Heroes of Champions Online II

By Shamus Posted Thursday Sep 24, 2009

Filed under: Pictures 82 comments

I’m afraid I’ve let you down again. No Fuel / procedural content post today. No good excuse, really, except that I’ve been playing a grotesque amount of Champions Online. Here, let me show you:

This is <a href="http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/1056303">Concealed Carrie</a>.  Her bio: My mommy says it’s wrong to hit people. So I shoot them. I’m also not allowed to talk to strangers. So I shoot them, too. </p>
<p>Are you a stranger?
This is Concealed Carrie. Her bio: My mommy says it’s wrong to hit people. So I shoot them. I’m also not allowed to talk to strangers. So I shoot them, too.

Are you a stranger?

I’ve spotted a few other people going for the “cute little girl superheroine” concept, although most people mess it up and just make their character small. She ends up looking like a tiny adult. If you want a little kid:

  1. Go short, obviously.
  2. Make the head nearly as large as possible.
  3. Eyes should be really big. 90% -ish.
  4. Eyes should be as low on the head as possible. You’ll need to move the cheeks down a bit as well to keep them from interfering.
  5. Ears should be a little large.
  6. Turn muscle way down, and body mass down.
  7. Maybe nudge the feet and hands up a little in size.
  8. Shorten the limbs.

The common approach is to have a little kid with a really violent superpower like swords, claws, dark magic, or somesuch. Concealed Carrie is a munitions character, and she became my main the moment I discovered the joy of the Lead Tempest power. Did you see Christian Bale in Equilibrium? How they did that gun kata thing? Well, you get to do that. And it is awesome. Especially as a twelve year old girl.

I’ve pretty much built the character around leaping into groups of guys and then shredding the group from within in a fountain of bullets. I also use the assault rifle for when someone gets ornery. A lot of people swear by the minigun, but I haven’t run the numbers to see which is better from a time / power drain / damage output perspective. And even if I’m not getting 100% combat performance out of her, she’s still a lot of fun.

co_char17.jpg

Thematically, she should absolutely use speed or (even better) acrobatics as her travel power, but I learned the hard way that the designers of Champions Online have a cruel and malignant hatred of non-flying characters and have designed this world in order to torment them. The guys on buildings, the inexplicable cliff in the middle of the city, the rat-maze canyons in the desert, and the un-scalable mountains in Canada: These are things that will impede you on the way to fun if you cannot escape the embrace of gravity. Really, they should give speed runners the ability to run up walls for a short distance, and acrobats should get some sort of Prince of Persia style wall jump that angles upward. Both types of travelers need a way to move without needing to wade through every damn mook in the world while their flying compatriots effortlessly cruise by overhead. If you’ve never tried to go up six flights of spiraling steps in a third person game just so you can see if the guy you’re looking for is up there, then you’ve never really understood what it means to suffer. The camera doesn’t know what the hell to show you.

For Carrie, I compromised and went for swinging. Swinging is still slower than flying and is useless indoors, but at least I can get over the walls of the maze without straying too far from my character concept.

I’m not sure what inspired me to make her. I think after going through The Path I wanted to balance things out and play a little girl who could kick some ass.

And speaking of Little Red Riding Hood, here is someone Star on Chest ran into in the starting zone:

co_char12.jpg

And here is someone else, in the same zone at the same time:

co_char13.jpg

And here is the conversation they had:

co_char14.jpg

The puns on these two made me laugh:

co_char16.jpg

I love these wings:

co_char18.jpg

You have to see them in motion for the full effect, but I think they’re magnificent.

EDIT: And here is the world’s most awesome tooltip:

co_dsp.jpg

Yeah. “DSP” turns “DSP” mode on and off. Awesome. Good thing every single person in the world will instantly know what DSP is and why they might want to make it on or not on. I mean, naturally I know what DSP is. Naturally. I’m not some rube who goes around being ignorant of important things like DSP. But what if – and I’m just being hypothetical here – what if you met someone who didn’t know what DSP was? I mean, that would be hilarious, right? But how would you explain DSP to that person? Not that I’m asking. I mean, there’s no need, since I already know all about DSP. But I’m just wondering how some people would explain it using plain English.

