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City [Forwarded] Flexible Culture Buildings Skin System

DeletedUser126

Guest
Flexible Culture Buildings Skin System

Aright its actually quite simple once I explain.

The idea is to be able to change the looks of the culture items skins to make the cities more varied and interesting. Now as cool as it sounds there would need to be few limitations and requirements.


Limitations:
- Culture Item or building needs to have the same size value. for example 3x3 skin can only be used on another 3x3
- The skin don't change the building original culture value. Its only superficial. If for example you build Monster Fountain with 410 Culture and change skin to Astrolab it still will be 410 with the looks of Astrolab. Not 1000.
- When you hover over the item it will say the original item name with the skin name in (). For example Monster Fountain (Astrolab). The () content can be slightly faded to signify skin info.

Requirements:
- You get access to skin when Culture item have been researched and built at least once.
- You only get access to diamond items skins if you bought and placed them at least once.
- You have to research an optional knowledge on each tier. Its a dead end research that is optional, and reasonably cheep.

How it Works:
- When you built a culture item you can click on it and chose the skin from a 3rd tab in the building menu. Once you chose it you have to confirm it.
- In the future a more skins can be added as the game will progress. They can be gained through research or other means like rewards in future game content or mechanics.



Advanced Version (more coding required):
This is a more advanced version of this idea, but it would req. a lot more coding to implement unlike the basic version, but at the same time it would allow a lot more flexibility in building the towns to make the more unique.

The major difference would be not using a simple size based reskin system but a multi skin variation editing system.

- Advanced mechanics explained:
The more advanced version would allow you to edit the base 3x3 Monster Fountain in any way you want. You use 3x3 original base for Culture calculation (410) but you can fit in a combination of other culture items skins inside.

In this case we can fit in 3x Twin Flower Bed (1x2) and 1 War memorial (1x3) to cover the 3x3 surface but in more unique and interesting way. The 3x3 Surface would still provide 410 Culture but it would look a lot different in every city.

That sort of system could create a whole new level of creativity for players.



Ok discuss!

Its just some random idea I though it would fit in perfectly.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
It would be nice to be able to change the skin of culture items indeed. I was thinking in a much simpler way, like for example, i don't like the red roof of my butchershop, i want a blue one, or imagine having a floating citadel with a red glow instead of blue, it would make it look like it has satan's pit underneath it :D

The advanced idea looks good, it would almost give us endless possibilities, i don't think something like that will ever happen though, but let's start with the ''normal'' version first, that would be a huge improvement already.
 

DeletedUser157

Guest
I do like the idea but it seems like if this was to be added it would be made a diamond feature only.
 

DeletedUser126

Guest
Nah dont think so, as it already would utilise the skins from the diamond buildings as we;; as the normal ones, and only way to use them would be to buy or build them in the first place.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
The idea is to be able to change the looks of the culture items skins to make the cities more varied and interesting...​

I think, if there is no difference in the value and occupied size and only the appearance changes this is only a new dress for the eternal 'how to rotate buildings' desire ... technically a 'rotated building' is also only a 'new skin' for the original building.

To make cities more cities more varied and interesting regarding the 'cultural buildings', I think a possibility would be, work against the fact, that in each phase of the game, only a certain 'monoculture' of 'cultural buildings' makes sense.

So for example if you are in the 'middle green until middle violet'-era, to get out the maximum culture of the limited place you will replace all your 'Holy Codecs' by 'Delicatessen Butcher' and like your city before was blue, it becomes red - and because neighbor-system fails, you will have a nice number of red-roofed butchers to be able to assure you a certain culture level.

If there would open up an alternative, for example 'upgraded codecs' vs. 'not upgraded butcher', 'double-upgraded glorious statue' vs. 'simple upgraded codecs' etc. etc., cities would be more varied and interesting.

That this can be realized, we can see from the 'manufacturer' scheme, where the first boosted manufacturer remains still an 'interesting building' even in all later epochs.
 

DeletedUser126

Guest
Actually from a coding point of view its reasonably easy in comparison, all you have to do add new code and reuse already existing assets and code.

I'm programmer myself with 15 years experience in industry, and even more as a gamer. Its not the same thing.

It would take a lot more money to do what you suggested as you would need to do whole design process for each side of the building as they where never designed to be a 3d models to begin with, there can be several other reasons why not, but cba to make a list now :)

I can say that roughly my method would take from 25 to 50 times less team hours to do than making all assets with 4 sides of view for rotating to create pseudo 3d.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I like the idea as it will create a 'play' feature, give us one more thing to do and show off a person's creativity. However, how it is done, is beyond me... (technologically challenged sometimes) :D
 

DeletedUser252

Guest
It would be nice to be able to change the skin of culture items indeed. I was thinking in a much simpler way, like for example, i don't like the red roof of my butchershop, i want a blue one, or imagine having a floating citadel with a red glow instead of blue, it would make it look like it has satan's pit underneath it :D

The advanced idea looks good, it would almost give us endless possibilities, i don't think something like that will ever happen though, but let's start with the ''normal'' version first, that would be a huge improvement already.

i would like that one. You still can see what the building is when you visite my town.
 

DeletedUser442

Guest
Yeah.. I would love that. I am not too thrilled of all that pink. -sighs-
 

DeletedUser43

Guest
This idea has been forwarded together with this idea (click) to create more options to customise cities. If you have more ideas or elaborations of the previously suggested ideas, please share them with us in one of the existing threads. :)
 
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