Skins, hardware requirements, game limitations, etc. question

[oboe]

Just musing here, but how would the impact of custom skins on the game change if each aircraft was provided a number of "base" color configurations (for example the P-51D could have 3 bases - drab green over grey underside, all natural metal, or drab green top surfaces only with  natural metal below) and players configured their custom skins in the hangar by selecting one of the bases and then choosing nose art and ID letters from a pre-approved list of historically correct schemes?   

That is, would the game overhead be lessened if custom skins weren't each one entire .res file, but instead a standard base configuration that had a small overlay of the proper accent color trim, decals, and nose art?   (Similar to the way squad art is overlayed onto the skin but more extensive).    Would that ease memory and/or bandwidth requirements?

Also, what if custom skins were persistent - remembering your chosen configuration for each aircraft from session to session, until you changed it?  And each time you selected and used the skin, it could have a more weathered, dirty and grimy appearance (weathering files would be another overlay onto the skin).  Maybe even minor damage, like bullet holes, would be retained from sortie to sortie and session to session, until the plane was serviced in the hangar.

And maybe while you were in the hangar, you could see a semi-transparent panel in the upper left corner of the screen, showing kill marker flags for the number of kills you have in that skin, and maybe mission markers for the number of sorties you've flown in it?

Just pondering here.  Was watching my son conifgure his character in Halo in XBOX Live and was wondering how some of the traits that make that game so successful might be implemented in AH.   Persistence and customization were a couple that I thought might be important.

Ideally for me, the final state of custom skins is that we have a LOT more skins to chose from, and you as well as everybody else can see what skin you're flying.   Just wondering if there is a way to get there from here, theoretically-speaking.

[Krusty]

I think given the infinite number of combinations that you could create (which would be historically inaccurate by the way, thus negating the use of historical plane codes) that it would actually ending up using tons more memory than just having multiple skins.

Plus, an OD skin is not an OD skin is not an OD skin. Just look at the many skins we have in-game for the OD P-38s. Many of them are visually distinctive, despite all being based on the same "stock" pattern. Take that away and you'll be taking away a lot of the creativity and flexibility the skinners have right now.

Any monkey with MS Paint could make a single red wingtip stripe for inclusion into the game over a stock template 

Now let's see that monkey make the wing that goes under the stripe, eh? Now how about the fuselage attached to that wing? Nobody wants to just make a stripe then stop. Just make a letter code then stop. That's not fun, IMO.

[oboe]

Naw, they'd be picking from a pre-approved set of historically-correct noseart/letter codes so it wouldn't be an infinite number of combinations available.

I think my thinking was also influenced by the scenario team and all the custom signature tags they've created for pilots.  What if each pilot could also have basically his own skin in the scenario, and everyone could see it?   Amount of work put on the skinners aside, I was just wondering if there was any way to handle skins within the game that would, theoreticaly at least, make that possible.

The game already supports a very limited version of this idea with its support for squad noseart.   So I guess I'm wondering, if the unique graphic information for each skin is separated from the common or 'base' graphic information, does that make the custom skin file size small enough to drastically increase the number of custom skins that can be used, without running into bandwidth/memory limitations.

But yeah, if all the bases of an aircraft skins come from a small number of common bases, then it's a 'cookie-cutter' approach.   I thought I had a way around that by also supporting customized weathering/dirt/grime files.   Always trade-offs in any approach, I guess.

[Krusty]

I think if you ONLY had one side, if you only portrayed one type of aircraft family (only ponies, only jugs) you could get away with this. However, every theater had its own rules, it's own letter codes, sizes, placements, every plane and every squadron had variations.

Not to mention all the different variations for GERMAN markings, or Japanese! Or Italian, etc...

It's really not something you can do and still retain normal pre-made skins. It's all or nothing. And if you go "all" in this case it's just way too complex to build in all those rules for all the different planes, units, nationalities, just to stick on a few pre-determined details.

The research alone would be killer for HTC. I do recall, however, that HTC mentioned something with decals depicting repaired damage and the like when they were working on Combat Tour. The idea was you'd see the repair marks if you came back from your previous mission with damage. You'd see your kill marks. They said it was possible to do something like that.

I think in scenarios that would be a lot of fun (having a patched up wing! Or a fresh plane if you die and come back! Or a dirtier and more wearied looking plane as the scenario rolls on!). I think some of these ideas would make scenarios a bit more like mini-campaigns (which is what they are, IMO).

[oboe]

I think persistence like this (retained battle damage; gradually-weathered and dirtied planes) would be very cool in a scenario, too.

What about this:  A skin download pack for use on the scenario server, that has the custom skins that have been made for the scenario.  Maybe you download the skin pack, and it only functions when you're logged into the scenario server.   When scenario designers choose the terrain to run on the server, they also go to some skin catalog page (like Hammer's Net Aces catalog) and select the skins to be included.   We'd need some automated process to run and build the skins .zip file, which could be unzipped into a skins directory that is used only when logged into the scenario or special events server (thinking here of Reno air races-like skins for use on special events air races, too). 

I think Skuzzy told me once that AH wouldn't have different skins in different arenas though, so that may never come to pass.   

[Krusty]

How about pre-set damage maps with alpha... So you can't specify you were hit in the wing, or the fuselage, but you see the patches. Maybe 2-3 different levels of that, plus "none"?

Then a squad-level command that can be enabled by the squad leader or somebody with invite privs, to set ".damage <gameID> <0-4>" to overlay that plane with pre-specified pre-alpha'd damage maps?

There may be a bit of a compromise as to what patches look best on BMF vs OD, etc... But I think that would be do-able.

Also a flag to disable in the MAs (or not -- it could be client side only or could have a toggle switch for "squad members only"? or maybe toggle so client side only in MA and global in SEA? lots of possibilities)

That deals with a pre-set number of overlays, and only one in use at any given time. I don't know how much of a system impact that would have, though.