Can I make my character left-handed.

Majority of games have characters automatically using their left hand for shields or they hold their staff in their right hand. Personally this has always felt a little off to me being a left handed person myself. Was wondering if there hand been any discussion on if we can decide which is the predominant hand of our character?

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Yuyukoyay

It might be better to mirror the equipment in the game and editing the hands a little. Though mirroring the models will make them look more unique in a crowd.

unknown

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IllusionTokomi

CJW wrote: »

Should just be a mirror check box, you can do this in most programs by inverting scale along the X axis. I can’t see how this could be tons of work like everyone is saying?

It depends on the animations. It's not as simple in an engine as a check box for hand-crafted animation. Sure! For out-of-the-box engines things, it *might* be possible. But you can never just check a box and load it up, it has to be tested, this takes away from time that might be better spent developing other things.

Additionally:
It will increase the required art assets, as all your gear must be inverted. For example: you can not grab a potion with the left hand off your right belt pouch if that is now your scabbard (because you have swapped handedness). It goes without saying, the potion must come from a proper location on the character. This means the art assets will have to all be adjusted (at the very least). There may need to be twice the art assets. That means every single piece of relevant gear (chest pieces, pants, backpacks and backs-slung items) must be re-textured (possibly), and reskinned (certainly). This doubles the work load of the art department, who are now no doubt already working on new assets.

If they can't do both these tasks concurrently - which is likely in a small development studio: Do they stop developing new assets and work on this or do they develop more playable game content, and less cosmetics?

It's not easy for the decision-makers (the leads and the dept. heads) at this point. So, yes, it seems simple on the surface, but even this is a complex matter.

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