Maximum number of traits

[Madmachine]

I hate to say this, but too many traits seems to make individual girls not more unique but less.  Some of the girls in the various packs start with an huge number of them, often times redundent or contradictory.  They seem to be almost a jumble of random traits.  I had a thought that perhaps there should be different trait classes. For example, physical traits, mental traits, background or occupational traits, and finally experience trait.  For the physicial, mental and background you can pick a choise of 3 or 4 for each (less if you choose), and experience is what they have picked up though the course of the game and can be as many as will fit.

[DocClox]

I hate to say this, but too many traits seems to make individual girls not more unique but less.  Some of the girls in the various packs start with an huge number of them, often times redundent or contradictory. 

I tend to agree with you. On the other hand, the girlpack makers seem strongly opposed. And since they are the ones doing the work in this area, I feel their opinion has to carry a bit of weight.

That said, I also agree with the notion that you should have room to add traits to your girl in game time, so in the interests of keeping some trait space for in game use, I have a proposal.

Firstly, the trait limit to be left at 60

Secondly, there should be a limit to the number of traits a the game will load from a .girls file. I'm thinking 30 is a reasonable value, since (IMHO) if you can't adequately describe your girl in 30 traits, you just aint trying hard enough. Possibly we could make the cut-off level configurable by the user so that those who think that more is always better don't have to feel discriminated against.

Thirdly, there's a good argument for someone going through the released girl packs and producing a mimimalist version with traits limited to no more than six or perhaps ten. It would only need the .girls file to be changed, after all.

So, that's one way forward. Comments welcome, especially from the girlpack compilers.

[trex]

I like that compromise with the minimalist versions, and considering that traits *do* have to be limited somewhat for game development reasons, a configurable option would be great. Would configurable options be possible in other fields in the game? 


With the re-configured file, could an existing game be modified? (Even with constraints like existing girls in brothels or what not?)

[DocClox]

Would configurable options be possible in other fields in the game?

No reason why not. I think I'll start a new topic to discuss what we might make configurable

With the re-configured file, could an existing game be modified? (Even with constraints like existing girls in brothels or what not?)

Umm... I'm not sure, but offhand, I think not since once a girl file is loaded, it isn't loaded again. If that's the case, then it would take a bit of work to reconfigure traits on the fly. So assume not unless you hear otherwise.

[exodia91]

I feel like people aren't getting my point clearly enough. In a game that's moddable, there are ALWAYS going to be mods that are broken/ sub-par, that's just the way mods are, if you don't like them, don't use them. But don't try to solve this by restricting what modders can do, that's just retarded. And if you don't like what a mod has to offer, instead of complaining it makes the girl "less unique" MAKE YOUR OWN. there's an extremely easy to use tool, you have no excuse.

[DocClox]

I feel like people aren't getting my point clearly enough.

Well, that certainly seems a possibility.

In a game that's moddable, there are ALWAYS going to be mods that are broken/ sub-par, that's just the way mods are, if you don't like them, don't use them.

Fair enough.

But don't try to solve this by restricting what modders can do, that's just retarded.

Ummm... I'm proposing a change whereby you can set your game so you can have as many traits as you like up the the current maximum. So I guess you're right: I really don't see how that is "retarded".

And if you don't like what a mod has to offer, instead of complaining it makes the girl "less unique" MAKE YOUR OWN. there's an extremely easy to use tool, you have no excuse.

And in fact, that's also what I proposed. So again, I guess you're correct: one of us isn't getting through at all.

Look: I understand that this is a feature of the game that is important to you. And since you're one of the guys doing valuable work for the game as a whole, I don't much want to piss you off. And because of that, I'm doing my level best  to take your feelings into consideration.  I'm also being very careful to make sure that neither you, nor anyone who shares your philosophy of girl design needs to lose anything with these changes.

So yeah. Either I missed your point - and I'm still missing it now. Or else you're missing mine. I genuinely don't know which.

[exodia91]

You assume I was talking to you. I thought I quoted the guy...

[DocClox]

It seemed a reasonable assumption at the time.

Does that mean you'd be OK with the changes I proposed?

[exodia91]

Configuring how many traits a girl can start with seems pointless and needlessly complicated, there doesn't NEED to be an enforced limit. Let people make girls how they please, you don't have to install them, you don't have to use them, so just don't.

[DocClox]

Configuring how many traits a girl can start with seems pointless and needlessly complicated, there doesn't NEED to be an enforced limit.

It's not exactly enforced if you can set your own limit as high as you like. Well, up to the currently enforced limit of 60, which I take it you're OK with?

Let people make girls how they please, you don't have to install them, you don't have to use them, so just don't.

I'm not going to force anyone to make girls any in particular way at all. I'm just considering accommodating people who'd like to see fewer traits.

I'm not trying to make you (or anyone else) play the game in any particular way here. I'm just enabling the people who don't share your vision of the game. Why is that a bad thing?

[exodia91]

because its pointless. Guy A makes a girl with say, 12 traits, Guy B downloads and installs said girl, and tries to play. But because Guy B has his game set to only allow girls to have 6 traits or less, the game throws back an error/crashes/refuses to load the girl. So Guy B goes in, has to edit the girl to have only 6 traits.

See? the feature is pointless, if Guy B wanted a girl with only 6 traits, he could have just gone in and edited her without this feature. It is essentially, utterly pointless

[letmein]

I think what Doc's suggesting isn't to cause a hard crash when there are too many starter traits;  rather, he wants to make it that the game loads regardless, but only accepts the first X traits or a random set of X traits.  Which, if done, would *not* be pointless.  It's not a perfect solution (assuming, of course, you think there's a problem at all) but it's a decent compromise, I think.

[exodia91]

then you'd have robot girls without construct and giving birth/being wounded, etc.

[letmein]

Depends on how you exactly code the system - IIRC, some traits have been hardcoded to require others, and I would think that accomodating that would be simple enough.

[zodiac44]

None of the traits are dependent on any others, though there are some mutually exclusive ones.

Exodia, I think the point was to make it a customizable option.  If you don't want to play with a trait limit, you don't have to.  If you want to restrict traits to some minimum, then all it takes is a few clicks.  Excess traits are simply ignored (you can test that now by making a girl with >30 traits - the ones at the end are simply ignored).