realistic character changing

[Deddarus]

ok..ppl seem to want realism so heres some suggestions

Eating (assume its gonna have a use) - eat too much = get fat, exercise a lot = get slim etc

scars from battles

growing hair

physique - strong characters become more muscular, players that fly a lot get bigger wings etc

maybe embed some unusual character changes into the race backstory

eg 1 race might have the trait that the more intelligent they get the bigger their heads get... or 1 race might develop big hors as they get better in battle

etc etc

[elscouta]

yes, can be a good idea.

Probably an hard thing to implement nicely though

[Kixie]

Originally posted by Deddarus
ok..ppl seem to want realism so heres some suggestions

Eating (assume its gonna have a use) - eat too much = get fat, exercise a lot = get slim etc

scars from battles

growing hair

physique - strong characters become more muscular, players that fly a lot get bigger wings etc

Now eating, there will probally be a set weight that you can adjust in the beggining of designing your character. If you want to rp a tubby person you can make him eat alot with a big physique. to hard to script this eating and getting fat without lots of unnecessary lag. Remember this isnt an eating simulator, its an mmorpg.

Now scars in battle. Definally a good idea.Not too hard to script. Just scars that appear in set places on body and dissapear 2 or 3 hours after fight.

Growing hair. No way. Growing hair is unnessary. this isnt the sims or something. there is no reason to get that complicated. If you want to type \"/me shaves with razor\" thats fine but there is no reason to have a huge script for facial hair.

[Deddarus]

all the physique changing would require is for each character model having 4 models (ok this might produce a rather rapid change in shape but more models could be added if server constraints allow)

eg

normal body
skinny body
fat body
muscular body

then when the fat/strength variables cross a boundary the players model is changed to the appropriate one

[Kixie]

yes but how would we know when to change models? Do we get fat from eating rapidly? or eating more than usual in one day? what is the factor on walking around and figting? How many fights a day do we get in to get musular? how long do we not eat untill we get skinny? Can we get skinny from desease. too much to script IMHO.

[Deddarus]

i dont know the script structure used here so i cant comment too much on it but as a pseudo code algorithm i would suggest this

food is eaten
quantity/weight of food is added to food_eaten variable on player
on a timer food_eaten is decreased by a set amount and player weight is increased by same amount
if player weight > fat_weight constant player becomes fat

if food eaten falls <0 the same code would cause player weight to drop
if playerweight < skinny weight player becomes skinny
if player weight = 0 player dies of hunger

as stamina drops (ie player becomes tired from exercide) food_eaten is decreased but player weight is not increased


i believe that would work and would not require too complex a script

[Olig]

Although it may not be much, I dont think its nessesary. If you want to play a fat character, design a fat character. Besides, you also have to script how people will loose that weight too through excersize. An objective of a MMOG is to reduce the amount of lag as much as possible, and I would much rather have a better ping than have these ideas implemented.

(Maybe have a barber profession that can change hair instantly?)

[Deddarus]

the above pseudocode example incorporates the effect of exercise (note the section on stamina)

additionally the changes in player model will be rare thus the client side lag would be negligable (it equates to the client side lag occurred when an object is picked up and placed in the inventory), server side lag would also be negligable as this basically simplifies to a timer-incerement-decrement script which will be repeated hundreds of times over to deal with standard gameplay issues (eg poison, spell effects, stamina drain etc)

[Syreal]

i think this whole \'realistic character\' thing would be much better for a game like Morrowind. its not online and i bet if the dev\'s of that game could do wot they already did, then they could do this (the prior sentence might be confusing.) Maybe in The Elder Scrolls 4 (cant wait till that comes out!)

[Kixie]

yes this system is really more adequate for an offline game. And i cant wait for elderscrolls 4 either!!!1 *shakes in excitement* *has heart attack*

[Deddarus]

welp..seems unpopular

anyways in the server i used to work on ppl asked for this a lot.. and we had much more complex scripts in place

the only limitation was that we were using the standard graphics set and had no realistic means of updating it (seeing as the graphics, as is usual, are client side)

oh yeah.. and we also had growing hair + beards but then the characters worked on a layer system and it was just a case of changing the object equipped to layer_hair or layer_beard

[dfryer]

Well, the skeletal animation system will provide for making characters fatter (and maybe beards longer).  Scars might be trickier (i.e. the server would have to keep track of about a million scars, which might not add that much to the game)

Aside from technical feasibility issues though, I think characters taking on individual appearances is a healthy addition to a roleplay system.

NPCs from some cultures might even have preferences for certain characteristics/body types - in other words, \"relative charisma\" would be computed based on how appealing the NPC finds you.

[Kuiper7986]

its an MMORPG, it isn\'t supposed to be real. When your talking about realism an MMORPG your talking about, \"When I stab a monster, it should die.\"

[dfryer]

I think RPG\'s are distinguished from other games by their attempt to create a particular \"reality\" with it\'s own (usually complex) set of rules.  In a good RPG, you *want* to be able to combine eye of newt with wing of bat and get some evil brew.

Mmm... brew.

[Kixie]

mmorpgs are the only games that can suck me in for days on end with out sleep... thats why i play em..