Custom ship crew uniforms

captainhunter1 · July 2012

One of the things that has bugged me for a while about Foundry missions is that whenever extra crewmembers (other than Bridge Officers) are used in a story, they always have different uniforms from a player's ship's 'standard uniform'. This tends to break continuity and take the player out of the moment so to speak.

I know this subject has been brought up before in other sections to allow a player to select a 'standard uniform' for their crew so it would be seen on the NPCs wandering around when the player visits the interior of their ship. My suggestion is meant to give added weight to the idea as it would add greatly to immersion in many of Foundry missions as well.

Adding three additional catagories to the drop down list for Bridge Officers in for the dialog box choices would make it fairly simple. 'Science crewmember', 'Tactical crewmember', and 'Engineering crewmember' would be all that is needed. These would generate a random race and gender for the NPC in the dialog box - - that would be wearing the ship's standard uniform - or conform to the player's 'crew customization'. (If the player decided on an all Andorian crew, or all male crew, etc).

This customization would be part of the regular game, but the data provided there would be drawn on by the Foundry for missions involving NPCs from the player's ship. So security teams beamed down to help would have the ship's uniform, NPC's used on 'player ship' missions could be wearing the player's ship uniform, etc.

It would be nice to add a catagory to the costume section as well to allow for a little customization. Using the most famous example - having the ability to use Helna's head/body, but wearing a players uniform. It could be as simple as a check box in the costume section after creating the NPC. The box would simply say, "Use player uniform?" So that whenever the NPC was generated in a Foundry mission they would have all the characteristics as designed by the author...but be wearing the player's custom ship uniform.

Sound like a good idea?...and add more weight behind the reason to make a 'crew customization' ability for the game in general?

markhawkman · July 2012

You can do custom skins for npcs. I've done it to replicate TOS era Romulan uniforms.

drogyn1701 · July 2012

This goes squarely in the "Would Be Nice" category. But until we have the tech to designate a crew uniform, we won't have anything like that in the Foundry. They've always said they would like to give us that feature, but I've never heard of any progress being made on it.

Of course with fleet starbases, the request was renewed to include being able to put fleet uniforms on all the base personnel. Who knows maybe if they get that going, the dominoes will fall.

Until then, I just use random generic 2409 uniforms for anyone supposed to be in the player's crew. This way they at least match the npcs walking around the ship interior, even if they don't match people's BOFFs. I know a lot of authors would rather use a particular favorite uniform of theirs for Starfleet personnel. It's just one of those choices all authors have to make.

drogyn1701 · July 2012

markhawkman wrote: »

I've done it to replicate TOS era Romulan uniforms.

Really? I don't suppose you could post a screenshot showing the character creator. I have a mission where you fight Romulans in the TOSish era. I can already do a pretty good Romulan head, but would love to have custom TOS-looking uniforms rather than modern ones.

markhawkman · July 2012

http://marhawkman.deviantart.com/art/You-CAN-haz-Romulans-314111278

Check that out^

It's not perfect, but it's reasonably close.

for comparison: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Unnamed_Romulans_(23rd_century)

I started with a Vulcan(obviously) and added a new uniform. TOS Romulans look essentally identical to Vulcans anyways.

In case you're wondering what mission, "B'Vat's Legacy" is a Fed mission on holodeck.

drogyn1701 · July 2012

Yeah I went in and played around last night with that combo. It looks close, as close as we'll get anyway. I wish we could get the textured look on the gray part. But i don't see a way.

Still I'm definitely thinking about using it, create some of the different colors. Will take a lot of reskinning, I have a lot of mobs in the mission. I had to reskin all the Klingon friendly mobs to a combination TOS/TMP hybrid version, since my mission takes place right around the time the Klinks would be getting their ridges back.

markhawkman · July 2012

One thing to consider is that players won't get the time to scrutinize the costume in precise detail. If it looks reasonably close they might not even realize it's different.

drogyn1701 · July 2012

Well I would have some dialogue from a Romulan commander, so it would at least have to look good from the upper arms to the neck, lol.

markhawkman · July 2012

Ah, IMO that's the part of this outfit that looks best.

Except the mercenary bandolier which I threw in to simulate NPCs wearing kits, the outfit was based on the one Joanne Linville(Romulan Commander) wore in "The Enterprise Incident". It's not identical but nearly so. The main difference is in the precise locations of the panels, and the sleeves. But you can't see the sleeves in a dialogue window. Joanne's char had an outfit with one side burgundy, and the other grey, but the closest we can do is one side grey and the other with 3 vertical bars. Unfortunately, the only way to get the right side to be Burgundy in the right spots would involve setting color1 to burgundy, but color1 is the entire left side. It's kinda odd the way they decided to set the color panels. It has color1 as main color, and either color2 or color3 as the stripes, with the other one reserved for the belt.

gewehr98 · September 2012

It really is an immersion-killer when you're using a TOS interior to see DOffs in 25th century kit. Por ejemplo:

Screenshot

(PS: Why is my Engineering BOff at the helm?)

Custom ship crew uniforms

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