More variation per unit: Male (Black/White), Female (B/W)

[Sapient]

The Lavinians are a great example of a racially diverse faction that is already part of Wesnoth (and I wish they were included with the standard release), which suggests to me that this feature, although an interesting idea, is not really needed.

Besides, you are forgetting orcs have brown skin. (And Northerners are my favorite faction!)

[Disto]

On skin color:
I think that automatically changing the skin tones would be interesting, but probably require much more work. I'm not advocating making changed skin tones mandatory, only expanding the unit variability. If the gender tag could be changed to allow any number of variations then creators could decide at the time of creation whether or not to include other skin colors.

I'm not interested in allowing different skin colors to avoid (1) potentially offending people or (2) recreating reality. I'm interested in allowing different skin colors to make the units more inclusive at the creator's option.

Feasibility for Artists:
With a program like Gimp or Photoshop, changing skin color is actually a very easy and fast process (just use Match Color, Curves or Replace Color), though applying the simple process can be time consuming unless the artist automates the process to apply to all the different image files for a particular unit. I honestly don't know how you'd do that with GIMP, but I'm sure it wouldn't be any harder than it is in Photoshop.

On unit image variability:
Beyond skin color, allowing more unit variability would generally expand what is possible in the Wesnoth Universe. Who knows what creative variations people might come up with. That is what's exciting for me about open source.

Wesnoth's Homogeneous Culture
I understand and appreciate why Wesnoth could be and is a primarily White society. At the same time I believe that Wesnoth will continue to grow, and just like the real world, there will come a time when a mixed culture (Medieval Egypt) might play a role. It would be great if this was part of Wesnoth's possible future. (Also: Were Medieval Spain + Portugal racially homogeneous?)

Questions:
1. Would it in fact be easy to allow the expansion of possible variations on the gender tag?
2. Are there any technical problems in allowing this variability
3. Are there any plot problems in allowing creators the option of creating a heterogeneous culture?

I imagine you could do this skin colour changes in a very similar way to team colours, you just need virtually a dupilicate of the code, and used a random number to pick which set of colours. Same for hair as well, except your not going to get a blond black person so you'd need to get the two to work together properly.

edit: Dfool's already said this..........

[wayfarer]

Well something different. Fmunoz posted somewhere else a turitorial for sprites with different heads you could add them one a base as you needed them.
Would it be possible that the whole head could get replaced not only the color. That would open a lot more options.

[guest]

Would it be possible that the whole head could get replaced not only the color. That would open a lot more options.

Well, yeah, I know a few (people, not sprites) who could use a head-change.

I think I might have to opt for attaching romnajin's signature here:

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Sorry for the meaningless post.

[wayfarer]

Would it be possible that the whole head could get replaced not only the color. That would open a lot more options.

Well, yeah, I know a few (people, not sprites) who could use a head-change.

I think I might have to opt for attaching romnajin's signature here:

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Sorry for the meaningless post.

Already tried it they are hard to find in shop.

[Boucman]

I think that allowing more "gender" variations, that is variations that are randomly choosen by the engine at game creation is a good idea... if someone submits a patch, I'll gladly have a look at it... our engine needs to be more versatile

I don't really mind the multicultural aspect, but I do think we are reaching the point where units are too complex in term of quantity of art needed, we should start being really cautious about that....

[Eleazar]

There will in the future be a way to specify in a unit definition color changes similar to team colors, but with the ability to define the end color range instead of just using the unit's team color. This will enable artists and unit designers to have random hair/skin color for units if they wish to do the work necessary. It should not have any more impact on CPU performance then the team colors has had. It will not require new graphics, so it shouldn't increase download problems for low-bandwidth player. It will not provide the variation in graphics that gender does, but that is ok.

DFool, Would it also be possible to create an additional kind of color shifting for this purpose that only changes the value(luminosity) of selected colors? This might be simpler to use for some minor, but noticable hair or skin color shifts. I would certainly do some work with this.

I don't think head-swapping is viable. An animated unit will usually have things (in different frames) go in front and behind his head, as well as the angle of his head changing. For head-swapping to work, a different head for each frame would usually need to be drawn-- with that much trouble you might as well just make completely new unit graphics.

[turin]

And could probably have been predicted, I have huge issues with making the Loyalists multicultural... however, I think the idea is actually much better than that of random female/male units. I think that, for example, a mixed white/arab culture (similar to Spain) might be interesting... although, for simplicity's sake, I think that the best solution would just be to have different units recruitable, some white, some arab.

IIRC, the campaign Survival uses unit variations. Take a look at it.

PS: Thanks to those who complimented the Lavinians. Unfortunately, they're not nearly animated enough. They're animated decently, but I have neither the time, inclination or skill to animate them to the game's standards...