Player Skins

[Renay 2]

My idea is pretty simple and I think it is possible as well.

In game every player looks pretty much the same. This sucks because you can't tell from far away if someone is your friend or not, judging by the outfit.

What I suggest is a skin system kind of the way Minecraft handles skins. Since the server loads your character data from a global database, there should be a website where players can look at their characters and change their skin. Now it wouldn't work exactly like Minecraft, every player just uploading his own skin.

We could have like a view window where we could choose an outfit from a variety of clothing parts. Then once you join the server, it loads your character data and everybody has a more or less unique skin.

Discuss.

[Renay 2]

bump, i'd like a dev opinion on this

[JimiEZ (DayZ) 0]

I too find the inability to properly distinguish characters from one another to be one of the biggest shortcomings of the whole mod currently. Yeah, I know you can change the face a bit in the menu, but that's by no means enough differentiation, as it doesn't work further away and it's still kind of hard to distinguish your friends quickly.

I think the Minecraft system might be a too complicated, with the server constantly having to fetch texture information etc. but why not at least give each new character a random skin from the several civilian (maybe even some of the takistani civilian skins from OA) and maybe insurgent / guerilla skins already available in ARMA 2 / OA and have it persist until death? Yeah, I realize that not all of them are as equally good in camouflage etc. and some people would still often look the same, but I think it would still be much better than the current Attack Of The Clones we have.

You could then probably get rid of the bandit skin as well, since people could actually warn others, something like:

"Watch out for the lumberjack in Elektro".

[Renay 2]

I meant not exactly like the minecraft system with the server getting the new skins. I mean adding a bunch of skins to the mod already and we can choose our skin on a website. So you could create your own outfit from a variety of the stuff in the mod, the server wouldnt have to load every skin.

[oktyabr 53]

What was it, the original OFP? I think so. We used to upload skins of our own faces (or whatever you wanted to make). It was cool.

You might get a dev response and maybe even see some solution yet but I really think a lot of things like this will wait for the improved Arma3 engine.

[iceblink 0]

It would probably be less taxing on the server if there was just a number of default skins rather than custom ones, like civilian, police, soldier (not a well equipped one), etc. Maybe at most have the ability to pick different colour versions?

I'm not going to wear a pink priest costume though. :D

[Jarlek 3]

Would be nice if we weren't a part of the clone army xD

[Shimmler 4]

+ OP

like the idea

[GK_Buba 0]

It has to do with the backbacks Renay.

Only OA and expantions after that have char's with the option of having a back pack.

I think once they figure out a way around it, like either fixing thins for the older char's or redo the AO ones.