Thank you so much, Joey! That's a huge load off my mind!
I feel bad making a lot of feature requests, so don't feel obligated to do any of these, but these are the things that would make the game most awesomer (lack of grammar intentional) to me:
-Have your currently selected girl also be selected by default when you go to "Transfer Girls" (just like how going to "Turn Summary" currently works).
-Allow us to search through our current girls/items/whatever list. Maybe by hitting ctrl-F, typing, and then hitting enter? (and then the first match found is selected)
-Allow the player to specify what loot types girls should prioritize when they go into the Catacombs (without using the config file).
You could just change the gang loot sliders that already exist to also affect what loot your girls take, or try something that's fancier, but more work. (maybe a "Job Details" button for jobs that brought you to a window/pop-up that let you specify stuff like that and maybe gave you some information about the girl's job? That could be useful down the line, too)
-Create a "Town Gossip" panel that you could access through a button that displayed current events and miscellaneous information.
(like your current quest and any recent events that you think are especially interesting, such as "Masked Vigilante strikes again!" or information about any demon lords that happen to be invading Crossgate and how we might go about defeating them.)
-Create a nice XML-y format that lay-folks like myself could use to add more complex conversations to girls, sorta like a mini dating sim. (or give a short tutorial explaining how this could be done using scripting, if that's not too hard)
---------------------NOTHING BELOW THIS POINT IS ACTUALLY FEATURE REQUESTS---------------------
I'm thinking something like creating a .chatsx file that could be referenced by a .girlsx or .rgirlsx file. And this file would allow you to create whole branching dialogues that would be used if the player interacted with a girl and selected an option like "in-depth conversation" when interacting with them.
Each .chatsx file would contain any number of "ChatStates", each of which contains a Name, a Body (stuff the girl and you say before you get to make another choice in the chat, preferably with end-of-line being an allowed character, written as \n or something.), and then a number of Choices which would each contain a summary of your reply and the Name of the ChatState that this choice would take you to. (like <Choice Text="Tell her you love her." Link="MySchmoozyChatState" /> or something) And then there would be special ChatStates, CHAT_BEGIN and CHAT_END, with the first always playing when a chat started and the second always ignoring any Choices that it might contain and ending the chat after playing its Body text (if there was any).
If you really wanted to go all in, you could add alternate special ChatState names that allowed custom chats to be started in different contexts, like RECRUIT_BEGIN, MISSION_BEGIN, RUNAWAY_BEGIN, ITEMSCRIPT4_BEGIN, or whatever.
If you REALLY wanted to go all in, you could add Conditionals to ChatStates, which would be checked (in order) before playing a ChatState's Body text and would redirect you to a different ChatState if the girl's stats met a certain condition. (like <Conditional Stat="PCLove" Operator="GREATER" Amount="80" Link="MySchmoozyChatState2" /> or something) Clever writers could even use empty ChatStates that just had a long list of Conditionals to get some pretty interesting functionality here!
Or if XML can't read items in order (IDK why it wouldn't, but programming is weird) but you still wanted to give people some complex functionality, you could let people write <Conditional Stat1="" Operator1="" Amount1="" Stat2="" Operator2="" Amount2="" Link="" /> to accomplish the same thing, but that seems like it would be a lot of work for you, and people could always use chains of empty ChatStates instead if they REALLY needed that functionality for some reason.
Of course, the best case would be something like <Conditional Content="(PCLove > 80) OR (PClove > 50 AND Happiness > 90)" Link="MySchmoozyChatState3" /> but that's so complicated I can't even GUESS how you'd make something like that...definitely not worth it, unless someone already wrote a script that could understand something like that. @.@ If you did add Conditionals in some form, you'd probably also want to add something to Choices to allow them to optionally change stats. Like <Choice Text="Compliment her singing." Link="BadDuetChatState"
Stat="Happiness"
Amount="7" /> or something. You could do the same Stat1, Stat2, etc. thing here, but I don't think it'd be a big deal, considering that chats could potentially be long enough to alter multiple stats as they moved along ChatStates.
And suddenly while I was thinking all that through and getting all excited an hour has passed. Time for me to go to bed. >.<
Ummm...I tried to order the suggestions based on how much work I thought they'd be for you. The first two wouldn't be too hard (I think), but would be huge quality of life improvements. The last three are things that I think could add a lot to the game, and open up the possibility for doing some really cool things in the future...but they're all rather a lot of work.
You can tell I got a little excited thinking about the possibilities of that last one. Sorry if the excessive detail was annoying or unnecessary cuz there's already an easier/better way to do this through scripts. =3
And thanks for all the great work you've done on this game! This has actually replaced Skyrim as my preferred method of hopping into a fantasy world when I want to relax after a long day...which is either a good thing or a bad thing when you consider that this is SUPPOSED to be a porn game.
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EDIT: Insomnia's the worst. Since I wasn't sleeping anyways, I went ahead and threw together a very simple hypothetical .chatsx file, which might be more readable than my attempt at explaining the general idea I'd had in mind. =x
While I was typing that out, tho, I realized that it'd be cool if you could reference stats, skills, and globals like your own Disposition stat for Conditionals. So at least I feel justified in my sleeplessness. =P
Aside question: Would implementing this format ultimately make it easier for you to implement scripted encounters in the game? Or is it easier for you to just program it straight into your scripting language?
