Maximum number of traits

[letmein]

Ah, but we are using different standards of what is and isn't a "defining" character.  I'm using purely physical traits - I don't know or care where most of the girls came from, meaning that I don't know about their personality at all.  It's totally fluid, in my eyes.  On the other hand, physical traits are obvious (you can SEE them), and I would think that no one here would want those to change from game to game.

Now, when I say "physical" traits, you may say that things like Big Boobs and Long Legs should be included.  I suppose that, by definition, yes they could;  but I claim that with the caliber of girl that is included here traits like these are simply too universal to be "essential".  You can argue that point, but it's basically an opinion call.  On the other hand, there are a couple traits like One Eye (and, maybe, Tsundere and Yandere, since I'm not exactly sure what those do) that should be included;  I had One Eye noted but Doc must feel otherwise, because he does not.

The whole point of the list is that it is arbitrary - I don't expect everyone to agree on it, but I maintain that an defensible argument can and should be made to keep the list as small as possible.  Isn't that the point of this whole deal?  If the list were too long, then this whole subject is basically moot.  Personally, I feel that even 15 starting traits is too much - I'd prefer, say, eight or even six.  My view on traits is that they should be special;  some traits should be virtually unique, and even the more 'common' ones shouldn't be given to every girl.  Of course, some traits don't apply under that assumption - MILF, the addictions, etc. - but as far as the fetish things go those should be rare enough that a player has to choose which ones they include in a brothel.  You shouldn't have one girl that's able to service 80 fetishes;  you shouldn't even have a brothel that can do that.

[NuMysterio]

That was my point, limit the number of Essential traits for each girl so that the designers can go hog wild on the Fetish traits while still making each girl reasonably unique.  It shouldn't be a SMALL list, and it should include the more stand out traits or ones that are purely discrpitive rather than effective.

For example, Assassin should be an Essential trait as something like that would be a major part of the girl's personality.  Fragile is another one, it defines the girl.  Dependent, Tsundree, Yandere, Fearless, Iron Will, these are all the core makings of a person, so they should be Essential.  Then you limit how many Essential traits each girl gets (say, 3) and then leave plenty of room for the Fetish traits (15 is probably more than enough). 

So the core difference between a Cat Girl, Horrific Scars, Assassin and a Demon, Slow Learner, Sexy Air are more apparent and well defined.  You want the list to be reasonably large because it increases the number of different combinations of girls possible to create while allowing the fetishes to add the finishing touches.

I think we're on the same page, really.  The IMPORTANT traits should be limited per girl, but the UNIMPORTANT (AKA Fetish) traits can be nearly unlimited because they don't really have any meaning toward who the girl is, they're just part of the gameplay mechanic.  I'm saying the number of Essential traits should be greater to give more flexibility in creation without letting the builder just assign any old trait to a girl.

And that rambled a bit more than I wanted.  Oh well.

[LordShame]

I'm just thinking out loud here, but why have a defined list of "essentials" at all? Maybe there could be an order of importance for each trait of each girl, and depending on user settings or whatever, the game only takes for first 3 or 5 or 10 or all of them.

Let's say there are two girls. Both have "elegant", "great figure", "big boobs", "nymphomaniac" and "fast orgasms".

In the editor, they could be defined like....

Girl A has:
1.Elegant
2.Big boobs
3.Fast orgasms
4.Nymphomaniac
5.Great figure

Girl B has:
1.Great figure
2.Nymphomaniac
3.Big boobs
4.Fast orgasms
5.Elegant

If you're playing a game with maximum traits enabled, both girls have the same traits. But if you play a game set to take, say, the first three, suddenly you have two different girls. So you can customize your game for accuracy and tell it to use a lot of traits, or you can customize it for variety and it only takes the most important.

There's another simpler way to go as well, if ranking every girl's individual traits is too much work. There could be just an option at girl creation to toggle whether a trait is essential or not. It wouldn't make a difference to people who want to play with all set traits, but for the other players there could be a setting to disable non-essential traits. So in effect one girl could have, say, "elegant" flagged as essential because it's a defining facet of her character, while another girl would have it flagged as non-essential because it's something that applies to her but isn't a critical aspect of who she is.

[DocClox]

OK. I've been thinking about this, and I've pretty much reached a decision. Let me tell you what I'm going to do:

Short term: I've just about finished converting the girls file to use XML. When that happens if a .girlsx extension exists for a given filename then that will be loaded over the .girls file.  You can edit XML files with notepad (or with a proper editor), just like the current format, but XML has a lot more context information built into it. So it's going to be trivially easy to pare down any traits list that strikes the player as excessive.

By way of example, here's Kos Mos under the new format:

Code: [Select]

        <girl   name = 'Kos Mos'
                desc = 'Her devotion to logic and probability makes her quite difficult to manageat times. She seems bland to talk to and doens&apos;t have much of a personality.'
                charisma        = '0'
                happiness       = '100'
                libido          = '10'
                constitution    = '100'
                intelligence    = '90'
                confidence      = '80'
                mana            = '0'
                agility         = '100'
                fame            = '0'
                level           = '0'
                ask_price       = '0'
                house           = '0'
                exp             = '0'
                age             = '100'
                obedience       = '50'
                spirit          = '50'
                beauty          = '100'
                tiredness       = '0'
                health          = '100'
                pc_fear         = '0'
                pc_love         = '0'
                pc_hate         = '0'
                anal            = '2'
                magic           = '0'
                BDSM            = '1'
                normal_sex      = '3'
                beastiality     = '2'
                group           = '3'
                lesbian         = '3'
                service         = '1'
                strip           = '4'
                combat          = '6'
                status          = 'Normal'
        >
                <trait name ='Big Boobs' />
                <trait name ='Cute' />
                <trait name ='Strong' />
                <trait name ='Adventurer' />
                <trait name ='Assassin' />
                <trait name ='Sexy Air' />
                <trait name ='Great Figure' />
                <trait name ='Great Arse' />
                <trait name ='Tough' />
                <trait name ='Construct' />
                <trait name ='Long Legs' />
        </girl>

So all you have to do is delete the <trait> lines you don't like and start a new game. Couldn't be easier Here's the full  girls.girlsx file.

I'll also see about loading the major girlpacks once again, andI expect I shall be pruning a few entries to taste.I'll  post the girlsx files when I do.

Longer term, I am going to do a config screen, and I intend that a trait cap will be one of the configurable fields. I'll see if I can arrange to load traits in the order they appear in the XML file. That way putting the ones you want kept at the top will ensure they appear in the game.

Longer term still, and  I'll look at allowing players to define which traits they consider to be essential and which not, possibly along with the ability to define your own traits as well. (You kind of can already, it's just hard to make them have an effect).

If I get all that done, the final thing will be to look into adding a degree of controlled randomness into the unique girls, at player discretion.

[edit]

Hmm... don't know what happened to the formatting on Kos Mos there. Should be better now

[letmein]

Cool beans.

[NuMysterio]

snip

I like that, actually.  It would be easier to impliment and wouldn't piss the girl creators off as much.  Nice idea.