ColorGuy

Hello everyone! Hello Devs! I'm ColorGuy and this is my first and last suggestion. COLOR!! City of Heroes needs more of it! How much more? All of it! Not an extra shade or a lighter version of a color..all of them! Every single one! With a few exceptions possibly which I'll explain later lol. What's the most elegant modern solution you can think of to accomplish this? For me I figured a color wheel would be awesome! It would be, but as I've played the game for a while and learned more about the development process, I realized that the process of adding one might eat up too much limited time that is certainly already allocated to things that have been deemed more important. So I must respectfully suggest an alternative. Something so devilishly simple yet effective that it can hopefully slide right into some tiny crack between all the big stuff. So I asked myself a question. What is a color to a computer? I learned that it's just a value, or a number. Jeez how original, I mean it's almost like they don't even care! Which can't be true because I was just talking to one yesterday. Anyways.. let's continue. I mean if a color can be reduced to a number, then why even bother with all these fancy wheels and pallettes and thingies? So here's my suggestion, leave the pallette and all the other color stuff untouched. Simply add..a tiny little bar underneath or above it (or anywhere else) that has two things in it. A box to input an RGB value, and a little square next to it that displays whatever color you created with those values. Yep, that's it. It's boring and it works and it doesn't involve a divorce with our beloved color palette of the last 20 years. Now let's talk about the elephant in the room, you don't want people running around naked all the time. Solution, take the range of the values that correspond to the skin tones already in the game and make it so that whoever enters a value within that range is simply denied their color. Or every value around that range, I think even just deleting the colors without any nuance would work too. How does this impact City of Heroes? What a great question! I'm so glad you asked! To put it mildly it would without a doubt, improve the potential quality and quantity of costume possibilities on an enormous scale! This tiny RGB bar would save thousands of hopeless souls that have been trapped in the character creation screen for decades! Oh and don't even get me started on the contests! Hundreds of concepts suddenly unleashed because finally..they can make that hat a little more green just how they envisioned it. Not too green! Just..perfect. Here's another thing. Everyone wants more costume pieces right? Well guess what? That little bar? Gives them thousands. What about all the parts that can't be colored already? Forget em. Seriously! I think the parts we have already are great! What if every costume glitches out or something because of all the new colors? In my concept that wouldn't happen, because the colors would be separate from the ones on the pallette. So that anyone who isn't interested can simply ignore the bar! How am I supposed to find an RGB value without a wheel? Google, you'll find plenty trust me. I also believe that since playing Homecoming with other people requires an internet connection, that it is safe to assume they can also access a web browser. Can I save multiple colors to my own fancy custom pallette? Nope, just put the value in a notepad or have the colors saved on your phone in a fancy app! If you're like me and spend hours customizing, that would probably be a better solution anyways! Ok let's wrap this up! First I'd like to address one last question. How do you know this is truly the simplest way to do this, do you even code? I don't and I can't. In fact maybe this is even harder! I hope it isn't but if it is and this just isn't possible no matter how I shake it? Then at least I can say I said something, because I love homecoming and I love you random citizen! So that's it for me. Just to be clear I have nothing but love for the devs and all that they have already done! I also encourage discussion on this exciting topic! I myself am not the chatty type so I'll be heading back to the old grindstone. The final boss, character creation. Toodles!