Continuing from last week, today is part 2 of the AMA, regarding mostly questions about customizations! We have heard feedback about wanting more explanation to why things are answered that way and we'll try to answer each question to our best.
FRAME and OVERALL CUSTOMIZATION
Delphonse: Will you allow players to create custom avatars?
Let us quote what we've said last year:
"No, we aren’t planning to have that system in-game. The game is written to have players headcanon their own pilot into the game and we think pilot avatars will take away from that experience. A pilot avatar customization system will take away from that immersion by providing choices that might not fit everyone’s idea of their pilots. Like, if we have 10 images and 20 choices of face of pilots available and it does not represent what you want to look like, it’s not going to be good right
?"
To further explain our answer, we'd like you to imagine all the different people playing this game, each having their own image and story of the game itself. One might want to represent themselves as a human, another as a dragon, another as a sentient AI, a kemonomimi of sorts, or maybe a cyborg. To satisfy every of these ones, we must create hundreds and thousands of customization (can't just be an image, right?) for everything, hairstyle, color, horns, base looks, etc.
Honestly it's not feasible for us to do something like that which might end up still not satisfying another group that we haven't thought of in the first place. Also, from last year's answer:
"Another thing, where does your pilot come into play? If there are pilot avatars available, we will need a place to display it, like, you will need to be able to have a choice to respond to NPCs both in missions and in base dialogues also. That makes it really harder to provide immersion into the game itself, since there will not be 30 choices available, but like, at most 3."
We hope you understand why we won't put avatar customization in our game.
Tsubasa: Are docking points for drones and weapons still considered by VD? Brad: Will it be possible in the future to set Launchers/Bits to dock somewhere on your MASS when not being used and for picture mode? Anonymous: Can weapons be customized with hardpoints, such as a combat weapon mounted directly on the shoulder, backpack, shield, etc., so that it can be displayed on the body even when the weapon is not in use
No, quoting from last year's:
"...they are purely for aesthetical purpose, and drone docks we count as functional, as they must work alongside the drone system. And each type of new energy launcher might not have the same number of drones or sizes and it will not work. We will need to isolate systems from each other so missile pods cannot work as well because each bullet launcher has a fixed specific number of bullets, projectiles to fire already..."
For weapons, however, we wanted to do it but there is a lot of conditions to satisfy first before we can start working on them and there isn't a good solution to them. There are too many weapons in the game, not just a simple piece of sword or dagger or gun, but anything possible through accessories. What if make the system and they just float clip into the ground due to its length and whatnot. Those are the kind of things we need to look at and solve first. We will not deny this, but we'll only take a look after Early Access is done.
RAINING TIKI: Will there ever be an option to Increase and Decrease the size of a Shoulder/Arm/Hip/Leg/Ankle Piece? Like on the Default parts for those who don't use accessories out of difficulty.
We know this is something that players have been asking for every year. The answer is still no, the current scaling is already at the maximum and minimum without compromising other things (animations, gameplay hitboxes, OG parts that doesn't clip into each other).
I'd like to talk more about this topic. We know there's a lot of people over/underscaling the base frame pieces with third party tools and have been requesting the same thing quoting "why does VD care anymore about clipping issues when they've given Accessories." The answer to that question is because there are players of different levels and different mindsets, some would want baseline to look as great as it can be and use only functional sliders for the ease of it, some might mind a lot about clipping issues in their animations (you see people bashing about games where parts of the shoulders/arms clip into the body). If we make things clip from the baseline, things would be awkward in both aesthetics and gameplay level (think lower scaling to the extreme and hitboxes aren't relatable to the size of the M.A.S.S. unit). Some animations would be weird and clip into each other hard and it is something we would like to avoid at all costs.
Floofy Poofy: Can we pick how a Weapon Functions... within reason? For example, I want to make a Halberd but when I do the game says its a Mace... But Clearly its not. Stuff like that?
We have to deny this one as well. While in the current version, this seems to be doable, it is something that would certainly impact the creation of future weapons, an example being the flail or whip archetype that comes to mind immediately. Those particular functions require a specific model functionality to be able to work without glitches (gameplay and aesthetically) to stretch and/or shrink. We aren't able to make one model that fits all of those things and we don't want to come back to every piece of model and make it work when we wanted to create something new or different. We will try to make more variations fo each functionality though, but that would only come after more and more functionalities are created to fulfill the creation dreams of our players.
Dice2k: Will you try to make parts that would make M.A.S.S jets simple transformations? Kickersboy07: i wother will there be a feature where your mech can transform into a vehicle like a spaceship or a car. If so, how much can you customize. If not, are there going to be any plans for something similar. TK: First, it seems impossible, but I'd like to have a variable frame. I think it would be more fun if we could unify it with a simple deformation structure like WING Gundam and attach parts to it to make our own variable gas. Anonymous - Will there be transformable skeletons in the future?
