08-19-2011, 07:00 PM
There is a simple reason why I decided to use blocky avatars: I want people to have complete freedom to look however they want. If you look through the skins catalog, you'll find semitransparent colored ghost skins and floating report buttons.
However, many people are stuck with Microsoft Paint, which doesn't support transparency. So if the skin template had transparency (which is necessary to make non-rectangular body parts that look good in the website and game) then the transparent parts would appear black when they saved it.
I could work around this by using black instead of transparent for the background of the template, and then use a mask to "cut out" those parts once the skin is uploaded. However, that would also limit possibilites, and I don't want to restrict our players' creativity just so uninformed people won't think I used this skin design because of its popularity in other games.
However, many people are stuck with Microsoft Paint, which doesn't support transparency. So if the skin template had transparency (which is necessary to make non-rectangular body parts that look good in the website and game) then the transparent parts would appear black when they saved it.
I could work around this by using black instead of transparent for the background of the template, and then use a mask to "cut out" those parts once the skin is uploaded. However, that would also limit possibilites, and I don't want to restrict our players' creativity just so uninformed people won't think I used this skin design because of its popularity in other games.