"Appearance" based on clothing and jewelry

[T-shirt]

I dislike the idea of imposing such value judgements as intrinsic to things one char may favour for legitimate reasons. You tie the hands of those who want to rp different tastes.

No you don't tie the hands. With this suggestion nothing changes, except the order in which characters are displayed on the people screen.
You can still role-play that you prefer naked people. Or rough fur boots.

You can also role-play that you have more confidence and respect for young people, but the people are still arranged by age now.

I do think that clothing should have some effect on the game. Protection from weather could be fine, but that depends on weather being implemented. The given suggestion does add some effect to clothes, but it is minor enough to be able to ignored if you don't care. And large enough to give outfits value.

The bonuses could be complicated and different for common clothes and uncommon ones, but I think it would be best if it were kept simple at first. With experience the clothing values could be adjusted.

I was thinking of a value depending on the manufacturing time. A piece of (visible) clothing that took 1 day to manufacture raises the appearance by 1 (or 8 if manufacturing hours are preferred).

[Pieter de Groote]

You should include some value for the time needed to collect/process the resources.
So:
- leather has higher value than hide.
- gold has higher value than iron.

[SekoETC]

Fur boots are not rough. They're soft and cute. (I should know since I invented them.)

[Jos Elkink]

This idea would also mean I can't use the people list to estimate ages anymore, which I do all the time

[Pieter de Groote]

That's another advantage.
Age is so overrated in Cantr.

[sanchez]

I disagree. Cantrian longevity ought to convey more status than vanity.

[T-shirt]

Age can be displayed with {CANTR CHARDESC}.

Clothing can't.

[SekoETC]

This idea would also mean I can't use the people list to estimate ages anymore, which I do all the time

You shouldn't be able to tell which one of two people of approximately the same age is older. If this thing would get implemented (although I pretty much doubt it will) there might be need for sub-categories in the twenties group (early twenties, mid twenties, late twenties) but beyond that it hardly matters. Ok, maybe thirties could be split in two as well.

[wichita]

I like the idea of having the most noticeable character appear at the top of the list. I dislike having it hard coded based on an externally "arbitrary" point system. By arbitrary, I am thinking of the fact that if we declare silk clothing to be more "noticeable" than hemp clothing, we work against the natural cultural environment that would be expected on a silk island with no hemp.

In an advanced city where most people own clothing, nothing worth mentioning is actually worth looking at sometimes.

Rather than working out a complicated way to rank the characters, I would like to try and figure out a way to characterize characters based on a glance at a list. I still like the idea of sketched out avatars. Nothing fancy, just cartoon characters the show male/female, wearing a shirt, wearing pants, wearing, shoes, wearing a dress...

Then we could glance at who is wearing clothes or not, who is holding stuff, etc. We could also display the number of visible clothing items, and the number of carried items next to the character on the people list....

Either way is going to add some clutter to the game interface.

[kinvoya]

*ignoring wichita's opinion*

Here's what I've come up with so far. It's a lot of work so I'd like some feedback before I go any further. It is, of course, incomplete right now.

I think I've covered every factor except time to make the project. That was just too much. Someone can add it in later if they feel strongly about it.

I'm making the table in Word and it won't translate here so you have to figure out which column the points would be in. If anyone wants an easier to read version email me at jjm2006@lycos.com and I will send you the table as an attachment.

Column key:

B = Base Points (ponts increase from easiest or most basic to luxury items)
C = Cloth or yarn
M = Materials or Metal
J = Jewel
T = Tool
S = Size (large amounts of materials adds points)
F/J = Flair/Justification (plus or minus points to make sense if points seem too high or too low in relation to other items)

Notes:

Clothing Material Points (Animal, vegetable, metal, mineral, manufactured)

Hide=1
Bone=1
Sinew=1
Fur=2
Feathers=2
Leather=4
Treated Snakeskin=5
Crocodile leather=6
Tortioseshell=4

Wood=2
Flowers=3
Reed=3
Coconut=3

Copper=5
Silver=5
Gold=5

Diamond=6
Turquoise=6

Wool yarn=4
Wool cloth=7
Hemp yarn=4
Hemp cloth=7
Cotton yarn=4
Cotton cloth=7
Silk yarn=4
Silk cloth=7
String=3
Glass beads=6?
Iron=4

Materials Weight Points

Cloth
1-200g = 1
200-400g = 2
400-600g = 3
600g + = 4

Yarn
400+ = 1

Hide = 0
Leather = 0

Feathers
1000+ = 1

Gold = ?