We'll answer these three questions together first by quoting last year's:
"No, transforming frames are out of the question. It messes too much with the system if we’re making a frame that can transform between two forms. Weapons that can move around a bit are a possibility. Since you know we have motioned weapon parts already, so if we do have time we might expand further on those ideas towards melee or towards other kind of shooters, but no, armor parts will never get motion tag."
For further explanation, transforming frames have too many complications. Let's talk about simple ones first, such as hatches opening and closing upon using thrusters. Seems simple enough, but what would happen when players start and stop boosing immediately, repetitively? How to make those kind of things smooth, how to make thruster effects or any kind of transformations happen without looking awkward? Those things should be as foolproof to what they're designed to do as possible.
Looking further to full body transformation, how to set each form comes to mind, which part moves where, how to make them not clip into each other as much as possible, what is the trigger, a button? Automatic transformation? What benefits must it have to the player? Is one form better than the other in gameplay terms? There is too much to handle when the baseline is as free to customize with as our game, unlike others that have certain specific parts already designed as a pack for transformation.
Varien: Is it possible to get different hanger poses to make it easier to build such as a A or T pose?
It is not possible. There are certain systems attached to the current pose (such as holding up the arm, zooming into the hands) such that adding more poses would have us reworking a good part of the customization system. You've already tasted how long it takes us reworking the game through the creation of multiplayer, we don't want to work with no ends in sight for another year with zero updates aside from WIP previews.
lord of spoon: will we see light pulsing or color changing in the paint menus
No, effects and active light changing as well as gradient coloring requires much more from a player's graphics card and we don't want to further this burden into the extremes. We created M.A.S.S. Builder and tested the game with PCs as old as a decade ago and we still aim to have those PCs able to play the game, albeit almost impossible in the current iteration.
Krakenumbreon: Will you guys be adding the option for different walking and running animations? DynamicCity: Any plan to implement different way our M.A.S.S. frame moves on ground? For example: Hovering on the ground (like Dom in mobile suit gundam series)
To the first question, there is only one movement in the game that's not boosting, but if you meant different types of movements then that's another story. Different movement animations such as hover movement, low angle running, etc. Stuffs like this will be further investigated after 1.0 is released. We will not outright deny it but it is something we will not look into at all before version 1.0 is done and we're out of Early Access.
Faze Walker: If fans asked of more custom parts like to make the charecters look more anime part human like charecters would you add such parts?and hope this is alright but i would also like to ask if we can see more customizable look for the little helpers/drones we have like making them look like tiny version robots and such just for looks tho
We do think there are a lot of parts that can make your M.A.S.S. unit humanoid already, especially looking at some players' creations. We've added a lot in 0.7.0 that can satisfy these creations and if the need arise we'll work on more of them. For the energy launchers, we will also say they are extremely customizable that there are people making them look like dragon whelps, books, tiny robots and the likes already and we urge you to try and use the accessories system to make one!
Andrew: Will there be added functionality to the Build engine such as warping, increased sizes? and hopefully many more parts?
Baseline armor parts and frames cannot be further scaled up or down already and this should be the final version of what you'll see in release as well. For more parts, these are something we wanted to do. We, at one point, even talked to each other that we should just rush every mission and core features to completion so that we may revise everything related to it and use all the time that we can outsource things (VA, more music, etc.) to create as much variation on armors, weapons, accessories, decals, etc. as possible in that timeframe.
Shield Liger: I understand there are parts to create the ultimate m.a.s.s unit, but are there any plans for custom sound effects? For example, movement, sword attacks, thruster sound effects, and missiles? Salutes to the Vermillion Digital Team!
No, customization of sound effects is a box we don't want to open. Reasons are that sound effects is not just one single piece of sound bite for one single thing. It is a whole composition of various parts played in sequence to create something. In example, swinging a sword and hitting a Quark. There is a start of the swing, the swing itself might have 3 different sounds being played, the impact again has alot of sounds bites together.
Allowing the customization of every sound effects in the game would be overwhelming to both us the creator, having our sound person make at least 10 combinations of everything, multiplying their workload, as well as having players look at a list of every sound piece available, and then our programming team create a whole new system to do it, and having each unit's savefile size multiplied by a lot more is not something feasible to the project in every aspect.
AlbinoNemo: Is there an estimate of when you plan to introduce frame-related changes? (For example, removable skirt armour or changing hand types) Dante: Will we get an option to get rid of side skirt frame for our MASS units Invidia: Could you add an options for invisible or removable weapon/frame part ? It could be annoying having to work around the the base weapon/frame part when creating our own design using accessories. Especially the skirt hardpoints, please let us remove those from the frame. Eillis: If/When can we expect the removal of waist pads on skeleton? They get in the way of creative design more often than not. Anonymous: Could we hide some skeleton that we don’t need,such as skirt and the feet?
