More robust workshop avatars (More settings, Improved offset editor, QOL+bugfixes)

[Eddieboy]

I really wanted to express all this stuff now because I think it’s crucial and important to be done and ready before the big 1.0 release.

I love how Tower Unite has been pushing user creative content more and more. Condos have so many features and tools for players to use now to the point that players can create full on custom maps for games now. The tools have been expanded so much now in that front.

However this same love seems almost completely absent for workshop player models. Easily the most important way a player can expressive themselves in every aspect of the game. I wanna help shed some light on where the current system is not just lacking, but also holding players back and hopefully give some ideas on how this can be vastly improved for players and creators a like.

I won’t go into any details about that actual creation, rigging, etc. Just the moment you import your model and on wards as well as in-game issues.

Starting with some bugs.
Hat offsets have always been extremely inconsistent and buggy. To the point I often just take them off because they’re too unpredictable. Such issues are:

• Hats scaling / offsets changes often for the weirdest reasons. From certain interactions, changing sizes, dying, etc
• Hats scaling / offsets often are de-synced. Appearing at different sizes or different positions even though they look fine for the player client.
• Hats occasionally staying in position / being left behind after a player dies and respawns. (This is very common with pets.)
• Offsets being inaccurately displayed in the workshop editor or straight not working at all. (Ties, Masks, etc.)

Offset editor NEEDS individual settings for each item.
Currently you can adjust the offsets of a hat, but ONLY ONE PER CATEGORY. So if you find tune the positions of a hat to perfection, you will get lots of inconsistent results on other hats in that same category.

Here’s an example of what could be possible if you could save individual offsets per hat instead of per category:

Inconsistencies between editor and in-game
This is more of a bug, but very important for perfections like me. The editor needs to look 100% accurate to how it’ll look in-game. Because for some items, it’s currently a complete guessing game. For example, I sacrificed my entire waist offsets to specifically make the hula skirt look good on this avatar specifically. (Note: All pool tubes will look awful because of this but that’s beside the point.) It looks perfect in the editor, however when I load it in-game…

Allow avatars to add customizable body groups / toggles.
Lots of avatars are not just one thing. Some may have multiple outfits, customizable shirts/pants, toggle-able hair or maybe no clothes at all! In any other game like Garry’s Mod or VRChat, you can simply toggle these things on and off. Unfortunately in Tower Unite, avatars can only be one thing. So if you have the same avatar with multiple outfits or styles, they have to be a completely separate upload. Which means you have to redo the hat offsets on each and individual upload. This also indirectly spams the workshop with variants of the same exact avatar.

Tower does have a solution to this though! It actually always has! The default models have customizable outfits that can be toggled between at anytime. Allowing workshop creators to utilize this system would cut down on the work of managing multiple avatars while also cutting down on workshop spam.

(I’d go a step further and account for unique hat offsets based on these toggles. Making your avatar headless for the sake of making one of Towers many head covering masks look good is something to consider.)

A few little things worth mentioning / suggesting.

• Free fly cam in editor: Pretty self explanatory. Helpful for fine tuning offsets without the burden of the default camera.
• More than just the scale ruler in editor: The scale ruler is decent but waaaay too vague. You should be able to swap out the ruler with other things to help with a sense of scale. Such as default player models, every NPC, some types of furniture, etc. You kinda have to play a guessing game with player height metadata which requires you to keep pushing unnecessary updates to the same upload.
• Allow players to create their own custom hat offsets themselves IN-GAME: Default models or someone else’s workshop upload. Allow players to fine tune hats themselves to their truest desires. Nothing is more painful that finally finding the PERFECT AVATAR. Just for all of your hats to never look right on top of it.

I’m sure there’s some small things I’m forgetting but this is all the major stuff. I really hope to see more advancements in this specific field because providing the right tools to players will do wonders for this game long term with player creativity.

[DragonLord_PL]

I agree with a lot of this stuff, since I think nearly all of it should have had been in the game for years now and it’s just not. Though I do also have to say that I think having the ability to pick separate offsets for each accessory item in each category would be kinda pointless if we also couldn’t do scale - I mean, really, if we did this, then why not improve on both systems at the same time? I hope more people vote for this thread, since it’s one of the most important, yet very heavily underdeveloped areas of Tower, which feels as though it’s just somewhere near the bottom of development priorities. It is as you said yourself - Nearly every other game with this level of customizability already provides far better Workshop creation tools than Tower has been offering for years on end now - It’s a shame on developers to keep things this way for so long. Anyway, thanks again for this thread - I hope that I have added some value to it by providing my own insights

[Eddieboy]

Scaling is apart of offsets. Or did you mean something else? Also thank you!

[DragonLord_PL]

It was what I meant. I just always treated it separately from the position/location offsets and wasn’t really aware that it was actually a part of the system as one thing - I only knew it was in the same place as them, but still thought it was just it’s own thing. Sorry about the confusion.

[Alexer_Zoderia]

@Eddieboy

Allow players to create their own custom hat offsets themselves IN-GAME

This, and honestly Idk why I didn’t think of this before.

I do also agree that the Workshop systems should have a full overhaul, now that we have the newer workshop rig, it’s an optimal time to refine the system. Keep in mind though, that Workshop is a dynamic system and one that was custom-built for TU, so it may take some time to finish everything outright.

That being said, in my own case, being able to have a Bodygroup system would be So helpful.

