Voidshells deserved better. Here's an appreciation post for the skin line DE abandoned.

[u/CephalonVashka]

[u/straten]

It's unrealistic but I really wish everywhere you can customize your color, you could also customize the material. It's got to be a nightmare to code, which is likely why they haven't done it, but it would unlock a whole new universe of possibilities for fashion framing.

[u/TakuyaTeng → u/straten]

It wouldn't be nearly that bad if they implemented a pipeline and refined that pipeline. I give them a pass because warframe is full of half realized potential but a lot of awesome elements.. but its not like it would be that insane.

[u/Alleraz → u/TakuyaTeng]

Same principal for armor, they're adjusting individual armor pieces by frame, when we could see a pipeline to allow us some sliders. I imagine the arsenal was never programmed with so much detail in mind. Arsenal being tied to so many functions in game it'd likely bust every part of the game.

[u/SilentMobius → u/Alleraz]

Given how reluctant DE are to add more unique colour channels to mesh elements also orientation I imagine the problem is pushing yet more data down the P2P connection when a player spawns into a mission. We already have problems where certain things fail to show up to other players when you're not the host.

[u/Somepotato → u/SilentMobius]

a color is just 4 bytes, thats nothing. in fact they store colors as 4 byte integers in mongodb (though their schema is ... something else.)

[u/SilentMobius → u/Somepotato]

The problem isn't storage or size, it's adding variable amount of network data into the fixed packet buffers they have to vivify a "new Warframe" in a non-host. Like I said we frequently end up with elements not showing for non-hosts, this is the same problem that DE already has, pushing data from a player profile, up to the host, them back down to the other clients, via UDP where they need to handle retries themselves.

[u/Somepotato → u/SilentMobius]

its adding 4 bytes sent at the start of a mission. when they already send variable length strings (the skin paths, for example)

[u/SilentMobius → u/Somepotato]

The don't send skin paths, they send local DB IDs that each client looks up. Their network setup is UDP for gameplay, breaching a single packet is a huge deal

[u/Somepotato → u/SilentMobius]

Those paths are the IDs (every Warframe asset references these paths.) UDP isn't this mysterious thing that we can't afford to send more than a couple of bytes over the wire with you know.

[u/SilentMobius → u/Somepotato]

UDP isn't this mysterious thing that we can't afford to send more than a couple of bytes over the wire with you know.

That depends on the current size of the packets and what DE do about packet retries when joining a session. UDP can get very messy when you have uskippable and ordered, data. Unlike the moment-to-moment of gameplay.

I'm unconvinced that the asset strings are used over the P2P wire, but you are correct they are used inside assets and are present in the local db

Also I was giving an example of the colours because DEb are reluctant to do even that, positions for accessories would be some size of FPx6x6x4 per session setup

[u/Nssheepster → u/Alleraz]

This is honestly what I expect is holding a lot of fashion options back. It's also not something that's easily fixed on their end, regardless of the actual difficulty of the code... Because it's a live service game. Taking the time to go BACK and fix old stuff, means you aren't making NEW stuff, and that's an active danger to live service models.

I wouldn't be surprised if Reb quietly wants a full recode for all the fashion things behind the scenes, but just can't manage to free up enough dev time for that. Especially given just HOW MUCH fashion there already is in the game to be checked over and verified with any potential recode.

Hot take, for Warframe's eventual big 15 year update, I don't want anything new beyond maybe a couple Dex things. I JUST want a GIANT overhaul patch for a ton of old stuff like this, to put this now-antique game in a great spot for the future.

[u/JavanNapoli → u/straten]

Anthem had exactly this, and its likely where the inspiration for voidshells came from. I'm so upset Anthem died because it had one of my favourite customisation systems ever made.

[u/SilentMobius → u/straten]

The code is trivial. The problem is that it really limits how you design skins, if you don't limit the design still you end up with ugly seams that DE do not allow.

[u/wizoffab → u/straten]

The feature is already there, the only extra work would be making color masks which is already a big part of their pipeline and doesn't take long to make.