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@Nakeds and ANSI
Where is your hair? And your nose?

I've always had a bit of a gripe with nakeds. Mainly because a lot of players not only write massive, multiple paragraphs to describe someone's neck, but then add onto it with tattoos. With no colors, separations or indication of where something starts and end, meaning your only recourse is to skim the whole thing, usually whilst trying to emote and talk to that character, which at least, to me, leads to me getting a very vague picture in my head, if any at all.

I propose a few changes. Firstly, that each @naked be clearly separated in a clean format rather than just continuous prose. A list of exposed bodyparts, each cleanly separated, with their description after. I understand some people might prefer to write continuously if you want to be more creative than literal, but this could also be solved with an option that could toggle how each player wants to see @nakeds. One to just display it flat out as it works now, and one to separate everything nice and neatly.

The second change is ANSI. Two things always felt kind of weird, that you could style up your hair and choose from a ton of ANSI colors, but then that actual color isn't visible anywhere. And a similar problem with tattoos. You're paying money and someone is investing UE into that skill to give you a tattoo, only for it to result in something that's completely indistinguishable from a regular @naked.

So I propose we allow players to use ANSI tags in their descriptions. If we want to limit them to prevent abuse and players giving themselves free, massive tattoos (and thus denying RP/work to other players) we could simply allow players to ONLY use the colors they pick in character gen/hairstylers. So a mona with sapphire blue eyes and steely blonde hair could use those ANSI and no others, until she acquires others via hairstyler, implants, make-up, etc. It would also be great if tattoo artists could get extra options provided they have the skills and gear, such as being able to do bold/italics and stuff like that. Color-flashing/changing tattoos sound extremely themely.

I've had situations where someone had literally two or three whole screens of nakeds due to tattoos and unnecessary convoluted nakeds.

I don't like rainbow descriptions but on the other hand I am never going to bother reading the first line if your description is indigestible, and everyone knows color coding is a perfect way for us to distinguish things at a glance.

Similar stuff has been suggested before, and seemingly never implemented. I am however 200% into this idea. Just like we made skincolors a thing, we could do this. 90% of descriptions won't be a rainbow description, but that one character who is very colorful, a great artist and pays for tattoos 24/7, they are gonna stick out as a walking rainbow, and I think that's totally fine, amids the grey shrouds of Red and everything. People have their way to express themselves. Some, more crazily than others. I also had this thought recently that it would be nice to put your eye color into your eye naked.
Only having eye colour and hair colour seems reasonable to me.

I'm pretty sure 90% of people just ignore descriptions with tons of tattoos because of the spam, so I don't know whether allowing tattoo colours would make that much difference.

I'm guessing for the separated nakeds part though, you mean something like:

( Left eye ) Looks like an eye.

( Head ) He has black hair.

and so on?

I really wish we had a way to distinguish regular @nakeds from their attached tattoos.
One thing we have to keep in mind is that some players are color blind or even fully blind. We have to be careful how and when color is used for things like this.
I might be in the minority, but I read every description and digest it entirely. I love getting an image in my head from large lines of prose.

Typically if you just pose something like, ":takes a moment to digest my surroundings." That's a hint to the other players that you're taking a moment to read and appreciate their descriptions.

When meeting someone new, or showing someone a new place, I pose slower than usual in order to give other people a moment of downtime to digest.

As for the suggestion, it would be nice to inject some color, perhaps as a Charisma bonus. Every Shortdesc modifier above average gives you +1 @naked that you can inject a color into. That way attractive people pop out more, and regular scum blend in with the crowd.

Mobius brings up a good point about blind folks too.
Simply allowing tattoos to be ANSI colored by the artist would go a long way to breaking up the 'wall of text' that some characters have going on.

I really don't want to see people having the ability to just color their nakeds because if artistry is anything to go off from, we might wind up with 10-15% of the playerbase looking like crayola vomit when you do l dude.

10-15% of mass headache is still better than like 50% of literal walls you can't be bothered to read. I may be in the minority when I say I have ADHD, and when I see an overly large text, I usually don't bother reading much of it at all, and when I do.. I am going to lose my concentration several times. This is why I don't read it in the first place, because this would ultimately delay my response to that person's roleplay immensely. Perhaps I'd miss the chance to interact entirely. I'd very much like to see some way to distinguish things better from descriptions. Sure, there are people who are blind or color blind, but does ANSI color make things more difficult for them? Do they read out like a code, even in the client?
https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/-nakeds-layout-and-sub-descriptions-1891/

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/colors-in-descriptions-1630/

For whatever reason the wall of text seems to be the unflinching status quo. @nakeds are basically unreadable in the moment past very basic descriptions, but tattoo isolation, colour integration, extra formatting options have been demurred on each time.

I would kill for colour in nakeds and tattoos to be treated like art.

I'm absolutely all about making nakeds more digestible. I have been hacking at mine to make it easier to deal with for a while. However, this doesn't just affect nakeds. I've seen clothing items that are three and four sentences long, so to me, it doesn't matter if you make nakeds disgestible, because you could have a clothing item or tattoo that is also cumbersome.

I've seen coloring work in other games and I will tell you, it is painful to look at. Someone who is really into pastels and someone else who is into dark colors and then someone else likes rainbows and suddenly, I have a headache. Skin color was different because it's at least consistent and all one shade. I think the minute you start giving free reign to coloring like that, it's going to encourage people to ignore descriptions even more. I know I will.

