Fix skins that should be asymmetrical not being asymmetrical

[Baark0]

This has been a problem (afaik) since the start of DST, where certain skins are mirrored on both the left and right side of the character sprites.  This is most prominent in WX-78's skin "The Unfinished". I don't own the skin to show you, but a quick google search and you'll be able to understand why it's problematic. Half of their face is exposed, while the other isn't, so logically, only one side should be exposed, yet for some reason, the unfinished side is exposed on both sides of the skin. Below I've uploaded a few other examples:

WX has a patch of ice right along the line in their face

Pretty much every Wendy skin's flower is mirrored, the Forge season 1 skin also has a braid that suffers from this issue

Minotaur Wortox has these ear piercings

Wig has this weird decorative braid

This issue also extends to items, as characters will always hold the item in the position furthest from the screen

Now sure, some of these might just be nitpicks, but these are small details that would be nice. Since Klei seems so determined to make asymmetrical skins, they should at least make them look normal. It basically renders some skins like WX's aformentioned unfinished a skin I will never touch, since it's jarring to look at and also breaks immersion.  It'd be nice to see some skins get touch ups.

"But most of these are so small you'll never notice them"

But what if people do notice them? That's not a good reason to leave these graphical errors in the game, especially since they've been around since the start of the game. Is it really that time consuming to make art for the other side of a character model? Take Wigfrid's aforementioned skin, all you'd have to do is erase the braid on the left facing sprite and it'd be fine.

"But drawing every skin in perfect detail would take too much time"

Well when you want to make asymmetrical skins, you should be prepared to put in the time to actually make them asymmetrical, not just from the front/back.

Sorry if this post came off as angry or toxic, this is just something I really feel should be changed.

Also no hate Klei I love your game

Edit: I'd also like to bring up an issue with Maxwell's verdant skin: whenever he blinks, his leaf crown moves. Not sure if this is intentional or not but somehow I doubt it is.

[SkyistheGround]

glad im not the only one that noticed tbh
you mentioned wx's unfinished skin which i agree with, but imo its weirder for wormwood skins
every single one of them is asymmetrical because of bloom
i've mostly been able to ignore it since im usually too busy doing other things in the game but taking a loot at triumphant wormwood in particular

as someone that draws, its tricky since there's no good reference

i love all these skins so much, weird mirroring or not. i enjoy the work and creativity put into them more then im annoyed but nice to discuss sometimes
p.s. i also have unfinished wx to show

[fimmatek]

1 hour ago, Baark0 said:

This has been a problem (afaik) since the start of DST,

This has been the case since the beginning of DS actually, and not a problem with the skins, but the general feature. Characters only have three sprites, front, back and side, but there aren't separate ones for left and right. This is the most visible with Wendy (even without a skin): her flower is looking toward the player, no matter if she's facing left or right. But you can notice that every character does the same, if you equip a tool, they'll hold it with the hand that is further from the player:

Therefore, Klei can't fix it by just editing one sprite, instead they have to add a fourth one to every character and skin, and maybe even modify the animations too.

This was reported a while back and a dev (I think PeterA?) said something like "yeah we know this looks a bit strange at first and we keep it in mind, but it would take a lot of time to fix it, so we just leave it for now". If someone can find that post that would be nice.

Anyways, I'm all for this change, it would be cool if skins and characters actually had different right and left facing sprites, but I doubt it would happen any time soon.

 

[Wilson-brb]

i have so much agony with wilson eye on the survivor skin..

[Wardin25]

yeah, winonas industrious skin also has this, i dont mind the holding the tool from a different side part but itd be nice if they started implementing a 4th side to the skins that need them little by little

also I wonder how this even came to be, did the artist feel like a 4th sprite wouldnt be necessary since the characters were symmetrical and then they forgot when making wendy?

[Baark0]

35 minutes ago, fimmatek said:

"yeah we know this looks a bit strange at first and we keep it in mind, but it would take a lot of time to fix it, so we just leave it for now". If someone can find that post that would be nice.

Still, the fact it's been in the game since launch is a problem. It breaks immersion, looks weird, sometimes even bad (as seen with unfinished wx-78), and in most cases probably wouldn't be that hard to fix. Most of Wendy's skins seem like they'd take less than 20 minutes to fix.

9 minutes ago, Wardin25 said:

yeah, winonas industrious skin also has this, i dont mind the holding the tool from a different side part but itd be nice if they started implementing a 4th side to the skins that need them little by little

I personally think hand sprites would be important to update, since hand items are kinda the most important equipment in the game. It makes the game feel unpolished (even though it is).

