Soldier Portrait Mod

[perpetual]

Hey community, I'm interested in creating mods that enhance the soldier personalization / rpg elements of Xcom.

To start I've created a small code modification to display soldier portraits in place of rank images on the basescape soldier info screen and in the battlescape. They are simply based on race/gender at the moment. See the attached pictures.

I put an abbreviated rank string in the battlescape name for now. Not a satisfying solution, but one without a UI redesign.

My next goal is to have individual portraits for soldiers picked from a pool for each race/gender combo.

So my questions are:

- Is there interest in these type of features? Maybe not this specific implementation, but along the same lines.
- Have any modders created more faces in the style of the default inventory graphics? Im not much of a pixel artist. 

[chaosshade]

Totally!  I'd love to see a mod like this come to completion, it'd help me a lot in picking new names for my soldiers.

[Solarius Scorch]

Yeah, it's very interesting.

I've added many new faces to the game (OXCE allows for up to 128 faces), but haven't released it yet. See this post.

[Meridian]

@Solarius:
The issue is that the two screenshots above are using different palette (basescape and battlescape).
So you would have to provide all the pictures twice!

Just like vanilla has rank icons twice:
1. https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=BASEBITS.PCK
2. https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=SMOKE.PCK

But if you'd like to see the avatar on the battlescape GUI only, I can do that as optional feature in OXCE+.

[Solarius Scorch]

@Solarius:
The issue is that the two screenshots above are using different palette (basescape and battlescape).
So you would have to provide all the pictures twice!

It's not very comfortable, but I don't think it's a problem at all. One entry doesn't make much difference since we won't have too many pics (128 at most, though I doubt we'll get there soon).

But if you'd like to see the avatar on the battlescape GUI only, I can do that as optional feature in OXCE+.

I think it's worth considering, though I lack the technical knowledge to say how hard it'll be, and I haven't really given it any thought yet.

[Meridian]

It's not a lot of work, took me 10-15 minutes to have a first prototype.

There are however questions like:

1. what background to use?
a/ default brown-ish?
b/ plain solid black? maybe with a border?
c/ custom? (26x23 pixels)

2. which avatar to use?
a/ avatar with the corresponding armor?
b/ or take fixed armor (e.g. NONE)?

3. where/how to display rank?
a/ don't display?
b/ display as text before the name?
c/ display on the same place and allow toggle between avatar and rank by right-click? (+maybe have a user option what should be displayed by default?)

Attached is prototype with: 1a, 2a and 3a ... this one looks quite nice, but many look really bad with this background

[ivandogovich]

It's not a lot of work, took me 10-15 minutes to have a first prototype.

There are however questions like:

1. what background to use?
a/ default brown-ish?
b/ plain solid black? maybe with a border?
c/ custom? (26x23 pixels)

2. which avatar to use?
a/ avatar with the corresponding armor?
b/ or take fixed armor (e.g. NONE)?

3. where/how to display rank?
a/ don't display?
b/ display as text before the name?
c/ display on the same place and allow toggle between avatar and rank by right-click? (+maybe have a user option what should be displayed by default?)

Attached is prototype with: 1a, 2a and 3a ... this one looks quite nice, but many look really bad with this background

1 b
2 a or b
3 b or c.

^^ My votes.  Looks Awesome! Love this!

[Shoes]

Have you considered making a smaller sized rank insignia and putting that next to the name? Like Perpetual's idea, but tiny pixel art picture instead of name.

Or even take that tiny rank and put it in the top left corner of the portrait.

[robin]

i wanted to do the exact same thing using apocalypse's portraits (which are too large by default, you need to resize then but they still look good enough).
i never spent time on it because i just deemed it impossible (and it was also lower-ish priority, compared to some other thing is still have to finish).
very cool idea.
ideally people should be enabled to add portraits packs***: anime characters, famous people (actors, politicians, singers), your friends-relatives (your grandma killing sectoids), avatars from the community in which you're making a let's play, or whatever the modders come up with.

*** but to check if the feature makes sense, some testing portraits should be made, to see if they still look good when resized that small. apocalypse's portraits are ok because they're black and white; random photos or images (and colored too) might look like shit.

[Solarius Scorch]

It's not a lot of work, took me 10-15 minutes to have a first prototype.

Wow.

There are however questions like:

1. what background to use?
a/ default brown-ish?
b/ plain solid black? maybe with a border?
c/ custom? (26x23 pixels)

I'd say some sort of gradient would fit best. Not sure about the specifics though, requires testing.

2. which avatar to use?
a/ avatar with the corresponding armor?
b/ or take fixed armor (e.g. NONE)?

I'd say NONE, otherwise the face would often be obscured by the helmet, and I assume we're going towards a "personal files" effect, with a recognizable photo.

3. where/how to display rank?
a/ don't display?
b/ display as text before the name?
c/ display on the same place and allow toggle between avatar and rank by right-click? (+maybe have a user option what should be displayed by default?)

Attached is prototype with: 1a, 2a and 3a ... this one looks quite nice, but many look really bad with this background

After all I think the picture should only be seen in geoscape, not in battlescape, where it gets a bit tricky.

Have you considered making a smaller sized rank insignia and putting that next to the name? Like Perpetual's idea, but tiny pixel art picture instead of name.

Or even take that tiny rank and put it in the top left corner of the portrait.

Yeah, that last one seems best.

i wanted to do the exact same thing using apocalypse's portraits (which are too large by default, you need to resize then but they still look good enough).
i never spent time on it because i just deemed it impossible (and it was also lower-ish priority, compared to some other thing is still have to finish).
very cool idea.
ideally people should be enabled to add portraits packs***: anime characters, famous people (actors, politicians, singers), your friends-relatives (your grandma killing sectoids), avatars from the community in which you're making a let's play, or whatever the modders come up with.

*** but to check if the feature makes sense, some testing portraits should be made, to see if they still look good when resized that small. apocalypse's portraits are ok because they're black and white; random photos or images (and colored too) might look like shit.

And how would it correspond to the inventory pics? It'd work in Apocalypse, where there are no inventory pics, but not X-Com 1/2. We can't have different portraits for the same person. Unless I misunderstood you somehow?

[Bloax]

It would be pretty hilarious if the mugshots had damage states like the HUD face in Doom;

even more so if morale had an effect, too.

[Phoenix7786]

I can just now see someone who cross-pollinates over at Zandronum trying to make a FPS out of X-com in the Doom Engine.

[robin]

It'd work in Apocalypse, where there are no inventory pics, but

do you mean the fact that apocalypse only has that one face for the paperdoll?

[Meridian]

1 b
2 a or b
3 b or c.

^^ My votes.  Looks Awesome! Love this!

I did 1c, 2b and 3b.
More info here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4187.msg58662.html#msg58662

[perpetual]

Inventory graphics are a concern, ideally the face in the paper doll would match the portrait.

However, making a sprite for each face/armor combo is a lot of work and isn’t too mod friendly, however. Perhaps a system with separate armor and head sprites could be devised?

@Solarius
Those faces you linked looks great, they have a lot of variety on such a small scale! I’d be very interested in those files if/when you see fit to release them.

@Meridian
I was going to say it would be great to include the battlescape feature in OXCE+, but it looks like you've already done it! Now more people can be exposed to the idea. Can that codebase be used for standard XCOM as well?

@robin
Definitely, I envision this feature to be friendly to custom portrait packs.
I personally wish there was more space for portraits, but I don’t see it happening without a serious interface redesign.