This game deserves better player portraits/avatars whatever

Or they could use the money to pay the staff.

I would like to see them animated (which they did for GalCiv2), but otherwise they get the job done.

-HM

...I really like the style the player portraits are done in.

They have to leave us modders some areas to improve on. Seriously one mans trash is another mans treasure.

More seriously, I would have like for more zippy graphics but the bottom line is that the player portraits are a very minor aspect of the game. So when one is allocating resources such as limited man hours on testing, coding, graphics -etc.. and one has a very small production team what should they focus on? I'm sure the ship graphics where a much higher priority.

I know that is not what you want to hear but it is the way it works. Everything in life is a trade off. This is especially so in the business world. The idea is to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

I'm sure the developers figured that game play was a much higher priority then LoTR type of graphics. Then there is always the dimension that they designed this to play well on low end systems for additional justification for not having super killer graphics.

Personally, I really like them a lot. The style is really standardized, but I think many of them are pretty great.

I think the portraits are good enough considering you rarely see them that much anyway. I would like to be able to pick each race individually and not in the 3 pack system currently employed though.

I was very dispointed with the portraits too. Even my friends new to the game, that's the first thing they said when we started our first game; the lack of pictures to choose from and the the below average artwork of them. And the end-game finger-painting of a picture that comes up durring the victory screen is a big letdown too. (maybe another topic, but after untold hours of play, the game just ends suddenly in one second, jumping to that victory screen, not much of a payoff for all that work).

Lets hope that in the future there will be victory and faction video developed within the community or by the devs proper. Again SD/IC have made no secret of their focus on older system playability as well as game mechanics and not fluff-n-stuff. Food for thought...

I too like the style of the portraits. Several of these pictures have been around since before the beta. I however, have never seen the victory screen, only the defeat one (when I surrendered).

I just thought it was curious. I really liked GAL CIV II, but the one thing that really jumped out in that game too was the REALLY basic portraits of your player and the AI players. I was surprised to see the same artist did the portraits in SOASE.

Honestly, if every sci-fi paperback in the bookstore (even the God-awful ones) can have decent cover art, then this game should deserve better quality portraits. Don't get me wrong; I give high praise to the game graphics and to the game as a whole. Even the music is pretty decent. Why did they cheap-out in the same way twice on the player portraits?

Geez--even the cheezy Fabio-based covers over in the garbage "romance" section are better than these portraits are. Maybe there should be a Fabio portrait tossed in to the mix; maybe to represent all the pirates. Give us a good mugshot of Fabio to aim for when launching an attack.

@Scotty - Come-on.... Lets be reasonible. :p The art is not that bad. You may not like the style but it is commercial quality nonetheless. Personally I would prefer something more surreal but I accept the design choices inherent with this game as well as GC2. Toonish image styles are the norm for many titles these days. The images for these titles are above that level to be sure. After all they do make these products with the idea that the players will change them anyway so better to spend the money in more important areas such as game play. :LOL:

Just look at what can be done with what we already have..

lol

OK. +1 creative point for the Ponies.

It might also be a paradox, the gameplay graphics in Sins are so great, so eye-popping, that I guess to see the other artwork in the game, well, it just seems kind'a sub-par.

You guys might want to see this link for my friend's work in modding the portraits.

very nice guy called Max.

I can find a place to host the files if you guys are interested.

Placed this in the mod section as well.

omg i love em.

These are great.

The first 16 are very well done and would make a great addition to the game.

I must confess that there is something unsettling about the last one. Perhaps it is TOO scary.

People sure do love stealing the works of others, eh?

Windexglow, you sure do love making the same post on multiple threads, eh?

Awesome!!   Thank you for sharing!! 

I think I found one for me

-Teal

 

:)  Thank you for the wonderful avatars!!  These are wonderful!!  Quick question if i might though, is there any reason why a jpg file 63x63 shouldn't load from the desktop for the avatar in images?  (of course there are probably a million reasons)   :) 

But was hoping it was something simple i was missing.

Thank you again for the wonderful avatars and take care,

-Teal

 

 

 

avatars are located in the textures folder under a file called portraits. you can edit in photoshop to change the avatars to anything u weant. I like to change them up for all the mods to have star trek portraits 4 star trek, star wars for star wars, etc....