 


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82 thoughts on “Heroes of Champions Online II

  1. Henebry says:

    I love Huggernaut, but I don't get Tai Li.

    1. Shamus says:

      Tai Li’s name isn’t funny, but she’s from the group “Fawlty Powers”.

  2. mc says:

    Wow, am I correct in thinking that you’re in EST, Shamus? You’re up early. If I hadn’t gone to bed early I couldn’t hope to function enough to post at this hour. :-)

    1. Shamus says:

      My sleep schedule is a complete wreck right now. I’m sleeping in random little 2 and three hour blocks. This happens to me sometimes, and I’m never sure why. At some point this weekend the chaos will suddenly stop and I’ll crash for ten hours. At which point I’ll learn what my new bedtime is. :)

  3. I’m impressed with the variety of the character costumes you can come up with

  4. DrKwang says:

    Are Concealed Carrie’s glowing arms a costume part or a power effect?

  5. Ol'Timer says:

    I really dig Carrie – reminds me of this 28mm hasslefree mini:

    http://www.hasslefreeminiatures.co.uk/pack.php?pack=1647

    I guess that’s what she’ll look like all grown up.

  6. Mazinja says:

    Oh yeah. Of course I know what DSP is. I mean, who doesn’t? Some kind of NOOBLET? Srsly.

    About Flying, I find that the one issue with it and other high-flying powers tends to be the Anti Air batteries scattered around some areas. Ow.

    I love Acrobatics in general because while it lacks the vertical mobility (and has a dozen aggro problems) of other travel powers… its so COOL to look at the character move around.

    … but then there’s the issue of some exploration perks being only available for those that have FLYING POWERS! :|

  7. Veloxyll says:

    Those black outlines are forever ruined for me by the terrible array of code known as Silverfall.

    And hehe @ 2 Red’s!

    But man, n00bs who don’t know what DSP is. Geez, what’s the world coming to!

  8. scope.creep says:

    I think that there are lots of Little Red Riding Hood characters around because there are so many wolves. I’ll admit to making a wolf character, Big Bad. I fail at names; I admit it. I even had my own encounter with a character dressed up in a big, red, hooded cape and (of course) skimpy bikini — L’il Red was the name. It was amusing for 30 seconds or so, then I got tired of hearing about grandma.

  9. mc says:

    It sounds kinda like adrenal fatigue, Shamus. Have you ever talked to your doctor about sleep?

  10. Mari says:

    Direct stock purchasing? Is that what DSP means? Your heroes can buy stock direct from the issuing corporation?

  11. Rhys Aronson says:

    Just a not you do get a second travel power at like level 35 or so.

    I’m really liking CO and I’m not normally into MMO’s (and I don’t read comics but its just good general fun and stylish as all hell.

    Say Hi if you see either of my characters

    Lady Defenestrator:

    http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/979368/biography

    or Lord Defenestrator:

    http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/1085122/biography

    Should set up Twenty Sided Superheros or something

  12. Lazlo says:

    sounds like you’re on your way to discovering your own brand of polyphasic sleep. Cyclical polyphasic sleep? Hmmmm….

  13. Rosseloh says:

    I don’t suppose they have a trial out of this yet? If it’s good enough, I bet I could convince my roommate to switch with me from CoH to this one….But I’d need to try it out first.
    Unfortunately my experience with MMOs is that the trial doesn’t come out until months after release…

  14. kikito says:

    ok, I’ll bite. What is DSP?

  15. BlckDv says:

    I feel your travel power pain. I’m operating two “mains” right now; Doylo my winged supernatural flyer (I am just waiting for a deeper Regeneration nerf, It still seems awesomely overpowered) is my solo play main, and Special Force my axe wielding military Dwarf tunneler is my playing with wife main. Sadly…. HER main can fly, and moving as a team has gotten so frustrating that I am using my free respec to give him Earth Fly, the very tenuous connection to his Dwarf concept that still allows actual enhanced travel.

