[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons andanimals

[cruise]

Thus spake Mike Rozak...
> Actually, I have non-photorealistic effects coded in. They work well for 
> still images because they hide the all-too-perfect rendering. However, 
> when applied to the 360-degree view of the world, painterly affects are 
> very unsettling, but I'm not quite sure why. Painterly effects are 
> headache-inducing when used as animations (80's "Aha" video, for 
> example, or I can easily render one up).

Well, yeah, somethings just weren't meant to be moving :P
It doesn't have to be large amounts of unreality - the fantasy genre, 
for example, is almost crying out for a fully CG movie, where the spell 
effects can completely ignore the rules of physics for lighting, and it 
won't be jarring, even if the rest of the movie is trying to approach 
"reality."

> I agree, but most people seem to like reality. Elves are humans with 
> pointy ears. Dwarves are short humans with beards. Hobbits a short 
> barefoot humans. Orcs are ugly green humans. Something like "The Future 
> is Wild" or "Alien plant" would be neat, but might be too weird for most 
> people.
> 
> Thought experiment: Would "The Sims" (offline) have sold as many copies 
> if the characters were distinctly non-human (like my rat/thylacine 
> animation, or dragons, or non-human aliens)?

Obviously there is a balance required - the players need /something/ 
recognisable to anchor to, then they can float off into the unknown 
knowing there's something reassuringly familiar to return to. And some 
people need less of a reality anchor than others.

The recognisable elements in the Sims weren't the characters, I think, 
but the activities - cooking, sleeping, working, mating, etc. The 
representations would have to be  anthromorphic to be recognisable as 
those actions, but not much more than two arms, two legs, two eyes, two 
ears a mouth and one head.

It would have lessened the sales still; some people need more reality 
than others, and the extreme of that is some people need as much reality 
as possible. But I doubt it's a significant fraction, though I have no 
evidence for that obviously :P