Tell me where did all the female hybrids go?

[6649f8fdc2c43voodoo47]

sure, take a shot at the female hybrid if you want.

[6649f8fdc2f70endwars]

voodoo47
Don't tempt me man, because I will do it!

[6649f8fdc32acicemann]

lastmaster
Go for it. I'd love to see it attempted.

[6649f8fdc36e2Chandlermaki]

voodoo47
Don't tempt me man, because I will do it!

...seriously, please do.

[6649f8fdc3ae1Hikari]

voodoo47
Don't tempt me man, because I will do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxxFAfQhJic

keep in mind these are athletic women, or at least the Many would go for a more muscular build for its 'cheap' foot soldiers.

[6649f8fdc3dd4endwars]

Hikari
I was thinking I would make it a female "pistol hybrid". I will just base it upon the regular shotgun hybrid, edit it into a female model with added detail and give her a pistol instead of a shotgun. Just for a bit of variation.

I am not sure if we can make her more atlethic. Make her less damaging but faster.

@voodoo47 Would it be possible to create a new class of hybrid without changing the existing hybrids? Slightly faster but less damaging? (since she will wield a regular pistol instead of shotgun)

[6649f8fdc3ffevoodoo47]

class yes, should be a fairly simple dml mod, however you would need to throw a bunch of mission dmls in to make the generators actually spawn them (afaik, there is no simple way of telling the engine to spawn creatures randomly, they need to be specifically set on each generator, so you would have to for example replace og-shotgun with og-pistol on lets say, every second generator on a particular map. //actually, I just had an idea how to work around this in a horrible, yet fully functional way - you could NVscript a certain chance to convert into a pistol hybrid onto the shotgun hybrid upon spawning. will test this later).

note that the pistol should not be a part of the model, just a detailattachment (the AI model attached to the Eng request topic is the shotgunless version of the shotgun hybrid model, that is what I would recommend using as base. also, as mentioned in that topic, I would recommend not going too overboard - just making the model a bit slimmer, giving it some chest padding, and a smoother facial texture would do fine. audio is not that big of deal - Turnbull's log indicates that after the mutation progresses to a certain stage, there is almost no difference between a female voice and male voice).

[6649f8fdc417fJDoran]

What about adding a skirt texture, instead of trousers,on the females?

[6649f8fdc42afvoodoo47]

no SS2 AI wears a skirt. also, I imagine this would be a pita to do, and would inevitably look too solid, remember, realistic fabric is not a thing in the Dark Engine.

[6649f8fdc4a19endwars]

class yes, should be a fairly simple dml mod, however you would need to throw a bunch of mission dmls in to make the generators actually spawn them (afaik, there is no simple way of telling the engine to spawn creatures randomly, they need to be specifically set on each generator, so you would have to for example replace og-shotgun with og-pistol on lets say, every second generator on a particular map).

note that the pistol should not be a part of the model, just a detailattachment (the AI model attached to the Eng request topic is the shotgunless version of the shotgun hybrid model, that is what I would recommend using as base. also, as mentioned in that topic, I would recommend not going too overboard - just making the model a bit slimmer, giving it some chest padding, and a smoother facial texture would do fine. audio is not that big of deal - Turnbull's log indicates that after the mutation progresses to a certain stage, there is almost no difference between a female voice and male voice).

Good advice. I will leave the dml and generators business to you if you don't mind.

I will base it upon the shotgunless version as you said. Should be ever so slightly easier to work with. I will combine it with the female model and I will certainly replace the head. (there is no way to make that vampire head anything resembling female, definetally not by smoothing the face texture. I will edit the female face texture and make it look hybrid though.) I will not go overboard, no worries.

I am not too worried about the audio, like you suggested before, that can be edited to sound software to be a little softer if need be. But I doubt we need it.

What about adding a skirt texture, instead of trousers,on the females?

Basically what Voodoo47 said. Plus they are wearing a spaship uniform/jumpsuit. It simply wouldn't make sense.

In fact, I was thinking about making female and male uniforms look a bit closer. Male pants have side pockets like kargo pants, but female ones don't for some reason. I will probably tackle that at a later date though. Female pistol hybrids comes first.

[6649f8fdc4bbfKolya]

Truth in fiction: pants for women rarely have (usable) pockets.

[6649f8fdc4faeZylonBane]

What about adding a skirt texture, instead of trousers,on the females?

[6649f8fdc51a8Nameless Voice]

I would strongly recommend that you just make a female hybrid with a shotgun, rather than one with a pistol.

Adding different hybrid variants would simply be a cosmetic change (and also very easy to set up), whereas the other would be a gameplay change - which would be harder to implement, would require testing, might upset people because it changes the game too much like a mod, etc.

Would be nice to see the idea with the hybrids wearing different-coloured crew uniforms, depending on the deck that they spawn on.  That should also be fairly easy to set up, and not affect gameplay.