    I’m glad you took swinging, my alt “The Jedi Ape” with swinging is my favorite character to just go exploring with. It is so much fun to let go on the upswing and catch yourself as you flail through the air…. none too precise for maneuvers, though.

    As an aside; Tunneling seems to be bugged anyway, it is supposed to make you invisible to enemies, but I have noticed Super Villain and Purple mobs frequently are happy to open fire on me as I dig my way past them.

    I am all for a Twenty Sided supergroup, or at least friends list, you can find me @Adidasu

  16. Rhys Aronson says:

    ah woops im @TheTallest

  17. MrPyro says:

    The irritating thing about googling for DSP is discovering how many people can’t spell DPS.

  18. Tuck says:

    The more I hear about this game the more it sounds exactly like City of Heroes…

    So what are the differences between them? Assuming there is more than one — the name.

  19. DKellis says:

    There are quite a lot of differences, depending on what you’re looking for. You could also compare this game to World of Warcraft (especially the quest structure), but it also has differences from that which would take longer than one comment to list out.

    Even the parts which seem similar may not be so: for example, CO and CoH seem to share the Character Creation praise, but the customization goes in different directions: CoH is Barbie with a huge wardrobe, while CO has much fewer outfits but is made of plasticine.

    It’s like the differences between, say, Fallout 3 and Fallout 2 (or Oblivion). Or Final Fantasy 6 and Final Fantasy 7.

    If I had to sum up the differences: CoH is an old game on an old engine that has had most of the bugs and kinks worked out, has had time to build up both reputation and capital, and is very comfortable with where it is at the moment, although it’s still looking to the future. (Much like WoW.) CO is a brand new game on a new engine, and it shows very painfully at times. It has potential, but that’s all it has right now.

  20. Kevin says:

    Dynamic sound processing or some such, I think.

  21. rofltehcat says:

    That Huggernaut guy is awesome :D

    So… what is DSP now, Shamus?

  22. eri says:

    DSP = Digital Signal Processing. Basically, what that does is implements real-time effects on the audio, like reverb and echo. If the game is more modern and sophisticated, it will have many different types of these, so a wide-open forest won’t have the same reverb as the inside of a submarine. It may also include things like sound occlusion. Many games these days have different effects applied depending on the speaker setup as well, and provide 3D positioning specific to each configuration. Some games go as far as to having proper 3D positioning with headphones, where an algorithm known as the Head-Related Transfer Function is used to simulate how sound in a 3D space enters the ear (“virtual surround” essentially, similar to Creative’s CMSS-3D technology).

    But yeah, I can understand why most people wouldn’t know, if they’re not into audio mixing or programming.

  23. Factoid says:

    DSP Stands for Digital Signal Processing:

    It’s a very wide ranging field that encompasses everything from speech recognition to audio filtering during the digital-to-analog conversion process as you output to your speakers.

    Even KNOWING what DSP means I still don’t know what turning it on or off would actually do.

    My best guess would be that since this is an MMO it almost certainly has a built in voice chat system, yes? DSP is probably used to filter background audio out of the mic input.

  24. mavis says:

    One of my biggest problems with Champions online is travel. I created a gorilla – I took acrobatics – I find it almost impossible to get anywhere without getting beaten half to death.

    I know travel agro is a feature of about 90% of games – but given that anybody with flying can just ignore it – why they left it in is a mystery to me.

  25. krellen says:

    The differences between Fallout 3 and Fallout 2 are a bit more prominent than the differences between the Myth and Oblivion.

    Shamus is making CoH and CO seem similar because he is concentrating largely on the part that really draws him – character creation and the flexibility afforded there – which is probably the one part where they differ the least. His review of CoH centred largely around the creator as well.

  26. Drew says:

    Another meaningful difference between CoH and CO as I understand it is that CoH runs on a Mac.

