I would like to see some people be left handed. This would be a nice touch but may be too much work for what you get out of it. I would hope it would be as easy as just mirroring a right hand person to make them left but I know it cant be that easy…(holds breath hoping it really is)
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Really good idea. I always liked games where they pay attention to these little things. But I would not expect it until there is a stable version of the game with like 10% as much bugs as it has right now. Still, preserve that idea for later zimes because it is indeed a great one 
was actually going to reply with something along these lines… someone more knowledgeable could shed more light (paging @voxel_pirate!), but it may indeed be something like taking an existing animation and “mirroring” it… shrugs
given that my son is a “lefty”, i wholeheartedly support this idea! 
I think the engine is bone-based and all activities so far are using the “mainHand” bone. If you manage to switch those bones (for example, by renaming them, or having a different model that has them renamed, or something like that), the tools would automatically use the other hand. Animations perhaps too, but I don’t know anything about them.
The very cheapest hack that probably would work is to simply flip the model in the engine, i.e. if we had the render_info.scale entry to be a vector instead of a scalar, we could simply set scale.x (I think?) to -1 - therefore flipping the model horizontally, including all bones and animations. This is a nasty way of doing it and probably causes quite some issues (if it’s even possible at all) - but it’s a way of doing it.
The easiest would be if Radiant will include an identifier or so based on which the Lua-code is adjusting the animation to “left-handed”. Otherwise you will have to change the code… which I don’t think is ment to be changed (part of the engine?). You can for sure create new animations and / or switch the mainHand with the offHand but that will not work well as e.g. a shield would be hold in the other hand but facing the wrong direction. I think this is not the easiest thing to do…
That sounds like an extremely bad idea for multiple reasons:
- How do you know which animation has to be “flipped”?
- How do you “flip” an animation?
- Do you need to tell the engine for each animation whether or not it is to be played flipped?
- What if you wish to have this kind of system, but for asymmetrical beings where a simple horizontal flip would produce wrong results?
- Does the system just work on hands?
These are all things that possibly introduce visual (or worse) bugs and create a system that is kind of static (in the sense that it may only be used for hands on a symmetrical being, such as humans).
If the animation system is using normals instead of absolutes and those are set properly (for example, both normals “forward” of the hand are pointing towards the body and this normal is used for positioning things) then it wouldn’t matter which hand you attach an entity to.
After all, simply flipping the view model is what Team Fortress 2 does - and TF2’s animation system is not exactly an easy one. So the last option - simply flipping each citizen horizontally - could probably produce a proper result for humans. It won’t solve the asymmetrical being one, however. It’s a solution that requires little to no work on the other hand and implements a system that can be used for other things too.
The only problem would be issues for interactions. A basic step would mean flipping whatever they’re using along the unit’s x axis, a more complex approach when you actually need to make new animations would be for interaction with fixed objects (e.g. a lever). Plus if you end up with something that can’t be flipped like writing.
I’m pretty sure even just flipping objects based on another objects axis won’t be easy though.
I think that you should be able to adjust your peoples re-occurring actions. in the begging, people needed 3 units of food a day to not be hungry, now it’s just one, and I think that makes sense, in the alpha, there is no way to really get past the camping, roaming nomads phase, however, I think you should be able to dictate weather people get a full 3 meals, a good 2 meals, or just a bare minimum 1 meal a day.
I think if people eat more food, they should get a boost to the body category of their trait, and maybe a quick nap is enough to keep people from being tired, but, maybe you can choose to let your people have a full 12 hour super nap, or a quick 4 hour one, and this should increase your people’s mind. as far as spirit goes, perhaps the more free time a citizen has will increase that, for instance if they get to chill by the fire with their friends, or if you have them chopping lumber in the dead of night.
I’m not sure what the best way to implement it would be, but I think it would give you some interesting decisions down the line, do I send all the food to my soldiers so they fight better, or do I give it to the crafters and miners making the soldiers weapons, do I try and let everyone get a long sleep so that they are better crafts people, or soldiers later, or, do I give them quick naps so that they can be constantly alert.
though these would only give small boosts, and probably wont effect game play at this time, I thin this could be an interesting, deeper level of game play for players trying to master the game, I know it’s something that would give me pause.
this could be handled in much the same way that a lot of simulation games do it, with a sliding bar or percentage wheel accessed from some menu.
- How many “hours” for work (1) -----|-----(24)
- How many “hours” for sleep (1) -----|-----(24)
- How many “hours” for play (1) -----|-----(24)
or - How many “hours” for work (50)%
- How many “hours” for sleep (20)%
- How many “hours” for play (30)%
This might be a cool thing to add on but I don’t know if it will come out in vanilla. It may be to “hardcore sim” or I may be wrong. The way I see it working (if done the way I wish they would) is that in the short run setting your workers to work all hours of the day and night with little sleep or recreation could rocket your productivity, but over time the workers would become slower and your productivity would actually suffer from sleep deprivation and worker unhappiness. It would give you a good way to wring faster production out of your city for a short time (such as if you were expecting a goblin raid and needed to put up defences fast,) but might cause quality or speed issues later on (maybe even having your fighters not do as much damage because they haven’t had enough rest.)
As for interesting traits added to characters I think “Fumbles” (goblins reference haha) would be kind of funny. Every so often as the character is walking or doing whatever it would drop whatever it was holding and have to pick it up again. They would of course hurry on their way so that you would not lose any productivity but it might be a bit of a fun level of depth to add.
Another one might be “Show Off” where the character would add an extra flourish to whatever it is they are doing. Such as on every fifth strike on the anvil the Black Smith would toss the hammer in the air and have it do a flip before continuing on, or having the soldier strike a heroic pose after killing a bunch of goblins.
Maybe even “Curmudgeon” during his time off when supposedly social gatherings and conversations would happen he might be the one that has the speech bubble full of “&$#^@!” and looks like his berating people.
For ones that do have gameplay effect, maybe have one such as “Born Leader” that would give a productivity buff to any group he was working with. Maybe even “Troublemaker” who would give a productivity debuff to his group.
That sounds like a fantastic Idea, I think it would really add character to the people, and dictate what kind of activities they spend their time doing. for instance if someone is a boastful warrior, they would probably go to the tavern, or go and tell stories to people, or, if they are trouble makers, perhaps they play pranks on other villagers, or tell jokes to people.
there is that personality field on each character card that will have a random personality type, it will be neat in the future to see how this effects the game.