01-06-2024, 01:41 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-06-2024, 01:52 PM by mintyphresh. Edited 1 time in total.)
As of right now, the only ways to get custom-colored skin for a character is either to have the much-coveted Contributor medal, or to go to Genetics in-round (if it's staffed) and ask them to change the color (it has to be simple to do on the annoying RGB knobs since you can't input a hex code, unlike the hair dye machine).
It's frustrating to me that a powerful character customization was put behind a medal so rarely given out to players, and under such arbitrary methods as "bother an admin after you've done some indeterminate (but significant) amount of work for the codebase." With every other character customization option that I know of either being unlocked at the start or unlocked by playing the game (the contest medals do not customize your character), it really just... doesn't seem fair.
I was recently gifted the medal arbitrarily after doing pretty much nothing for the codebase (just made some minor changes to chemlab organization and changed alcoholic drinks), and I've really been enjoying having it, especially for a Blattodean that I roleplay as a mantid. I think being able to change exoskeleton color fits the mutrace well-- and it allows for a variety of insect species to be played using the mutrace, e.g. wasps.
There's been some mention on the Discord of making this a trait, so that humans could take it too; my proposal would be that the trait is normally a -2 or -1, but is innate with roachpeople the same way that hemophilia is innate with cowpeople. I do think humans should be allowed to take it; if it was something purely silly then I could see it being contributor-only (which is why I didn't mention the contrib scream) but there's non-silly reasons for a character to have atypical skin tones, even in RP (like my HoS character, who was partially hulked to restore strength following a coma). Having the trait be medal-locked to something achievable by the average player would probably still be wise, though.
(It's outside of the scope of this discussion, but I'll forget if I don't put this here: Someone else mentioned that having multiple "special styles" in the character select screen for different body form-factors would be an excellent way to further extend the customization of bugpeople, to add things like wings)
It's frustrating to me that a powerful character customization was put behind a medal so rarely given out to players, and under such arbitrary methods as "bother an admin after you've done some indeterminate (but significant) amount of work for the codebase." With every other character customization option that I know of either being unlocked at the start or unlocked by playing the game (the contest medals do not customize your character), it really just... doesn't seem fair.
I was recently gifted the medal arbitrarily after doing pretty much nothing for the codebase (just made some minor changes to chemlab organization and changed alcoholic drinks), and I've really been enjoying having it, especially for a Blattodean that I roleplay as a mantid. I think being able to change exoskeleton color fits the mutrace well-- and it allows for a variety of insect species to be played using the mutrace, e.g. wasps.
There's been some mention on the Discord of making this a trait, so that humans could take it too; my proposal would be that the trait is normally a -2 or -1, but is innate with roachpeople the same way that hemophilia is innate with cowpeople. I do think humans should be allowed to take it; if it was something purely silly then I could see it being contributor-only (which is why I didn't mention the contrib scream) but there's non-silly reasons for a character to have atypical skin tones, even in RP (like my HoS character, who was partially hulked to restore strength following a coma). Having the trait be medal-locked to something achievable by the average player would probably still be wise, though.
(It's outside of the scope of this discussion, but I'll forget if I don't put this here: Someone else mentioned that having multiple "special styles" in the character select screen for different body form-factors would be an excellent way to further extend the customization of bugpeople, to add things like wings)