This article is currently only a proposal
The features or design guidelines described in this article are only a proposal made by one or some persons. It has not been evaluated or accepted by the core development team yet. Feel free to add your personal opinion about them or make counter proposals.
This article contains information for Programmers working or interested in working for The Mana World
This article collects information regarding the conceptualisation of the gameplay of The Mana World
It should be possible to dye every piece of visible equipment to change its appearance and make the outfit of the wearer more unique. The graphic engine can display this by changing the hue of the equipment sprite. Although this allows a lot of different color variants without having to keep a lot in mind when creating the sprites. Pure grey tones should be avoided because hue shifting has no effect on them at all - besides that every graphic should look ok with changed hue (just maybe not very realistic). This system makes it a bit complicated to give a piece of equipment a specific color because you would have to know what color it had before. How about making a virtue of necessity and integrate this into the dyeing concept?
My idea is to put a magical substance into the game named "kobold powder" that has the ability to change the color of items. Because of its magical nature the outcome needn't look as realistic as it would be expected when using normal dyes for coloring items:
| Item | Description | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Lesser Kobold Powder | Mysterious substance that slightly changes the color of everything it comes into contact with. | Changes the hue of an equipment piece randomly by 5°-15°. |
| Stronger Kobold Powder | Mysterious substance that significantly changes the color of everything it comes into contact with. | Changes the hue of an equipment piece randomly by 30°-90° |
| Kobold Powder Detergent | Cleaning agent that removes the effect of kobold powder from an item. | Changes the hue of an equipment piece back to normal. |
Multiple lesser and stronger kobold powders can be used on the same item to change its color even more. While the detergent should be buyable in every well-sorted alchemy shop the lesser and stronger kobold powder should only be obtainable from monsters and especially the stronger one should not be dropped too often so that heavily dyed equipment becomes a prestige good.
Dyeing items shouldn't have any effect on the gameplay.
