Clothing Lists: A minor detail that bothers me a bit

Averi

An addendum (sort of) to the Clothing Layering discussion

This is just something that bothers me a lot.  I don't know if there's a feature to change this though.  Whenever I look at someone and they are wearing 50 things, the rings and flowers and stuff are often listed first whereas the actual shirts, pants, coats, dresses are near the end.  Thus while I am reading, I picture the adventurer naked, wearing only medallions and rings and belts, until I get to the part that shows their clothing. It would be nice to maybe list the shirts, pants, boots, coats, dresses first as a default?  Being a bard and a designer, I often look at people and their clothing and it was just a minor detail that I found to be inconvenient.  

I don't know if this has been brought up before so sorry if it is repetitive. 

Beya

This is a nice aesthetic addition. Clothes>>accessories>>flowers.

Katzchen

Then there's that awkward moment when you get to the end, and you still haven't spotted anything resembling real clothing, and you give them a weird look.

Sena

I would like this, not because of "picturing them naked until I get to the clothes", but because when someone wears 50+ different things it can be very easy to overlook the important parts. Having everything sorted would make it a lot easier to see at a glance how someone is dressed (which is a lot more realistic than "Oh, I didn't notice you had pants because of all the flowers in your hair").

Iocun

I agree. Having a better default order would be a vast improvement over what we currently have.

Of course, my true wish would be for a non-tedious way to sort the appearance of your character's clothing entirely, or, my absolute favourie, to have a way to merge it into your character's description. Like:

describe self five foot tall, with a heavy built. $robe is draped around his rotund form, fastened by $belt. $armband13245 adorns his hairy left arm.

->

He is a powerful troll and five foot tall, with a heavy built. An elegant, green robe is draped around his rotund form, fastened by a simple cotton belt. An armband depicting a leaping tiger adorns his hairy left arm.

He is also wearing:

A woollen scarf.

A bone ring.

A scabbard of crimson leather.

I'd love such levels of customisability, but it would come with its own problems of course, most notably what to do with the description when you remove one of the included items when you remove it or it decays.

I always hated how strictly the "description" portion of the description was separated from the "apparel" portion and that there's no way to describe how a piece of apparel is worn.

Nim

@Iocun: Some crazy, but relatively simple "first choice" type of grouping system might be able to handle that, where you supply one (or more, but more would = more processing time) sentences, and it uses the first one that contains only items you're actually wearing.

Eg:

describe self five foot tall, with a heavy built. ($robe is draped around his rotund form, fastened by $belt.|$robe hangs loosely upon his rotund form.|omg he's robeless.) ($armband13245 adorns his hairy left arm.|His arms are really, really hairy.}

Where, if he was wearing a robe+belt+armband, it'd go like the above, but if he was just wearing the robe (out of those three items, he'd look more like:

He is a powerful troll and five foot tall, with a heavy built. An elegant, green robe hangs loosely upon his rotund form. His arms are really, really hairy.

Some issues with a system like this include:

• Trying to be all-inclusive might be difficult, given the surpisingly vast amount of clothing options in Achaea. Might be solved by creating generic classes (like, $hands for hands/gloves/etc.), which I assume exist internally anyway, or maybe by the creation of custom item groups that could be set with another command (for example, you might have a group of items that all could conceivably cover the scar on your back!)
• Might be laggy or otherwise computationally expensive to allow for a large variety. Of course, it only really has to ever be computed when items are worn/removed.

Also, I imagine that a sentence (or phrase, or whatever) that doesn't have a valid output (for lack of appropriate items) could just be omitted, and stuff.

Arador

Katzchen said:

Then there's that awkward moment when you get to the end, and you still haven't spotted anything resembling real clothing, and you give them a weird look.

I'm wearing fullplate, gdi!

Aerek

You and me both, brother. Steel is the new black.

Jacen

Nim said:

@Iocun: Some crazy, but relatively simple "first choice" type of grouping system might be able to handle that, where you supply one (or more, but more would = more processing time) sentences, and it uses the first one that contains only items you're actually wearing.

Eg:

describe self five foot tall, with a heavy built. ($robe is draped around his rotund form, fastened by $belt.|$robe hangs loosely upon his rotund form.|omg he's robeless.) ($armband13245 adorns his hairy left arm.|His arms are really, really hairy.}

Where, if he was wearing a robe+belt+armband, it'd go like the above, but if he was just wearing the robe (out of those three items, he'd look more like:

He is a powerful troll and five foot tall, with a heavy built. An elegant, green robe hangs loosely upon his rotund form. His arms are really, really hairy.

