Male and Female Versions of Units

General feedback and discussion of the game.

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Should some units have male and female images?

Yes!
50
78%
No!
14
22%
 
Total votes: 64

Dave
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Male and Female Versions of Units

Post by Dave »

Since the poll at http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 0&start=30 gives results that appear to favor some units having male and female versions, but the poll might have poor options, I'm opening this poll to find out the feelings of the Wesnoth community:

Do people think that some units having both male and female versions, which are selected at random, is a good idea? No fence-sitting options here; just a 'yes' or 'no' (or you can abstain, of course).

Don't bother actually replying to this thread unless you have something new to add on the issue.

David
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Herkum
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Post by Herkum »

Could it be expanded to have several models, male or female?

Just to give an idea, suppose that Dave likes the Elf army East, they could have a few different models from Elf arny West. So stats, some everything, just some different models.

What do you think?
Burnsaber
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Re: Male and Female Versions of Units

Post by Burnsaber »

Dave wrote:Since the poll at http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 0&start=30 gives results that appear to favor some units having male and female versions, but the poll might have poor options, I'm opening this poll to find out the feelings of the Wesnoth community:

Do people think that some units having both male and female versions, which are selected at random, is a good idea? No fence-sitting options here; just a 'yes' or 'no' (or you can abstain, of course).

Don't bother actually replying to this thread unless you have something new to add on the issue.

David
It is good to have more graphics in-game.(and beatifull ones too). Since it doesn`t matter if the unit is female or male (in gameplay reasons), there is no harm in having them.
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allover
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Multiple versions of units

Post by allover »

I like the idea of multiple versions of units (male/female, variants) but I worry about the collective maintenance effort - as a non-artist, I worry about wasting the time and effort of the artists working on Wesnoth. (Although there seem to be people willing to spend hours drawing units nobody plays with...)

The male/female thing is kind of nice (although coed armies were historically rare - not that women didn't fight, just usually they were last-ditch village defense, being less expendable). Perhaps male units would be more likely to have "strong" and "resilient" while female units would be more likely to have "quick" and "loyal"? (one would have to be careful to avoid creating unwanted correlations between traits; maybe pick the traits first, then the gender?) Of course, if you want to get really silly, there's always transgender shamans and pregnant soldiers...

Multiple versions might be nice, though, for multiplayer and for some scenarios. If different tribes of orcs looked slightly different, it would add a nice bit of flavor to the game, and it would make multiplayer games look a little better.

Really, though, I don't think it's enough of a benefit to be worth putting much effort into it. Two pictures, where available, and no in-game effect seems good to me.
Dacyn
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Post by Dacyn »

I support female versions as long as I can't tell the difference between them and the male ones. :wink:
Anyway, I have some questions about this poll:
Where does it get its authority? IMO we should only use democratic processes when there is a reason that the majority is likely to give us a valid result. A reason I don't support female units is that they are a liability for graphics designers, so it would make more sense to do a poll of graphics developers to see whether they think female units are a graphical liability...
Why is there no "I don't care" option? A lot of people will probably vote for "yes" because they don't care, just to leave well enough alone...
Last edited by Dacyn on October 1st, 2004, 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Invisible Philosopher »

EP made a teleport picture for the only unit with teleports in the game. By the time it was implemented, there was another graphic that needs a teleportation animation. Meanwhile half your Silver Mages don't have a teleport animation. The addition of female graphics makes the graphics less finished rather than more, overall.

I think that if done correctly, having two genders isn't a problem, but it still isn't good either.

A better solution (IMO) is to make the graphics ambiguous in gender where possible and desirable, instead of making two for each unit. I wonder if some people are thinking "I can't tell what gender that unit is for sure, but since it's a fighter, it's probably male; therefore, it needs an obviously female version." I hope not...
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scott
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Post by scott »

Invisible Philosopher wrote: A better solution (IMO) is to make the graphics ambiguous in gender where possible and desirable, instead of making two for each unit. I wonder if some people are thinking "I can't tell what gender that unit is for sure, but since it's a fighter, it's probably male; therefore, it needs an obviously female version." I hope not...
I think this is the current MO.

Also, if gender graphics are kept for some units (and I think it adds to the game), the equality of male and female units should probably become axiomatic or else it will keep coming up (like in this thread already). It won't stop it from coming up, but at least someone can point to the axiom and say it is how it is and it ain't changing, so move on.
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Dave
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Post by Dave »

Dacyn wrote: Anyway, I have some questions about this poll:
Where does it get its authority? IMO we should only use democratic processes when there is a reason that the majority is likely to give us a valid result.
We don't use democratic processes. This poll is simply to see what our users think, which can help developers make decisions.
Dacyn wrote: A reason I don't support female units is that they are a liability for graphics designers
I don't think they are a liability for graphics designers, since units do not have to have female versions. It's an optional thing. We are not going to reject units for lack of a female version (unless they advance from a unit that has a female version, but generally to add the female version in the first place we add it for the entire tree).
Dacyn wrote: Why is there no "I don't care" option? A lot of people will probably vote for "yes" because they don't care, just to leave well enough alone...
I don't like 'fence sitting' options in polls. It just leads to ambiguity. If you don't care, then abstain from voting.

