Meaningful Customization - III: Character Creation

[Evil Minion 943]

I like the aspects of survival and charcter customization and in my opinion it would be great if those could be combined to allow for more choices. Some might be "just for show" while others might have some special use or general utility. Instead of only having "joke", "low tier" and "high tier" items there should be a variety of options that can prove useful under certain circumstances while also having some drawbacks attached to them. On the other side there should also be room for purely cosmetic aspects.

I decided to make multiple topics instead of a single long one but will use former thoughts in later ones (thats why the topic name has a number in it). This topics main focus is the basic survivor setup you can choose from the start to gain a more personalized character. Its more about how create/customize your starting character could work than about modifying your survivor ingame.

 

Part I - Stamina & Weight

Part II - Temperature & Wetness

Part III - Character Creation

Part IV - The Dynamic Character

 

2 CHARACTER:

2.1 Ethnicity

I am not entirely sure if different ethnicities are needed. On the positive side it might provide more realistic characters because it allows to couple multiple traits making them look more like people you would meet in real life (avoiding single eyelid black skinned characters with blonde hair). On the other side it might be too restrictive and make it impossible to create mixed ethnicity charcters as you are limited to "typical" characters.

I think it might be a good idea to go the middle way: provide some rough templates but plenty of options (like a skin color slider) to make the character unique while still retaining some of the typical traits of their (wider) ethnicity. So basically provide three base types:

African (allows for the darkest skin tones and coiled hair)
Asian (allows for single eyelids)
Caucasian (allows for the brightest hair colors)

Those, while providing some typical looks, should be highly modifiable. In fact it should be possible to bring two charcaters who are based on different types very close to appearance or modify your character in a way that he/she looks very different from the typical base types.

2.2 Face

Faces should work similar to the way faces work in real life: to recognise people. To make this possible the overall variety of faces should be very high - which means significantly higher than the maximum number of players on a server (right now any group of 9 or more people has at least one pair of "twins"). The best way to achieve this is to provide some kind of character generator to combine single features - this way variety comes from different combinations rather than needing a huge amount of predefined faces. A character generator would also make it possible to "recycle" features and is much easier to access (though it is possible to arrange predefined faces in a similar way).

Lets look at an example to understand the possible combinations. You got six features: head (upper face, ears etc.), jaw, nose, mouth, brow and cheeks with 5 options each. This already makes for over 15000 possible combinations. Add sliders for their positioning (e.g. for the mouth) and skin tones as well as some additional options (like the already mentioned single eyelids, more mouths, eyes etc.) and nobody has to find a clone of him/herself ever again.

But there should be more than that. I highly doubt that all survivors of a zombie apocalypse would be young or middle-aged adults. There should be a much greater range of possible ages starting from characters in their late teens and up to people in their sixties (lets play as badass grandpa/grandma!). Also appearance: some people look plain, some look cute, some look scary, some are pretty, some are ugly - and so should the survivors (potentially - if everyone decides to play an ugly and slightly scary badass grandpa so be it). Each of those effects should be achievable in multiple ways (if there is only one "scary option" per feature chances are that all players who like to be scary will look alike).

Faces should come without accessories or makeup so every freshly spawned player would look comparatively plain. However there could be some items for painting your face in various ways - as well as an option to wash it all away - and maybe even piercings and scars. There should be some freedom how to use the items in question (e.g. painting your whole face in red using a whole lipstick). Also using dirt to "paint" your body might be interesting.

2.3 Hair, Eyes and Body cosmetics

Some additional customization options that affect your appearance. You choose them when creating your suvivor and they cannot be changed mid-game - similar to your face - but - also similar to your face - could be altered ingame if you got the right items or playstyle. Hair will grow over time (and if you are a male your beard will also grow) but can be cut, shaved and even styled (with the right tools). You may dye your hair but finding colored (and usuable) contacts in a postapocalyptical world doesn't seem very realistic to me. Similar for your hairtype: getting curls or straightening your hair would require tools and effort you usually would not have. So your eye color will stay the same and your hair type will dictate which kind of hairstyles you can use.

Hair Colors:
- black
- dark brown
- auburn
- chestnut
- ash
- red (only caucasian)
- golden (only caucasion)
- blonde (only caucasian)
- grey (only older survivors)
- white (only older survivors)

Hair Types:
- straight
- wavy
- curly
- coiled (only african)

Eye Colors:
- light blue
- dark blue
- grey
- green
- hazel
- amber
- brown
- dark brown

Finally we got body types - because not all survivors of one sex are built in exactly the same way. This gives an option to tell apart people at medium range and adds some optical variation. Body types are meant as purely cosmetic but you might have the opportunity to gain or lose weight or even train to build up muscles (next topic will cover this). Your body type is more of a basic setup that outlines your basic appearance and where you gain or lose fat in general.

Male:
- Athletic (lean with long legs and somewhat defined shoulders)
- Muscular (broad shoulders with shorter legs and very narrow hips - "top-heavy V-shape")
- Rectanglular (less defined shoulders with medium legs, weight is distributed equally)

Female:
- Hourglass (balanced weight distribution, defined waist and slender legs)
- Pear (wider hips and legs with a longer waistline and narrow shoulders)
- Androgynous (narrow hips and less defined waist with broad shoulders)

Different body shapes (the ones that do change gameplay) will come from ingame weight loss or gain. For example a "bulky bear" will be a muscular man that got some weight (rectangular would not gain broad shoulders while athletic would only get a beer belly) and a supermodel body would be a skinny hourglass figure (pear would retain the wide hips while androgynous would tend towards a boyish look instead). Still the body type is only meant to affect appearance ("bulky bear" would still play just like "beer belly guy" if they got the same weight).

2.4 Starting Character

You should be able to choose most of the above for your starting character as well as your first basic set of clothes. But similar to this you should not get all options right from the beginning. I already mentioned that body paint (of any type) and possibly accessoires should not be present at the beginning. Similar for hairstyles. Both sexes should start out with a rather short cut (compare george form above) and men with a stubble (if you want cleanly shaven go find a razor!). Body type should be as selected with medium weight (neither skinny nor fat) and not particularily trained.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Evil Minion

[Nesuma (DayZ) 108]

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