Character descriptions

[SekoETC]

Yeah, I think I'd rather have those stupid drop down boxes than nothing.

The non-translatability was the best argument against the original idea, even though at least in the past, a level of knowledge in basic English was necessary to play the game because most things weren't translated, so we could assume people can understand free form English descriptions, at least with a dictionary.

Also in the past most of the players were from the English language group. Now it has changed with all the Polish around. But people still mostly meet only their own people. Also, if you would run into someone with a foreign description, the person would get a foreign aura even though your character didn't know what these "creatures" exactly were. (And you cannot hear people talking in strange languages if you're hiding inside and expecting them to slip a note or even knock.)

Then to psymann's idea.

In addition to hair colour (and I think there should be more options than the listed few), hair curliness should be a first phase quality. That would be something very hard to change unless curling/straightening irons get added.

Hair colour and curliness would still be existing traits in a bald person, they would just be invisible since there is no hair. Baldness is not a colour.

When choosing hair colour, it would be nice if the player could pick "I want my character to have dark hair", leading into something on the range from darkish brown to black. Or "I want brown hair", and that could range from mousey grayish brown to golden brown to a hint of copper.

Something like blue eyes would range from striking sky blue to pale grayish blue. Green ranging from bright green to olive. But of course if people would be whining, "Boohoo, I wanted this EXACT SHADE, waaaaaaaaah, now I'm gonna kill my character, you bastards!" then yeah, hell, it wouldn't matter if old characters could choose the EXACT hexacode for their hair and eye and skn colours! But for newspawns, there should be some variation, otherwise we end up with lots of people with pitch black hair or carrot red.

Some people would get fat easily and others would be the kind that can eat anything without getting fat. It could all be controlled by diet. All newspawns would be within normal limits, some a bit chubby and some rather thin. You can't seriously decide to have an obese character if he ends up spawning in a mountain community where getting a meal depends on wether anyone can manage to bring down a goat. Sure you can RP him as constantly hungry and whining for bigger shares, but if he doesn't get fed each day then he's gonna be gaunt.


EDIT: Hair colour ranges between hues 15 and 30. Saturation 0 to 240. Luminosity pretty wide range as well. Naturally not all colours in this "cube" are valid hair colours. But some sort of a pattern might be possible. If we assume saturation goes down with age, hue remains the same and luminosity goes up some. There would be 30 - 15 = 15 hue options (ranging from off-red to off-yellow) + some preset luminosity and saturation.

Edit 2: In GIMP, the range goes up to 60? But in MsPaint, that's definitely green. Anyway, maybe 40 on Microsoft scale would still be acceptable. CSS allows displaying colours by HSL, as far as I can remember.

[Phalynx]

Yeah, I think I'd rather have those stupid drop down boxes than nothing.

Then to psymann's idea.


When choosing hair colour, it would be nice if the player could pick "I want my character to have dark hair", leading into something on the range from darkish brown to black. Or "I want brown hair", and that could range from mousey grayish brown to golden brown to a hint of copper.

Something like blue eyes would range from striking sky blue to pale grayish blue. Green ranging from bright green to olive. But of course if people would be whining, "Boohoo, I wanted this EXACT SHADE, waaaaaaaaah, now I'm gonna kill my character, you bastards!" then yeah, hell, it wouldn't matter if old characters could choose the EXACT hexacode for their hair and eye and skn colours! But for newspawns, there should be some variation, otherwise we end up with lots of people with pitch black hair or carrot red.

Some people would get fat easily and others would be the kind that can eat anything without getting fat. It could all be controlled by diet. All newspawns would be within normal limits, some a bit chubby and some rather thin. You can't seriously decide to have an obese character if he ends up spawning in a mountain community where getting a meal depends on wether anyone can manage to bring down a goat. Sure you can RP him as constantly hungry and whining for bigger shares, but if he doesn't get fed each day then he's gonna be gaunt.


EDIT: Hair colour ranges between hues 15 and 30. Saturation 0 to 240. Luminosity pretty wide range as well. Naturally not all colours in this "cube" are valid hair colours. But some sort of a pattern might be possible. If we assume saturation goes down with age, hue remains the same and luminosity goes up some. There would be 30 - 15 = 15 hue options (ranging from off-red to off-yellow) + some preset luminosity and saturation.

