Dev Diary #96: Maybe I *should* diet…

[Silfae]

Greetings.

Well, well, well, looks like this is where the fat chin meme comes to die.

Today I will be talking about one of the free several patch additions coming alongside Holy Fury, namely character shape.
With our next expansion, rather than being a random genetic component, this visual effect will be turned into a dynamic feature.
The game now will keep track of your character’s lifestyle and either increase or reduce his weight accordingly. Going above a certain threshold will result in your character gaining the Fat trait, alongside the appropriate visual, while going below a certain threshold will result in your character gaining the Malnourished trait, alongside a new emaciated look.

While there are certain events that can result in immediate gain or loss of weight, characters will progress from one state to the other primarily depending on their conditions and lifestyle. Traits, Focus, Society membership and health can all affect a character’s state. Some factors, such as being Gluttonous, will increase a character’s weight, others, such as belonging to a Monastic Order, will reduce it, and others still, such as leading an army during wartime, will keep it balanced.

New events have been added to give flavor to this new mechanic, allowing players the opportunity to change their habits or offer advice to their friends and relatives’ lifestyle. Some old events have also been updated to use new effects and make the mechanic feel fully integrated to the rest of the game.

And that should be about it.

​

 

[Silfae]

What effect will this have on mods that use custom portraits - including yours, silfae?

They will need to be updated, I'm afraid.
This feature required updating all chins of all portrait sets and the addition of two new separate layers that apply the fat chins and the malnourished look. Depending on how many custom portrait sets a mod has this might be a faster or slower process.

 

[Silfae]

I'm going to assume it was easy to code, otherwise the internal decision process that prioritized this over eg. mechanics for Orthodox, boggles the mind.

It was done on spare time, no actual Code required.

Will it be okay (i.e won't crash) if we don't update the portraits or at least leave the layers blank for a while?

I don't think it'll crash anything, the portraits without them simply won't have those visuals.

 

[Silfae]

Malnourished trait should definitely have an health malus.

As for the Fat trait, not so much, as I see it as just being a little overweight.

But there should be a tier 2 "Obese" trait that has an impact on health.

Going far after the threshold for either fat/malnourished can indeed result in health complications, especially in older characters; though that happens more rarely.

It will probably be handled through events and variables, a bit like prosperity, no new incredible mechanic created just for that

Yes, the weight is just a variable, going a certain amount past 0 will result in gaining the fat trait, going a certain amount below 0 will result in gaining the malnourished trait.

 

[Silfae]

Can we hope that this means that one day the Ugly-Pretty traits too will actually be tied to the appearances of the portraits? This has been a pet grief of mine for some time.

It was discussed, but unfortunately that is something much harder to represent on CK2 portraits. Aside from the issue of subjective beauty and different beauty standards, there is just a practical problem when trying to "make" an existing portrait pretty or ugly. If the layer is too thick, all pretty characters would look the same (and so the ugly ones), if it's too thin, it might result in giving the opposite effect (making a naturally pretty portrait ugly and viceversa, or causing visual oddities).

 

[Silfae]

Other than making your character appear fat or thin do the traits have any difference? I mean are their modifiers the exact same? Also, are we going to see portraits effected by other traits like this e.g. brawny, frail?

There might be some other minor trait-based portrait visuals in store for the future, yes.

 

[Silfae]

You probably could do a bit with mouth width, nose type, and eye spacing.

Well, yes, symmetry/asymmetry were taken into consideration, the issue would still remain: you'd need to pick that one or two combinations of eyes/mouth/nose that look particularly good (or bad) and have them be applied every time the pretty (or ugly) trait is applied. That would result in every pretty character using that portrait set to look the same. One could create alternative combinations that also looked particularly good (or bad), but if you consider that you'd have to make them for each portrait set, that would become an absurdly long task.
In this case the graphics already existed, they just needed to be carved away from the chin layer and put into a new one.

Maybe an event to get the malnourished trait as a Zealous Hindu or Orthodox monastic member? That would be a cool little flavor feature.

That is indeed one way to get malnourished.

