[SUGGESTION] Palette swap figurines (Update to Cuthbert's Costumes)

This is a small, relatively easy to implement suggestion that allows players to customize the look of their team:

Palette color swaps. In other words, same figurine, but different color theme.
There are different ways to implement this, but I suggest a very simple one:

- Step 1 -
In Cuthbert's costumes, clear the boxes left and below the character. Don't show their deck and equipment.

- Step 2 -
In the box to the right of the character, add three color choices.
For example, for the standard green-robed elf Wizard, you'd see the following:

Hair [black] [blond] [violet]
Robe [green] [red] [indigo]
Orb [purple] [blue] [orange]
{Save}

The colors would be colored boxes, not words. If you click a color, that part of the figurine changes color (duh). With 3x3x3 choices, the game would select one of 27 image files. That should still be manageable both from making the images and storing them.

- Step 3 -
If you click the {Save} button above, the figurine is displayed with the current choices in the box below (where the deck is currently), for quick selection later.

It's there to allow players to play with different figurines and try different configurations. When you click on any of the stored figurines, it changes the look of the PC to that configuration.

Below each of the stored configurations is a {Remove} button.

Bonus feature: You can change the order of the stored looks via drag & drop.

- Step 4 -

Profit!

 

Wow, I really like that idea! I have to admit, I'm curious as to why this isn't implemented in the game already. Remember, if you will, the home page of the Card Hunter site -- the very page we'd see when clicking the Card Hunter logo here in the forum. There on the home page, you can see the human wizard. Now, in the game itself, he is wearing a blue robe, but on the home page, he is wearing a purple robe with yellow decorations on it. This makes me wonder why this color-customizing feature isn't already a part of the game! Don't you? In any case, I'm very fond of this idea, and it would indeed bring a little more personality to a player's party! Blue Manchu, implementing this into the game would only make it better, so what'cha waiting for?!

 

@Paprika: Thanks for the support.
It's a small team so they need to prioritize, but I agree that now the game is out of beta this would be a great thing to do next.

Some additional thoughts:

- It's probably best to keep it to three elements with three choices each. With each new choice and each new element, the number of image files that need to be prepared multiplies. Just adding a 4th choice to one adds 9 new image files for 36 total. It's still relatively quick to slap them together in Photoshop, but it will be a chore to maintain.
Of course, you could add a full figurine customization tool, but let's keep it simple.

- Limiting the choices also makes sure each of the combinations looks good. In the example above, the 3 color choices for hair - robe - orb should all come from one palette to make sure they harmonize regardless of choice.

- There could be other choices than color. For example, for the human male fighter, rather than hair color there are three choices of helmet design. Or, there could be choices like axe - sword - mace.

- Ideally, this will help sell figurines. Right now, what you see is what you get. If I don't like the blond hair on a paid figurine, I'm unlikely to shell out 80 pizza for it. However, if there is some preview function that allows me to see all 27 versions of a figure, I'm more likely to see the red-haired one I like and buy.
Blue Manchu, I'm making you guys money here

 

IIRC, there are actually three color themes for each figurine already.

The only way to see the other two currently is to make a party with three of the same figurine and you'll get one of each color theme.

 

Yeah I've seen this request before, and I support it wholeheartedly. I like that Martin K took the time to make a concrete suggestion regarding how the controls would be laid out, though. It's kind of true that your gear doesn't matter at all in Cuthbert's Costumes.

 

Very much support this.

 

Ooo, I didn't know that. This may have convinced me to get the vampire elf skin and make 3 vampire priests and play through the entire campaign that way.

 

I have the vampire elf skin, and it is very unfortunate that the best looking one is the third one, so you can only ever see it when you have a full team of vampire elves. Being able to manually select which color out of at least the available 3 would be really great.

 

Wow, I've got the vampire elf figurine too, but I hadn't thought that limited edtion figures would have multiple color options... not sure why I thought that, though. Anyway, like I said in my previous post, I really like this idea and would very much love to see it added to the game.

 

Well, I can't really detail how it would work code-wise, as I have zero experience with Flash, but I know in C++/C# and VB there are ways to alter shading on a single image to create dynamic copies on the fly, without requiring the copies to be premade, just a single image as a base.

Coding-in a dynamic image shader may or may not be feasible, or easy, in Flash. As I said before I know nothing about Flash, however I have some limited experience in C++ & C#, and a good amount of time fiddling around in Visual Basic. I have a J++ book, but never got around to reading it, heh. Call me lazy.

 

Dude, I won't call you lazy! Stuff like that would probably make my head go BOOM, so I won't blame you if you didn't read that book yet. It all sounds like a foreign language to me, as I have no experience with... erm... C%* and or #C... or in E=mc2... Oh man, calculations... exceeding... brain capacity... Call the medic!

Ok, all sillyness aside, I still find it a good idea. No clue if it's "easy" to include though, because as I said before, I have no experience whatsoever in... uh... C$$ and err... stuff like that. Eh heh heh heh heh...

 

The original Diablo did this with items. You'd have your standard silverish metal axe, fire items would be shifted to a red hue and so on.

With character figures, it's a bit more complicated though. You'd have to separate the layers and alter the shade on, say, the hair only.

My original suggestion was much easier: Just create some variations in Photoshop and load them as finished image in the game. KISS, low-hanging fruit... I'd rather have the dev team use a simple solution here and throw big resources elsewhere.

 

It's not quite as hard as you would think to colorize individual parts. The colors used on the character images are not too deeply shaded, you could just run a For loop that targets specific color value ranges and alters the values depending on which color you're trying to change it to. It would be a long series of nested statements, but shouldn't be too terribly difficult.

Visual Basic is a GREAT language for anyone who wants to learn coding, as it combines a GUI overlay on top of the program you are building. You can simply drag and drop a button, for example, and it will auto-populate the code for a button. Here's a sample of basic coding found in virtually every programming language, the If-then-else statement:

Code:

If x>2 Then
x=x-1
else
x=x+1
End If

It may seem weird at first, but this example is easy to explain; If variable X is greater than 2, the value of x becomes x minus 1, otherwise (else) the value of x becomes x plus 1. End If tells the computer that's the end of the statement. Visual Basic is not hard to learn, it's pretty fun too! I learned VB from a computer class my freshman year of high school. All it takes is a basic understanding of algebra. You don't NEED to know geometry, trigonometry, calculus or statistics, but depending on what you're trying to do that math knowledge would come in handy.

 

*bump*

I played a bit with triplet parties (same race/class/figurine) in the last days and I can confirm that yes, color swaps are already in the game. The female elf warrior and the human wizard in kimono have red/green/blue versions. The female dwarf cleric (paid figurine) has ochre, red and blue.

Players just don't have access to them unless they use the same figurine multiple times in the party

I understand that my original suggestion takes a bit of time to implement, so here is a quicker version that works with the exisiting artwork:
Add 3 clickable squares in the top right corner of the figurine window (red/green/blue) that switches between the available color swaps of the figurine.

 

I agree with you there. Like I said, I don't know much about what could be implemented and what can't, but adding those buttons shouldn't be that much of a problem. I really think that being able to change the color of your party's characters adds another layer of personality to each party!