A peek into character creation

26 July, 2024

One of the issues we had with Broadview 1.0 is a lack of consistency between sessions. You could play one day as a Caucasian homeless beggar with blonde hair, and another as an Italian gangster with a thick accent. In theory, this makes sense for a roleplay game—the player can create any kind of scenario and story they want. However, in practice, it made it difficult to keep track of who was who and what was what, especially as it relates to the police: if a player was running from the cops, they could just become a completely different person, and the police would be none the wiser.

We also had issues with people dressing up as inhuman characters, like aliens, robots, or gummy bears! Simply making a blacklist of clothing would be impossible, especially with the introduction of Roblox's UGC program: there would be too many items to keep track of. We needed a more robust solution.

Player wearing the taboo gummy bear

To address these issues, we decided to implement a character creation system, but there's a problem: A significant portion of our playerbase is made up of those in our community's police agencies, and if we still wanted to keep track of criminal records, it would continue to lock them into that playstyle. So, we've given all players the opportunity to create two characters, with the ability to choose between them before playing.

Creating a new character

When you first join Broadview 2.0, after agreeing to the rules, you'll be brought to the character selection screen with randomly generated appearances. You'll notice at the top, it says: "Legal (Suggested)". It's our intention that players create one character to use for legal activities, and another for illegal activities. It won't be required to abide by this suggestion, but our hope is that it will allow players to experience both sides of the law without having to worry about their criminal record.

Picking a name

As you go through the process, you'll notice that you have to pick a name for your character. This will be a permanent choice that is uniquely associated with this character, and departments will also use it as a form of identification for their employees. There is a large list of names (over 25,000) that you can choose from, and it will show suggestions as you type.

Changing your hair

After picking your name, it's time to customize your character. You can choose from a variety of different faces, hairstyles, and clothing options suggested by the community, and we'll have a ton more coming soon.

Choosing a skin tone

We've also added the ability to choose a skin tone from a predefined list. This will be the only part of character customization that is locked in. You will be able to go to various businesses to change your clothes and hairstyle, for a fee. As you purchase more articles of clothing, the ones you aren't wearing will be found in your Wardrobe, which you can access from your property.

Broadview 2.0 is intended to have more progression elements than before. We want it to not just be a roleplay "server", but a roleplay game! One of the first things we've integrated into 2.0 is Skills. You'll be able to level up certain skills by performing actions related to them. For example, if you want more stamina, you'll need to run more. If you want to be able to carry more items, you'll need to make your character stronger.

Choosing your skills

When you create your character, you'll allocate a certain number of levels to different skills. Currently, the plan is for skills to have no maximum level, but the amount of experience required to level up will increase exponentially... but this is still undecided.

We've come up with a list of skills that we think will be beneficial to the experience, but these are not final by any means. It is entirely possible we may combine or separate skills as we continue to develop the game. We'd love to hear your feedback:

• Dexterity: How quickly you can perform certain actions, such as interacting with objects, swinging your weapon, or crouching.
• Driving: How well you can drive vehicles, affecting the speed that you can shift, turn, and brake.
• Endurance: How long you can run or swim before getting tired.
• Fishing: How likely you are to catch fish when fishing.
• Intelligence: How well you can pick locks, investigate crime scenes, or solve puzzles.
• Lung Capacity: How long you can hold your breath underwater.
• Smithing: The speed or skill you have when crafting or repairing items.
• Strength: How much you can carry or how hard you can hit.

After you've created your character, you'll be able to spawn into the world. You'll also be given a rundown of your character's status (this screen isn't finished).

Character status

What's pretty cool is that these are real characters simulated by the game: before I took this screenshot, I equipped an ATAC-786 and rejoined. You can see it on my character!

That's about all I have for today. Everything I've shown here is fully functional, and I've moved onto working on other parts of the game. I'm excited to show you more! Join our 2.0 Development Discord if you haven't already!