Edit 2: In GIMP, the range goes up to 60? But in MsPaint, that's definitely green. Anyway, maybe 40 on Microsoft scale would still be acceptable. CSS allows displaying colours by HSL, as far as I can remember.

As we are in no way talking about pictures here, what is all this babbling about. Hair colour as an example needs 5 or 6 colour options, the rest if you desperately feel you need to can be passed on in role play surely.... You are just trying to get more description into the drop down menu.. what's wrong with simple?

Just imagine it:

"Stop thief..... someone stop that newspawn thief with hair three shades darker than aurburn and eyes the colour of cornflowers on a misty morning"

Pure madness

[SekoETC]

Aww come on, a VISUAL colour would say a lot more than a word. And it wouldn't need translating. If you had a little or not so little box that's coloured by an individual colour, you could interpret it how you wish. Some might say something is reddish while another one would claim it's brown.

But what the hell ever, let's have brown, light yellow, carrot red and pitch black, and everyone will be happy. I forgot Cantr is strickly literal.


And **** this ****, we're totally off topic. I bet there's another topic already for outlook. This was simply for a free form box and it has most effectively been rejected. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Some ****head can do A LOT more damage by shouting obscenities with "talk to all" or knocking on a door a thousands times than by writing stuff to a box no one sees unless they bother to read the person's description! And who would bother to read the description of someone who's acting like a nuissance, exept to see if they are carrying items that might be stolen. So why on earth are people stuffing a giant pea up their nostrils just because someone suggest AN EASY METHOD for relaying information about your character when you're not online to rp it, or if you cannot be arsed to write *is tall* every time someone new comes to town. Everyone ****ing hates those *she bats her thick eyelashes and twirls her long golden locks around her finger* so if this player was allowed to have personal space where to put down that she has the goddamn long lashes and blonde wig then people wouldn't have to suffer about it! The time it takes to program this? A matter of minutes. ALL you need is a goddamn box and an extra column for storing that info in the character table. -> Endless options. You don't need checkups or anything, not necessarily. Players can moderate each other and I'll be damned if someone gets bloody offended over a description that they don't even have to read.

[psymann]

Ha ha, Seko, does that translate roughly as:

"If you can trust me to write RP that makes sense every time my character talks, why can't you trust me to write a decent decription?" ?

If so, I agree with that. As far as I can tell, the only argument against free-flow text box is the issue of translation, which is a shame, because without that issue, I can't see much of a problem with it.

Ooh, also: The drop-down menus, while more restricting in terms of what you can describe, do have the advantage that you can have projects to comb your hair, or dye it, or go on a diet or something, because that would be the only way to amend your character's description - rather than just editing the textbox whenever you like.


I can still go with either drop-down boxes or free-flow text. The only things I'm really against is appearance-by-genes or no appearance at all.

psymann

[Pearl]

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I posted this somewhere before, but the dropdown boxes could have:

Eyes: brown, blue, green, grey, or black

Hair: black, brown, red, blonde, white, bald

Height: tall, average, short

Build: skinny, slender, average, heavy, fat

Yes I realize you're going to wind up with people in their nineties with red hair and people in their twenties with white hair, but so what? Honestly I really think the reason nothing like this will ever get added is because everyone always comes up with super complicated and completely unworkable suggestions.

Simple is better! And not only is it better, it's more likely to get added. Just take a look at the Implemented forum, how many of those things are drastic changes to the way the game works?

Marian is a Genious!
I really think the dropdown boxes would work, you could then turn the descriptions chosen into sentences like it was suggested before.
Seriously, it would be great for RP.

[Marian]

In addition to hair colour (and I think there should be more options than the listed few), hair curliness should be a first phase quality. That would be something very hard to change unless curling/straightening irons get added.

Hair colour and curliness would still be existing traits in a bald person, they would just be invisible since there is no hair. Baldness is not a colour.

When choosing hair colour, it would be nice if the player could pick "I want my character to have dark hair", leading into something on the range from darkish brown to black. Or "I want brown hair", and that could range from mousey grayish brown to golden brown to a hint of copper.
waaaaaaaaah, now I'm gonna kill my character, you bastards!" then yeah, hell, it wouldn't matter if old characters could choose the EXACT hexacode for their hair and eye and skn colours! But for newspawns, there should be some variation, otherwise we end up with lots of people
Something like blue eyes would range from striking sky blue to pale grayish blue. Green ranging from bright green to olive. But of course if people would be whining, "Boohoo, I wanted this EXACT SHADE, with pitch black hair or carrot red.

