"Appearance" based on clothing and jewelry

[Pieter de Groote]

This suggestion aims to increase the effect of clothing and jewelry.

Currently clothing and jewelry have no effect in Cantr. They do have some roleplaying value, but not an awful lot. How many characters really notice those silver framed spectacles, crocheted silk shawl, ivory earrings, snakeskin boots or rope pearl necklace?

1. The first part of this suggestion is to implement an appearance score (or maybe "status").
2. Secondly, all characters on the People Screen will not be arranged by age, but the person with the highest appearance will be at the top and the person with the lowest will be at the bottom. People with the same appearance score will be arranged by their age, oldest first.
3. The third part is to assign appearance bonuses to all clothes and jewelry. Of course simple hide pants will have much less effect on appearance than silk pantaloons.

The result is that people that look good will be noticed first.

I hope for the following consequences:
- People will invest in clothing and jewelry to increase their status (i.e. be high on the list).
- Tailors and goldsmiths will have a real purpose.
- Also the traders that have other resources than limestone, hematite, coal, gas and wood can find interested customers.

Even company clothing will have a purpose, because all people with the same clothes will be near each other on the list.

PS.
Ideally the appearance bonus should partially be dependent on the availability of the used resources, but that will probably be impossible to program. The more exclusive the clothing or jewelry, the more appearance bonus.
The guy walking into town in crocodile leather boots and crocodile leather jacket would certainly turn some heads if there's no crocodiles on the entire island.

[T-shirt]

That's one of the better suggestions I have seen in centuries.

I could have thought of it myself... should have.

[SekoETC]

I think there was something along these lines earlier, but it was about adding an adjective in front of the (wo)man in his/her x:ties.

The problem about this idea is that some items have more value in different regions. In an area where most people are naked savages, hemp clothes could be considered amazing, but in a town with cotton, it would look rough and primitive. Or then exotic. There's no telling how people will react. In a community where everyone wears clothes, a naked person would stand out totally. And at least irl, if a young person and an old person were wearing the exact same outfit, the young one would be considered better-looking.

Not to mention that Cantrians tend to read from bottom up.

[Nakranoth]

Well... using the proposed suggestion, the hemp cloth would turn heads in a naked community because that person would have the "highest" bonus... and the naked person would also turn heads for having the lowest... both extremes would draw some attention. But finding the manpower in RD to effectively assign said vaues, plus getting ProgD to think it worthwhile enough... it won't be implimented any time soon, me thinks.

[sanchez]

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.

[Nakranoth]

Hey, I vary form social norms IRL all the time. Doen't keep you from doing the same IC, just means the social norms are actually there to go against.

[Averus Wolfmaster]

For me... Idea is good, well, very good, quite excellent ( it has few defects but stil... its better then not considering at all ).

[Kreed]

Yes, I like this one, the effect would be noticable but not in your face.

[Jos Elkink]

I certainly don't like this suggestion. But I do agree that clothing should be more visible. When the clothes functionality was designed, it was always the intention to include the descriptions to the "a man in his twenties" part. For that reason, both short and long descriptions of clothes are stored in the database, but only the latter are currently visible. The problem is, though, that 1) those descriptions are only in English so far and 2) the name of a characters gets really pretty long. I mean "You see a man in his twenties with a long sleeve cotton shirt and leather pants with sandals say: " ... " " that's a bit too much ... So I'm not fully sure what a good alternative is, yet. To attach a score I think is not a very good idea, because different people like different things and some clothes might be luxury in one region but not in another. But that clothes should be more visible I agree.

[Wilmer Bordonado]

Question: How could any item (clothes, in this case) be more visible in a game which is text based?

Answer: the only way is to a graphical support to them and show it when certain action is made. For instance, when clicking on a character's name, graphics for clothes could be shown, instead of the long description of them.

I am personally working on the translation of clothes descriptions to spanish, and it's a heavy work to be done because of the large number of clothes. But I don't consider translation in itself will be a great change for making clothes more visible or more usefull.

