Revised Contact Looks

[Serpine]

I was going through my hard drive and stumbled on pictures that I had posted in an old thread on the original CoH forums, where we were theorizing updated looks for existing contacts and such in the game. Basically trying to use more updated parts rather then just generic citizen models, show that they were "in uniform", and better reflect their background info. Most of these characters were unfortunately made somewhat useless following Issue 21 and the changes to the initial missions (the thread originated before that point if I recall), but it was still an interesting thought process.

Update: I actually managed to find the original thread these were from archived:
( https://web.archive.org/web/20120911092314/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=266729 )

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SG Registrar:

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Registrar.jpg

Caitlin Murray-Davies (DATA contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Cait.jpg

Rick Davies (DATA contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Rick.jpg

Rebecca Brinell (SERAPH contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Rebecca_Brinell.jpg

Antonia Nash (GIFT contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Nashes.jpg

Kong Bao (Skyway contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/KongBao.jpg

Gregor Richardson (MAGI contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Gregor.jpg

Susan Davies (ELITE contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Susan.jpg

Ghost Falcon (Peregrine Island store contact)

https://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/inkrion/City%20of%20Heroes/Falc2.jpg

[Skull Thuggery]

Man, Kong Bao is stylin'!

[Serpine]

Man, Kong Bao is stylin'!

Well, his background description was that he was supposed to be an icon for the culture of his community so grandpa-in-business-suit just didn't cut it for me. :)

[houtex]

Let's be honest.  That's Patrick Stewart *playing* Kong Bao.

[Thirty-Seven]

I loved this thread!

I dunno if I kept some of the ones I made... For sure I have the costume saved though that I made as a replacement to those hideous Merit Vendors that they insisted on putting EVERYWHERE!

[Triplash]

Nice work! I'd love to see some updates like this.

At the very least, I think the Davies should get new phones. They're not representing DATA very well using cellphones from the 80s.

[Serpine]

Let's be honest.  That's Patrick Stewart *playing* Kong Bao.

An early cast leak for "City of Heroes, the Movie." :)

Nice work! I'd love to see some updates like this.

Yeah even some basic work on a handful of npc outfits  and their emotes would be great at breaking up the stream of basic civilians armed with newspapers. As the general costume tech advanced the usual suspects appeared more and more dated in comparison to the player characters interacting with them frequently. If the game was relaunched and the new overlords were amenable I would certainly volunteer to help build and merge revised looks like this into the game.

What I'd love to see really is a system where an official thread could be opened for a target npc, people could submit look proposals, the proposals would be voted on, and then the winning one for that npc could be linked to the npc for deployment next patch (after a final dev vetting for appropriateness of course).

Admittedly I don't know if the tech for such substitutions exists (aka, how baked in are the looks of npcs and can they conveniently take PC style costume data or do they require extensive conversion). Or if the theoretical future devs would think such a thing worthwhile. But its a fun thought experiment.

[Tacitala]

At the very least, I think the Davies should get new phones. They're not representing DATA very well using cellphones from the 80s.

There was a mov tucked in the large list, EMOTE_SMARTPHONE_PRE, that has the character using on a more up to date phone (or as I put it in the Mov menu "talk on new-fangled cellphone").

Edit- As modeled on the left by the ever-stylish citizen of Praetoria:
https://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu85/Tacitala/phones_zpse766630a.jpg

[Thirty-Seven]

Hey, I found the versions of folks I made for this thread on the official forums that I ended up using as NPCs in one of my SG's AE RP arcs:

https://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/ryft37/Costumes/Re-DesignSuggestions.jpg

Also, there was my take on Davies:

https://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/ryft37/Costumes/Rick_Davies.jpg

[Triplash]

There was a mov tucked in the large list, EMOTE_SMARTPHONE_PRE, that has the character using on a more up to date phone (or as I put it in the Mov menu "talk on new-fangled cellphone").

Edit- As modeled on the left by the ever-stylish citizen of Praetoria:

Ooooh! Yeah that one is much sleeker and cooler. That's what I'm talkin' about!

And the Prae citizens overall looked way better than the primal earth ones, for sure. IIRC they did strike me as being pretty fashionable too, yeah... and that got me thinking. Any new set of citizens for blue and red sides would have to range all the way from fashionable outfits and smart business suits, to jogging suits and jeans with t-shirts, even right down to those shabby looking homeless guys you'd see pushing their shopping carts.

It would be a LOT of new costumes to make to get a true sense of the diversity you would see in a city with everything from slums to skyscrapers, but if the passing citizens *could* be updated like that, I think it would be a very pleasant change.