General Discussion

[DarkTl]

I need the same for brother and sister due to one trait.

I added

        def hs(self):
            if self.gender == "female":
                return "sister"
            else:
                return "brother"
               
        def hss(self):
            if self.gender == "female":
                return "sis"
            else:
                return "bro"

But strings like
    "[hero.hs]"
    "[hero.hss]"

give me <bound method Player.hss of <store.Player object at 0x11F90AB0>> right in the dialogue window. 

[Xela]

I need the same for brother and sister due to one trait.

I addedBut strings like
    "[hero.hs]"
    "[hero.hss]"

give me <bound method Player.hss of <store.Player object at 0x11F90AB0>> right in the dialogue window. 

@property
def ...():
    ...

[DarkTl]

Ah. In notepad + they have the same color as docstrings, I automatically ignored them 

[John Bull]

Bro's. although I like your game I get the impression you are trying to make 5 games at once. It's an RPG combined with an RTS and an arena combat game combined with a spreadsheet management game.I also becomes very convoluted when you have many girls who end up mutations of each other statwise despite having been obtained through different RPG inspired quests. May I suggest specializing in one or the other?I for one don't generally use the arena or the magic system a lot, I have the real final fantasy for that.You could totally rip a stat balancing network from another game. 'Otherwise good work.


EDIT:
So I drew a graph. I'm wondering,is the focus on the Main character and his team of girls, which makes it an RPG, or the main character and his pimping business, which makes it a management game with flavour combat events

[DarkTl]

No, it's totally closer to RTS than to RPG. Yes, you can have a team, but it's not nearly as unique and special feature as an RPG requires.
Xela, things like [char.pC] don't work inside rts function, such as the one in the interactions_interests label.

[John Bull]

No, it's totally closer to RTS than to RPG. Yes, you can have a team, but it's not nearly as unique and special feature as an RPG requires.
Xela, things like [char.pC] don't work inside rts function, such as the one in the interactions_interests label.

Is there anyone who made a comprehensive graph about what features influence which others?
I mostly see people discussing flavour and legit programming issues on the forum but I have the impression too much options meander out to the extremes of the graph and are therefore not very important in the grand scheme of things. I can't code or write at all but I have some ideas on making mechanics interact more solidly with each other. You guys can also have all my cringeworthy stuff from way back when I still wanted to make porn games

[John Bull]

Major thing at this point is probably this:
Currently it looks like a dating sim since you spend time/capital on picking up girls to work for you, who then become generic collections of numbers. The flavour text and events are all in the picking up phase.


To make it a pimping game, write events that add flavour and traits to girls based on what they do in their jobs. They are still generic collections of numbers but the focus shifts to a pimping game.

[Xela]

Bro's. although I like your game I get the impression you are trying to make 5 games at once.

That is the idea

I also becomes very convoluted when you have many girls who end up mutations of each other statwise despite having been obtained through different RPG inspired quests.

Well, we do try hard to mitigate that but in the end, they prolly will. There are many possible offsets through quests, events, traits, texts, relationships and etc.

So I drew a graph. I'm wondering,is the focus on the Main character and his team of girls, which makes it an RPG, or the main character and his pimping business, which makes it a management game with flavour combat events

The idea is not to force a "focus" of any kind. Player should decide what they wish to do/work on. You don't do Arena? Ok, there were a bunch of people who clocked a few dozen hours in it. And it got only more interesting now and will get better in the future.

Flavor is text and image based. You got that right. Capital-wise there can be no graph, we are trying to design a game where even capital doesn't stand central. We'll see of that will be a success or not in another couple of years There will be a way to play the game under that chart, it will just not be the only way.

For now the focus is to move to a broader concept, we started really small (SimBro clone), expanded our view a bit (WM clone) and later expanded towards our own design. Code and content need to catch up, that is what the beta will be about. Development should get a lot faster/easier past beta release and "final" major code refactoring.

[Xela]

Xela, things like [char.pC] don't work inside rts function, such as the one in the interactions_interests label.

Damn it... I half expected that... let me take a look, this should be fixable in auto-mode.

[John Bull]

Seems legit. I'm going to make a graph of all the intertwining mechanics to see what is the ultimate deciding factor then try to find out how to mesh it all together. I forced together a bunch of similar games into a massive project once and it always ended up a repetitive grindfest. Not sure if I'm missing something though. I've even done probalistic events once but people didn't consider them legit because the triggers were semi-hidden

[Xela]

Is there anyone who made a comprehensive graph about what features influence which others?
I mostly see people discussing flavour and legit programming issues on the forum but I have the impression too much options meander out to the extremes of the graph and are therefore not very important in the grand scheme of things. I can't code or write at all but I have some ideas on making mechanics interact more solidly with each other. You guys can also have all my cringeworthy stuff from way back when I still wanted to make porn games

Major thing at this point is probably this:
Currently it looks like a dating sim since you spend time/capital on picking up girls to work for you, who then become generic collections of numbers. The flavour text and events are all in the picking up phase.

