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Author Topic: Why is everyone tanned?  (Read 3126 times)

Mantonio

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Why is everyone tanned?
« on: February 02, 2011, 03:42:01 pm »

Now I KNOW this topic is going to get me a load of funny looks, but I thought I would ask. And no, I'm not implying anything either.

Is there some kind of random chance that just favours skin colour in Dwarf Fortress? Does it heavily matter on what kind of biome the civilisation is in? Because pretty much every human, elf and dwarf I've ever ordered or met was copper, chestnut, dark brown, cinnamon, etc etc. I can only remember having one pale dwarf ever, although I admit that I may have simply not noticed the others since I don't check everyones description.

Sooo.... yeah. Everyone seems very tanned. Why is that?
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Assassinfox

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2011, 03:46:15 pm »

Blame all the pitchblende they've been mining.  ;)

Untelligent

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2011, 04:21:42 pm »

I think there's just a lot more "tan" skin colors than "not tan" skin colors.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2011, 04:23:25 pm »

Pop open the raws on the dwarves, and you'll see the big list of them.

You can weight the chances of one skin color over another, though.  You can make ecru have weight of 1, while something paler like "cream" or something has 20 weight.

I do think it's somewhat odd, though, how dwarves are all so tanned when most of them never see the sun for years at a time.
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tps12

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2011, 04:32:16 pm »

I count five of the eighteen skin colors (dark peach, ecru, pale pink, peach and pink) as "white," so that's around 28%. If anything light skin is overrepresented.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2011, 05:17:57 pm »

Ecru's a pretty dark color that isn't really a natural-looking skin tone, AFAIK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecru

But I think part of the problem is that most people don't have color swatches handy to figure out just what the Hell "dark peach" looks like.
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Untelligent

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #6 on: February 02, 2011, 05:48:03 pm »

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[5th]Lupin

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2011, 01:44:06 am »

Genetics are kind of broken in this version. I've had civilizations where every last member had the exact same eye, hair, and skin colors.

I hope it's a simple fix.
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tps12

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2011, 07:54:13 am »

Genetics are kind of broken in this version. I've had civilizations where every last member had the exact same eye, hair, and skin colors.

Iceland?
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3

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2011, 10:43:16 am »

Genetics are kind of broken in this version. I've had civilizations where every last member had the exact same eye, hair, and skin colors.

Even if all of the colour modifiers are weighted the same, the game considers ones declared earlier in the list to be dominant over those declared later. This generally results in the most dominant colour taking over an entire civ (as civs begin with a very limited population, four couples or so).

The easiest way of fixing this is adding the token TLCM_GENETIC_MODEL:MIX to the descriptor. This causes descriptors to be chosen at random, with the probability of one being picked based on its weighting.
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plisskin

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #10 on: February 03, 2011, 06:52:04 pm »

Sure we do.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Color

Yeeek, a Cream dwarf would look a bit like Nosferatu after an eating contest.
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[5th]Lupin

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #11 on: February 03, 2011, 07:14:34 pm »

Genetics are kind of broken in this version. I've had civilizations where every last member had the exact same eye, hair, and skin colors.

Even if all of the colour modifiers are weighted the same, the game considers ones declared earlier in the list to be dominant over those declared later. This generally results in the most dominant colour taking over an entire civ (as civs begin with a very limited population, four couples or so).

The easiest way of fixing this is adding the token TLCM_GENETIC_MODEL:MIX to the descriptor. This causes descriptors to be chosen at random, with the probability of one being picked based on its weighting.

I've actually done that, with no results. I also have each trait numbered so that there is no dominate color (each one has an equal chance of showing up). No dice.
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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #12 on: February 04, 2011, 02:54:35 am »

I failed to mention that colours declared earlier are more common in general (presumably due to the way the selection algo works), regardless of other factors, so yeah, that happening is still very possible. I guess one could make an effort to even things out a little by deliberately weighting colours defined later higher than those declared earlier, but that's by no means ideal.
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[5th]Lupin

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Re: Why is everyone tanned?
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2011, 06:05:04 am »

I failed to mention that colours declared earlier are more common in general (presumably due to the way the selection algo works), regardless of other factors, so yeah, that happening is still very possible. I guess one could make an effort to even things out a little by deliberately weighting colours defined later higher than those declared earlier, but that's by no means ideal.

Yeah that's what I meant when I was talking about trait numbering. Did that to every single color, and I still get clones.
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