How about some stereotypical longer hair?
so i have an idea, who says that the children need to serve a purpose. While i love the ideas people have come up with for children becoming workers and needing raising. There has been the various issues of micro managing and buffs/ de-buffs. So what if like the pets from the kick starter, children served no purpose at all. there are simply there to add flavour to the city. People would still interact with them, like if a worker is idle and such. So the children would just start appearing after the city is started and perhaps some would disappear when a new worker is ordered/built.
Which issues do you mean exactly?
sorry issues isn’t the right word, i mean’t that there had been various different idea’s for buffs etc
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Ah… now I get it. For sure children could be similar to “pets”, just a nice feature to let your town look more alive. But the discussion above shows me that there is so much potential… this might be a pitty.
True I see it more as a compromise between the two main camps of those that want the kids and those that don’t, it could also maybe provide the basis of family mod, assuming of course that an idea similar to this was vanilla.
I’m not sure there’s any need for a compromise though; this will be a mod. Tom has already shared his views and it sounds very unlikely that this will be in-game. Certainly it wouldn’t match the detail or depth of ideas present in this discussion. So with it being a mod, it works fine for everyone without needing compromise; people who want children install the mod, and those who don’t, don’t. 
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fair enough, consider my points moot 
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@Amlin I think your points are ok - no need to apologize for the post. I think what is going on is this: we all agree the basic mod idea sounds awesome, but different people like different things.
It seems to me like we should focus on a basic mod that implements this design without many extra bells and whistles. That alone will be a lot of work (the models, animations, effects, LUA code, 2D art, sound clips, balancing, ‘enjoy-ability’, etc). A well crafted and documented community mod.
From there people can take that work and make their own mods a lot easier, we can try out the “just pet-like” one, we can try the one where you raise them to be specialized workers, we can try the one with the kidnapping wolves… (errk)
This is a case of “divide and conquer” when it comes to modding. Split it into its simplier parts - the mod is both easier to finish and more accessible for future development. It is win-win. Open it up to creativity. @voxel_pirate said it best in the OP: [quote=“voxel_pirate, post:1, topic:2957”]
In general something like this could support a lot of other ideas.
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I’m interested in a modding team myself, but dunno quite where to start. If you’d have a use for me on this one later I’d be glad to help. I suppose we’ll see where things are at in December.
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What we could do before beta is to spend a bit modelling (minor goal) but much more importantly we could actually decide on mechanics. We could even decide on multiple sets but pretty much the more detail we can work stuff out in the better. For example there’s been a lot of ideas thrown around but what would people most like to actually see implemented?
well that did clear things up for me so thanks. I think that the idea of a community driven mod broken into small parts sounds like a great idea
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aye… as with any project, you just need clear definitions of roles and responsibilities…
“you! do this…”
“you! do that…”
“and you! @Geoffers747! you cant possibly be flossing your teeth for that long… get out of the restroom and do some work!”
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@Smokestacks Why do you think so? So far I have understood that our devs are still thinking about this and am not sure how it could work / look in the game. I do not give up yet the hope 
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I am a bit sceptical in terms of a “community mod”, at least at this point in time. There have been some careful tries to involve the community into a joint project. May it be the time still to pass until the beta starts or not so interesting ideas… non of them is followed-up at the moment.
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Well simply from how reluctant Tom seemed in the previous livestream to do kids, saying they were a lot of work with animating them and stuff and he currently couldn’t really see the benefits. However you are correct that he was very much not definitive in his answer either way and I may have misheard/misinterpreted him anyway 
I see 4 essential elements that are the starting blocks of such a mod [disclaimer - just one opinion of many]:
- It should include the models, animations, and other art assets needed for the simple version.
- It should also include a way for the unit to progress from one stage to another, either with input from the player or automatically over time.
- The inheritance, genome, or “traits attributed to the unit by the nature of their parents” whatever you wish to call it, should be implemented. Mainly because we’d want a uniform way to do this, without it breaking the game or blowing up other mods.
- Lastly, a “caretaker” AI with behaviors, actions, and priorities should be made. This can be later used in any sort of mod - parents, babysitters, nannies, teachers, (or wolves?), etc can all have this ‘caretaker’ task assigned to their job role.
I was toying around in my head with a ‘simple’ way to do this in game. I believe it is always best to use engine mechanics first, prior to writing a bunch of script from scratch. It is probably A) more stable and B) more efficient this way.
You could create two new job roles, Infant and Teenager, then give them new behaviors and roles that make sense. Then, you just “hire” or “obtain” the new unit when it is at Infant job class rather than Basic Worker job class. It is essentially just adding two more job classes to the front of the entire class tree.
*edit: Voxel models from @voxel_pirate’s original post.
Ya I think in some way we’re just spinning our wheels til we get our hands on the game and see. There are no other games out now, and haven’t been for like 1-2 months, and none coming up on my radar… just so bored… mod planning wins for today’s activity 
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In terms of the animations for transforming from one stage in life to another how do you think this will be done as I imagine this will be difficult to get right, maybe there will have to be some workaround for this so that we don’t have some strange voxel metamorphosis going on as a baby suddenly gets bigger and grows new clothes. Maybe it will have to be done in a way where the player doesn’t actually see it.
Only do it while offscreen? We might be able to do that but otherwise it would require a series of gradual changes but the main effort would be in animation. Going from crawling to toddling to walking while getting slightly larger would work pretty much fine most likely. The only thing you’d need models for is the different proportions.
I would not put too much effort into this and just play a “level-up” animation. We have seen in one of the last stream that your worker turns around and jumps into the air if he is promoted to a profession. Maybe something similar coudl work for the children also. They turn and jump and land as the next “level”… maybe covering the exchange of models with some particle effects.
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yea, just instantly replacing the model with the level-up model should work fine. Certainly for a start.
exactly… the worker picks up a saw, and “becomes” a carpenter with the little animated sequence…
could save some effort, and just borrow the same logic here… 