Choice Between Anthro or Feral Avatar Options

[The Hobbit]

oookie here we go! a while back i had this idea....because i noticed nearly half of furcadia is feralor has a feral form. Plus we allll love to be cute SOoOOooOOOOooOOooo <-- oo's n_n; i was thinking furc should give you the option in your player editor of feral or furre! mhm right >.> yup well i started to find patches for the ferals to show you buttttt i... had an issue finding a furc acceptable phoe............ annndddd the oner of the equine is kinda not.. on soo no permition but i edited my patch to make super cute bunny xD anddd a place holder squirell till i get a donated one :O il post the pics tomorow

[The Hobbit]

[img]http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38245324/[/img] yah.. k theres the pic............. or you can link to it witth http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38245324/ ya i dun have a horse but i edited my rox into a bunny and a squirrel n_n they so cute xD

[Shinichi Kudo]

First of all: PIXELATION



And o.o ... nice idea, but I don't like ferals too much x) furres rock

[Auora]

First of all: PIXELATION



And o.o ... nice idea, but I don't like ferals too much x) furres rock

Second of all: a lot of those avatars aren't yours, they're from various places. I think I've seen all of those avatars somewhere before, but names escape me. But I don't think you made any of those feral avatars. :P

[Jagura]

I approve. <3

[Yiddish]

That would be double the patches, double the loading times, double the space, double the everything. I think the regular patches we have right now are enough. We don't need to see ferals out of dreams. We barely see them anyway except when they are on break socializing or just dream-hopping, and it's not like they're roleplaying in Acropolis or AI or anything, because they're not. We don't need 'em out of their little wolf dreams. If you can't bare to see yourself anthro-sized for the little time your out of your RP dreams, then just change your default patches. :/

[Fawkiia]

[img]http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38245324/[/img] yah.. k theres the pic............. or you can link to it witth http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38245324/ ya i dun have a horse but i edited my rox into a bunny and a squirrel n_n they so cute xD

Hobbit; you know better. You didnt make any/some of those. The owl was by Talz, the dire wolf and gryffe are by Kaelyn'fae..(sp? cant remember)~ Ferret by Swiftkill, Mini dragon by Talz, Mousie/chinchilla(SP) by Talz, Cat by Slang or someone else. Lot of people have redone it.

Even if; supply credit regardless. ):

Anywho; they'd have to add alot of portraits, and extra patches; which would raise prices for full port sets if someone charged for those. ><

[Aura]

I don't believe Deviation gallaries allow unoriginal work, you should remove that entirely.

[Kaelin'yFiae]

Just a note, I will vouch for The Hobbit and add that she did ask me if she could use my gryphon avatar when she suggested this, and I said it was fine. And I tend to be pretty laid back about credit, I probably even told her she didn't have to add it.

Aura: Actually, as far as I know DA does allow unoriginal work when you have permission from the artist. XD Although I can't vouch for the other artist's whose work is present there.

[Dagger]

Furcadia is the magical world where the animals have learned to walk upon two legs and speak.

Wouldn't the addition of feral avatars undermine the basic premise of Furcadia?

[Harley]

Why would you need to change the eagle avatar, honestly?

[Youlanda]

Furcadia is the magical world where the animals have learned to walk upon two legs and speak.

Wouldn't the addition of feral avatars undermine the basic premise of Furcadia?

Of course it would. It goes completely against the basic premise of Furcadia.

Other arguments against are:
1) That'd be adding many more avatars to the game. Would there have to be wings for the various critter avatars? You'd be adding at least 50% of the current avatar size onto the full current avatar size.

There are currently 760 frames of avatar in Furcadia. It would take paid staff time to make all the avatars and all of their variations, it's unlikely DEP would use stuff made by other people. Avatars take time, huge amounts of time. Not only would the avatars have to be crafted, shaded, shadowed, winged, aligned, remapped and tested for remap and parity for each of the individual 760 frames. (Which will go up to 860 or even more next update.)

I'd estimate the testing of remapping, animation, alignment, and parity would take about 10 minutes per frame. That's 7600 minutes to do just part of a full incoming avatar process. That's about 127 hours (126 2/3). That's a bit more than three work weeks at 40 hours each. Realistically, it might take two to three times that amount to craft, shade, shadow, and wing the avatars. Three times 126 2/3 is 380 hours. That's nine and a half weeks of 40 hour work days for a single person. (Ever wonder why it takes so long for Furcadia to release a new avatar?)

Time is money. The time could be better spent on other things.

2) You can alter avatars in your own dream. If you enjoy them, fine, enjoy them in your own dreams.

3) Just because you like feral avatars and feral roleplay doesn't mean that everyone else likes it/wants to have to deal with it/wants to engage in it/appreciates it.

