Avatar customizing idea, Almost like the port utility Options

[Lazurious]

Now this is just an idea.. Like you can make/take and import a personalized portrait for your character, we should be able to import an avatar and have him seen that way on the streets of Furcadia.  It would have to go through the same process as the portraits do and be checked over so that it's not rude or someone ripping off a dragon. I honsetly think that alot of people would buy something like this so.. why not eh? The biling could be like the SS but a mit more expencive.

On another note: What do you think of that and being able to change your tri-wings seperate from the colors of your avatar?

[Sohare]

 I really agree with him, it might be a little extra push on lag >> but I kind think it would be a worth while utility, and what better way to earn more money for furcadia? I imagine tons of furre's would go for that O.o from furre's who want meaner looking dragons, to furres would want to paste a cheese insignia on their avatars shirt and totter around baring the power of cheese o_o;

[Dib]

This has been brought up before. I believe Felorin said it would cost A LOT of money avatar wise, and a lot of work... Although I'm not sure, it was awhile ago.

[Lazurious]

Alright then.. what about the wing idea? That couldn't be that hard to make it so that we can seperatly color our wings from our furres. Like an all black furre with pretty pink wings XD

[Binkari]

I'm not sure if this idea would really take off if it WAS implemented. A portrait is just one thing. You don't need to make multiple copies of it in different positions. We're looking at 30+ frames of actions in a walking avatar. Having anything less than the standard would most likely look subpar. Some people might make gigantic avatars, others might make really teeny ones. Others might make a partial set, so the avatar turns into a default one in certain positions. It'd make for a very inconsistent Furcadia.

Besides, with a custom portrait, people have to load the custom portrait when they click on you. If you went on say, AI with your custom AVATAR, everyone in the vicinity would be forced to download those custom images.

[Leticia]

I'd like to say that this is a nice idea, but there are some unavoidable problems with it.


The first and probably most telling the issue of bandwidth.

The largest single avatar file in the furc directory is 155, Gryphons.  Dragons and Pheonixi are also up in the 130-150 range.  The larger the avatar, the more space it takes up.  Now, if you have a custom avatar, and it's displayed the first time you see someone, it has to be downloaded.  With my connections, 150Kb usually takes me a minute or two.  I t have a terribly slow connection, but it's a small file.

It's not inconcievable to have to download 150kb in the background while playing furc - it would provide lag considerably, but it would still only take a minute or two and go away.

But if you're standing in a high traffic area - and face it, they're not high traffic because no one's there - you might have 2 or 3 or 10 people coming through with these avatars.  Now we're looking at a 10 minutes or more of transfers for us slow connection people.

And before we get caught up with that, someone else comes through.  The lag gets worse.  If Furc's trying to download them all at a time, there's no chance we can move or speak or follow conversations.

Now, it has been suggested regarging this idea in the past that the avatar not download until you click on someone.  Noting that the avatar file is STILL much bigger than the portrait file that may currently download when you click on someone, this is still not a BAD solution.  However, 90% of people would know their avatar wasn't being seen by 90% of people, and it would likely depress sales.

There's another problem with size.

We've all had the experience of being unable to be seen or unable to see because of dragons or pheonixi, or wings, or gryphons, which are all large and extend beyond their one tile area.

Custom avatars could concievably be even more blocking - even if given a size limit perframe no larger than the largest frame of the dragon or such.  After all, a big old rectangle would block more.

And yet another problem comes with the cost.

Portraits' main cost is not for the space, and it's not for the bandwidth.  It's for the human administration time in checking over the portraits for decency.  Avatars have 20 frames that would have to be checked, and carefully, because being on a smaller scale, inappropriate details would also be smaller.  I can just imagine some joker running around with an avatar that flips everyone off or that has a noticeable... umbrella in their pocket.  A logical progression of scale (10 to check one image) would make an avatar around 200.  Even assuming they make it only half that price for the avatar, you're looking at 100.

Some of these are overcomeable, but together, they make portraits rather more accessible for customization than avatars.

I answered the wing color question in the topic you made for it, so instead, I'll take a moment to soapbox MY idea of custom avatars.

Avatars could be distinguished by a text string - for instance Leticia_Feline_Mages for my one and only ever released avatar patch.  Your ini file would then have your primary species, as it is now, and your secondary species - some custom avatar patch.  This avatar could be stored in Leticia_Feline_Mages.fsh in the default directory or in a secondary avatars directory.

When you saw someone walk across your screen, it would check to see if you had their secondary avatar installed.  If you did, it would display.  If you didn't, their primary avatar would display.

Not everyone would see your avatar, but you could talk your friends into sticking it in their folders a lot easier than you could talk your friends into overwriting the way every feline or canine or whathaveyou looks so that you could have whichever avatar.  And the more popular avatars would probably be pretty well universally visible, except to brand new players.

[Lazurious]

Points taken. Alright then, drop this idea and thanks for the detailed post @.@

[Titanis Walleri]

There another problem with the wings. 1. You'll have MORE colors to work on because If they do that they'll have to add More things! 2.triwings look good the way they are 3.Meow

[Doal]

You know its not a bad idea. DEP could always add another server thats like P2P for this. for those who want to deal with lag and so on. and if its a P2P that means they will be getting -allot- of money, because i imagine that these avatars would yes be slowly kicking of at the start, but i am sure everyone will want one. but hey.. its an idea, let DEP decide right?

[Amy Gotcha]

It would be ever so nice to be able to change the colors of ALL wings separate from your avatar. That way you could, say, have Monarch Butterfly wings without having to wear all orange or be a blue angel with white wings.

[Justin StinCoy]

In the future, it may be possible to easily change the colors of the wings without causing lag or increasing the size of Furcadia. When DEP finally manages to separate wings from the walkabouts (thereby decreasing upload and download times), they could conceivably program Furcadia so that players can choose wings colors independently of the main avatar (and, with 24-bit color coming, that's going to be a lot of colors). The default color settings of the wings could be the same as they are now, but, in this hypothetical future Furre Editor, a player would be able to change these settings at will without worrying about how it would affect the rest of the walkabout.