  27. chabuhi says:

    I tried making a little avatar for my daughter on the 360, but there’s just no avoiding the breasts. And certain clothes just make it all too obvious that the avatar is not actually a little girl and then all I can think about is in ten years when she’s out in the Wild on her own and the boys are all trying to get around her defenses and I forgot to renew my concealed carry license and her brother is in college and not around to take the fall for me beating the crap out of said boys and how am I going to pay for her wedding when I’m in prison somebody please write to Oprah so this kind of tragedy never happens again!!

  28. Galenor says:

    I’ve been having a great time making heroes in this game.
    When you buy a new car, you have to say what make it is. When you buy a new computer, you have to say its specs. When you buy a hero game, you have to show your heroes.

    It’s just…mandatory.

    Some may remember that I asked if you could make a character with a top hat, handlebar moustache and monocle. On hearing that I could, I set out to make my main: Lord Weathertail.

    http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-53-56.jpg

    His bio looks like this:

    “Lord Weathertail is a man who knows honor and virtue when he sees it. Which is why when villains began to fight near his home – disturbing his weekly peruse of Butterflies Today Magazine – he decided that what this generation needs is honor applied to the face, and virtue crammed up their backside.
    With a steady hand and calculating mind, which could only have been honed through years of stamp collection and model assembly, he began to build the tools with which he would teach kids of today.”

    The word count limit kills me. :(

    I then decided to try my hand at another hero. I had a plan of action, but that went quickly down the drain when a combination of an admirals hat, and the perfect pirate beard, snowballed into Captain Dreadclaw.

    http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-58-37.jpg

    He’s a Might character, and owns what I call the ‘Super Mario Power’ – Super Jump. It’s the most fun travel power I have come across. Add to that the fact that Dreadclaw has the ability to either…

    – Deal massive damage to anyone in front of him and send them flying 50 feet, or
    – Deal MASSIVE damage to one person in front of him and send them flying 50 feet

    …means he’s quickly becoming a favorite. :D

    And finally, I just had to give the Hero creator to my older sister, who spends more time designing, creating, and writing backstory for Sims families than actually playing the game. Upon utilizing the Hero creator, she felt it was her duty to ensure that every single drop down menu had an option in it. Bracers, Back, Arm Accessories, you name it: it had an option in it. ‘None’ was another way of saying ‘Boring’. As a result, she finally accumulated an hours-worth of tinkering into Theia.

    http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-59-29.jpg

    Dear lord. :P

  29. Alrenous says:

    You got your desired definition of DSP, but in case it happens again… Their first result for DSP is the one given here.

    Star on Chest is still the soul of awesome.

  30. Pickly says:

    Even KNOWING what DSP means I still don't know what turning it on or off would actually do. ,/i>

    I noticed this when googling to figure out what it was.

    (From the other explanation comment above, it does seem surprising that they didn’t just call it “echo and reverberation” or something along this lines)

  31. RIck says:

    “I tried making a little avatar for my daughter…but there's just no avoiding the breasts.”

    This, even on CoH. I swear if either of the two games (or even DCUO) puts models in for children, they’ll have me for life.

    I guess boobage is what you need to expect when your target audience is pre- and pubecent boys (yes, even us 38-year-old boys). ;)

  32. Randy Johnson says:

    I see you still have comic outline on. I cannot recommend enough that you atleast try the game with that option turned off. I thought the graphics on Champions were terrible until I discovered they were intentionally spitting in the face of their graphics with the intention of making it more comicy.

  33. Ergonomic Cat says:

    chabuhi: My daughter developed at about 12. And she is, as my wife delicately puts it, “big up top.” She’s also a gamer. I have lived in mortal fear for 3 years. Luckily, she still thinks “dating” means setting facebook status and then hanging out for an hour at school after classes are done.

    I had one char with Acrobatics because it’s awesome. Everyone else is flying, swinging or tp because they work.

    I think CO and CoH are really very different. They start from the same base but go off wildly. CO is mostly open world. CoH is mostly instanced missions. CO is hugely (often painfully) flexible. CoH has Archetypes, which are constricting to a degree, but help define you.

    CoH is about sight lines and grouping (friendly and enemy). CO is about action, blocking, and self-sufficiency.

