Dynamically named statues

[Sho]

It would be neat to have statues that use dynamic naming to represent characters.

Implementation:
Marble statue (categorize under "Buildings," along with the landmarks)

Materials:
5000 grams of marble

Time:
10 days

Tools:
hammer
chisel

When the project is started, you choose from a list one of the characters in the same location, and input a name for the statue. The project will be named "Carving a statue of <name of statue>".

The completed statue will be displayed on the Objects screen as "Statue <name of statue> of <dynamic name>". The dynamic name displayed here will be the same as the subject's; if the viewer changes the statue's name, they will see the subject character with that name, and vice versa.


Intended uses:

Allows characters to learn the names of important people without having to ask everyone, even if the important person is not present.
There's probably some good RP that can be made of this, no?


Possible extensions to suggestion:
Other materials: Bronze would be good, and would give bronze a real use. I just have a problem with the implementation - a realistic implementation would use large amounts of wax, which is currently very rare stuff.
Other subjects: Statues of held objects (tools, for example) have been suggested, but I'm not sure the demand is there. Statues of bodies on the ground might be implementable. The ability to make a statue of any character you have a name for is probably also implementable in theory, but might be too unwieldy in terms of interface or server load.
Interface shinies: Putting the dynamic name in the project name would make managing abandoned statue projects much easier.


Questions/issues:
The usual: Is this reasonably implementable? I haven't seen anything in Cantr that would be a good foundation for basing this off of, but it doesn't seem like a huge project to me.
How would dead characters be handled? Is it acceptable (for the players) that when the subject dies, the statue's name would "freeze white" into either the age and gender, or whatever your character named him or her last? Possible CR issues with characters using statues to keep track of their generals and sheriffs?

Inspired by: http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=129653#129653

[Torch]

I think the only way around the CR breach would be to leave the name dynamic somehow even though the player is gone, like the location names now that aren't tied to people. I'm not sure that's worth the hassle since while the person was alive they'd have to be dually tagged, and then once they were gone the statue would be the only thing with the name, and it'd still be dynamic so that new characters could learn who it was. (That'd be really cool, but I'm ducking as I type for whoever comes along first from the ProgD and reads this...)

Or you could make the name static, and then people would just have to learn who it was by asking if they didn't know the character by the same name.

If the naming could be figured out without a CR issue, I think this would be a great idea. It could also open up interesting possibilities in the religion department for idols and such.

EDIT: Just thought, the static names wouldn't necessarily work. I could make a statue of John Doe. John Doe might have gone to the next town over and called himself Fred Smith. The person looking at the statue, if he or she were from the next town over, would see the name John Doe on the statue but recognize him as Fred Smith. With static names that wouldn't happen. Hmmmm....

[Sho]

I agree that the "death sensing" problem is probably enough to kill the whole suggestion. It's been an issue for a very long time, and has been on Flyspray for a while.

http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4804

http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2433

Making the statue names static would basically kill the idea; it wouldn't be significantly different from a landmark.

[El_Skwidd]

Torch gave me a good idea. Maybe bronze could be used in statues? You could make a statue in likeness of a person or group of people, of a specific building, or even of a tool if you want it to symbolize something. Just some art that doesn't really require any talent, because however you imagine that person to look like is how the statue looks.

It could work like this: you can make a statue of whatever like out of x amount of bronze, or clay, or mud, or stone... whatever. then you could put it on a simple, elaborate, or extravagant base, depending on the materials you have.

Depending on the weight, it could be dragged around like a person between buildings or towns.

Hmm...

Figured I'd repost this in a more relevant thread. The death sensing would be a weird effect of this, but when is it not weird?

Maybe you could choose to engrave the name of the person into the statue. It shouldn't add any more onto the required working time, and could get rid of the death sensing problem by keeping the statue as a static name.

[Sho]

But then it's just a landmark, except made of something other than wood or stone and called a "statue," and since landmarks will probably be a lot cheaper, nobody will care about statues.

[Torch]

I agree. I think the only way around both the CR issues and the character perception issues would be a separate dynamic tag on the statue (of course the engraved name on the statue would be static, but the "appearance" to the player wouldn't) If s/he's named the person the statue is of, it would show that - otherwise it'd show "man/woman in his/her twenties or whatever. Changing either the statue or the person's tag would alter both for that particular character. Upon the person's death, the statue's dynamic tag now stands alone, and remains what it was at the time of the death unless the character changes it again later.

Unfortunately I'd imagine that would be a nightmare from the programming end...

[Chris Johnson]

The dynamic name issue shouldn't be a problem . Dynamic names for dead people are kept after they die, The death sensing issue is not because of dynamic naming per se , it's a kludge to stop further interaction with dead characters, so in principle the statue likeness could be linked with a person (living or dead) - It would need a little programming but not much.

I'd recommend that the project could not be started unless the person it represented was present (either as a living person or a body - similar to key duplication ), there has to be some means to capture the likeness and whilst it could be done from memory , that would be more difficult to program

I wouldn't just limit this to statues, I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd want to have picture portrait of their loved ones/ nearest and dearest/ self-important town mayors (delete as applicable)

EDIT : Oh ...and wanted posters

[El_Skwidd]

But it wouldn't just be a landmark. It would be a statue. They essentially do the same thing, but look at it from the character's perspective. The character could see a more hastily crafted landmark with some words engraved on it, or he could see a carefully made work of art with some words engraved on it. It's kinda like the difference between two stone buildings. When my characters see buildings, they don't picture them all as the same squat, square stone structure. The name alone gives them a bit of insight as to what it looks like. For example, Tower of the Damned is tall and narrow, Imperial Coliseum is squat and rounded, and Casa L'abarquero is long, thin, and average-height.

It's all about perspective.

[Sho]

Equally a character can look at the landmark named "Statue of Felix Dzherzhinsky" and treat it as a statue, while treating the landmark "Welcome to Moscow" as a signpost. Creating a new type of landmarks that use bronze or marble will make the RP more realistic, but it's not a significant change (not to say that such a change isn't often the best way to implement a suggestion).

But since dynamic names are implementable, this is a moot point. Cheers.

[Pie]

How 'bout this...


The statue is started out as "Statue of xxxxxxxxxxxx in his whatever" And you can select this statue and it will show you what it has written on it.

Also, if you are novic at making this statue, it will be shoud as a used statue, or it could be a crumbling statue.

And, of course, you can see my connection of repairing and quality of the statue, of course, if this(quality of items) would be implemented to everything, then whepons and tools would be repairable,[posability] but they would degrade faster... posably[/posability]

[Nick]

At first I glanced at the topic.... "ugh, yet another idiot suggests statues"
And then I look at the author... "Sho? Come on man, what are you high?"

But upon reading the suggestion, one of the few good original ones I've seen in a while. Melikes.

[Rusalka]

Probably it is a wrong topic, probably it was already suggested, so please show me the proper place for this post.

Why statue? Can't we just call it a wooden/stone/bronze/etc object? It would be much more universal, not everyone wants to creates a landmark which represent a person. Maybe it can be a fountain or a coumn, or even a stonehenge!

Small stone object:
raw materials: 2000 stone
tools: trowel

Medium stone object:
raw materials: 5000 stone
tools: trowel, chisel

Large stone object:
raw materials: 10000 stone
tools: hammer, trowel, chisel

Huge stone object:
raw materials: 25000 stone
tools: hammer, trowel, chisel

We would be able to name them in every way we want, just like buildings or vehicles.

I know, people want it.

One more thing - I'm trying to make this idea as simple as possible to implement, cause we have to start from something. If you guys carry on with making such big programming-needed ideas, the whole thing will die like hundreds of others.

[Agent 0007]

I thought about stonehenge, it would be for my character very useful... so I think it's a great idea. I thought also about building statues and other monuments.

[Solfius]

A "monument" is vague enough to work for several uses, but the intention was for statues of people, not general monuments.

[wichita]

These are essentially just new landmarks, or am I missing the point? The only difference is the dynamic naming, which kind of defeats the purpose of the "statue" IMO because because it would just appear as <random> until each character names it.


I was testing something along these lines trying to implement moveable figurines, etc. I wasn't having much luck with it though.