To quote last year's:
...Things like hiding the skirt part sure, changing hands and fingers, and something else are all in there. However, the physique of the whole frame will not changes, as there will be a lot of complications that can happen. It will be a mess to changes the whole aesthetics of the frame itself, and even if you think making the frame smaller and bigger in some parts to represent muscular frame or feminine frame will not be troublesome, let me tell you that it is not easy at all...
On the question of when, we are still unable to even take a look at it so for now, I will say either at version 1.0 release or after that, before we start working on the Rex and Spider frame.
WaffleDefender: What are the kind of mecha frames would you love to have despite not wanting it in the game?
This is a confusing question because we would like what we love to have to be added into the game so we'll answer it with the mech frames we liked but unable to be added into the game with our systems then. Frames like Wanzers are one, true mecha-musume is another, beast and draconic mechas, and SD is the final frame type we wanted to add but they have too much complications attached to them. We love to have them, but we don't want to have them in the game because of the hassle surrounding the creation of them.
Badzombies2003 - Have you ever thought about making non-humanoid M.A.S.S Units (like quadrupeds or more standard vehicles like tanks or planes)? Gildedghoul: Will there be an option in the future to make beast-style mechs? Anonymous: Consider non-humanoid mecha Anonymous: Whether to consider adding non-humanoid structure skeleton and expand the placement scope of accessories? Reza Nox: Will we see any customization with a different layout, like multiple legs or reverse joint legs? Pazuzu wolfgang: Well you be adding Spider legs, tank legs, Hover legs, and others to the game? Farenhite: Any chance of adding tank and hover leg types in a future update? Cody Furlong: When will we be getting Reverse Jointed, Digi-Grade, or Quad type mecha? Lamp: Is there any plans for new frames to build around like quadruped? Phoenix257: Are there plans for adding any new base skeletons such as quadripedal or reverse-joint? Internicion: Do you plan to add other frames such as one with multiple legs or digitigrade legs in M.A.S.S builder? T.K. @ Oasis: When, if ever, will the new base frames (Rex and Spider) seen in the M.A.S.S. Builder Kickstarter project page be available? Shun The Witch: I havent seen any talk about the other mass frame types like the multi legged one that afaik was on the kickstarter. Does anyone know anything?
Yes, there is the Rex (Reverse legs) and Spider (Quad legs or more) frames are promised as a stretch goal for our Kickstarter campaign and is in the plans. For the question when, we will start working on it after the game fully release out of Early Access into version 1.0 which would be extremely far away.
For non-humanoids like beasts, however, we cannot make them since our game uses M.A.S.S. units arms and hands to hold weapons with firing points and every other things attached to these places. Beasty, non-humanoids, gun-arms units cannot work with the system our game uses.
The Eldritch Mire: I know you have announced Rex and Spider frames for post release of the game. So is there a probably we will eventually get a Centaur frame?
Honestly before we kickstarted our game, we were discussing whether we would have a spider frame or a centaur frame. We ended up choosing the Spider frame for that kind of aesthetics (and ease of work). We might look back after we completed after these two to what we wanted to create next but there's no plan at all after these two for now.
Oz: Will you make alternative frames and/or non anime mecha style pieces. I'd really like to build 40k style titans and knights.
While we wanted to do mechwarriors and dreadnought type of mechs, it fully conflicts with how our game's weapons function and would not be feasible to just create a whole new system for them so I would have to fully deny any kind of mechs that have gun-arms.
Anonymous: Can the attack position of the Beam launcher be changed or increased? I want to restore the GUYVER
No, changing its position will change things related to aiming the beam, the gameplay impact it has, and a lot of other things. Any customizations to an existing mechanic of a weapon cannot be done for just one thing since every other things will now want to be able to customized as well.
Anonymous: Want the missile launcher appearance Settings to move to the armor screen, and show the MASS, it’s cumbersome to switch back and forth during appearance modification
As Bullet Launcher is a weapon and uses a different kind of system for their customization, it cannot be moved into the same menu as armors. There will also be a problem of having too many things in one page and the UI will be too cluttered to look good as well as making UX extremely confusing to have certain weapons be in the armor menu instead of all weapons in the weapons menu.
Anonymous: Can you add a function that allows manual input of RGB values on the painting
No, let us quote last year's answer:
"...What do our players want. Do they want the color that’s associated with hex codes or RGB to display correctly in-game? Or do they don’t care about the displayed color but just the right color codes? These are two very different things, because even with the right numbers, with shaders and lightings and everything else, the displayed color, I can say it here right now, will not come out as expected.
