Currently in my story the MC and LI is customisable, however after having come up with so many ideas that require limb overlays I’m starting to debate whether I should let the reader choose their looks.
I dont know what to do, do I let people happily choose their looks but lose out on awesome scene plans I have in my head
Or risk people being disappointed they cant do their preferences, but allow them to see the awesome scenes…
If you are going to add limb overlays, don’t include CC. Do what you want and not what others want, let the readers see those awesome scenes with those overlays!! 
I personally don’t care for CC, but a lot of readers do and if you don’t offer it, most it your fanmail will be full of people asking for it (that’s exactly what happened to me in my first story).
In my current story, I allow the readers to fully CC the MC and two LIs, but I make it very clear I use a lot of hand and arm overlays. I make my overlays in three different shades per character, and highlight the shades that match. I find this gives the readers a wider range of CC options, while still allowing me the freedom in my directing I’m looking for. I always choose a light, medium, and dark shade each so that even if the readers don’t pick one of my recommended skin tones, hopefully the one they pick will be close enough to the three on the side to not ruin the reading experience. You could always do three different skin tones and let the readers pick from only those three if you wanted to be exact.
if i may ask, how did you code this? this would be very helpful in my story as well!! since i do allow CC, but there will be limb overlays
Of course! It’s not hard at all. I just use a points system, and then if/elif/else when I want to use a skin tone specific overlay.
The circles on the side are tappable in my story hence the first part of this code, but yours can be tappable or in regular choice format.
Then when I want to use a limb overlay, I just do it like this:
In this particular scene, I’ve already set my overlays in the positions I wanted them at the start of the scene, and then just put them to opacity 0 so I would be able to move them without doing another if/elif/else choice later in the episode:
You can see that I moved all three of the overlays, but if you were playing with a light skin tone, for example, the only one with its opacity turned up would be the light coloured hand, and thus the only one you could see.
Does that kind of make sense? Let me know if it doesn’t haha!!
You could always do limited CC. For my one story, I didn’t want the reader to alter my MC’s appearance too much, so I created my own tappable template with 4 similar skin tones, some hair color/style options as well as a couple lip colors.
I’ve never gotten any complaints from it🤷🏼♀️
At the end of the day it’s your story and while I do agree with wanting to make the experience for the reader as nice as possible, you should also make sure that your story is the way you want it to be🙂
this is amazing ! you’re always so helpful and you’ve honestly helped me so much with overlays, directing etc thank youuuuu, without you i’d still be stuck on episode one, i’ll definitely use this
would you like credit?
ahhaaa yessss :)) thank you
thank you <3 i agree, i just didn’t want any fanmails begging for cc or people not having the full experience due to weird looking overlays
I personally don’t mind not having to CC, but i’ve seen on so many people’s stories that their readers complain about it or stop reading all together. I would give a warning in the beginning that overlays won’t match if they CC too much, so you won’t get any complaints of not having the option to CC lol – happy writing on your story though! 
I’m so happy you feel like I’ve helped! Don’t worry about crediting, have fun writing!
Bump!
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