Some issues with a system like this include:

• Trying to be all-inclusive might be difficult, given the surpisingly vast amount of clothing options in Achaea. Might be solved by creating generic classes (like, $hands for hands/gloves/etc.), which I assume exist internally anyway, or maybe by the creation of custom item groups that could be set with another command (for example, you might have a group of items that all could conceivably cover the scar on your back!)
• Might be laggy or otherwise computationally expensive to allow for a large variety. Of course, it only really has to ever be computed when items are worn/removed.

Also, I imagine that a sentence (or phrase, or whatever) that doesn't have a valid output (for lack of appropriate items) could just be omitted, and stuff.

That would be an incredibly detailed system, and sounds pretty freakin awesome. Does sound like it'd be hard on the system though

Iocun

Nim said:

Also, I imagine that a sentence (or phrase, or whatever) that doesn't have a valid output (for lack of appropriate items) could just be omitted, and stuff.

Yeah, I think that would be the easiest way to go about it. Whenever no worn item is found that matches a $marker in a sentence, the sentence is omitted. It might mangle some descriptions, but if people write their descriptions carefully enough, it will work with those sentences missing as well.

Averi

@Iocun @Nim

That's an even better idea. 

Nim

@Jacen: Ideally, you'd only do any actual processing when 1. setting your description and 2. changing worn items around, and more ideally, the actual description you'd be setting would be abstracted (like, group 1 has {phrase 1, requiring gauntlets; phrase 2 requiring boots; phrase 3 w/o requirements}), so you're not string-parsing every single time!

That's pretty ideal, though, and I'm sure Achaea's code is a strange and ancient beast with needs, but I dislike assuming things about code I have no access to. Whether this is possible/feasible is really up to IRE's coders, not me, after all!

Tarkanian

maybe something like aetolia's, where the clothes and accessories are enumerated in a bullet-point type of list, instead of one run-on sentence?

Sena

Tarkanian said:

maybe something like aetolia's, where the clothes and accessories are enumerated in a bullet-point type of list, instead of one run-on sentence?

We already have that. CONFIG CLOTHESLINE ON.

Jacen

Dammit, I thought that was monk specific, to clothesline a player dashing thru the room

Tarkanian

@Sena saves the day for me! Thanks!

Nellaundra

Jacen said:

Dammit, I thought that was monk specific, to clothesline a player dashing thru the room

Spying your chance, you reach out and slam your arm into @Nim's throat as she dashes through the room, leaving her senseless!

Aerek

No, no, it's the anti-JPK. You prep both legs and leave the room. When they Pounce, Lunge, or JPK you, you clothesline to stun and prone them, then break both legs with HFP. It's another reason for Knights to hate Monks!

Delphinus

Aerek said:

When they Pounce, Lunge, or JPK you

*ambush

Pounce is an emote that Eleusians use when they want me to maul them.

Iocun

Are you saying people who pounce shouldn't be stunned, proned, and have their legs broken?

Amunet

I was told recently that the order in which clothing is worn is determined by its order in your inventory at the moment you put it on. If you want your clothing and jewellery to show up in a certain order, strip down, drop whatever you want to wear, pick it up in the order you want to wear it, and put it on. It's kind of a pain, but it's the closest we're going to get to any sort of method to the madness until the Garden has mercy on us.

Beya

Amunet said:

I was told recently that the order in which clothing is worn is determined by its order in your inventory at the moment you put it on. If you want your clothing and jewellery to show up in a certain order, strip down, drop whatever you want to wear, pick it up in the order you want to wear it, and put it on. It's kind of a pain, but it's the closest we're going to get to any sort of method to the madness until the Garden has mercy on us.

If you're worried about thieves or over-tidy denizens, you could also put the items into your pack.

Antidas

Being worried about thieves is generally good for the health

Amunet

Oh, right, thieves. I have a dressing room in my text-house in the subdivision, so I never really think about that sort of thing.

Katzchen

I would honestly be more worried about someone walking in on me stark naked, alone, with clothing all over the floor than thieves.

Amunet

Dressing room. I'm telling you, it's a good investment!

Orklanishkal

That's dumb, I just strip naked in public places

Kitarel

There's a citizen of Hashan that changes her clothes at Crossroads... Or the bank...

But, you know, Hashan is serious business.

Beya

Amunet said:

Dressing room. I'm telling you, it's a good investment!

After buying credits to change into absinthe and omnitransing your skills. In that order. Right, @Amunet?

Amunet

Haha, I wish. I'm not omnitrans, quite yet. Guilty as charged on the absinthe, though!

Draekkar

Clothing is listed in the order it is placed in your physical inventory. So, if you want to display your items differently, you'll need to move it from your inventory, say for example, get naked and drop everything you're going to be wearing in your subdivision house, or another private room. Pick up and wear each item in the order you want it to be displayed on LOOK. Its a workaround, but it works. I would be happy to see some sort of sorting of items by default, but that would probably require too much recode.