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Full-range skin color for Blattodeans (and maybe everyone?)
#1
Rainbow 
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)
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#2
Having recently grown very fond of my little roachperson, I'd love to see this happen. So long as it fits in the feel of the game I'm all for more character customisation and less hassle for making your character look like themselves. The 'special styles' thing would probably be a much bigger project somewhere, but all in all I definitely think both the ability to colour one's roachperson and the special styles thing would be neat and positive additions.

At the very least it'd be neat to have a few more configurable sense-making colours as a roachperson without needing to be a very specific brown.
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#3
Really like the idea of carapace colour being unlocked on roaches, the way whatever filter applies over the colour you choose makes colours look great and I've been loving toying with it on a fork where I have the medal. Would be really nice for character customization
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#4
I feel like i recall an admin mentioning there being some internal discussions regarding the contributor medal, but idk what that entailed or if any conclusion was reached. Regardless, I agree. Having a pretty significant character customization detail be locked behind having some sort of meta support from admins feels like a remnant of a more elitist/cliquey time. If its not a good fit for the game then nobody should have it, and if it is a good fit for the game then everybody should have it. Perhaps humans could be limited to sane ranges but i dont see any reason why a bug or lizard person couldnt be pretty much any color.
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#5
Given that character recoloring is already mostly available through genetics for humans, I personally see no problem in introducing a trait for it and would enjoy the additional character options that would open up thanks to it. Plus, additional customization for existing mutantraces(in color, physical features, or otherwise) is always good for facilitating new RP interactions. Ultimately, I'd love to see something like this implemented in the game and agree with the other points brought up in the thread.
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#6
I don't have anything to add, the original comment says it pretty succinctly. And I'd have to agree with Solenoid, a trait specifically to enable that kind of customization would be wonderful in the sense of requiring a bit of commitment to it, instead of just being a no-brainer for everyone.
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#7
...I got it, new medal for linking a forum account should grant access to the trait
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#8
I can't see why not. Saurians allready have it
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#9
(01-16-2024, 09:37 PM)mintyphresh Wrote: ...I got it, new medal for linking a forum account should grant access to the trait

I like that idea; it seems like a fair thing to do
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#10
(01-16-2024, 09:37 PM)mintyphresh Wrote: ...I got it, new medal for linking a forum account should grant access to the trait

Really like this idea honestly.  A lot of players don't have accounts and when I've asked people to leave feedback on threads before I've gotten the answer of "is it worth going through all the hassle of making an account just to comment on one thread" a lot of times, so if they have a reason to make an account in advance it'll seem like less of a hurdle to comment on the rare topics they want to have input on
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#11
(01-16-2024, 09:37 PM)mintyphresh Wrote: ...I got it, new medal for linking a forum account should grant access to the trait

Love this and the initial idea. Absolute support, and it would incentivize more interaction with the forum.
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#12
Spoke with a dev about implementing the Forums feature-- Mordent brought up concerns about intrusivity with players that don't want to sign up to the forums for privacy reasons. Additionally, there's probably going to be some difficulty with getting some kind of forum-ckey linkage going (and I don't think there's a soul alive that would want to grant the medal manually for every person with a forum account).

I've made a PR that adds the feature to Blattodeans (#17736), but the future of odd-colored skin on humans is uncertain.
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