Facial Animation

[Plastiware]

Does anyone else feel that the player characters in Blockland are a bit lacking in life?  How about a little facial animation?  Basically, each face that the player can select from the avatar options menu would have multiple textures that the game would use depending on the circumstances.  Some possible examples:

• Blinking at regular intervals.
• Mouth movement when chatting.
• Lovestruck (love), angry (hate), confused (confusion), surprised (alarm), and happy (win) faces to go with the various emotes.
• By extension, angry face while/shortly after using a weapon.
• Also by extension, happy face after finding treasure.
• Pain, low-health, and dead faces.
• Closed eyes (and maybe Z emote) when the player hasn't moved in at least five minutes.
  

Of course, this is probably not an idea that anyone can just mod into the game; it would have to be an official update for it to really work, and I'm sad to know that this idea will likely never get that far.  Still, a man can dream, right?

[Ad Bot]

[Lamebro1]

Really good idea,i hope Badspot sees this topic.

[YourBuddyBill]

If the Terrorface doesn't animate like the rest of them, that keeps Renderman creepy.

[Plastiware]

Oh yeah; SetExpression events would be neat too.  This could be useful for making zombies constantly look dead.

[xxxxkill]

This would require many, many decals.
Even more than we have now.
For every decal we have, we need 15 more decals for each one.
You can see the problems this would present.
Not to mention that this kind of script would be similar to having the "Rainbow_Player" script, which changes body part colors. This works on a similar principle.
It would, indeed, provide a bit more atmosphere, however, it would increase download times and require thousands of lines of code.

[Demian]

Or make the engine work with GIFs.

[Plastiware]

This would require many, many decals.
Even more than we have now.
For every decal we have, we need 15 more decals for each one.
You can see the problems this would present.
Not to mention that this kind of script would be similar to having the "Rainbow_Player" script, which changes body part colors. This works on a similar principle.
It would, indeed, provide a bit more atmosphere, however, it would increase download times and require thousands of lines of code.

Ideally, this would not be an addon, but a part of the actual game, so none of these would really be problems.  All players would already have all the face decals needed, and rather than update the player's avatar entirely, the game would just draw a different texture on the player's face depending on the situation.

Also, all the various faces would add up to no more than 13, and that's if you include eyes closed and mouth open sub-faces for low health.

[xxxxkill]

Or make the engine work with GIFs.

Would this require any major changes?

Ideally, this would not be an addon, but a part of the actual game, so none of these would really be problems.  All players would already have all the face decals needed, and rather than update the player's avatar entirely, the game would just draw a different texture on the player's face depending on the situation.

Also, all the various faces would add up to no more than 13, and that's if you include eyes closed and mouth open sub-faces for low health.

If you think about it, one face would require 13 decals.
Throw in custom decals that don't work with the code, and shazam.
99 problems.

Seriously, this has been suggested, and might be horribly inefficient. Blinking would be fine, as that would only require the regular face and a slight edit, but the rest would be going too far IMO.

[popman98]

This was done. There was a video of it.

Someone might be able to make a blinking face.

[Isaac Fox]

Support.

This was done. There was a video of it.

Someone might be able to make a blinking face.

Are you sure you're not thinking of Block Eye Entertainment's animated Blockland videos?

[Extrude]

Bad idea, been suggested hundreds of times before.

[xxxxkill]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Block Eye Entertainment's animated Blockland videos?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bPPGbRSxbM

[Plastiware]

I feel that this idea's detractors are missing the point.  I think it could work beautifully, but it would probably require some modifications to the basic way the game works.  I'm not asking that someone makes this an add-on, because it would suck.

[-Jetz-]

Bad idea, been suggested hundreds of times before.

Where?

I think a better place to start would be replacing our current decal system with one that layers facial features, like eyes, mouth, hair, and details, onto the face, for more freedom in customization. Then these features could have alternative and animated textures defined for emotion.

[Rusty]

Bad idea, been suggested hundreds of times before.

Please go and insert your bad attitude into the nearest bin.