Information on player customization

Justin Meisse

Hi everyone. I'm doing some research on player customization to pitch for a project. Does anyone have advice on the ins and outs of a system along the lines of this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch6d5zS9cdc

The engine doesn't really matter but bonus points for unity implementation.

EliasWick

I am not familiar to Unity and how it works, but I believe that a progression system in Unreal Engine 4 and Unity would work in a similar way.

A Progression system (customization included) is made up of many components working together. Experience, unlockable items, talents, skins, loot-boxes, taunts etc. Some of these components are more difficult to implement depending on how the game is built. There are probably templates that you can find in the Unity Marketplace / Store.

Creating the actual Progression system could be very difficult and time consuming. Creating the User Interface is an easier task and could be done by one man. You have to keep in mind that there has been more than 10 + people working on that progression system, not to mention all the skins, animations, sounds and all the code that allows it to work seamlessly.

Hope this helps a little.

Justin Meisse

Hey thanks, Elias. I'm really looking for info on pipeline and tech. I'm working on a game right now as a character artist that has a fairly simple customization system and I'm brainstorming on a pitch for a more in depth one for the next game.

I figure I'll share what I've got so far:

What I've gleaned from looking at the Doom 4 stuff is they have about 20 character models split up into head, arms, torso, legs and base. Each has about 3 texture variants which are different primary and secondary tint zones. Patterns are available to fill the secondary tint region. Since I'm the only character artist I'd probably shoot for 4 characters and do the split as head, arms, torso, legs. Or possibly a head/face split since they are robots

I've worked with systems that have tint systems in place, We would create 2 black and white masks for a primary and secondary tint regions. The main texture would have those areas be grey-scale and the engine would tint those areas with gradient ramps. I don't know how most games do the pattern overlay, I'd guess it would involve making sure you lay out your UV's so the pattern looks good.

Another system I'm kind of familiar with is in the games I've worked on our player customization system would bake textures for the skin, face, hair, gear, etc.. down to one map to cut down on draw calls