On top of that, I agree with Mobius. This does not help color-blind, partially blind, or fully blind people at all.

Therefore, my suggestion is a little different and probably not implementable. It would be a TLDR for descriptions, similar to the glance command. I would love to be able to glance at someone and it spits out, "He has brown eyes, brown hair, and a tattoo on his left arm. He's wearing a jacket, jeans, and boots." But I think that would take a lot of code rewriting for nakeds and everyone having to basically giving a one-to-two word description of all of their stuff.

I'm like ynk. I read every description; however, your character is going to associate with the same people pretty regularly and stop reading them. I've had instances where my character changed their hair and it took two weeks for someone to say notice. I don't expect those people to read it, but if there was someway to glance at these changes, that would be amazing.

Make an @options toggle so people who don't like it can turn it off then.
At least with clothing you can 'glance' at people now.
I keep my @nakeds purposely short and easy to read because I know nobody's going to bother reading it if it's any longer, plus tattoos. Maybe people could just write shorter @nakeds?
I don't see why glance can't do what DoveCage suggests.
If tattoos had a consistant color like a shade darker or lighter than your skintone, or maybe a basic grey/black/white, it would be easier to tell apart from your @nakeds.
Keeping trim and nicely formatted @nakeds and @worns (which is an exhausting process and something I spend far too much time fighting with) ends up being sort of pointless as soon as you start factoring in things you don't have control over.

So while we're at it:

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/tailor-applied-custom--worn-on-armor-1937/

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/ideas/custom-makeup-messages-1936/

It seems most people agree there are plenty of changes to be made to make @descriptions ideal?
The WORST is when someone's "look" is five screens long, they're not wearing a hat, and you can't tell their age, complexion or hair color because THEY DIDN'T WRITE THEM.
Just for reference, there's a difference between simply adding color tags like this:

...and going as far as this:

(Apologies if these are wacky sizes. I'm on mobile where everything scales magically.)

@ynk

I agree

@beandip

I -always- specify age, complexion and hair, eye color, height AND build for this exact reason! I have noticed some people do not, which sometimes makes it hard to compare heights and such other things.

I try to be detailed but also not overdoing it. I fear however people won't read my descriptions simply because they look like they are more than they are. If there was a way to split up the @nakeds a bit more, or add some color like in @ynk's example or JUST change tattoos to an entirely different shade (like a different skin tone, one step lighter or darker than your own, just to tell it apart). I don't think this would be turning your description into a rainbow.

I like my long character description *sits*

But what if tattoos were like paintings?

Look Fred

Fred (a dude with stuff)

Fred is stunningly sexy despite having zero charisma. His eyes are green pools of neat stuff and blah blah something arms. A [tattoo] is on his left arm. A [tattoo] is on his right arm. More stuff about Fred's rockin' bod.

To view Fred's tats I type "Tattoo larm on Fred" or something.

The game magics me Fred's left arm tat "Fred's left arm tattoo is: A really epic latin phrase."

Im not a coder. Coding is magic and I would buy the wizards ice cream if I could. But is this possible? Or would that break stuff?

I would love color in there maybe like paintings, but maybe that's a different project.

I will echo what some other people have said, and add that I forgot to mention that clothing also compounds this problem, as a lot of pieces of clothing are also extremely verbose. Altogether, a lot of this stuff makes me not read or care about some descriptions and that's a shame. I find myself recognising characters by their jobs and what they do instead of what they look like. Oh, that's Joebaka, he's a ganger with a lisp. Janebaka is a fixer that works off of Ashlin, etc.

Ynk's post is a great example, I don't think most people will go overboard and make rainbow characters. And the few people that would, I don't see the problem. Someone covered in tattoos IRL also draws a lot of attention.

I also really like Pinklepop's idea a lot. Having a basic, few word description of the tattoo (with color) sit on the naked, and then being able to examine it closer for the full-page novel that some people like to write, that way, both parties are happy. And it would allow artists to get really creative/detailed with their tattoos, as they should, without making character descriptions completely unreadable as some are now.

I wonder if the same concept wouldn't work for nakeds? Like... A @shortnaked of some kind, where it's encouraged (read: character/word limit) to be as succinct as possible. "She has sinewy, scarred arms. His eyes are emerald green and sharp." Things like that, and then you can inspect each one closer to get the full verbose description for when you really want to count the pores on Joebaka's pecs. Things remain clean, everyone gets the level of detail they want, and it prevents spam.

More I think of it, the more I like it. I think I like it more than my initial formatting suggestion.

But more ANSI, please. ANSI is awesome.

You're right that tattoos stand out, so the last thing I would expect is for them to be hidden behind a sub menu of looking. I do like the idea of them being a slightly different, lower-contrast color from your skin tone, though.

Keeping in mind those who are blind, color blind and vision impaired.

Definitely agree the @nakeds situation could use a little more flexibility in making certain important characteristics stand out, as well as that some are simply TOO DAMN LONG to read in an active roleplay and still manage to leave out key features that should be readily obvious.

Absolutely love the demo @ynk put up, that's not eye blinding or too rainbow whatsoever and my ADHD/sensitive eye combo were happily able to pick out those needed details at a glance. Much approve.