[6649f8fdc52c6voodoo47]

using the weaponless mesh is what I would recommend, that way, the new model would be much more versatile.

[6649f8fdc552avoodoo47]

This thread was split off from System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition Update & Community Participation at this point.

there were quite a few requests in that post, so "a ton of stuff" is pretty accurate. but whatever.

anyway, as far as female hybrids go, canonically, female hybrids do not really exist anymore, as they have become rumblers by the time the Soldier enters the stage. Turnbull is an exception, she seems to be the last female that has not turned completely - as we know, each host reacts slightly differently to the Many infection, and the transformation speed is not the same (a few people are even immune), so this is plausible. in the vanilla game, there was simply no need to create a special model for her, as the original resources are lowres enough for this to not really matter.

but yeah, if NDS already are working on the models, creating a slightly feminized model just for Turnbull may not be a bad idea. I would however, advise against incorporating a female shotgun hybrid into the ecologies - again, the last decade has taught me that people mostly want vanilla just smoothed out, not complete reworks, "whatever the person in charge deems fit". basically, the main SCP rule - changing mechanics or altering visuals drastically is a no-no (so for example, the shard hybrid exists within the game lore, but SCP will never add it - it will have to be a standalone mod, as adding another AI type is out of scope).

and one last time, if NDS go all out on SS2EE, what is going to be left for SS2R? unreal engine graphics?

[6649f8fdc5a22Kolya]

as far as female hybrids go, canonically, female hybrids do not really exist anymore, as they have become rumblers by the time the Soldier enters the stage.

Why would the women develop faster into rumblers? Where is that mentioned?

[6649f8fdc5c2dvoodoo47]

it isn't, but if you look at the models, the human hybrids look like males, and the face remains on the rumbler look female. so as far as we can tell, female crew members have been killed, turned to midwives, and mutated into rumblers. Turnbull had to either be infected very late, or be extraordinarily immune to the infection to remain humanoid for so long, it seems. the way her voice changes suggests that feminine physical traits are getting lost as the mutation progresses, so it's not too far fetched to assume that at some point, it's almost impossible to tell whether the hybrid was originally female or male.

I imagine this probably is/was what IG went with when they decided to not create a distinctively female looking hybrid model.


still, I wouldn't mind Turnbull having a slightly sleeker build, if she is so special. but again, just a nice little tweak, no Pamela Anderson please.

[6649f8fdc63ffendwars]

voodoo47
Or a better and more likely explanation would be, they simply didn't make a female version of the hybrid model... not because it doesn't exist, or it mutated or whatever.

Voodoo47 with all do respect, that argument makes no sense whatsoever. You could argue that their voices change, there is evidence of that (flimsy evidence, but it is at least there), but there is absolutely no proof annelid Grub completely transforms the host into something male looking. That is only you justifying the lack of a female model.

There isn't a model that's wearing glasses either, you could try to argue glasses don't exists in System Shock universe because of it, you could say maybe they are advanced enough to have automated free eye surgery or something. But lack of a model isn't an evidence at all. There isn't glasses on models, because they didn't make a human model with glasses. Simple. There is solid proof there are NPC's who wear glasses, we can see it on their portraits, but their in world model are the same. Another example would be just because they all look about the same and they don't have different faces you can't make an argument they are all clones or something. There are portraits to prove this isn't true. They all look the same because didn't make a different model for each and every NPC. It proves nothing.

Don't make up stuff that isn't mentioned in game to justify a lack of a model. It isn't there because they didn't make it. Not because it doesn't exist or it mutated into something else. There is no evidence that suggests a mutation completely transforms the host into something resembling male. There is no evidence a mutation causes something like this at all, only the tumorous growths are mentioned in game. You can look at the concept sketch and tell it is supposed to be male, not mutated into male, but male. They simply didn't make a female version of it.

My guess is, they probably thought it is low poly enough to not matter.

Frankly, your argument gives me serious HL1 flashbacks, people used to make stupid arguments about how there could only be scientist zombies and there couldn't be security or soldier versions of the zombie because they wear head gear or whatever. But that was them justifying the lack of a model. Along came Blue-Shift and Opposing Force, canonically showing there could be zombie versions of both. Proving it wasn't there not because it couldn't exist, but because devs didn't simply make a model for it. (Also in HL2, combine wears full head gear, but even they couldn't escape becoming zombies) It is the same with SS2.


As for mouth animation, they have the source code and they are porting it into kex, great many things that wasn't possible before, should be possible now. If they do not implement it now, before it is too late, before they make the new models, it will not be possible at all. Implementing a similar system to what HL1 had wouldn't be too difficult, at least not for a dev team. They could put a mouth bone and make it move based on the audio. It is simple enough, it worked for HL1 and it would work for SS2.

