Add scaling slider for tails (and maybe capes)

tl;dr - allow scaling of tail length and thickness

The costume creator allows one to alter the proportions of faces and some body parts using sliders. You can make a head wider, longer or taller, to varying degrees. Some of the possible changes are too subtle to be very noticeable, but some can be dramatic.

It would probably be some work to add a scaling slider for tails, but it would enable a fair amount of creativity. Tails are very visible and attention-getting, and they’re “hot” right now with the Animal Pack being new; being able to make them shorter or longer, fatter or thinner would add a great deal of individuality to them, and allow the limited number of tails in the game so far to work with a much wider variety of concepts, even before (or instead of) creating individual new tails.

Shortened and slimmed down, the wolf tail would be good for a variety of lab-type dogs. The cat tail, shortened dramatically, would work as an acceptable substitute for “whip” type tails on the sight hounds (greyhounds), beagle/basset types, and bully breeds. Cat characters might like to “fatten up” the cat tail a bit; it’s very slim as-is. A dramatically fluffed-up wolf tail might work for skunks and (maybe) squirrels. A slightly elongated bunny tail might be an acceptable substitute for a bear’s nubby tail. Some demon types may want a substantial tail, not the wire-thin one we have now. I’m pretty sure all the dragon players would like to increase the length of the reptile tail a bit. And so on.

Clipping issues can be mitigated by carefully setting the outer boundaries of the sliders.

This could theoretically also be applied to capes; they could at least be made wider to resemble cloaks or narrower (like a table runner, for want of a better comparison). But I accept that there are probably more clipping issues with capes.

I’m honestly not sure if this would add graphical lag by increasing the amount of costume information packet, but that might be a concern. I know capes supposedly are graphically intensive; I assume moving tails would be too.

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If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog

I could go for this, /signed.

Agreed that there are tech issues like the clipping you mentioned, but hopefully not to complicated that they can't be overcome.

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/Signed. A nice work around, if possible.

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I'd love to beable to decrease the width of the base of the wolf tail!

/signed!

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BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection

I agree with this suggestion.

Regarding performance - I would not expect a significant hit. Capes use up performance because they require on the fly physics calculations.
3D models with pre-set animations, like tails, should not be any more graphically intensive than the animated "breath" cycle for torso. And we already have multiple sliders for rescaling chests.

The main problem would be making the models scalable (a general scalar should be simple, a distorting one ("width but not length" for example) would be complex) and adding UI elements for adjusting these scales. There may also be problems with finding room in the costume data structure for this new data - looking at the data structure in .costume files could provide some hints on implementation.

Regarding clipping. The main items tail would/do clip with are "cape objects" and wings - in both cases there is already plenty of clipping so its a sort of "nothing to lose" scenario.


And, while not requested in original post, if the developers are going to implement this then I ask that they look at scale sliders for wings as well.

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I do not suffer from altitis, I enjoy every character of it.

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Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!

Sure, why not? Extra customization is always welcome.

/signed

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Signed. My tiger's tail looks way too skinny.

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/signed.
My succubus needs a thicker demon tail.

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