Some people would get fat easily and others would be the kind that can eat anything without getting fat. It could all be controlled by diet. All newspawns would be within normal limits, some a bit chubby and some rather thin. You can't seriously decide to have an obese character if he ends up spawning in a mountain community where getting a meal depends on wether anyone can manage to bring down a goat. Sure you can RP him as constantly hungry and whining for bigger shares, but if he doesn't get fed each day then he's gonna be gaunt.


EDIT: Hair colour ranges between hues 15 and 30. Saturation 0 to 240. Luminosity pretty wide range as well. Naturally not all colours in this "cube" are valid hair colours. But some sort of a pattern might be possible. If we assume saturation goes down with age, hue remains the same and luminosity goes up some. There would be 30 - 15 = 15 hue options (ranging from off-red to off-yellow) + some preset luminosity and saturation.

Edit 2: In GIMP, the range goes up to 60? But in MsPaint, that's definitely green. Anyway, maybe 40 on Microsoft scale would still be acceptable. CSS allows displaying colours by HSL, as far as I can remember.

Argh! There you go getting ridiculously, pointlessly complicated again! Do you honestly think things like hair curliness and metabolisms and twenty different shades of green are ever going to have a chance of being implemented? Why not eyebrow width and the whiteness of teeth and fingernails that grow at different speeds and have to be trimmed with special tools while we're at it?

That's it, I can't handle this discussion anymore, I'm out...


Edit: and thanks Pearl.

[formerly known as hf]

[Crosshair]

Lol!!!


And Marian, don't get so stressed, its just a suggestion that Seko has put alot thought into.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Haha, good one, Cooper...

I'd rather have a free-flow text box with a character max than drop down menus of pre-written text. Or a free-flow text box for each feature such as eyes, hair, etc. that you could put in what shade of blue or green or purple or pink or whatever it is, e.g. sky blue, emerald green (say a max of 20 characters for each box). Not big on the drop down menu of colors though. A flat blue shade on a screen can't capture the lively blue of someone's eyes. Then again, those wouldn't need translation at all really.. hmm..

I don't really care as long as it's optional. I don't see a necessity when it can be rp'd fairly easily as you go. It's the forced crap that I'm against.

[Elros]

Haha, good one, Cooper...

I'd rather have a free-flow text box with a character max than drop down menus of pre-written text. Or a free-flow text box for each feature such as eyes, hair, etc. that you could put in what shade of blue or green or purple or pink or whatever it is, e.g. sky blue, emerald green (say a max of 20 characters for each box). Not big on the drop down menu of colors though. A flat blue shade on a screen can't capture the lively blue of someone's eyes. Then again, those wouldn't need translation at all really.. hmm..

I don't really care as long as it's optional. I don't see a necessity when it can be rp'd fairly easily as you go. It's the forced crap that I'm against.

The only problem with this people typing in ridiculous stuff.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Haha, good one, Cooper...

I'd rather have a free-flow text box with a character max than drop down menus of pre-written text. Or a free-flow text box for each feature such as eyes, hair, etc. that you could put in what shade of blue or green or purple or pink or whatever it is, e.g. sky blue, emerald green (say a max of 20 characters for each box). Not big on the drop down menu of colors though. A flat blue shade on a screen can't capture the lively blue of someone's eyes. Then again, those wouldn't need translation at all really.. hmm..

I don't really care as long as it's optional. I don't see a necessity when it can be rp'd fairly easily as you go. It's the forced crap that I'm against.

The only problem with this people typing in ridiculous stuff.

The 20 char max would help keep this from being too much of a problem, I think. "Emerald green" is 13 characters. You'd really be limited to only two or three words to describe them (maybe four or five, depending on word length). No long, pages upon pages description, yet not limited to specific colours, like blue, red, green, brown, black. Sure, someone could put something silly in, but it won't be much of a silly. Won't even be a supercalifragilisticexpialadocious. I guess you could get 5 four letter words in there. Ridiculous things would happen in any free-flowing text box anyway whether it has a max of 20 or 200 characters, for each feature or a full one for a whole head to toe description.