 

[Silfae]

What about doing the opposite, i.e. making the probability of gaining the attractive/ugly traits dependent on the portrait?

That would require code work, since the DNA is not open to script; also, I'm not sure the "good" and "bad" combinations are consistent between portrait sets, so a DNA code that might look pretty on westerngfx might seem ugly on, say, cumangfx.

 

[Silfae]

No. Brawny and frail should be genetic body shape - skeleton size. Frail is "small-frame" from birth. You can't exercise your ribs or skeletal hip to grow wider.
Strong and weak should be (are?) based on upbringing and physical exercise. So a person born neither brawny or frail can still gain strong or weak (+1/-1).

However, I've never seen a person with a combination of these. I would argue that this should be possible.

Hence, a frail person could get the strong attribute, making them cancel each other. Mother Theresa on steroids - neutral strength at best. (-1+1)
A frail person could also be weak - Mother Theresa with no exercise and bad diet. Now we are talking very weak physically. (-1-1)

Similarly, a brawny person could be weak as well as brawny. Born "big-frame" and genetics like Mike Tyson, but choosing to write poetry all day and never exercise, this person's strength is similar to someone not-brawny who is not strong. (+1-1, which is equal to person with 0). A regular person (0) who exercise (+1) will be stronger physically.
Also, a brawny person could be strong. Now we are talking physical strength! (+1+1) Mike Tyson big frame/genetics, AND hard physical exercise.

@Silfae If you could descend to the commonfolk and comment/correct this, I'd be grateful,

You are generally right, but inverted the traits. Strong and Weak are inheritable genetic traits, Frail and Robust are the result of habit or training (so they are usually either gained during childhood, on rare special events, or when picking a focus, such as War for Robust). Since they are opposite traits, you could in theory have a Brawny Weak character, the same as you can have a Dull Genius (good potential, wasted).

 

[Silfae]

@Silfae

Would it be possible to show us some examples of fat/malnourished characters that use other sets of portraits (e.g. Iberian, German or maybe even the new French set )?

Here is a couple more examples.

Spoiler

 

[Snow Crystal]

What's the trait with the pointy helmet, crown, and two dots on a gray circle?

Coronation trait.

 

[Silfae]

I think they mean societies like the Dominicans or Benedictines.

Yes.

1. Is it just fat? Can we become an obese chinful nightmare king?

Though there is no visual change, the game will acknowledge if a character goes far beyond either extreme. Not something I'd recommend...

Nice work! You have so many portrait packs I got a bit worried!

Ah so the malnourished face is just paler skin on those two. Well it would be a huge task making new chins and other parts for all portrait packs.

Thank you.
Yes, every portrait has a base face, one cannot carve away from that, the layer needs to be something that is placed on top of it.

 

[Silfae]

If they're using "malnourished" as the binary opposite of "a little on the heavy side", and health penalties come in when you're one step beyond those, then "malnourished" would be more like being skinny, with true malnourishment being the step beyond - health penalty and all. Course, it's also possible that malnourished IS malnourished, and we just haven't seen the benign skinny state.

So the spectrum would probably be something like...

Obese (health penalty) - Fat (minor penalties) - Default - Underweight (minor penalties) - Starving (health penalty)

...just with whatever names they give them. I agree that unhealthy bodies should carry some health penalty (any bit overweight is unhealthy, so -0.5 or -0.25 makes sense, for instance). But games and balance, so "minor penalty before health penalty" is fair.

Going far after the threshold for either fat/malnourished can indeed result in health complications, especially in older characters; though that happens more rarely.

 

[Snow Crystal]

Speaking of coronations, are they christian only thing or can pagans or muslims or any other religions also have coronations?

There will be a Coronation Dev Diary in some weeks, it will probably be discussed in that one.

 

[Silfae]

Actually, that's a really good question. Should overweight characters deal with the lack of food while the gates are shut better than regular (or especially malnourished) characters? I mean, if you're malnourished *and* then you run out of food, I'm guessing that that should be pretty damaging to your health.

Yes, if you are malnourished already and then are stuck without food in quarantine, that would make you more malnourished, which, as for the opposite extreme, can lead to health complications.