Veteran/aging soldiers

[mr curtis]

Tell that to Sgt Akriel ... 126 missions, 448 kills, 21 melees. Currently serving at a marine training station (location kept secret). Too many "last missions".

http://pcsostres.ac.upc.edu/aramirez/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media=files:sgt-akriel-126.png
That story and image actually gave me an idea...something for me and Curtis to do in V1.02. :7

So what's this amazing idea? I'm intrigued...

[Niklas]

I love the fact that the sergeant looks so old, with his white beard and so on.

What I want is for every sergeant face to have a veteran version. The first one - the rookie - is given to new marines and after X missions they are given the other face - the veteran. That way you can see the progress of the marines.

Another thing we could do is to make veteran versions of normal soldiers helmets. Something painted on them to make them look more deadly/cool. A red tear from the eye, a yellow stripe down the middle, a sharks mouth, ...

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Another thing we could do is to make veteran versions of normal soldiers helmets. Something painted on them to make them look more deadly/cool. A red tear from the eye, a yellow stripe down the middle, a sharks mouth, ...
Seconded. :D

[Jorgen]

What would then trigger the change? A certain couple of missions or a particular rank?

[Niklas]

What I want is for every sergeant face to have a veteran version. The first one - the rookie - is given to new marines and after X missions they are given the other face - the veteran.;)

I don't know when, but maybe 20 missions, 50 or 100 missions. No matter rank, kills or whatever...

[mr curtis]

So what sprite-work would this entail? Just want to know exactly what you're envisioning with this.
Do the faces get older (eg. hair goes grey, beards, etc.), or do they get more rugged looking (scars, harsher haircuts, 'angry/shouty' face)?

Both would pose their own problems (especially in mods for the sterner or more ferral 40k chapters).
It would be cool for the Blood Angels, though - you could see some effects of the Black Rage (fangs and eye colour) :)

[Niklas]

Well, I want people to see that their sergeant got old, not that they suddenly have a new sergeant.

So beards would be cool. Cigars. Scars. Boldness.

Maybe they can have a small beard as young and then it grows larger when they get older and so on.

And for the normal soldiers we just make like 10 minor paint jobs for the helmets that can be combined so a soldier can have 1-3 at once (to get many variation with few sprites). Think like a white stripe down the helmet over the left eye. One with a stripe down the right eye. And then They can have one on the left, one on the right or both...and so on. 10 sprites = 720 variations...if I counted it correctly. Should be enough I guess. :)

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

And for the normal soldiers we just make like 10 minor paint jobs for the helmets that can be combined so a soldier can have 1-3 at once (to get many variation with few sprites). Think like a white stripe down the helmet over the left eye. One with a stripe down the right eye. And then They can have one on the left, one on the right or both...and so on. 10 sprites = 720 variations...if I counted it correctly. Should be enough I guess. :)

What look do we want? Clean factory paint-job or something that looks more like painted by the soldiers themselves?
One color? Or a mix of colors?
White would make them look very clean. Red, on the other hand, would contrast nicely with the green armor.

The current visor doesn't lend itself too well for this kind of thing, though.
And what do we do about the armor improvements on the helmet?
Maybe we could use the tinting code with a set of "facepaint" sprites?
If we did that, the sprites themselves could be mono-colored, and the actual color randomly picked from an array of several available ones (for greater variety). Doing it this way would also allow for free vertical flipping of the overlay - ie if you have a stripe going over the left eye, you don't need a separate one over the right, just flip the existing sprite and you've got it done.

The players might want some more complex patterns that can't be broken up into several interchangeable pieces (eg a skull) and don't really combine well with other patterns, though.
So we could have space for some unique patterns which are not combined with any others and never flipped.

I think it would be best if the face paints were separate files that could be freely extended, but that just might be me.

[Niklas]

I'm go with anything.