I have been thinking alot about this since for a few of my charecters there is no real RP looking clothing/armour and though renames are good, being able to make our own, or purchase off of another would be a good addition. In that case here are just my random thoughts on it. Hope they help.
There seems no real easy way to add in the ability to modify existing armours or clothes in a new colour by "dying". The main reason of course is that alot of armours have the colour the text is also written in their title. It would seem silly to have "Red studded leather armour" written in green.
To this end the only way I can see the dye skill working is that it will only work with selected clothes and armours. In this case my suggestion would be, of course, to make it only work with Player made armours and clothing, and possibly a selection of stuff coded to be sold inside the guild houses themselves.
I would envision 2 or more guild house scattered in the major towns where players could learn skills, as well where some base stuff to use are sold and where there are mobs that you can pay to dye things.
An example of what I was thinking is this. As part of the quest to learn tayloring, you learn Three sets of commands.
1. Weave <fabric>
This is like the smelting skill form the smith trade. You can take the raw material (Can't think of a good term offhand for the raw material, but you know what I mean), and turn it into a bolt of <fabric> where <fabric> is one selected from a list. As your tayloring skill goes up you can make more advanced fabrics. (Eg. here are: Cloth, Linen, Velvet, Silk, Satin, lace, Calico, Muselin etc...)
If succesful you have a "Bolt of <Fabric>" appear in your inventory that is defult colour white (or that crappy grey we call white
2. taylor <garment type> <Fabric>
This command works the same as the smithing skill in that you select a garment type and have a bolt of fabric in your inventory. As your skill increases you can make different garments, with more complicated ones (eg. Gowns) being harder than easier ones (eg. Shirts). Just say for example that you had a "bolt of velvet" in your invetory, you might make a shirt from it. You would end up with "A shirt made of velvet" or "A velvet shirt" depending on what is more popular.
3. Dye <item name> <colour>
Fairly self explanatory. Bolts of cloth, as well as any item made from them can be changed in colour. This does not change the name of the item, but merely changes the colour of the text of the item.
Usage of any of these parts of the skill would aid towards increasing the "Tayloring skill" as a whole, though I would suggest that there be a min number of attempts of each before increase.
The 2nd and 3rd skill should also be able to be used with leathers made by those with that skill. To clarify, those with the tayloring skill could take "A hide of <whatever>" and when using the taylor skill, in the fbaric part they type hide. This will make the item to be out of "leather". The item can then be dyed as neccessary.
The final suggestion to make to all these , is that those tailors whose skills are high enough, should possibly be allowed a 4th command. This command would be to beautify (for lack of a better word) an item already made. What I basically mean is adding gems to a dress, or stitching to leathers. The skill might be something like this:
4. complete <clothing item name> <item to be compelted with>
The end result can be hard coded, where the title is based upon the material type of the item it is complete with. For eg. IF you use any type of material gem, you might get <an item> decorated with <gem type> (eg. A velvet gown decorated with pearls, or A linen shirt decorated with emeralds). Other suggestions would be using the terms, "set with", "woven with" or even "<gem type> laced <item type>". I am sure there are more, but thats all off the top of my head.
In the case of a thread being use, then the item will come out with <Item name> stitched with <thread name> (eg. leather armour stitched with gold thread, or Silk shirt stitched with purple thread etc.)
The only thing to note with this part of the skill is that when it is used, it finished the item. In other words the item looses the flag that allows its colour to be changed. (Since it will be of more than one colour, as the colour of the gem, or thread etc remains).
While it has been suggested that there this new skill is coming, I would also suggest a possible extra skill, one that would be similar, but probably would not fit under the "Tayloring" umbrella.
That is, I would like to be able to colour, or recolour armours made of metal types. I have seen alot of armours out there that already say in there descriptions something like "Steel <whatever> covered in <colour> paint". Since all player made armours tend to be that neutral grey colour I would love to see a place where we could have such armours (Again a mob selling colourable armour would also be nice) painted. For those smiths who have their masters stamp, then I suggest the addition of the stamp come after the colouring process. here are some examples of what I mean. As a smith I make:
Tin platemail belt and Steel armguards
I can sell them like this, and players can use their own skill to colour them, or pay a MOB at one of the guilds, or as a smith I can colour them myself. Then I add my stamp which "completes" the item and stops it from being repainted (ie. removes the flag again).
Thus I can take my tine platemail belt and paint it red, and sell it as such. Then I can take my Steel armguards, that are really well made, colour them purple and add my mark to them, and end up with something like:
Steel armguards stamped with a jawless skull
which I can then sell and can't be modified.
Alright - sorry for the length, but that covers my thoughts on how the skill could be implemented. As for quests for it, well that is an entirely different thread
Hope it helps, and look forward to reading other peoples ideas.
-Stayne
"Why would I want to learn how to taylor clothes? I would prefer to learn how to restrain myself long enough from killing the taylor that he makes them for me"
... more seriously, there has been a lot of discussion about dressing in a certain color scheme for RP purposes.
