Pink Petal Games
Feedback => New Features => Topic started by: zodiac44 on November 05, 2009, 12:02:27 AM
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Currently, traits are maxed out at 30 (which is far more than any beginning character ought to have), but it presents a problem late game. I usually have a ginormous pile of filthy lucre sitting around waiting to be wasted on whatever whims strike my fancy. Usually, this involves inserting absurdly expensive trait-adding items and buying them for all my girls to create my army of uberfrauen whores. When you hit the limit of 30, however, new traits disappear into the ether, never to be seen. This applies to traits picked up in the course of game play as well. For example, a trait-maxed girl will never become fragile, addicted to drugs, get an STD, or be broken through torture, to name a few. Now I don't suggest that you change things just to suit my whims (although when I lay out multiple millions for neural reprogramming drugs and physical reconditioning nanites to perfect one of my girls, I think I've earned the reward of having it work), but I can't see the logic of limiting the number of traits a girl can have, even for game-balance reasons. Limiting the number of traits a girl can start with is one thing, but whatever luck or misfortune bestows upon a girl in the game, she should keep, regardless of the number of traits she already has.
If you are concerned with save game bloat from having massive numbers of traits, you can get around that by storing the traits in a binary number, with each bit enabling or disabling a given trait. Convert the binary string into a hex value to store in the save file. Pick a large enough number of bits to start with, and you won't have to worry about running out of digits for traits. Of course, doing this would break the existing .girls/.rgirls files unless the game engine makes the conversion or someone releases a conversion tool.
The suggestion comes with the caveat that I am not aware of how things are handled on the back end, so it may be completely impractical.
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Frankly, I think that 30 traits is a ridiculous number, period.
I think traits should be split into two types - ones that are restricted, and ones that aren't. The second group should pretty much be all the drugs, the diseases, the scars, and perhaps Masochist/Fragile. The rest could be reasonably capped at, say, 10-15. Seriously, how many traits should you need to describe a girl?
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many is the person whose picture it is worth? I bet a whole lot more than 30.
That being said, this is a game, and shouldn't be expected to encapsulate the entire essence of each and every character in the game. Given that the list of traits is restrictive in and of itself, where is the harm in letting a girl obtain all non-mutually exclusive traits? Why prevent a massive accumulation of traits? Maybe I'm just blind to the consequences, but I fail to see how a limit helps anyone (or, conversely, prevents something bad from happening).
I already suggested that a limit on the number of starting traits might be a good idea, just to keep overzealous designers in check. There is no challenge in the game if you start with super girls who all have a zillion traits and maxed out stats, but in the end game when you are making money hand over fist, who gives a crap if your girls have every trait in the game?
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Personally, I'd like to see the starting trait number reduced as well. I tend to ignore traits on the whole, unless I'm looking for something with a game effect like fragile, or an addiction. The main reason is that they all get the same after a while, and you have this army of cool, sexy, big-boobed lolitas with great arses. If it was limited to say six traits, then you'd have to really think about which where the essential traits of the character.
But this has been suggested before, and the girl designers were not at all impressed.
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Yeah. That'd be me. ::)
Frankly, most traits don't do much more than add fetishes. Ignoring the others for a moment, I guess my view is still that having girls with every possible fetish trait defeats the purposes of having fetishes. I can understand where the modders are coming from - they have a neat toy, they like to play with it, they put lots of work into it and don't owe anything to complainers (or as I think of myself, a critic :-\ ). Why *should* they restrict themselves?
Meh. MAybe someday I'll just have to slam together a patch to de-trait the girls myself.
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I also find the trait limit annoying. I'm something of a perfectionist, and I feel that if I want to spend hudreds of thousands on turning my girls into super-whores, that should be possible. Seeing as the total number of traits in the game isn't that high, it wouldn't really bloat save files very much.
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Meh. MAybe someday I'll just have to slam together a patch to de-trait the girls myself.
You could make an item which removes every trait from a girl, and then play traitless >;o)
I also find the trait limit annoying. I'm something of a perfectionist,and I feel that if I want to spend hudreds of thousands on turning mygirls into super-whores, that should be possible. Seeing as the totalnumber of traits in the game isn't that high, it wouldn't really bloatsave files very much.
Ahh, a kindred soul!
I mention save game bloat only because there is a huge list of planned traits to add to the game (total would be over 100, IIRC). Multiply that times hundreds of girls and you get a pretty hefty save file. Saving traits as a binary string cuts down the space used for traits (assuming the average trait uses 10 characters at 1 byte per character) to 1/80th of the previous size, plus some small inefficiency factor for recording unused bits.
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Limitations, though, can make a work so much better. If you're restricted to 6 traits, then you, the girl designer, must think very carefully about which ones best represent the girl. Leaving the meaningless traits out and emphisising the important ones can make a girl more unique and special, creating a gem within a sea of sameness. Couple it with stats and skills, and you can more accurately replicate any of your wank girls in a meaningful and creative way.
And keep in mind that item editing can and does allow you to build items to add extra traits and skills, so even your "perfect" girl with 30 traits might end up having many of them removed or changed (I actually have a Maturity Potion item that removes the Lolita trait).
I have found that LIMITS make you more creative than a wide open canvas, and I think the trait system of this game would benefit from it.
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And I agree - that is fine and good when creating girls. I have no problem with limiting traits at creation. What I don't like is that the game limits them after creation.
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The point of having a modable game is that YOU can mod the game how YOU want, not how OTHER PEOPLE THINK YOU SHOULD. If you want girls with only 6 traits MAKE THEM YOURSELVES. If someone wants a big breasted loli with a great arse and an awesome eyepatch, who are you to limit them? You don't have to install girlpacks, you don't have to play with them, they don't come with the basic game, so STOP COMPLAINING.
