Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Player/Character Icons?

Is it possible (like in dA or FA) to link a player or character's name/icon with some shorthand command? It'd be nice if it'd automatically show the appropriate icon, if only because it'd mean I wouldn't need to update it for changes, etc.

I meant to use this in my group to list IC staff, for the sake of the why behind it.

Something like...
[icon=ferabird]
[icon]ferabird[/icon]

Seconding this. You can link directly to the icon image, itself, but that'll land you with a broken image if the person changes their icon.

I'd love that. I personally like to customize friends' lists, and it's always a pain to go back and re-edit if they change their icon.

Adding my voice to this! It was a very convenient feature on dA and I would definitely take advantage of it if it were available here.

Slapping my support all over this lovely suggestion.

No -- or yes, but for players only, as there can be multiple characters by the same name.

Perhaps if the proper link to the character in question's page was added to the code? then we could have both!

Ex:
[user_icon]Virusghost18[/user_icon]
[character_icon]http://www.rprepository.com/c/host[/character_icon]

Ohhh that's clever. I like that.

That wouldn't work either. You can change the shorturl at any given time and that will break the link and/or link to someone else. The only reliable option is character ID, but it's difficult to fetch at the moment plus some people have a habit of deleting and recreating their profiles frequently, so...

I recall - due to a semi-recent blocking incident in which I needed Kim's help - that characters have a perm id number? Players just can't see it....

I would use the ever-loving hell out of this if it were made an option.

So do players, and as I sit here considering it we'd have to resort to both in both cases, as usernames can change as well!

You can find the id currently in a number of ways. The simplest is going to any profile and clicking send message. The number appears in the resulting URL.

It sounds like a ton of work and recipe for tears to require people to go look up IDs every time they want to reference a friend, though, which is where I've basically ended up every time this discussion comes up. :

CURSES! I had hoped that maybe it was something I'd just missed. It'd be really nice to be able to quick-link players or characters for a more appealing looking group format listie thing.

I don't want to bring tears on people! I do know though that if such a thing is implemented I'd be happy to look up that perm idea for each person if I needed to in order to make it work.

The only thing that comes to mind is the feature in PMs and in the store where you start typing a name and it gives you a list of clickable names, characters and players, that automatically puts in something like [user]1234[/user] or [character]1234[/character]. How realistic would it be to implement something like this as part of the WYSIWYG editor?

It's not impossible but it does present some challenges! Might have negative implications for people on mobile phones, forcing more of them to use the "turn of WYSIWYG editors" option.

I'mma move this into the Suggestions board, since it's gone from a question about how to do something into a new feature discussion.