Global faces and decals

[WaterOre]

Feature Pitch

It's definitely a moon shot and I have NO idea how this game handles avatar elements internally, but global support for custom faces and decals (HOO "decals") are (conceptually) a natural extension of the vanilla player customization system. By allowing these assets to be shared alongside other elements of the player avatar, users will be granted greater freedom and convenience in selecting their appearance and viewing the appearance of others.

Potential Use Cases

To the best of my knowledge, decals are entirely clientside. Users are currently only able to view the custom decals of another user if they both have the same files installed in the same way, requiring excessive amounts of hardware space and time spent on RTB downloading highly specific decals that the player will likely never use. With this change, players will only be required to download decals they plan on actively using from RTB or create custom decals for their own personal use. This would greatly improve the avatar menu's navigability by reducing the number of decals in the selector, allow users to view each other's avatars more accurately, and transform the RTB decals portal from "I need to download the big packs that I think everyone else will be using" to "This decal looks cool, I can't wait to build an avatar around it".

How will it work?

I'm not entirely certain on specifically how it would be implemented, but given the small size of the community and improvements made over time to server capabilities, decals selected by a user could be uploaded wholesale to other clients while they are connected to the same server along with the rest of the avatar data. Alternatively, RTB Connect has a system currently in place to share avatar decals when making comments on addons or adding a user as a friend. Seeing that RTB Connect is included by default with installations of BL Rebuilt, this same system could be leveraged to allow for global decals.

Additional info

This system carries a risk of vulnerabilities and allows for an avenue of sharing explicit content to a wide audience, but issues like these would likely be rare and could be moderated by preventing users with an RTB ban from uploading global decals. In cases like this, the current system would come into effect and other users would only be able to view their decals if they already have them installed locally.

[maxymax13]

don't the avatars in comment sections work by uploading your avatar file to the b4 server and having it be rendered there?

[WaterOre]

If it does, then I'm not aware of that functionality. The screenshot attached to this post was taken with minimal setup beyond creating a fresh BL Rebuilt install, connecting to RTB, and then customizing my avatar using the in-game menu. The face used is an addon (Female faceB by Krystal and Alphadin), and the color used on the hat and shoulder pads is a custom hex.

[maxymax13]

that's the rtb connect window, which is just a small version of the 3d preview on the avatar menu