Idea: more faces.

General Development Black Mesa
#1

It has been demonstrated that a certain pool of faces is only used by a certain group of models. For example, every character in Black Mesa uses the standard facepool - yet in the Joint Operations mod, there is an edit that replaces the _02 faces for the marines with balaclava textures; AKA a whole new pool of faces. I’ve got no modeling experience, so I have no idea how to make this idea come to reality.

So I propose this:

  1. Find/create new faces for BM
  2. Make copies of the standard scientist, guard, etc. models, and make them each have their own pool of faces to choose from
  3. Profit

Thoughts?

#2

I doubt the team would go into making new faces.
Their full commitment is now on releasing the Xen on time.

As for the faces, i agree the game looks odd with similar looking people everywhere, but
i guess someone could/would make a mod in the future.

#3

tbh I think this could be alleviated by just having more face textures

#4

I don’t think it’s necessarily even the number of face textures that’s the issue - The reason we have 2 models per (male) human NPC is because the male head already has more variations than source’s built-in skin limit of 12.
The issue, at least IMO, is that, since they were all designed to be “generic human face” (As with the mesh, in order to be used with the FCS) they all tend to blend together - a lot of them are variations of the base male head with a slightly altered skin tone or stubble.
Some extra facial details in the skin, like blemishes or light scars, would go a long way even without increasing the total amount of skins, as would an extra, (morphable) hair submodel for more( 3D) hair and beard options.

The issue isn’t amount of variations so much as that all the variations aren’t wholly distinct from each other.

#5

We don’t need more faces.

We need more eyes.

Go full Bloodborne on this bitch and let us fight The Great Ones!

#6

Yeah, actually, more eyes would help a lot too.
I know statistically speaking brown is the most common colour, but it’d be nice to have some greens and blues peppered in there too.
That could probably be done with a seperate submodel so it’s not subject to the skin limit or locked to specific face textures.

#7

Probably should create a formula for the creation. I propose that for every two eyes that we have one nose. Any objections?

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.