The same goes for humans and anything else that doesn't fit the theme(s).

[Magic Hat]

"Furcadia is the magical world where the animals have learned to walk upon two legs and speak."

Personally, I play a character, that is in essense... one half feral. =P

If Furcadia altered it's avatars to suit some of the roleplay population, then they would have to include avatars for the other third of the population, in which comes from FurN. Now, do you really want a slew of slave avatars running around? Nada. Personal dreams are the perfect place for awesome feral avatars, like Youlanda said, it would take far too long, and use up DEPs' limited budget.

[Tarquin Lightfoot]

oookie here we go! a while back i had this idea....because i noticed nearly half of furcadia is feralor has a feral form. Plus we allll love to be cute SOoOOooOOOOooOOooo <-- oo's n_n; i was thinking furc should give you the option in your player editor of feral or furre! mhm right >.> yup well i started to find patches for the ferals to show you buttttt i... had an issue finding a furc acceptable phoe............ annndddd the oner of the equine is kinda not.. on soo no permition but i edited my patch to make super cute bunny xD anddd a place holder squirell till i get a donated one :O il post the pics tomorow

this would be nice as a pay option. In the future maybe when Furcadia isnt as reliant on species files. a digo where you change between the two forms depending on what species you are.

[Talzhemir]

Hmm. The decision to not have ferals was a complex one. I'll address the main points.



1. I've been in environments with feral RP and I dislike the overall effect on social interaction. Don't get me wrong-- I am not unaware of the GOOD effects ferals can have. But I have to weigh the overall bad vs. the overall good. When allowed freely, ferals have an unfortunate side-effect of being an encouragement for players to act less intelligently and less respectfully of others.



That's part of the fun of being a feral- it's relaxing and freeing to be relieved of a normal social obligation. But there's one big social change I strongly dislike, and that is, the implied acceptance of what's sexual harassment when done by a sentient being. To be blunt, real-life dogs must be forgiven when they do things like urinate in public and hump your leg. In actual practice, on Furcadia, the rating tends to go up from PG to R in all-feral Dreams.



HOWEVER... I've also observed that mixed regions, of both bipeds and ferals, this change is not as strong.



2. Because of the tendency to R-rated behavior and downright stupid behavior, the need for a moderator tends to go way up. More than "normal" Furcadia Dreams, those with all-feral dreams need monitors or babysitters, to keep the harassment under control. "Mixed" Dreams don't exhibit this social requirement as strongly. It's harder to run an all-feral Dream than, say, a BaH.



3. We only had room for a few avatars at the time. They took up room in PC memory that held the on-board in-use graphics, the RAM. That's not a big issue today, and more avatars will be added.



4. The download had to be kept very small. Protocols for reconnecting and resuming file transfer didn't exist and the transfer rate was limited to telephone line speed. According to the professional analysts, the bigger the download, the bigger chance of failure, and the later in the download the failure was, the smaller the chance of trying again. This is not as big an issue today, but analysts do advise that smaller downloads are more attractive these days.



5. Making "ferals" means doing twice the work on every new avatar. Because of walkabouts with color switching and portraits with color switching, development on an avatar is huge amounts of work. Making a new avatar is so difficult that there are, perhaps, a few dozen furres in all of Furcadia who do it at all. This IS a big issue. It would be better to add two new character types than one.



6. For legal and ethical reasons alike, walkabouts of default quality are always paid work. Again, I'd rather add two new character types than pay twice as much of our art budget for one.



7. Ferals *are* intended to be a part of Furcadia, ultimately-- it is part of the Lycanthian's "schtick". When this gets done, it will mean doubling the avatars we do. Remember that adding ferals means doubling the work on every avatar forever after. Please bear in mind what it already takes to add any FREE avatar now: a) Regular version. b) Classic wings version. c) Triwings version. d) Batwings version. e) Butterfly wings version.



Unlike wings, feral means significantly more art time. So it means pouring a ALOT of our resources into the project.



Currently, Furcadia gets around 4000 furres at peak. We are probably going to add feral form, but we need to be three times our current size to afford it. When we do, it will be a Digo, like wings, both to help cover the cost and to be a natural slow-down on the proportion of ferals to regular furres.



So... if you want to be in an all-ferals place or a place where it's free, I recommend supporting one of the existing all-feral Dreams.

[Dreamless Dancer]

Eagles.

[Favorites]

yup well i started to find patches for the ferals to show you

There, that right there verifys she did not claim she made them ALL Also, It would be alot, and for one my computer couldn't handle it... XD BUT it's still a good idea! YAY Hobbs <3

[Razkal]

Feral is more for dreams besides furcadia is a place where normal creatures learn to walk on two feet and speak. Every main map in furcadia isn't RP material and i'd say feral characters are more for RPing.