[Atkvin]

5 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

I personally think hand sprites would be important to update, since hand items are kinda the most important equipment in the game. It makes the game feel unpolished (even though it is).

I remember spotting that early in the game and wondering why it was left like that lol.

It's not something that bothers me at all - but part of me does want them to fix it.. not for aesthetic but rather gameplay reasons. Let us use that useless, neglected other hand to dual wield & hold a lantern while fighting etc., Klei

[Wardin25]

4 minutes ago, Atkvin said:

I remember spotting that early in the game and wondering why it was left like that lol.

It's not something that bothers me at all - but part of me does want them to fix it.. not for aesthetic but rather gameplay reasons. Let us use that useless, neglected other hand to dual wield & hold a lantern while fighting etc., Klei

they gotta have a hand free to catch themselves if they trip dood

[me real life]

1 hour ago, fimmatek said:

Characters only have three sprites, front, back and side, but there aren't separate ones for left and right.

Fun fact: this is why Woodlegs has two peg legs, rather than just one!

[minespatch]

As long as we can bring this up, the devs can probably write this down for the future.

[Wilson-brb]

they made an option for removing the moving heads on menu, i guess that would been a nice just this little thing too.

[-Variant]

This is an animation error more than it is an art error.
This isn't something that can be easily fixed as its rooted as far back as when DS was first being made...
As others have mentioned characters and mobs are animated via "faces", different directions if you will.
Players were animated up, down, and right. There never was a left made and in-game they're simply flipped.
The game doesn't handle asymmetrical faces either as far as I'm aware, so I'm unsure of how feasible it'd be to fix. 

[TemporarySolutn]

6 hours ago, -Variant said:

This isn't something that can be easily fixed as its rooted as far back as when DS was first being made...

that doesn't mean it cant be fixed and DST and DS are two completely games and run on different engines, it can absolutely be fixed atleast for the skin portion as there are custom characters that can do it, the animation portion will probably be harder to do but I sincerely doubt that it isn't feasible, its probably just not worth their time

[Baark0]

4 hours ago, TemporarySolutn said:

that doesn't mean it cant be fixed and DST and DS are two completely games and run on different engines, it can absolutely be fixed atleast for the skin portion as there are custom characters that can do it, the animation portion will probably be harder to do but I sincerely doubt that it isn't feasible, its probably just not worth their time

If it makes the game look better, I'd say it's worth the time

[TheDoughboy1917]

This is essentially a cost-saving measure, old fighting games used to do this as well (See Sagat in SFII and his magically flipping eye patch). It looks silly, especially when you point it out and while making asymmetrical sprites has been done (again, using Street Fighter, SFIII has Gill and Elena, who were made with asymmetry in mind) it's a lot of extra work. Even more when you consider they would basically have to draw a new sprite for every character and skin.

[TemporarySolutn]

4 minutes ago, TheDoughboy1917 said:

This is essentially a cost-saving measure

this isnt the 1960's, this is not an issue

[TheDoughboy1917]

42 minutes ago, TemporarySolutn said:

this isnt the 1960's, this is not an issue

You're right, it's probably more accurate to say that this is probably a time saving measure. Klei probably could have afforded to do this even before the Tencent buyout, but they probably decided it wasn't worth the time. Maybe they'll add it in the future, who knows.

[Hornete]

Code-wise I don't think it should be too hard, the game already overrides symbols all the time, so I think it wouldn't be too hard to override the face/head symbols only if the character is facing left/right, but of course I do not have access or the ability to read the engine code so I can't really say.

 

[Baark0]

6 hours ago, TheDoughboy1917 said:

Even more when you consider they would basically have to draw a new sprite for every character and skin.

I don't think they'd need to redraw the whole skin, just make some minor changes, like Wendy's flower, minotaur Wortox's piercings, etc. Obviously some bigger ones like unifinished WX would take more work, but those are rare outliers.

[minespatch]

8 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

I don't think they'd need to redraw the whole skin, just make some minor changes, like Wendy's flower, minotaur Wortox's piercings, etc. Obviously some bigger ones like unifinished WX would take more work, but those are rare outliers.

It's like what Hornete said, mainly a area of coding which is what the real concern is.

[Grim the]

This is what ruins Victorian Wilson for me.

[CarlZalph]

I believe the most constricting thing Klei has at the moment is time.  The tradeoff of allocating hours worked towards new content, bugfixes, skins, etc versus adding in some more art for skins.

 

On 5/30/2021 at 6:22 PM, SkyistheGround said:

p.s. i also have unfinished wx to show

Me too.

[minespatch]

2 hours ago, CarlZalph said:

Spoiler