The second important problem, the input problem, If you notice, every system in the game aside from name input itself, does not have anything that allows player to input anything in numbers. This is because we have been thinking about players with controllers in every form since the first day of the game and having those people constantly put down their controller to input things on their keyboard felt very annoying to us, so until we’re able to solve that problem, numbers input and color picker like you’ve seen in photo editing software are out of the question."
With that said, certain number of people have displayed unsatisfaction with this answer so let us explain further. The argument towards our stance comes from other games, including consoles, used on-screen keyboards to allow players to input text or numbers into certain fields. We, personally, don't think they belong in M.A.S.S. Builder at all since it is something much more difficult to navigate with controllers and looks extremely unpleasing, It is tedious and annoying to have OSK pop up to cover half the screen so one can input texts or numbers slowly. Applying OSK anywhere more than the naming screen would mean we will need to apply it everywhere in the game, in any system that wants it. People would demand us to put it on the tuning and development page to search for nodes which would result in more demands to allow filters and advanced search. People would demand it on the armor and weapons page to search for parts with certain names. The list goes on and the snowball does not stop rolling. We will say it right here that it is not feasible at all to add OSK into the game for any of these functions, certainly RGB values or HEX codes input and we will stand by our stance.
Anonymous: Could you add a feature that allows the weapon to be fired from other parts of the body, so as to achieve the same effect as the Gundam midhead Vulcan gun
We cannot, weapons' firing starting point is pre-determined so as it works flawlessly with other aspects of the game. Customizing firing points to the head or anywhere else might cause certain weapons to be unable to hit enemies effectively and players will start telling us it is a bug as it bricks the weapon and they wanted to fire from these certain places. We don't want this problem to happen so the only thing to do is not allowing players to customize them in the first place.
Anonymous: Can the dual hold of a weapon be changed into two weapons of different shapes, such as melee weapon 1 and melee weapon 2 to form a dual hold combination? If SO, CAN YOU do the same with a shotgun in the left hand and a beam gun in the right hand?
Holding different weapons in dual wielding is not something that is available, reasons are, there's too much work to do in both gameplay and aesthetics department. With how M.A.S.S. Builder weapon functions, there are a lot of weapon types, each with different animations available. Mixing them in dual wielding is multiplying this work to infinity.
There will also be a demand to change our core gameplay and keybinds for "left hand attack" and "right hand attack" to mix things up and to create more depth in combat instead of the "attack" and "heavy" attack we currently have, which is basically changing the whole game in itself.
Anonymous: Can I set a custom weapon type? Like a machine gun or artillery on a melee weapon, or a missile on a shield or something like that. For example, a dual weapon can transform into a heavy weapon. Armor can also be equipped with weapon functions
Transformable and functionally different weapons are a no go. We wanted to keep each weapon weapon as basic as it is so players can freely use any weapons of any looks to their desire and not having to worry about setting a weapon's or armor's usage functions. Remember, aesthetics must be separated from gameplay for as much as possible.
Anonymous: Can you add cylindrical (similar to Zagu in Gunda), pointed claw (similar to the original Gaogaigar in Gaogaigar) fingers, and can you scale the size of the palm?
Hands and fingers improvement is something we promised to work on, but it's in the same scope as skirt removal. Not a thing we will do soon but certainly something we'll work on in the far future of the game.
Anonymous: Can the camouflage effect and stickers in the armor color scheme coexist with the glow? Can camouflage colors and stickers not be covered by the glow effect?
No, patterns are on a layer that's lower than glows. If something covers the glow, the system won't be able to glow to its desire effect at all.
Anonymous: Can you add weapons that are smaller than the real weapons available today and can you add more gun positions to it
Smaller weapons will be added into the game when we have the time to work on it, which we don't have a lot currently, seeing as we're months late into the 0.9.0 update now. We'll try to set a better schedule and expectations so that we can deliver more contents next time.
Anonymous: Give us some pickling effect painting
Pickling effects pertain into the realm of transparency (coating on top to create certain effects) and we are unable to do transparency in M.A.S.S. Builder. If you want to know why we cannot do transparency, the answers lie in our last AMA.
Anonymous: Can you give us more details about the simple weapon parts you're working on? How small can it be? Is it just guns or is it all weapons? Does it include shields and launchers?
Sure! The simple weapon parts are mostly an extremely stripped down to polygons version of existing weapons. They have the same size as the current weapons you have so the M.A.S.S. unit holds it in the same way, but without details added. Think of it as the smallest weapon available currently but stripped of all excess decorations so you have a blank template to work on. For now, the only ones finished are shooters but we do plan to have simple parts for melee weapons and shields as well.