To make it a pimping game, write events that add flavour and traits to girls based on what they do in their jobs. They are still generic collections of numbers but the focus shifts to a pimping game.

No, no graph. I'll explain why in the follow up text.

We do not generally care about "legit programming" as much as in maintainable code. I've seen far too many projects fail because of perfectly and fully "legit programming" coder under "GUI design paradigm A" and "OOP design paradigm B" and "Scopes control paradigm C" ... etc. was implemented and that resulted in code that was not maintainable by a small team for the purpose they had for it. Here there are just a few rules: Code must be readable, must be expandable and must be the shortest version of itself, preferably with some comments. that still might mean different things to different people but we seem to manage. OOP model must be maintained, but how you do it is up to the coder.

There are no graphs or detailed concepts because we usually write our prototypes and concepts directly with code, seems faster that way and it definitely keeps us (or the two of us who are still hacking at it) on the same page. When you write stuff, it will always end up meaning different things to different people. It's (still imperfect but) better when everyone can take a look at what's up themselves.

I can't code or write at all but I have some ideas on making mechanics interact more solidly with each other. You guys can also have all my cringeworthy stuff from way back when I still wanted to make porn games

Well, yeah, the trouble is that if you're not developing from stage 0, you still need to know game mechanics really, really well. Or most of the ideas will not be useful in any broader sense. OldHuntsman writes the best designs but can barely write 10 lines of coherent code, but he manages the project from day one and know how everything works. If you have ideas, lets hear them but I doubt that a lot of them will be useful unless you understand how stats, skills, traits, jobs, interactions, combat, xp, leveling, AP, relationships, flags, locations, quest and events systems, GUI, buildings and businesses, items and equipment. taxes and etc... all fits together.

A lot of great ideas we got right after the Alpha release cause most of that becomes apparent when you play the game for a while. There is sadly no design document at this time, I am planning and already have an issue for it a "PyTFallopedia" in Civ games format that will make some of those things clearer.

We already have a decent system of traits based off jobs that wasn't there in Alpha. We are not planning to make it a pimping/fighting/exploring/arena/quests/main story line or any game in general. There will be choices and not simple choices that you get as "Forks" as you proceed. General gameplay will be a matter of personal preference, I think it already was to a good point in the Alpha, it'll get better with more content as we develop and maybe some extra people come aboard (we had like 7 members on the team once after Alpha release Some of their work is still a part of the game and will prolly remain so indefinitely).

[John Bull]

Wait how about this:
Instead of job X gives n XP > spend it on skills
Do something like


building, job, item or whatnot has either a chance or a counter to add trait Z which in turns affects the skill sets that are already there. I did that once only with medieval warfare but the principle is solid


EDIT: I'll play the alpha again and refresh my mind on how stuff fits together. I can usually make decent games but I forgot the mechanics of this one. Also never understood tax, I always died when they came to collect tax halfway through

[Xela]

Wait how about this:
Instead of job X gives n XP > spend it on skills
Do something like


building, job, item or whatnot has either a chance or a counter to add trait Z which in turns affects the skill sets that are already there. I did that once only with medieval warfare but the principle is solid

Why "instead", why can't it be all of that at the same time? I think out ideas about manager effects to the jobs and the buildings are far more interesting and carry more options and possibilities. But there is no reason why it cannot be both, you can better and more confident the more time you spend doing something productive (XP gain, very general). You gain skills (either very specific or at least specific). Gaining traits is not an issue, we just didn't design a lot of those traits yet that would be a good option to be acquired during jobs/training (but we have some).

[Xela]

EDIT: I'll play the alpha again and refresh my mind on how stuff fits together. I can usually make decent games but I forgot the mechanics of this one. Also never understood tax, I always died when they came to collect tax halfway through

I am not sure that Alpha gameplay is relevant to Beta, download it if you like, but this is what more modern version look like (without H stuff which YouTube frowns upon):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowPkYSq_6k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwMiX1GFHtI&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJCwnZxGQBc

it's all open source btw if you have time to figure out how to get it to work, we have a guide for that somewhere I think.

[John Bull]

Why "instead", why can't it be all of that at the same time? I think out ideas about manager effects to the jobs and the buildings are far more interesting and carry more options and possibilities. But there is no reason why it cannot be both, you can better and more confident the more time you spend doing something productive (XP gain, very general). You gain skills (either very specific or at least specific). Gaining traits is not an issue, we just didn't design a lot of those traits yet that would be a good option to be acquired during jobs/training (but we have some).

Yeah you're right. I have a whole database of that stuff + attached code but it is likely impossible that I can rip it out and give it to you. The way I fixed it was character has X disciplines, disciplines have effect based on their level and can be upgraded with XP (so I could sell XP items to premium users) and a completely parallel server where everthing is storydriven but still based on disciplines.