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Dev Diary #96: Maybe I *should* diet…

Greetings.

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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.

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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.

 

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I love the idea that someone at Pdox put this up on the whiteboard when brainstorming new features for HF.

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.
 
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.
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?
 
Well. I mean. OK.

Honestly, though, this is why I clicked with Crusader Kings so much more than I ever could with Europa Universalis. In EU IV, you're playing as cold, faceless entity that's rather hard to connect with. In Crusader Kings you play a person, and entire family of persons, and while you can focus on the grand stage of international war and diplomacy, there's also room for smaller, intimate little stories.

Your character being worried about their weight is such a goofy thing to see in what's supposedly a Grand Strategy game, and yet it's exactly the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to Crusader Kings.
 
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.
 
One of the coolest additions to the game I have read about for YEARS!
I have wished for something like this, since the game first came out...

Will the malnourished and fat trait not have an impact on health? From what I can see, it only affect the fertility...
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.
 
I have to ask regarding mods that could use the get fat/malnourished mechanism.
Can I define easily a set of traits that can be gained or lost depending on a value that I can play with ?

For instance, create easily a strong/weak couple. Where I set a value "strength" for all characters.
With event boosting the strength, traits giving monthly change in strength like malnourished give -1 strength per month.

I do know it's possible to have it handled by events and such, I'm wondering if this could make it easier and most importantly, more efficiently.
 
I have to ask regarding mods that could use the get fat/malnourished mechanism.
Can I define easily a set of traits that can be gained or lost depending on a value that I can play with ?

For instance, create easily a strong/weak couple. Where I set a value "strength" for all characters.
With event boosting the strength, traits giving monthly change in strength like malnourished give -1 strength per month.

I do know it's possible to have it handled by events and such, I'm wondering if this could make it easier and most importantly, more efficiently.
It will probably be handled through events and variables, a bit like prosperity, no new incredible mechanic created just for that
 
This can't be all of it?!
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We might either:

A) be nearing the release of the DLC.
B) they might be working on presenting something big next week and this is just an appetizer to keep us satiated.
 
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.
 
be nearing the release of the DLC.
There are many things that haven't been talked about yet!
Coronations, sainthood, baptisms, warrior lodges, new succession laws...