    I can’t see a rad/dark defender ever existing on CO. Or rad/anything really.

  34. DKellis says:

    CoH and CO both have no children in the games. Well, that’s not quite accurate: Penny Preston in CoH is supposed to be a little girl, but she ends up looking like a slightly creepy mini-adult due to early limitations on textures. She’s also the only (non-player) character who can be considered a kid. (I think the next-youngest would be the teenage Penelope Yin.)

    I strongly suspect that this is because they’re not allowed to show violence (even cartoony) to children and still maintain a Teen rating.

    One thing which irks me is that CO is quite bad at documenting stuff, including their metaplot. They bought the IP for the Champions tabletop game, but then changed it quite a lot.

    I suspect my view of Champions Online compared to the Champions tabletop game metaplot is very similar to krellen’s view of Fallout 3 compared to Fallout 1 and 2.

  35. Jeff says:

    Wow, this game gives you access to the US Department of Defense’s satellite network?

  36. Hal says:

    I guess the Huggernaut is there for when something DOES hurt the Blob.

    I think you’re looking at a fundamental design flaw in games that have flight capabilities. No matter how hard the designers work to make things equal for players who can and can’t fly, there will inevitably be more difficulties for players who can’t, including situations that are insurpassable/unreachable for earthbound players.

    One thing that reminds me of this was X-Men Legends, where certain areas of the game required a flying character to reach a switch, ferry characters across a gap, etc. Especially onerous were secrets, which almost demanded that you always bring certain characters along. Puzzles requiring Nightcrawler were especially annoying, him being the only character who could teleport through doors and certain walls.

  37. betty says:

    Galenor:

    http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-59-29.jpg

    More screenshots of that please! Seriously… that’s an amazingly well built character from the looks of it. I mean seriously. You should hand over the character creator to your big sister more. =P

  38. BaCoN says:

    *froths at the mouth, runs down the Red Riding Hoods and smashes them into the ground*

  39. RichVR says:

    Another note on boobies. When you go to custom body type, all the sliders are around the middle. The breast slider is maxed out by default. In joke? Or selling point?

  40. RIck says:

    Selling point. Remember our target audience. ;)

  41. Drew says:

    @RandyJohnson: From the screenshots, I think the comic outline looks great. Of course, I haven’t seen the game in action, and it’s entirely possible that it looks terrible in motion.

  42. Ergonomic Cat says:

    RichVR: Only on the “Vixen” body setting (I think that’s the name). Which is default. But there are other body types that start at different places.

    My wife did comment that the largest breast size was not as obscenely large as CoH’s….

  43. Nyaz says:

    Maaaan, I want to just fiddle around with the character creation menus rather than play the game.

    Also, “Huggernaut” = awesome :P

  44. Randy Johnson says:

    @Drew To me it makes it really difficult to distinguish anything while you are moving.

  45. Kdansky says:

    If you continue this, I’ll have to buy this stupid game… Curses!

  46. Vladius says:

    Everybody knows what DSP is. DSP is the feature of the year. You’re just behind the times, Shamus. (“Shame-us.”)

  47. MelTorefas says:

    “Debilitating Sex Persecution?”

  48. Aelfric says:

    This game has an option for DOUBLE STUFFED PIEROGIES?

  49. TSED says:

    What are people talking about, acrobatics and swinging?

    They’re AWESOME. No, seriously. AWESOME. I don’t just mean for fun factor.

    Acrobatics: You can just leave it on. Flying or whatever adds a huge energy cost to powers (like 15% or more). Acrobatics is essentially negligible – a cost of 50 vs 49 is not noticeable. Grab the additional power so that you SPEED UP when you TAKE DAMAGE, and BAM. AWESOME. Yeah, sheer walls are annoying, but they’re not too too bad.

    Swinging: OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU HATE THIS? Chilled? Held in mid-air? Rooted? No, you’re not, you can COMPLETELY IGNORE THESE THINGS. It’s amaaaazing. With some practice you can be as precise as a flier, and you actually DO move faster than them. Quite a bit faster, as flying is basically the slowest power in the game. If you’re indoors, tap jump and then tap it again, and suddenly you’re swooshing through the hallways at improbable speeds that NO ONE ELSE CAN ACHIEVE. Well, maybe teleporters, but not if they’re shooting you or something.

