Please split scales, feathers, and fur from skin

[PalletTown]

In the personal statistics under stats the player has the Skin ID. This value shows not only the values assigned to your skin, but also whether you have fur, scales, and/or feathers on your character. I think this leads not only to confusion to the players, but probably also leads to situations where it confuses the code. For example: On one of my current character has their skin described as Fluffy, Thick, Fur.

I think a much better system would be something like this:

Skin: Skin
Skin Color: Tan
Fur: Thick
Fur Color: Brown
Scales: None
Scale Color: None
Feathers: None
Feather Color: None
Chitin: None
Chitin Color: None

What do you guys think?

 

[Angle]

I would think skin fur and feathers could be good separate, but I also think having skin scales and chitin under skin would be best and make more sense.

 

[Karretch]

Each type doesn't need to be tracked individually. Why bother stating your character doesn't have chitin when omitting it doesn't even bring it to mind?

"Skin" is just plain and featureless, the others being self explanatory. Skin type, though, is your overall coverage and is to be envisioned as your torso and face. Arm, leg, tail, and ear types all are dependent on their own racial typing of what each individually has. If any of your extremities has a racial preference, like Ausar have plain skin but all their extremities have fur, then it would only need to track full body skin (plain) and extremities (fur). Skin color also needs to be tracked independently of whether you have a dominant type because it determines what some (all?) types come out as if there's not a racial color preset.

When you start mixing and matching parts is when you can start having more types added. My character, for example, needs only to track skin (overall) as plant, scales from gryvain wings, and fur from my fox tails and cat legs. I don't need to track feathers as I don't need feathers.

Your suggestion is needless complication, plain and simple.

 

[Noob Salad]

Can't, existing scenes might have to be rewritten. [pc.skinFurScales] or whatever.

 

[J-10]

At one point in time, it said my skin was Furred, Fur. Not weird at all, right?

 

[Woider]

In the personal statistics under stats the player has the Skin ID. This value shows not only the values assigned to your skin, but also whether you have fur, scales, and/or feathers on your character. I think this leads not only to confusion to the players, but probably also leads to situations where it confuses the code. For example: On one of my current character has their skin described as Fluffy, Thick, Fur.

I think a much better system would be something like this:

Skin: Skin
Skin Color: Tan
Fur: Thick
Fur Color: Brown
Scales: None
Scale Color: None
Feathers: None
Feather Color: None
Chitin: None
Chitin Color: None

What do you guys think?

How about:

Skin: Skin
Skin Color: Tan
Fur: Thick
Fur Color: Brown

That is just from your example, where all the useless information has been removed. There is no need to inform the player about a lack of X, Y or Z when a description only goes into what your character IS, not what it IS NOT.

 

[Cog]

I'm pretty sure PalletTown was trying to give all the different variables that might be included on the character as it might appear in code or in the stats menu of the codex. While it would be extraneous in the stats menu, it wouldn't necessarily be in code. The thing is, while the codex doesn't show it, all that information is already there, but some of the connections are a bit... wonky, shall we say? For instance, if I want to use Dovebalm to get wings, and I want them to be a specific color, the surest method is to use a fur transform like Naleen Nip, then get Ceria to dye it the chosen color, then get rid of the fur. But why is 'fur color' linked to 'feather color?' Similarly, there's links between chitin and... Vanae Markings, I think?

On top of that, skin color still remains, even if you've got fur over top of it. I've had characters with skin, Vanae Markings, chitin and fur, but as PalletTown pointed out, the only thing that showed up in the codex for 'skin' was the top layer (in this case, fur). Given that the codex's 'personal stats' are normally more precise than the description, this is, as he said, slightly confusing.

At any rate, this thread seems to be a request to make the divisions in the coding and/or display for fur/chitin/feathers/skin more distinct. Stating "all this information about stuff you don't have is extraneous" may be missing the point.

At the same time, I agree with noobsaleh that introducing this sort of division at this point would be a huge workload.

 

[Karretch]

It's chitin and scale color that are shared.

 

[PalletTown]

How about:

Skin: Skin
Skin Color: Tan
Fur: Thick
Fur Color: Brown

That is just from your example, where all the useless information has been removed. There is no need to inform the player about a lack of X, Y or Z when a description only goes into what your character IS, not what it IS NOT.

That makes complete sense. I just wrote it that way to demonstrate my point.

Cog also completely hit the nail on the head. While it would be nice to have the different epidermal layers enumerated in the personal stats, it is the deeper levels of the game that this heavily effects. Simply put, smashing 5 different epidermal types together will create a lot of issues and other weirdness.

 

[Noob Salad]

Technically, if you have fur, you don't have skin, at least as far as the game is concerned. Really, this doesn't make any sense because of course furry mammals have skin. But coding and writing wise, it's the simplest solution.

Best we can do is maybe change up the Stats screen. But what do I know, let's ask Based Jacques.

 

[Karretch]

The game doesn't reference any code besides your dominant skin type, the one that's your torso, unless specifically called upon by the scene to look at extremities. I don't see where you're getting code errors, I don't see how you could be getting them anyways. I also don't see how it's confusing to players when it's readily apparent what is what because 1) they know what TF's they took for what reasons and 2) the appearance screen is also there.

 

[Jacques00]

Know that it is always inferred that the player character has skin somewhere (being at least half-human and all)--fur, feathers, scales, chitin, bark all grow on top of skin. Fur and feathers will share the fur color stat (unless the body part is supposed to be a static color) and scales, chitin and bark share the scale color (chitin is black by default, otherwise).

The "Skin" category in the stats is actually set for the skin type (be it fur, scales, latex, etc.), so I can see how that can be confusing. I may reword that stat to better communicate that category if it helps.