Character Customization Poll

I was quite pleased with the number of people who responded to the Character Customization Poll. 120 people voted, and the results were interesting. At first, a significant number of people voted for Skin Tone / Ethnicity, which I found interesting. Very few AIF games allow for that choice, and when they do it is rarely ever referenced. I can think of several games that allow for the choice of the PC's skin tone, and then don't really ever reference it. It is especially challenging to include Skin Tone or Ethnicity in a game that uses static images for visuals, as it requires an entirely new character, rather than just swapping out hair colors or outfits. Eventually, the Body category won out, receiving 52% of the votes, which isn't surprising since it is such a major area of customization that can impact visuals as well as gameplay. Clothing was the second highest category with 21% of the votes, again not surprising due to the obvious impacts on visuals and gameplay. I was surprised that hair color and hair style didn't receive more votes. For my current efforts, I've decided to initially allow for a limited selection of body types, hair styles, and hair colors. More can be added if the demand if high enough. I will focus on clothing as the major option, since that has the greatest impact on gameplay. If demand if high enough, I will look at adding a Skin Tone / Ethnicity option later on. For the winning category, body customization, there are two main ways I see customization being done for a female PC. First, allow the Player to select from a small range of predefined body types (petite, voluptuous, lanky, etc.) or have a single basic body type with varied breast sizes. For a male PC, the same option would hold with varied penis sizes. However, I don't know how popular smaller penises would be, so that may be a waste of effort! For a male PC, it might make more sense to only allow the overall body type selection (muscular, average, skinny, etc).   Any thoughts?

Scene Differences

So far I have shown a few basic portraits. In the current design, players will also be able to examine a full character of themselves and NPCs, which will show the current outfit. Below is an example of this view:

In addition to examining characters, there will also be images for specific scenes. These images, when they show the PC, will of course take into account the PC's outfit, hair, etc. Here is an example of the same scene, with two different PC hair styles: