Syke 说:
...elevated to a status deserving of symbology...
To quote Willem Dafoe, "I believe the word you were looking for was symbolism."
Boondock Saints quotes aside, a system to make heraldry could be quite easy if you don't try to make every single texture. Instead, you make a certain number of fields (one for each field type) each more or less blank with say two color regions that for this instance will be labeled color x and color y. Instead of trying to make every color combination, just allow the player to insert the color code into a text box for each color choice. So, the same texture could support a plethora of designs. Also, in an attempt to get past making the ordinaires, beasts and charges built in, have say 2-3 layers including the base field. This way, things wont get too complicated. Each charge and beast would also have say 2 color choices (inside and border or however eogan feels would be most historically correct).
This sort of thing has been used in java by companies such as STX, Warrior, Nike, and many others to quickly do customizable color schemes on equipment. Yes, I know this game isnt java, but there should be some sort of way to make this sort of thing possible in game.
For those of yous thinking "ok, thats great, but how is this sort of junk going to get saved and sorted out," the heraldry could be saved in your export file much like the face key is. So, you have this long garbled list of letters and numbers which roughly resembles a leet speak mnemonic (b215x110yd015x256yg130 for example) in which each position and letter/number has an assignment. Now, the "code" i supplied above is just something I threw out there for simplicity sake, but it could be read as "field=b with color x=215 and y=110, ordinairy=d with color x=015 and y=256, charge=g with color x =130." Now, I'm no programmer (nor do I play one on tv), but this sort of thing was fairly easy to do using java back when I was in high school. There are a lot of other ways this sort of thing could be build, but this is jsut an example.
A thought just occurred to me that you might be able to use the same system used for the face construction as this. Instead, assign colors, charges, fields and such spots along the continuums (sliders). Im not sure how well this would work with the fields and such, but it should work decently with colors. Anyway, just a thought.
No matter how it's done, I think some sort of custom heraldry should be possible within the game so that it isn't just those of us with photoshop and such who get to have the spinky heraldry.