Silver =?

Glass beads = ? (given 6 points for all amounts because I don't know anything about making them)

Tools (points are for easiest to make version, i.e. bone needle rather than steel needle)

Knife = 1
Needle = 1
Hammer = 2
Knitting needles = 2
Crochet hook = 3
Scissors = 4
File = 5

And an example of how it works:

Clothing/Base/Cloth or yarn/Material or Metal/Jewel/Tools/Size/Flair or Justification/Total/Notes

Underwear
cotton briefs 1 7 1 -3 6 Cotton cloth, needle
fur bikini 1 2 1 4 Fur, needle
fur loin cloth 1 2 3 Fur
hide bikini 1 1 1 3 Hide, needle
loin cloth 1 1 2 Hide
silk stockings 2 7 1 1 2 13 Silk cloth, needle

Undershirt
coconut bra 1 4 2 7 Coconut, sinew, knife, needle
cotton corset 2 7 1 5 2 -3 14 Cotton cloth, bone, needle, scissors
decorated silk corset 2 7 7 5 3 2 26 Silk cloth, bone, glass beads, needle, scissors
feathered halter top 1 6 1 7 Feathers, leather, needle
fur undershirt 1 2 2 -1 4 Fur, needle, fur scraper
hemp undershirt 1 7 1 -3 6 Hemp cloth, needle
leather corset 2 5 5 3 15 Leather, bone, needle, scissors
long-sleeved cotton undershirt 1 7 5 13 Cotton cloth, needle, scissors

[sanchez]

Weighting hemp, silk, and cotton equally for regional balance makes some sense, but you're still going to need to normalise all extant items in the clothing database. Oughtn't Seko be doing this?

And I'm still against displaying numerical values.

[kinvoya]

Oughtn't Seko be doing this?

Maybe so. She knows a lot about programming and such and I don't. For instance, I don't know what this means:

you're still going to need to normalise all extant items in the clothing database

Get busy, Seko! I'm sure you don't have enough to do.

[Arlequin]

I vote against graphic avatars.

Just summarize the points and the average on the character short description, someway like this:

Global cost:
- A luxurily dressed (wo)man...
- An expensively dressed (wo)man...
...
- A poorly dressed (wo)man...
- A primitively dressed (wo)man...

Then, how well dressed (s)he is? Are his different clothes too different in cost? Like, wearing hide pants with a cotton jacket and a gold crown.

- An elegant, expensively dressed (wo)man...
- A correct, expensively dressed (wo)man...
- A strangely, expensively dressed (wo)man...

And so on.

[Jos Elkink]

I totally don't like these kinds of evaluations of the clothes. That really should be up to the cultural values of the characters, in my opinion. I do agree that it should be more visible. If I could draw nice avatars, I would probably have long done something like Wichita suggests, but to implement it now would lead to a revolt, I think ... But in a text-based fashion, it would be better to do something like that.

Are there more creative solutions / tricks to display this kind of information, without totally cluttering the events list (e.g. with "a man in his twenties with silk trousers, a woolen hat, ...... says: ""), but without ranking or attaching particular numerical values to particular types of clothes?

[El_Skwidd]

Somebody suggested putting graphics to be used in relation to all of the clothing. Instead of the textual description, put a .gif of what the garment looks like. I know that generally I don't read all of what a character has on while I'm punching in their name really quickly, so maybe that'll help some people.

Custom-written descriptions have also been suggested, which I'm a fan of. Maybe that'll encourage people to design appearances for their characters as well.