Should the mechs be painted?

[{G-S} Caleb]

Do you think the mechs should be painted or left plain I believe we need color and if you do too then vote.
However there can only be one look per mech and not one for every map sadly so if you vote yes, We or the devs would have to work on and vote for a favorite skin.

Here is an example of one I worked on.
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/2721/22ndskyerangersbushwhac.png

[Cujo]

There are several threads about paint if you use the search function at the top of the screen.  They should give you a good idea of what's up.

[[SF]JT Kirk]

Changing the skin in MW4 Mercs to match the map being played on was something i did everytime i played, its a small edge, but an advantage none the less, we also had a clan skin for formal matches.

heres a Puma in SF colours



But i had a prefered cammo for every mercs map.
Im hoping changeable skins is implemented in MWLL eventually, though i can see that "cosmetic" features like this come second to more important content

[{G-S} Caleb]

There are several threads about paint if you use the search function at the top of the screen.  They should give you a good idea of what's up.

Yes and having read those I wanted to see how the community felt on this issue.

To [SF]JT Kirk,
Yeah I doubt that the Devs view this as important as balance, new content, and bug fixes but it would still be nice.

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

I want an option for "later".  It would be a "nice to have" but far far down the list of things that need to be done.

[[SF]JT Kirk]

There are several threads about paint if you use the search function at the top of the screen.  They should give you a good idea of what's up.

Yes and having read those I wanted to see how the community felt on this issue.

To [SF]JT Kirk,
Yeah I doubt that the Devs view this as important as balance, new content, and bug fixes but it would still be nice.

Its definately on the drawing board as far as i can tell



there is jungle,desert,wasp and gunmetal for starts

[{G-S} Caleb]

Yes and you can even view those textures in the editor.
 However the Devs have said before that multiple skins are not possible for Crysis and that would mean those skins could be left unused.

[[SF]JT Kirk]

If anyone can get it to work, the Devs here can.
Moving mech legs as i recall wasnt something crysis could do either, but they got it to work.

either way, i hope its something we see one day. along with custom decals

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

The Mechs aren't painted cause... they eventually will be. It's a placeholder - on this generic metal texture in some unknown future the layer with actual color paint will be added. But it requires quite a bit of work and isn't something we gonna see soon^tm.

Moving mech legs as i recall wasnt something crysis could do either, but they got it to work.

Toth is an amazing programmer The C++ team is what makes impossible possible.

[DFDelta]

I voted for later, as there are far more important things to be done.

But IF they are painted one day I'd like dark blue colors for IS and a bright green for clan
(we might also have to change the faction symbols...  )

[(TLL) Heretic]

Voted for after release, but it is something I'd love to see once all the other gameplay things are done.

In the meantime, anyone interested in 'mech paintschemes should check out: http://www.camospecs.com/

A great site for regimental colour schemes (and a good help with modeling if you don't have the mini yourself).

[CHHš Sturmadler]

colors and insignia...

I will say a word on our plans for this, trusting you to be aware that all of this is subject to change, and may not even be possible.

I think we will be able to offer a handful (4-8) paint schemes for every vehicle.  About half of these will be faction-style color schemes (like the current Longtom).  We do not need suggestions.  We are aware that battletech has dozens of factions and everyone has a favorite.  The factions will be chosen to support our Clan vs IS theme, with a smattering of less obvious choices.  The others will be more generic camo colors.  I estimate that this will add roughly 1gb to the final build size (most of our textures are at least 2k).  These will probably be able to be set by the map designer, per-factory.  So one a given map, the clan factory might produce all Jade Falcon colored mechs, while the IS factory might produce only desert camo.

Now, the more interesting part.  None of the paint schemes will include personal touches.  No faction logos, unit insignia, pinup girls, "death from above", kill markers  etc.  These will all go on a separate (smaller) texture divided into quads.  I estimate roughly 50 permutations of this per-faction.  The good news is that this does not need to be done for every vehicle.  Each vehicle will have unique coordinates waiting to receive these.  The bad news is that... given all the factions in btech, even if these are only 256 pixels, there would be ALOT of texture files.  Maybe over 2,000...

Of course the other option would be to put all the faction symbols on 1 material, unit insignia on another, all the slogans on yet another, and all the pinup girls on yet another.  Problem with this: 4 extra materials being loaded per vehicle created.  Significantly worse on performance.

Either way, whatever we go with, the personal materials (faction logos and such) should be selectable by the player through a menu interface (possibly incorporated into the mechlab.  We might be able to assign this, by factory, to any vehicle that player creates.

I would say that's a best-case scenario.  Odds are we would have it working at or a short time after 1.0

I hope this sheds some light on the complexity of the subject, demonstrating the work we're putting into it.

[~SJ~ Amarus]

I voted for later, as there are far more important things to be done.

But IF they are painted one day I'd like dark blue colors for IS and a bright green for clan
(we might also have to change the faction symbols...  )

Or Red and a mottled grey...then we would have to change the factions from your change of factions

And I voted for yes but near 1.0 because I think it would be great to get actual clan unit colors and house unit colors I just think that right now there are way more things to do as functionality isn't even 100% yet.

[dCK-Ad_Hominem]

Thanks to Sturmadler for the info. I also checked later. Having colour for your mech is nice, but not mandatory, rather give me functioning UAC20s to rape some guys  .

[{G-S} Caleb]

Thanks for all the replies I created the poll just to see how the community felt on this issue.

To the Devs,
Thanks it nice to know that you have ideas on how this could and can be done.
Offtopic: Will the Stone rhino be implemented before 1.00?