    Munitions characters are especially painful with swinging in pvp, as they can hit you, you cannot stop them, and you cannot get away (unless you can teleport and they didn’t see where you went, which if you know what you’re doing you can still get a porter).

    Superspeed has.. issues, though. Get agro and you instantly slow down, which is a little… uhm, dumb. I’d recommend it for a second power (as that impact can make a nasty difference, believe you me) but yeah, levels 5 to 35 with superspeed will make you abandon that character. Guaranteed. I know I did.

    Teleport: Ultimate escape power, but keep in mind it cannot chase a guy. Something goes wrong and you’re stuck travel-power-less for 10 seconds, which is a big deal in the game’s action-oriented gameplay.

    Superjump: I can’t say I’ve tried these. They really don’t seem too impressive, though. Way too vertical, I think.

    Flying: Is lame, actually. It’s the slowest travel power, doesn’t work well AT ALL if you’re fighting, and is all-in-all boring. People take it because it’s thoughtless, or because they want to fly up and rain death on the poor ground-bound inhabitants. Way, way, WAY overrated.

    Tunneling: Haven’t tried it. Haven’t seen many that have.

    Seriously. Swinging is teh win. Acrobatics is good but not too good. Why the hate?

  50. J Greely says:

    Galenor, when I look at screenshot_2009-09-24-18-43-25.jpg, I’m convinced that I read that SF novel when it came out in the Eighties. It makes me want to search through my bookshelves so I can read it again.

    -j

  51. Andrew says:

    Not sure if you know about this, but Champions Online website has a page featuring Star On Chest and your article for him: http://championsonlinedailynews.com/meet-star-on-chest/

  52. Randy Johnson says:

    Well Shamus, looks like Star on Head got an interview with the Mayor. Tenochtitlan Gas Stations is rumored to be entering a sponsorship deal with him.

    Seriously tho, we really should try and get a 20 sided super group

  53. No 20 sided SG.

    That would very likely push me over to the “buy it” side, which I’d rather avoid. I played the beta, and enjoyed it, but I have so many other things to play.

    Plus, the babies wake up every time my wife launches CO. It’s the strangest thing. She refuses to try it any more.

  54. Randy Johnson says:

    How strange, it appears to have consumed my linky. http://www.freewebs.com/rasonhtml/-%20New%20Folder/staronhead.jpg

  55. Cuthalion says:

    Nice! Star on Chest made the news!

    Also, Concealed Carrie reminds me of Gunslinger Girls.

  56. Taellosse says:

    Is this game really and truly playable solo? I really wanted to like CoH (first and last subscription-based MMO I ever actually payed for, and loved it dearly until I realized I couldn’t play 3/4 of the classes by myself at all well), but couldn’t get behind it when I found myself forced to group whether I wanted to or not.

    Of course, if a Twenty-Sided group were created, I might mind it a little bit less. I have no tolerance for the typical stranger in an MMO.

  57. TSED says:

    Yes, you can definitely solo.

    I have played about 85% of the game solo, and that 15% I didn’t *need* a group, one just popped up from convenience.

  58. BlackBloc says:

    Yes you can solo most of the time, there’s the occasional mission that says you need 2 or 3 players but some of those my gf (who’s not hardcore at all) was able to solo as well. Some of these are legitimatly hard enough that you need more people, or need to be willing to take a couple dirt naps (given that unlike CoH you don’t get much penalty from death, who cares?)

    I am level 30 though and I have gotten a handful of missions that say you need 5, and believe me those you really do need 5 people (or 4, at least). They’re *harsh*. They take place in the Lairs, like Dr. Destroyer’s Robot Factory, and end with confrontation with Legendary level villains that can’t really be solo’d given that they can kill you in 2-3 non-blocked hits (blocking though tends to let you tank them for a while, letting your friends wail on them).

