New here.

[Lisadriana]

First off, I'd like to make my most sincere apologies in advance for any hard feelings this might brush up. I am way to prone to slip from solid arguments into full blown rants ;^.^

I recently got into ADOM, and while the sheer depth and magnitude of the game astonished me and kept me playing for a good few weeks, there's one thing, very minor, mind you, but still one thing that keeps me from enjoying this game to the fullest.

The PC generation process.

I was a bit bummed out about the fact that the game generated your background for you, but I can live with that. Several other games does this too.

But your looks?

I admit that I am incredibly vain when it comes to these kinds of things. If I can have a representation of myself in the game, I want it to be one that I am satisfied with. If given the option to do so, I will always make my first character into an as good as possibly possible likeness of myself, with the emphasis on appearance. After my alter ego, I'll start thinking about making pure fictional characters.

Randomised backgrounds? Alright. Choosing my skills for me? I can live with that. Random inventory? Lots of games do this, why the hell not.

Seemingly randomly determining my hair and my eye colour?
Not cool.
Not cool at all.

As far as I can make out, hair colour, eye colour and skin complexion has no real impact on the game. Mind you, I am still quite new to the game, so I wouldn't know if that stuff comes later on. It's just a neat thing.
But It bugs me.
It's creeping in under my skin, nagging me, haunting me. I can't relate to my alter ego like I can in other games because of this.
Take nethack for example. Nethack completely lacks any descriptive features on the PC looks (as far as I know anyways), so this isn't an issue. There's not a small field somewhere telling me that my characters hair is bright purple and her eyes shine with the light of a thousand unicorns.

Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

So I have to question why this feature is even here? Why taunt me with it? What crucial part of the game play mechanism would be disturbed if this where made out to a choice of the player? I can feel liquid irritation ooze itself out of my brain and down the small of my back every time my rainbow-loving alter ego busts down a door and blinds the fiendish orc's with her screamingly bad taste in hair colour.

Again, I'm sorry. This is a stupid thing to hang your neck around, but I can't help it. I am a silent but staunt supporter of either full character customisation or no customisation at all. Either we get to mold a character, like wet clay in the hands of an artist, or we immerse ourselves in the imagination of someone else. Middle grounds tends to be messy and incoherent.

This doesn't mean that I'll stop playing, oh no, I'm having much to fun with the game for that. But I have to vent it somewhere.
What I am trying to say, no wait, ask, in a very roundabout way, is;
Why is it necessary to shield certain parts of the character generation process from the glossy hands of the players?

[Ascaron]

Why is it necessary to shield certain parts of the character generation process from the glossy hands of the players?

Because that is how Mr. Biskup wanted it.


It would, I imagine, be possible to modify Jakkos's starsign selector to automatically find you a character with the right eyes/hair for you, but I would have no idea how to do that.

[pblack]

Well... you sir, are in a dire spot. that's for sure.

I think you are the first person that cares about that in adom. I mean, its a roguelike, you are supposed to fill in the blanks with your imagination but the game tells you those details and I'll spoil you a little by saying that your eye color can be relevant in one, and only one in-game situation.

But man... it's a roguelike. And one of the really hard ones... random detail generation is good IMO because you'll lose tons of promising PC's before winning the game and if you spend too much time building the PC you are more likely to give up after less failed attempts because every failure will be way more frustrating.

Also. It's pretty straightfoward. While humans may have skin and hair color of various types dark elves will only have white hair and dark skin. If the appearance of the Pc bothers you so much you might wanna try playing the races that distance themselves from humans more like Delf, orcs, trolls and mainly drakelings since those lizard like fellas will always be bald (i think) so you wouldnt have any way of being any different anyway.

In the end my advice to you is... use you imagination dude. Don't let that keep ya from enjoying the game because appart from one little detail that's NOT plot/quest related. The color of your eyes, hair, complexion, height and weight are IRRELEVANT. (Your weight is only relevant if you play a hurthling trying to visit a certain oak tree, but then, all hurthlings get the same treatment despite the actual weight of the PC, so the characteristic itself is irrelevant to gameplay)

[BurnedToast]

Just pretend? I mean, it only lists hair and eye color on one rarely viewed screen so it's not like it's shoving it in your face all the time. I don't even know what my hair/eye color (or age, and that does have ingame effects) is for 99% of my chars.

pblack - afaik the relevant situation is only an uncomfirmed rumor, I've never noticed a difference anyway.

[Subconscious]

After playing long enough you may notice that you automatically skip the character introduction. So many of the characters die too fast or you are not satisfied with them so you are going to generate them alot. Reading backgrounds etc. can be more like for roleplaying purposes but at least for myself it is just an unnecessary part which slows my gameplay. Just hit spacebar and continue enjoying the game.

The 'B' command can be usefull though. For finding out your weight and how much you have aged from ghost attacks. Both important things at some point of the game

[Xevoc]

I've heard rumors that drinking from a pool which has the same color as your eyes will have nice effects with high probability. I don't know if it's true or not, but the eye color wouldn't then be irrelevant.

[Silfir]

I think it's just that - a rumor.

Apart from recreating characters until they get the correct hairstyle, I can't think of any short-term solution. When Thomas created this part of the character generation process, I think he had the typical roguelike player in mind... Who doesn't really care about these things. At all. (As you can see in this thread.)

On the other hand, I imagine it's terrific motivation not to let the one character you managed to create with a decent likeness die, and it should teach you cautiousness more than if you could easily recreate an exact same copy of your character. In a sense, all these random factors serve to make characters more unique, give them some personality (even if that personality is restricted to bad taste in hairstyle) and let you feel their death more - that is, if you care

[Soirana]

just send the ones who do not meet you standard into oblivion [river will do] and generate further.

after few years i saw another person who cares about char external looks...

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Why is it necessary to shield certain parts of the character generation process from the glossy hands of the players?

Because, of course, this is a realistic roguelike. They didn't ask you about your hair and eye colour in real life when you were generated, right? Well, it's the same in ADOM. You don't choose who you are. That should make it easier (not harder) to identify with the characters.

It is almost certainly possible to make a script that would automate the rerolling process and choose a character with the right appearance for you. But if you're not a programmer yourself, I doubt that such a script will be made, since most of us just don't care enough about that (perhaps because we are mainly males?).

Anyway, what you can do is get a helmet that covers your hair and eyes as soon as you can, so you can imagine your character without seeing the features that you don't like.

By the way, skills are not random for most classes, they depend on the race and class (which you get to choose). The inventory has some randomness but it follows some rules depending on class (for example, wizards always start with 2-3 spellbooks, one of which is a bolt spell, two rings, a dagger or quarterstaff, etc.)

[gut]

Lisadriana:

> why this feature is even here?

Google 'adombot'. It's a player editor for ADOM.
It's controversial because it's based on code-dived
info, and I don't like to promote it too much here
because this is the 'official' forums. It is what you
need though, so...