-language and design feed into this as well. We're so programmed by what reads as feminine/masculine that it becomes harder and harder to break that mould

Darth_Biomech
Jan '20
wrentemple

Ah yes, sure, because everything's a political statement nowadays apparently.

I also noticing, not for first or third time, how in these rants those people are always only answering to either those who agree with them or those who make simple objections, but never to people who raise valid counterarguments, like "what if I can't use zbrush and morphs and retargets because my game is hand-drawn 2d animation?".

Thankfully you can sidestep the issue entirely by just simply making your game's player character female as the only available option. For the time being, anyway... I'm sure people will eventually find some other angle of attack to harass developers.

LordVincent
Jan '20

... questioning and critiquing = harrassment now?

I have people question and react to my content on a daily basis. Some have negative feelings about my creative choices, and sometimes someone brings up things I really need to reconsider. Being questioned and learning new things is just part of being a creative producer of any form. If they want to work with it, they need to get used to it.

Now if anyone involved actually has been harrassed (death threats, lies spread, repeated verbal attacks against individuals rather than discussions of their choices....) that's not okay. Harrassing people is never okay, no matter the motive of those doing it. But I'm not sure actual harrassment is relevant here?

liquidlilium
Jan '20
1
wrentemple

Gendered animation might be stupid in many cases but that doesn't negate the need for sexed animation in many (especially realistic) styles.

It's true a lot of people overestimate the sexed difference for mannerism and body language, almost all of those differences are only caused by people following gender stereotypes. But that doesn't negate a different physiology (that goes beyond just skeletal structure) and centre of gravity.

There's also many environment and story settings where adding gender non-conforming characters requires narrative adaption as well. Which means more work for writers and programmers. I personally would love more gnc characters and there's many games I never bought because the game wasn't interesting to me if I couldn't play as a lesbian. So I do get being disappointed by a lack of options, but at the end of the day just buy another game and maybe politely tell the developers why you didn't buy theirs.

(Seriously, more people who care about diversity need to put their money where their mouth is and actually buy the indie games that cater to them)

And not having the time or money to add a diversity option, even sometimes if it just a re-skin and not new models and animation from the ground up, is sometimes a valid excuse. Just because some lucky developers never had to cut features or prioritise away options they were aware some people wanted doesn't mean it never happens.

Darth_Biomech
Jan '20
1
LordVincent

One thing questioning or critiquing (when it's justified, mind you), but a lot of people are jumping on the "you don't have X in your games\fiction, this means you hate X!" line of thought with frightening eagerness. I remember too well the shitstorm about some Czech developers apparently being racists because their mindbogglingly faithful to being historically accurate game set in a medieval eastern Europe didn't had any African-americans in it.

Regardless, saying "If they say they can't afford implementing a female character then punch them in the head" is neither a questioning nor is it a critique.

TAMAnnoyingThe Cow
Jan '20
1

Mk so taking a step back from the pop culture wars-

The actual question that should be asked when dealing with new animations is
https://media3.giphy.com/media/RWDPIYOPlIkUg/giphy.gif

Ultimately- as a game developer you are making a game- and the first and foremost thing when making games is game play and how players are going to be interacting with the game play. Even with visual novels their is still a lot of time and energy put into what the player is doing as they are reading text- is it a murder mystery? Should they be paying attention to the background? Will their be journals for the player or are they expected to write their own notes with a piece of paper?

This is all important to get right even before you get the writing down. >how things are animated is kind of flavor< in comparison to getting game play down- having your story make sense- and making sure the game isn’t broken on release with a bunch of glitches.

Having two different animations for character models is incredibly secondary. Is it nice? Yes. Is it needed? Depends on the game.

Is the game an indie game that only exists because it got a kickstarter and has a bunch of passionate people backing it but still have their own day jobs that they have to do? Is it a role play game? Is it a game where theirs only one character to choose from so you and all NPCs have the same exact animations? Are the models made in 3D or 2D?

You can say “hey these tools are becoming more and more accessible” and you’d be right, but you know what doesn't bend to your will? Time and money management-

Maybe this is the retailer side of me but people have teams- and they have to pay their teams for the time and dedication for these projects. These projects have deadlines and if you want to meet deadlines then you have to make people work longer hours as well start paying overtime which some indie and Kickstarter companies don’t have the time and means to do.

Having multiple animations for characters is great especially in role play games cause then I can customize the shit out of a character. But ultimately I want a game that works and is well made, and sometimes that means cutting aspects of the project to fine tune other parts of it.

Most of the time the idea behind “multiple animations would have cost more” is much more complicated then that. But the company doesn’t have to explain to you -that the reasons are the power went out and they had no air conditioning for two weeks so they cut hours so their team wasn’t suffering working on heat boxes with no air and lost several hours of work because of it-

skicoak
Jan '20
liquidlilium

This is the simplest boil down to it.

And then understand that not EVERY demographic is going to be happy with every game. Economics is a guiding force in all of this...developers don't have an infinite well of time and resources. So if Developer X chooses to channel their efforts towards a certain slice of the market, that's their decision.

Only economics will change what's a profitable demographic to chase.

Darth_Biomech
Jan '20
liquidlilium

I never really understood that position as well, to be honest.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character is female.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character is Asian.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character doesn't have ginger hair.
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character have moral values that don't align with mine (Although in this case - usually).
I wouldn't refrain to buy a game I'm interested in if I found out that the main character isn't a human.
Hell, I probably wouldn't even refrain from buying an interesting game if it would carry a disgusting anti-intellectual and offensive message "science is bad" or "we shouldn't go in space".

Those things are all sound so minor in comparison to stuff that usually gets me interested in the game, I can't quite wrap my head around dropping it because of that. It's like "I'll pass this because it doesn't have enough color yellow in it".