[macdguy]

Thanks for the thread. These are good thoughts on the workshop support. We’ve been fixing and improving the process quite a lot so it’s good to know what other features creators would want. Just so you’re aware, a lot of these features have been discussed before in development calls.

Concerning multi-body support:

I’ve explained in another thread about the concerns of multi-body support.

@macdguy

The other concern is that when you have multi-body support, you will have to download all the bodies at the same time. You would also need to load in the body data in real time. It would be the same as loading two player models. This applies to workshop condo items as well.

But to also continue off from that, multi-body support will require you to download the model multiple times, it’ll bloat the size of the player model downloads. Yes, granted, if you’re wanting to use different outfits like you’ve mentioned, you’re already doing this. But other players only have to download the current outfit you are wearing actively, while the multi-body will require downloading all of them. In some cases, this can be fine. You’d have to work within our current file size limits.

@Eddieboy

Tower does have a solution to this though! It actually always has! The default models have customizable outfits that can be toggled between at anytime.

This is a different system. Workshop models use a separate system. To add multi-body support, we’d have to make an entirely new system. In my quick thinking, it would basically come down to having multiple .plymodel files inside of the addon system, and you’d have to compile each of those one by one. This would require changing how the editor imports models, how models get packaged, uploaded, and how models load in. We’d also have to add more networking, so that other players know which body you are currently using. We’d also have to make plenty of changes to the editor to make this process easier and add to the metadata (how many bodys, names of the bodys, etc.). This is by no means a simple addition, it will take time to add. We would need to seriously sit down and design the system out and that could take more than a month minimum.

I do agree that it is currently a bummer that you’d have to upload multiple versions of your player model. I hope the new outfit system (where you can save what you are currently) will allow you get close to what you’d want after you have uploaded multiple versions of the model. At least for now. You can also copy and paste metadata in the editor which will help in creation.

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@Eddieboy

Free fly cam in editor: Pretty self explanatory. Helpful for fine tuning offsets without the burden of the default camera.

This feature already exists. If you press WASD keys while in the editor it’ll activate free fly cam.

@Eddieboy

More than just the scale ruler in editor

The scale ruler and capsule is the most accurate way to get the scale of the model. If scales of other objects are off, then those items should be fixed, not the player model.

@Eddieboy

Allow players to create their own custom hat offsets themselves IN-GAME

This is something we’ve expressed desire to work on, but it’s a massive project and would add more networking per each player. I believe this would not be as needed if the player model editor had per wearable offset support in the first place, so I’d rather spend the time working on that first.

@Eddieboy

Offset editor NEEDS individual settings for each item.

I’m aware of this limitation and I’d like to tackle adding per wearable offset support. This will unfortunately will not come out before 1.0. It would of course only store metadata of hats you wanted to adjust after adjusting the overall position.

@Eddieboy

Inconsistencies between editor and in-game

From what I’m reading here, the only issue seems to be with waist items? I made a change in the last release that took workshop metadata into account for waist items, which it previously did not. Pool tubes specifically scale properly to the metadata. I can look into the issue further.

As for other desyncs mentioned, if you can find what actions cause the desyncs that would be very helpful. I’m only currently aware of seats having issues with wearable offsets.

[DragonLord_PL]

@macdguy

This is a different system. Workshop models use a separate system. To add multi-body support, we’d have to make an entirely new system. In my quick thinking, it would basically come down to having multiple .plymodel files inside of the addon system, and you’d have to compile each of those one by one. This would require changing how the editor imports models, how models get packaged, uploaded, and how models load in. We’d also have to add more networking, so that other players know which body you are currently using. We’d also have to make plenty of changes to the editor to make this process easier and add to the metadata (how many bodys, names of the bodys, etc.). This is by no means a simple addition, it will take time to add. We would need to seriously sit down and design the system out and that could take more than a month minimum.

I do believe that it would be well worth the longer development time to have this outfit system work for Workshop models, even if it were to have to be custom made from ground up from them. Tower really needs a lot more customization for player models, and as long as this would work decently well optimization/networking-wise after adding a complicated system like that to the game, it would greatly benefit everyone and the positives would easily outweigh the negatives. Then again, this is just a thought, and if a system like this never ends up in the game, it won’t be the end of the world - I just figured I would share my point of view on this.

[Eddieboy]

Thanks for the reply and explaining the technical side of things. I didn’t go into this thread thinking a few of my points could be easily added on a whim. All these things require a new system entirely rebuilt from the ground up. I personally think it’s worth it to provide as many tools as possible to creatives, but I understand why this doesn’t take priority.

@macdguy

The scale ruler and capsule is the most accurate way to get the scale of the model. If scales of other objects are off, then those items should be fixed, not the player model.

It’s not about making sure the hats are scaled correctly, it’s more so a helpful reference when deciding the avatars Player Height metadata. Which basically has nothing to reference with besides a vague ruler beside them. If you want to exactly match one of the default playermodels heights or even a random NPC. You will have to play a guessing game.

@macdguy

This feature already exists. If you press WASD keys while in the editor it’ll activate free fly cam.

Oops. Dunno why I never tried wasd. In my defense though, the lil “?” bubble that shows the controls is basically invisible with the default skybox when obstructed by clouds. I’m only now seeing it.

@macdguy

From what I’m reading here, the only issue seems to be with waist items? I made a change in the last release that took workshop metadata into account for waist items, which it previously did not. Pool tubes specifically scale properly to the metadata. I can look into the issue further.

Waist, Masks, Ties and Weapons seems to be the most noticeable with this issue.