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I think a customization shop would indeed be strange in a medieval world. Buying custom items, OTOH, wouldn't. I'm sure it wasn't extremely rare back then to have customers request a specific color from the tailor or a particular etching from the blacksmith. For a higher fee of course.

Yeah, so players could go to the regular shop and purchase their clothing which has pretty much one color for each style of clothing or armor (like a "Travelers Vest" would come in light brown) or it could have two or three colors if people will buy them (like "Druids Cloaks" could come in brown, black, or dark green).

But then there would be the tailors shop where you could go and ask for an item and specify what color and if you want special markings put on it. Then it's a matter of the tailor showing you different types of materials or dyes and a list of different markings they could put on it. Then, they tally up what those specifications would cost you and if you agree then they can make it for you.

I suppose, you could add another layer of realism and make it so that if enough people start asking for red capes at the tailor then they might start selling some at the regular shop.


Then there is the opportunities for stuff like item synthesis and sub-quests. Such as, purple dye for clothes can only be made from certain herbs found in really dangerous monster-infested places and you need to find some in order to get purple items. Or Dragon Blood can be used to make the special "Fire Red" Dye which not only makes clothing red but makes it resistant to fire as well.

Everquest 2 (and Eve too I think) has a quite detailed facial system. So this really isnt a new idea. The body type change was done in Asheron's Call 2 but not to a super fine degree with Height and build.

I definitely think that reading names above heads breaks the immersion and should be done away with. We dont have it in FPS games, and it makes more sense in an RPG to actually speak to find out such information.

There is a strange phenomenon though. Ever think about the sheer number of people you might run across in an MMO? You dont meet nearly that many new people in the real world (even if your in retail sales)...or at least you wouldnt have to remember that many faces for survival. In the real world you encounter the same people over and over and over because they dont die as quickly, nor travel as far.

But by all means..we should push towards realisim in 3d games until we can do totally photorealistic engines...then all there will be to focus on will be artistry and gameplay :)

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Original post by Lonewolf Darkmoon Ok another post asking for all of your opinions. In all of todays MMOG's the biggest problem I see is the fact that you have to have your characters name floating over your head so other players can tell you from the 100's of other look alikes.?

I think the game industry has bigger fish to fry in the MMOG area but I agree that I don't like games that lack customization.

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Original post by Lonewolf Darkmoon Is it possible to have your character creation phase in a MMORPG, as detailed as the creation phase in The Sims 2, but go a step forward and make the detailed customizing you can do on the face in TS2, also available for the entire body.

Possible? Sure.

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Original post by Lonewolf Darkmoon How hard would it be to program this into a game?

That depends on your experience and how much customization you want to implement. Just making a character generally unique shouldn't be too hard if you know how to model characters and load them into your app. Some games, like in the link I provided above, go pretty crazy with customizations. I imagine you'd have to spend a great deal of time planning, implementing and tweaking.

There's also the situation with clothing and armor. If you supply your users with morph targets for the body, that means any type of clothing or tight-fitting armor they wear will need to have the same morph targets.

Morph targets are not compatible across different models. For example, if you created a morph that increased the size of the right bicep, you would have to create a brand new morph for every single peice of clothing that wraps onto that bicep. It might not be too bad if you do a lot of mesh recycling. But if your shirts don't use the same arm mesh as your chainmail, then your artist is going to have a heck of a lot of work to do. Your game resources will end up resembling the Poser program's database.

My own game has too many types of clothing and armor to do this. Muscular character's clothing is not compatible with little dudes, and there are only a few different body shapes. The character's body parts can still be smashed or distorted slightly using mesh transforms. So hundreds of the same model can have slightly different shapes and still wear the same clothing.

Another problem is interacting with the world. If your character's height or arm length can be modified, they can't reach for door knobs or punch other characters square in the face without runtime modifications.

It's a whole lot of fun. Enough to make me happy with clone wars.