Macguffin Games

1. 

   Faulkiebear
   Member

   I'm making my first character here, and it seems to me that I have five choices for a portrait: armored graying black guy, gray haired bearded white guy, middle-aged lady in red looking to the left, the blank, and the blank with the letters 2FO1 above it. This happened when I made Highwayman, a bisexual male.

   I restarted, and have the same selection of pictures when I made Brigandina the heterosexual (ha!) female.

   I'll assume this is a problem, and not an example of MORE portraits. As you jerks well know, I'm on a Mac running 10.5.8 and not your new-fangled, fancy Snow Leopard.

   Posted 2 years ago #
2. 

   Graham
   Administrator

   Part of the "mo' portraits means mo' problems" approach involved putting our existing portraits into groups that included a babby(sic), one child picture, one adultish picture, and one later middle aged picture.

   It also involved coding character creation so that you could only select a later middle aged picture for your starting hero, since the only constant there is that they're in their forties (which we didn't think was particularly evident, either). While, yes, you have fewer options for your starting heroes portrait RIGHT NOW, that will certainly not be the case as time goes on.

   That said, I'll miss using the picture of the baby for my starting hero.

   Posted 2 years ago #
3. 

   Faulkiebear
   Member

   Fair enough. The main reason I thought it a problem was 2f01 picture, but that makes total sense.

   Just you wait until I take your baby picture and draw a mustache on it so I can put it in the middle-aged category.

   Posted 2 years ago #
4. 

   Graham
   Administrator

   The picture 2f01 means that we have earlier female pictures that don't have an old version, so there are placeholders elsewhere in the portrait chain. The game knows to show any picture designated as 'old' in the character creation screen, but doesn't know whether they're placeholders or not, because the game isn't very smart.

   Posted 2 years ago #
5. 

   Woodsy
   Member

   I don't know about when you plan to die, Graham, but Spruce is 46 and he looks like my great grandpa Joe. So not to demand more art, but it'd be kinda nice if our middle aged heroes didn't look like they're on the verge of death already.

   Posted 2 years ago #
6. 

   jbehnken
   Member

   Well in their defense, and given the time period, people did age MUCH quicker in those days of yore. From what I've read of medieval history - most people died in their 50's and apparently, if they got past sixty it was very likely they'd live into their 70's or even 80's.

   John

   Posted 2 years ago #
7. 

   Faulkiebear
   Member

   My line of thinking was (and maybe WP's), I always assumed that 40 looked 40 no matter the current life expectancy.

   I never really considered that people were saying you AGED quicker, just that Dung Fever and a whole allotment of other maladies were likely to kill you by 50 or whatever.

   Posted 2 years ago #
8. 

   Graham
   Administrator

   So what you're saying is that the Gorton's Fisherman looks -too- old?

   Posted 2 years ago #
9. 

   Woodsy
   Member

   Well, when Kaisa was in her forties she still looked like she was 16. When Spruce was less than five years older than that, he looked like Santa Claus soo...yes.

   Also, 40 then may not have looked exactly like our 40 because more folks were labourers and labour was often harder than it is today, but there's a difference between that and this. 40 then you'd be missing some teeth, have more joint trouble, rougher skin, perhaps, and probably look tireder, but you wouldn't simply look 70 at 50.

   Posted 2 years ago #
10. 

    magadog
    Member

    What Woodsy said, but... yeah, backbreaking labour and poor nutrition ages you faster. (Although this is going to be more true of the lower social echelons; there's little indication of how social stratification works, but it's probably safe to assume that heroes are at the top of it.)

    Also, cultural attitudes towards age condition how you present your age. In societies where age has a lot of cachet, people can start adopting the mannerisms and attitudes of old age a lot earlier, and this extends to appearance. Modern Western culture places a huge emphasis on youth; if you start greying in your thirties, you cover it up somehow. Elsewhere you might try to emphasize it. And we already know that the Loviisans are ancestor-worshippers.

    Honestly, though, I don't think it matters too much as long as it feels more or less consistent.

    Posted 2 years ago #

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