Saturday, December 13, 2014

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?
 
 












3 comments:

  1. For male customization, I generally prefer playing rugged characters as opposed to "nerdy" or suave types. So, ideally, "appeal" is what I'd like to see as customizable.

    For female characters,preferences in bust size vary wildly. I'm somewhere in the middle, but some like things gigantic and other flat-chested. I'm sure that would be a good place to start.

    Honestly, any level of visual customization is impressive in a game like this and I would be impressed with pretty much anything.

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  2. Obviously if it was a magical world where time wasn't needed to put in the work, people would want a plethora of customizations, but I think these could work fairly well. Just know that even with these 'simple' things, it could add quite a ridiculous amount of work.

    Changing just the basic body type might not be too bad. It could mean little change in the writing (if any is needed at all, depending how you write it).

    I'm usually fine with an 'average' guy, just because it is more easily to place yourself in that than the ends of the spectrum (ie, a ridiculously buff powerhouse or a near-anorexic type) regardless of where you fit. Of course, I'm fine with playing the role of someone else for the sake of a story, so that never bothered me.

    Breasts are a bigger deal, depending on the scale. If you can go very flat or very large, you may need 2 or 3 descriptions each time a titty-fuck scene goes on. Or if you show someone groping them, then that scene would need to be tweaked visually so there isn't a hand grabbing at air or clipping through the flesh. Clothing may also cause issues.

    I'm not an artist of any kind, so I don't claim to know how much work that would add in the end, but might be worth considering. Like AW stated, any customization is great and I am sure people would enjoy it.

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  3. Great feedback - I appreciate it. Definitely in line with where I am going. It isn't too difficult for the images, scenes can be adjusted for minor changes like breasts fairly quickly since I can reuse the rest of the scene without changes, generally. The writing takes more time, really, to make sure that scenes reflect character customization in fun ways, otherwise it is pointless.

    Thanks!

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