At least, that's what I think, if such a concept were to go with free-flowing text boxes.

[Marian]

LOL!

....wait, you mean Cantrians aren't green? But...but...they've always been green with big smiley faces, right?!

The only problem with this people typing in ridiculous stuff.

I have delicious, purple green eyes. What?

One of my chars from a mud had 'moon-yellow' cat eyes. Wonder how that would work out in Cantr?

I mean I think that probably wouldn't look right on a green smiley face person, but then again maybe it's just me...

[SekoETC]

People can also type ridiculous stuff on notes and the talk to all box.

Marian, bad time of the month?

I've been thinking about a system like this for a long time, possibly years. So don't tell me it's impossible. In text based interface it would be complicated, but with graphical components, not so much.

Every drawing program already has a colour picker where the position of the cursor on a 2D plane marks two of the components, as x and y, and the z variation is on a separate axel. For windows, x axle is hue, y is saturation and z is luminance. For many other programs, x and y are saturation and luminance and z is hue.

http://www.cecs.csulb.edu/~jewett/colors/hsb.html
Found a good article.

[Crosshair]

People can also type ridiculous stuff on notes and the talk to all box.

Touche

[Dreamhand]

In a similar vein to psymann's earlier post...

Facial Hair and Hair Styles would be a marvelous addition to the Cantr game as yet another way to distinguish your character, enhance his/her individuality, support character development and role-play, and foster a whole new set of equipment and in-game actions.

It would require one more element of characters to be monitored by the system... hair growth and facial hair growth, and for that simple reason (adding to server load) the whole idea may be chucked as untenable. But I shall press bravely on... Wink

The Hair Description could appear in the same window as the character’s clothing and equipment description to be seen by all.

Facial Hair for male characters could be gauged for every few days the character doesn’t shave:
Clean Shaven
Light to Heavy Beard Stubble and Moustache Stubble
Thin to Thick Beards and Moustaches
... and then stop checking once you reach “Thick”

To keep it simple, I’ve chosen to limit it to “beard” and “moustache” allowing characters to have neither, either, or both. For the truly inventive you could add “jowls” or “sideburns” but that seems excessive.

Hair Length would be similar:
Bald (1 week, then...)
Extremely Short (for 4 weeks, then...)
Short (for 8 weeks, then...)
Shoulder Length (for 10 weeks, then...)
Long (forever or until trimmed)
... and then stop checking once you reach “Long”

For those of us that actually LOOK at the descriptions of the people we interact with in-game, this would be a great enhancement to the character’s look...

The character is bald and has heavy beard and moustache stubble
The character has long hair and is clean shaven
The character has short hair and a thin moustache
...

Now... add to that the ability to trim and style the hair...
ACTIONS=============================
Shave: (instantaneous, like dragging) Male characters only. Requires a razor or a scissors. Player can choose any level of shorter facial hair they want (scissors wouldn’t be able to “shave” lower than Heavy Stubble)

Cut Hair: (instantaneous, like dragging) Requires a razor or a scissors. Player can choose any level of shorter hair they want (scissors wouldn’t be able to cut hair lower than Extremely Short)

Style Hair: requires comb and scissors. Takes 1 Cantr hour (or more)
This could be as simple as listing the hair as “neatly styled” (boring but a good stepping stone) to listing different styles, each with different tool, item, and time requirements. The styling would remain in place until the next hair growth change (see above).

EQUIPMENT:
- combs (plain and bejeweled)
- scissors (which we already have, but it bears mentioning) (and why can’t we make scissors from iron and bronze?)
- hair pins (plain and jeweled)
- barrettes
- hair ties/bindings/nets
- razors
- moustache wax

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
* I like the notion that has been put out in other posts about “regionalizing” hair color. Having people spawned on Shai Island have dark hair, the Plaekur and Akypor Peninsulas being blond, and the Quillanoi folks be brown haired (or whatever) would foster a more in-depth character designation (a black-haired person in Akypor would clearly be an “outsider”) and provide more RP opportunities.

* A whole new profession (“barber” or “stylist”) could spring up in the larger cities

* Characters would have an in-game way to further define their characters.

* Hair dyes and such are an option, but seem more like a “Phase II” Implementation of the concept

-------------------------
I’m always looking for ways to distinguish my characters for my fellow players and in my own mind and a visual cue like hair is a wonderful way to do so.