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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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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.
 
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.

This one is harder to handle : Pretty in the middle age is not pretty today. And same would be possible to be said regarding pretty in Sweden is not pretty in Egypt.
There is no universal intemporal beauty standards making this hard to have everyone agree that X is pretty, Y is not.
 
There are many things that haven't been talked about yet!
Coronations, sainthood, baptisms, warrior lodges, new succession laws...

I guess you didn't read my other point...
"they might be working on presenting something big next week and this is just an appetizer to keep us satiated."
 
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).
 
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?
 
No more potato faces?

Does this mean that we will get new asset for our character faces?
 
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.
 
No more mass genocide of triple chins for my Viking games.

I won't miss it, really, but still.

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).

A lot of things aren't very subjective. You probably could do a bit with mouth width, nose type, and eye spacing. Anything more would probably require a proper 3D portrait system like Imperator.
 
Is there a trait for to slim as well? I know there isn’t such a stigma to it like for beeing to fat, but there is one. Or at least give the characters an event about grandmother wants to feed you because you look so weak all the time. That’s what my granny did to me, it was really annoying;)
 
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.
 
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).

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