    But that’s 3 missions (2 of which were really the same mission, just two different objectives within that mission) out of over 160 I’ve done.

  59. BlackBloc says:

    BTW Shamus, if Concealed Carrie is DEX-oriented, I highly recommend Lightning Reflex + the Thread Softly advantage on Lead Tempest + Enrage (from the Might tree). Whenever you’re Enraged, Thread Softly gives you +30% to Dodge (I guess it means 30% of what you already had, because my Dodge goes from 60% to 78%, and 18% is 30% of 60…). I’m always in Lead Tempest mode, so with LR and Thread Softly, I just click Enrage before each battle and wail on my enemies. It’s fun.

  60. toasty says:

    I’m loving this champion’s online stuff, keep it up. :)

  61. Ergonomic Cat says:

    Taellosse: That’s my main beef with the game really. I miss CoH’s grouping. I’m at a place where I see little value to soloing an mmo, since I have excellent sp games and mp fpseses.

  62. Maldeus says:

    I don’t get it. Why don’t these games just give the option to scale down the breast size of girls to negligibility? It’s not like they’d have to decrease the maximum breast size, or start the slider lower, and my ‘toon from CoV would like so much better with a flat chest.

    1. Shamus says:

      Maldeus: Having dealt with this issue before, I can say it’s not nearly as easy as it seems. Generally you make a single model with breasts and then manipulate the topography using surface normals or the shape of the underlying skeleton. That’s fine for making them smaller (to a point) or larger (although it’s hard to get them to sag like they should with these techniques) but you can’t remove them entirely with these methods. The difference between “very little” and “none” is the type of change that requires an artist’s guidance. An artist would have to make a no-breast version for the program to use as a guide.

      And then you’d also need a second set of normal maps. (Bump maps.) In CO, the breasts get really, really small, but they continue to be lit as though they protruded quite a bit.

      Doing this alone isn’t that big a deal, but integrating this mormal / model swapping and blending with all the other stuff going on would take a lot of work to add what is essentially one option: No breasts.

      One of those things that seems trivial until you sit down to do it.

  63. TWorlock says:

    I reckon a Twenty Sided group would be ace.

    Also loving the info on Champions Online, just subscribed because of it.

  64. pneuma08 says:

    Dark Side Powers? ENABLED.

  65. RichVR says:

    @Ergonomic Cat:

    “Only on the “Vixen” body setting (I think that's the name). Which is default. But there are other body types that start at different places.”

    I wasn’t talking about preselected female bodies. I was talking about the bottom choice. Custom Body. There the breasts are always maxed out.

    I missed the other body settings because I never use preselected face or body types.

    The vixen pose does not affect the breast size. I checked.

  66. Armagrodden says:

    Is that Full Metal Jackie in the middle of the wings picture?

    1. Shamus says:

      Armagrodden: You are right. That’s FMJ in the middle.

  67. Telas says:

    Please stop praising Equilibrium.

    As both a former pistol shooter (former IPSC rank amateur) and former martial artist (before a herniated C6-C7 disc), I am more than a little aggravated by the number of people who think that there is any basis for reality in that movie. There isn’t; get over it. Or better yet, get to a range or a dojo and see what is real.

    Please, for the sake of real pistolcraft, can we put a disclaimer on that film? “This is about as realistic as the action sequences in Crouching Tiger / Hidden Dragon.”

    Sorry, I know I’m way off target here. Let’s blame the nerdy pet peeve thing and call it off…

    1. Shamus says:

      Telas: I don’t think ANYONE took that stuff seriously. It was obviously preposterous. But it made for cool spectacle, and it was something new.

  68. John Tomorrow says:

    I’m quite impressed with CO, and the way its coming out on top in ways of patches and such. It’ll be good to see what happens with it in the new expansion soon.

    As an old Gaia/WoW RPer, i’ve found that, because of the solo-questing nature of the game, there isn’t much cause for people to interact with others, and therefore there’s not much chance for people to discover that there’s people out there that want something more then constantly mashing the kill button for instant gratification.