David
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Dacyn
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Post by Dacyn »

Dave wrote:We don't use democratic processes. This poll is simply to see what our users think, which can help developers make decisions.
I would call that 'democratic processes', even though it is not democracy. Why even bother with a poll if there is no reason to suppose it will give a (in some way) valid result?
Dave wrote:I don't think they are a liability for graphics designers, since units do not have to have female versions.
The current female unit graphics are another set of graphics that are not ready for 1.0. Also, the Silver Mage does not have a female teleport animation... And you are not a graphics designer, so what do you know? :wink:
Dave wrote:I don't like 'fence sitting' options in polls. It just leads to ambiguity.
Sometimes the result should be ambiguous! If the majority has no opinion on a subject, the poll should reflect that instead of reinforcing whatever value it decides to vote for.
Dacyn wrote:If you don't care, then abstain from voting.
A poll needs to cater to the people who just read the poll options, then vote for the one they think is best, without reading posts below that imply that maybe they shouldn't vote. I use a "None of the above" option for people who don't want to vote, and it also tells you how many people looked at the poll and didn't vote- useful information, IMO.
caranha
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Post by caranha »

my 2 cents.

Instead of "gender difference", I support a milder version of "graphic difference" in units.

Eg. instead of gender, units could be differentiated by having or not a hat, or by different shades of hair/eye colour. Using gender has the advantage of setting clear guidelines on how the alternate units should look like. It has the disadvantages of language problems, and giving people ideas of changing statistics/advance trees based on unit subtype (in this case, gender), which I don't support at all.

That way, units would have simply "alternate graphic sets", which could be (and probably would be) male/female versions, but could be something else.

I think it really adds to the game when not all (for instance) elven archers are identical. But this graphic differentiation idea is just icing on the cake, really.
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Post by Darth Fool »

I am against having a distinction between male/female versions of the same unit. It not only adds extra graphics, which has already been mentioned(but may not be a problem if there are motivated individuals) but it adds needless complication to unit structure. For example, last night I just figured out that my script for adding advancements needs to be modified to deal with units that have female versions because the female tag defines a completely different unit. This leads to a lot of replication of data for units with female versions.

From a gameplay perspective I do not find having female versions of units useful. I am a big proponent of anything having an effect on the game having a visual cue, however adding alternate graphics to essentially identical units muddies the distinction between units. If the units are not to be identical (ie, the female units stats are different), then their should be a seperate unit.

If the decision is that having female unit-graphics is desirable, but that the units will have the same stats (a much better option than allowing different stats), then I would suggest that we change how the female graphics are implimented. Remove the [female] tags and simply have the engine search for UNITPIC_female.png anytime an image of the name UNITPIC.png is used in the unit definition, but a unit is female. If the female pic doesn't exist, just use the original.

well, that's my $0.02 worth on the subject...
silene
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Post by silene »

Darth Fool wrote:Remove the [female] tags and simply have the engine search for UNITPIC_female.png
It would force both genders to have exactly the same animations. The current engine is a lot more flexible.
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Post by Darth Fool »

silene wrote:
Darth Fool wrote:Remove the [female] tags and simply have the engine search for UNITPIC_female.png
It would force both genders to have exactly the same animations. The current engine is a lot more flexible.
yes, but at the cost of duplicating all the unit information. If you want to balance the elvish archer's xp requirements, hitpoints, etc you now have to do it in two places. This is not a good thing. If that much flexibility is desired, a whole new unit should be made instead.
allover
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Gender and translations

Post by allover »

It was pointed out in the translaions forum that multi-gendered units pose serious problems for translators (to some languages). While in English "fighter" is acceptable for both genders, in other languages (even French) you just have to use different words (guerrier, guerriere) to avoid painful grammatical errors. This means, for example, that when you click on an Elvish Fighter, it has to say something different in French depending on whether it's male or female. Other languages are apparently worse. In some cases, Arabic for example, a verb takes a different form depending whether the actor is male or female. Not to mention all the dialog spoken by "your most senior mage" or whatever needs to be customized depending on the gender of that unit, which is selected at runtime.

At the least, translators should have the option of turning off gendered units for their language, or else a quite elaborate system needs to be set up to support translations of gendered units.
silene
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Post by silene »

Darth Fool, please don't misunderstand what I said. I wouldn't be against a rewrite of the WML structure, so that the stats can be shared between male and female. However I'm against your idea of completely removing the [female] tag, it is too harsh of a change and would considerably limit the artistic possibilities.
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