I'm working on an anime style character based school sim and I think I've come up with an interesting idea for character creation that I thought I would run by people. The idea is that you shape the important events in your character's life before the game started by selecting photographs. Each photo would reflect a different event or decision about your character's path in life. For instance it would start with two photo's of babies one in a blue blanket the other in a pink blanket. The image you choose would determine your character's gender. The photo's you choose would determine the characters starting stats and personality, they would also be added to a photo album that the player can view at any time. As you played new photos would be added. Does this form of character creation seem interesting to people?

Sounds like a good idea- you make certain decisions in the beginning and then play through the outcome, definately cool. Games are more enjoyable when the player can make as many personal choices as they can- gives them more of a "this is my game" type of feeling when they play. :)

That's an awesome idea. I really like it. Depending on the tone you want, I can imagine things like whether or not there are other kids of similar age in the picture being a choice of whether or not you had a large or small family, were an orphan, or were missing a father or mother figure.

The only incongruency I can see is if there's anything overly negative that could have happened to you (like parents squashed by a giant robot or whatever). That probably doesn't make it into photos. (Or does it? Do newspaper clippings count, too?)

I like the idea too. I've had plans for RPGs which involve crafting the personality of the PC, but they involved either just plain text attributes, answering questions or through playing out short episodes of the PCs childhood. The photo album would be a good method of doing that, and a great way of simply representing what each choice does.

I'd make sure you caption each photo so it's clear what it does (i.e. "It's a Baby Boy!"). I'd probably also add in a few negative trait pictures as well to help round off your character.

Are you planning on having just a choice of which one out of two (or more) photos for each year of the PC life, or something a bit more complex (such as a plus/minus point system for choosing character traits, represented through photos)? The first method might make more sense if you hand-generate the photos (as you'll be showing the PC at different ages), but the second method could lead to more complex character types (and consequently, be harder to implement).

So yes, I think the idea is great!

I like it, go for it.

You could have stuff written in pen on them, comments.

Or, it doesn't have to be like a photo album. How about photos, yearbook scenes - cut and pasted, like a scrapbook. Make a collage or something.

Cool idea, heres some suggestion photos:

"Here is were he got poison ivy";
"This is when he got hit by a car a broke his leg";
"This was taken shortly after he conracted leprosy";

What about rendering photos in important moments during the game and adding them to the album? If you make an animation that will give you time (like the photo coming out from a camera), you will have time to use a more powerfull renderer then the one you use in the game engine, and the photoes will look like you premade them.

Great idea.

Just don't make the chain of pictures too long. I tried the question path for character creation in Morrowind once and finaly backed out after the 15th question.

That's a really cool idea.

It'd help give a sense of nostalgia, and connection to the character, too.

Thats like Fahrenheit!
http://www.atari.com/fahrenheit/