    So far i’ve found only one. I wonder if there are any RP guilds out there yet?

    Here’s my characters – ego trip aahoy! I am shamed by the woeful amount of dialogue alotted with the biography page.

    My Main, Tomorow (He’s supposed to be called Tomorrow, but for some reason i wasn’t allowed to use that as a name. Use-any-name-you-wish my ass.)

    http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/686273/biography

    My second, Telepathos (you’ll note his costume is very plain – i went for a ‘realistic’ view on this guy, like he’s cobbled together a costume from something in his cupboard instead of having a masters in threadwork and several cows worth of leather just sitting around.)

    http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/902550/biography

    And then Xeroclese (i suppose i should have made him more dorky looking, but he is a spartan. This is where i wished they had allowed spears into the game, as a spartan with a cutless looks shit opposed to a pike. maybe unlockable content?)

    http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/931747/biography

    Another gripe before i go – why cant we see what weapons we wanna choose in the creation screen? Its all well and good choosing ‘mutions gun #5’, but its just a name until i get ingame and see that it looks crap, forcing me to quit, delete, then reload the character (something that gets quite annoying if you spent thirty minutes creating someone and forgot to save their costume).

    Keep it up with the Champions posts Shamus, as well as the Champs Escapists comics – they are awesome!

    (One final thing – Red Riding Hood looked HOT!)

  69. BlackBloc says:

    I am more than a little aggravated by the number of people who think that there is any basis for reality in that movie.

    Geez, next thing you know you’re gonna claim there never was a Fellowship of the Ring that took the One Ring to Mount Doom and freed us all from the tyranny of Sauron.

  70. Alex says:

    I had a much-too long comment written up about younger female characters in video games that only barely relates to Concealed Carrie. Instead, I’ll just say that she’s probably the most interesting fan-made character in these games I’ve seen. And that bio really paints a picture.

  71. TSED says:

    @John Tomorrow:

    “Impossible powers discovered as a baby. Forced to murder parents. Wanders the Earth.”

    GEE. THAT SOUNDS SO UNIQUE AND CREATIVE AND NOTHING LIKE EVERY CLICHE’D WORLD OF DARKNESS CHARACTER EVER.

    I’m all for roleplay, but if you’re wondering why people in a silver/golden age superhero MMO with all sorts of campy goodness (including bad guys with RAY GUNS!!!!) don’t want to roleplay with the poster child for teenagers + White Wolf source books… Yeah.

    Your other two are better. And this sounds way harsher than it should. But seriously. I bet Tomorrow has a livejournal and everything.

  72. justaguy says:

    @TSED

    Dude, this isn’t a “Be elitist and rate my hero” thread last I checked. If you /know/ it’s way harsher than it should be maybe you should tone it down a bit?

    Seriously.

  73. sebmojo says:

    Homie! Turn it off! You’ve got it set on ‘whore’!! [/Simpsons]

    Shamus, do Americans say ‘Don’t be a stranger!’ for ‘stay in touch’? Because that would also be a nice final line for Carrie’s bio in place of the current one…

  74. John Tomorrow says:

    @TSED

    Ouch. Tis harsh much. What is world of darkness? And white wolf…and live journal?

    Granted, Tomorrow’s source is cliche’d. I had written it when i was younger. Didnt think of updating it. Perhaps i should…or not.

    @justaguy

    I had to coming. you should expect stuff like this from the internet. and i am guilty of ego-tripping – why do you think i posted it in the first place, just like everybody else?

    Everybody has their own opinion. Some people dont know how to deliver them in the proper manner.

  75. RudeMorgue says:

    @Telas

    As a former pistol shooter (amateur, uncle’s backyard vs. bottles) and former martial artist (until they changed the classes to 45 minutes instead of an hour and wanted to charge me the same rates), I know where you’re coming from. You probably were too busy to develop the skills to distinguish fantasy from reality. Been there.

    On the other hand, Equilibrium kicked ass. It did not make me yearn to study Gun Katas because they’re, like totally real, but it kicked ass nonetheless.

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