Firstly, I do like the original idea of giving a certain status to wearer's, but Seko's opinion is right, and there's no logical difference between a cotton trousers or a hemp ones. But I do also consider that something must be done with the clothes system to make it more coloured.

In the end, the functionallity of clothes is related to weather implementation. And I'm not talking about hurricanes or rains or snow. Certainly, it's not "weather", but "ambient temperature": each place should have a warm/cold/template range of temperature, as they have a certain type of resources and a certain type of animals. And that temperature could have certain effects on projects being made in the outside.

FI,
Collecting wood naked at a place where's 5º C with an axe, results a deviation of 50% (and the chance of getting a flu!)
Collecting wood wearing a shirt and trousers, the deviation should be minimal (2-3%?)

This could be done giving clothes a certain score of "warming", and doing an status bar of this variable on the character's description. Then this variable should be compare to the place's temperature. If character's warming is lower or higher than ambient temperature, then the deviation takes effect.

Jewellry couldn't be usefull, rather than rings or necklaces have a magical power, which I undestand it's not wanted IG. IRL, jewellry is still unusefull, so why it will have a function in Cantr?

Wilmer B.

[Jos Elkink]

I am personally working on the translation of clothes descriptions to spanish, and it's a heavy work to be done because of the large number of clothes.

Oh, my information was clearly out of date ... I didn't know that was possible already.

In the end, the functionallity of clothes is related to weather implementation.

Well, yes, true, clothes should be strongly related to the weather, but I think that's a different point from what this thread is about. Clothes have to do both with health / weather as with status and it's the latter that this thread is about ...

[Nosajimiki]

This could be done giving clothes a certain score of "warming", and doing an status bar of this variable on the character's description. Then this variable should be compare to the place's temperature. If character's warming is lower or higher than ambient temperature, then the deviation takes effect.

but aren't certain clothes useful for both heat and cold. One could argue that a silk headwrap could function to keep you warm in the mountains or keep the sun off you in the dessert. If this is done then there should be a "room temperature". So lets say for ease of math Cantr has a climate range of 0-100 degrees with 50 being room temp, every artical of clothing would have a modifier for both heat(temps above 50) and cold(temps below 50). So a silk head wrap might give a +3/-3 (increase heat effect by up to 3 degrees in cold and decrease it by up to 3 in the heat) giving a small bonus in either dirrection, but a fur coat might give a +20/+20 giveing a massive ressistance to cold but a massive peinalty for heat. Maybe we could also add umbrellas 0/-15 as something just ment to keep the sun off of you... ofcourse would also be good on rainy days.

Wilmer's sugestions aside, I rather like the first sugestion, and the way an "exotic look" could be evaluated is if every article of clothing has an invisable sytle attribute (cotton, silk, hide/fur, wool, etc.) Your fasion score will drop by one point for every article of clothing of the same style that exists in your town. Since it's an invisable number anyway negatives wont be an issue, and in that case a naked person actually could stick out amoungst a crowd of 30 people wairing loincloths.

[Wilmer Bordonado]

but aren't certain clothes useful for both heat and cold. One could argue that a silk headwrap could function to keep you warm in the mountains or keep the sun off you in the dessert. If this is done then there should be a "room temperature". So lets say for ease of math Cantr has a climate range of 0-100 degrees with 50 being room temp, every artical of clothing would have a modifier for both heat(temps above 50) and cold(temps below 50). So a silk head wrap might give a +3/-3 (increase heat effect by up to 3 degrees in cold and decrease it by up to 3 in the heat) giving a small bonus in either dirrection, but a fur coat might give a +20/+20 giveing a massive ressistance to cold but a massive peinalty for heat. Maybe we could also add umbrellas 0/-15 as something just ment to keep the sun off of you... ofcourse would also be good on rainy days.

Exactly. You've found a better solution for what I was thinking about.

Wilmer B.

[kinvoya]

I love this suggestion and I'm making a table of possible points for each clothing and jewelry item in the hopes that this will make it more likely to be implemented.

When it's finished I could post it here for feedback or send it to someone in programming if you want to keep it secret.

[Black Canyon]

Okay... but how many points does it take to win?

And....will this be on the test?