[6649f8fdc6578voodoo47]

isn't that exactly what I said? the female model doesn't exist because they didn't bother to create it, as its lack could be explained in a way that would make sense within the rules of the System Shock universe?

also, a quote of any part of any of my posts where I'm making something up, would you kindly.

[6649f8fdc6c20endwars]

voodoo47

Oh here you go:

it isn't, but if you look at the models, the human hybrids look like males, and the face remains on the rumbler look female. so as far as we can tell, female crew members have been killed, turned to midwives, and mutated into rumbers. Turnbull had to either be infected very late, or be extraordinarily immune to the infection to remain humanoid for so long, it seems. the way her voice changes suggests that feminine physical traits are getting lost as the mutation progresses, so it's not too far fetched to assume that at some point, it's almost impossible to tell whether the hybrid was originally female or male.

I imagine this probably is/was what IG went with when they decided to not create a distinctively female looking hybrid model.

still, I wouldn't mind Turnbull having a slightly sleeker build, if she is so special. but again, just a nice little tweak, no Pamela Anderson please.

This whole thing is you making stuff up to make sense why they didn't create a female hybrid model.

There is no difference between this and someone trying to make sense of why all NPC models look alike by arguing they are all clones.  They didn't create a different model for each NPC but that doesn't need an explanation within the System Shock universe.

They obviously do not look all the same and there obviously are female hybrids, they just didn't create a different model for every little thing. No need to make up an explanation for it.

Also, don't "would you kindly" me, this isn't Bioshock

[6649f8fdc6ef2voodoo47]

that is me, describing observable reality. no part of that is made up - did you even read the post?

lets go through it, bit by bit;

if you look at the models, the human hybrids look like males, and the face remains on the rumbler look female. so as far as we can tell, female crew members have been killed, turned to midwives, and mutated into rumblers.

yes. if you look at the models, that is what you can observe.

Turnbull had to either be infected very late, or be extraordinarily immune to the infection to remain humanoid for so long, it seems.

yes. there had to be a reason why she turned so late. partial/full immunity to annelid infestation is established (Diego, Prefontaine).

the way her voice changes suggests that feminine physical traits are getting lost as the mutation progresses

yes. listen to the log. and see how the rumbler looks like.

it's not too far fetched to assume that at some point, it's almost impossible to tell whether the hybrid was originally female or male.

yes. not too many feminine features on the rumbler, or reaver.

[6649f8fdc712dDepravedDiptera]

I like the idea of SS2EE having alternative skins for enemies and randomizing which skins spawn for the sake of variety and immersion, but alts that have new weapons like shards and pistols seem to overstep the vanilla game a bit. I think that should be left for an optional mod. Besides the more they add the more likely they are to mess stuff up so less is more

Also I kinda agree with Voodoo that the devs probably assumed nobody would care about hybrids all seemingly being male / looking the same because they're so badly mutilated you wouldn't be able to tell either way and at the time most games had army of clones styled enemies just because it was easier and more efficient for space and time, but alt skins wouldn't hurt anything imo and I think would be a nice inclusion, at least as an optional thing.

[6649f8fdc78ceKolya]

voodoo47 The face on the rumbler looks distorted, there is no way to tell if it was supposed to be female. Pretty sure ZB told you the same before. Rumblers and reavers are too far from human for anyone to care about their sex.

So what we have is a lack of female hybrids. The idea that "female hybrids do not really exist anymore, as they have become rumbler" may be your head canon, that's fine. But that's all it is.

I'll split off this discussion into its own thread eventually, as it's getting quite off-topic.

[6649f8fdc86e4endwars]

voodoo47
"Observable reality" argument doesn't even apply here. As I said, all human NPC models look alike, but that doesn't mean they are all clones.

The entire part about females mutating into rumblers with male appearance is something you made up to make sense of it. There is no evidence of it and it isn't mentioned anywhere. All you got is a recording where Turnbulls voice gets thicker sometimes, but that doesn't mean her body changed also.

Your physical appearance would not change that drastically do to a mutation. You might however grow huge tumors, which is actually mentioned in the game.

When you said:

canonically, female hybrids do not really exist anymore, as they have become rumblers by the time the Soldier enters the stage.

This was also something you made up. There are still living female crew members we can see in the game. Some of the crew had to turn into hybrids recently. If they existed and then after a while mutated somehow, just like Turnbull, we should be able to see them.

the way her voice changes suggests that feminine physical traits are getting lost as the mutation progresses

You could tell her physical appearance was changing from her voice? Seriously?

not too many feminine features on the rumbler, or reaver.

Are you incapable of reading?

If you accept this as proof, this could also prove they are all clones and no one wears glasses ever.

There are no feminine features on the rumbler, or reaver because there is only a single model for it. I will repeat again, this doesn't prove anything. Just because there is only one crew model that doesn't mean they are all clones.