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And I agree - that is fine and good when creating girls. I have no problem with limiting traits at creation. What I don't like is that the game limits them after creation.
I agree. There ought to be room to polish your girls to your hearts' content.
If you want girls with only 6 traits MAKE THEM YOURSELVES. If someone wants a big breasted loli with a great arse and an awesome eyepatch, who are you to limit them?
Furthermore, everyone should be able to write limericks with as many lines as they want, and no-one should have the right to say "but that's not really a limerick".
I must admit, I have difficulty understanding why you find this so upsetting.
You don't have to install girlpacks, you don't have to play with them, they don't come with the basic game, so STOP COMPLAINING.
We're not complaining. No one is saying "Exodia, you are doing a bad thing and we demand that you stop". We are discussing whether the game might not be better overall if you had fewer traits to play with at design time, and I think we're entitled to do that.
Your objection is however duly noted.
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The point of having a modable game is that YOU can mod the game how YOU want, not how OTHER PEOPLE THINK YOU SHOULD. If you want girls with only 6 traits MAKE THEM YOURSELVES. If someone wants a big breasted loli with a great arse and an awesome eyepatch, who are you to limit them? You don't have to install girlpacks, you don't have to play with them, they don't come with the basic game, so STOP COMPLAINING.
I come from a RPG background, and I see traits as "special powers" that the girls have. In my opinion, they should be acquired over time rather than at the start of the game. I'm not the kind of player who likes to sit down for a game of D&D and create a 20th level character to start with - it just isn't fun for me. It is for others, though, and that's fine.
When it comes to the girl packs, I often edit them myself to pare down the traits - and I'm fine with that. Someone else went to the trouble of assembling a collection of pics, assigning stats, and writing up a description, for which I am thankful. I appreciate what you and the other girl pack creators do.
I see where you are coming from, and I respect your opinion. Quite frankly, I would rather not have any limits on traits at creation if it means there are no limits in the end game.
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well, no problem with increasing the max amount they can have (already have to 60). Nothing i can do about designers adding a lot at the beginning though.
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I simply don't see the point of limiting the number of traits a modder can add to the girls in their girl packs. If you think they start with too many traits, it takes a few minutes at most to cut down their traits yourself.
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Having a limit of 60 is simply to cut down processing time. The game searches through traits (and many other things) a lot when you click next day. If the number of traits increases then the speed of the game will slow down. And as more stuff is going to be added to the game, i need to be careful how much processing i add.
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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.
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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.
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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?)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You assume I was talking to you. I thought I quoted the guy...
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It seemed a reasonable assumption at the time.
Does that mean you'd be OK with the changes I proposed?
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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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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then you'd have robot girls without construct and giving birth/being wounded, etc.
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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.
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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).
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and that leads to: what traits would get pruned? From what I can see, most of them are pretty important to describing a girl, and no matter how you code it, putting girls on a strict limit of traits is going to lead to some weird girls. Plus, its pointless, you can just load up a .girls file in the editor, and in a couple of minutes trim down girls to what you like. So for a possibly large amount of coding you have a minimal effect on gameplay, and save a few picky people 5 minutes or less of work.
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Yeah, but that's 5 minutes per girl. Plus, from my admittedly poor knowledge of coding, I wouldn't suspect that it would be all that tough to do; disregarding any GUI issues or whatever it would be a limiting count on a loop, with perhaps a check on a couple specific traits. Including GUI, it admittedly becomes slightly longer but Doc said he's planning a screen for various mechanics tweaks anyway, so why not toss this in?
If Doc is willing to do it, and if there are people who would use the option if it existed, why not allow it? It's not going to add any complications to the main game, and ignoring the whole thing entirely will be a perfectly viable choice. What's the huge issue that warrants a page-long argument?
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5 minutes per girl? more like 5 minutes for a huge list of girls, unless you agonize over what to change. With WM editor you can open up the .girls file, and just go down the list of girls taking out traits, then save it. Simple.
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Though I'd prefer if girls had a smaller trait limit. I don't mind it being insanely high either.
I do agree though, with so many traits it makes them seem less "unique" I guess? At this point in the game, traits don't seem to effect a whole lot other than a select few, so I can't say I really mind them.
When and if there's more traits that offer stat bonuses or what have you is when I'd like to see more of a limit. If that happens, I hope there's more negative traits to counter balance the flood of positive traits.
I just don't want any girls who are pretty much gods at everything from the start. Unless you have to work super hard to get one of these girls. Kind of like... a secret dungeon I suppose, or even the legendary pokemon. Legendary girls. :p
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Perhaps the best way to settle this would be to divide up the traits into different catagories.
One set of traits would be the core traits, what makes the girl that girl, and are limited.
Then you have Fetish traits that have next to no limits and can be shared between girls.
So like Demon, Catgirl, Construct and such would be Core traits, while Great Arse and Great Figure would be fetish traits.
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That would work. Means a little bit more work for me, but that would solve the problem. Fetish traits could be dropped more or less at random, since all they do is affect the number of customers you get.
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I like the idea, but I can already see girl makers protesting that <trait> isn't on the core traits list but it is absolutely essential to <character's> personality.
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I like the idea, but I can already see girl makers protesting that <trait> isn't on the core traits list but it is absolutely essential to <character's> personality.
I can't argue that you could be right. However, great figure, nice arse, sexy air, are more personal opinion than anything. What would core traits include other than Construct, cat girl ect. ?
It seems some traits that could be considered fetishes could also be considered core traits. Now it's just figuring out what would appease both parties on what should be where.
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I can't argue that you could be right. However, great figure, nice arse, sexy air, are more personal opinion than anything. What would core traits include other than Construct, cat girl ect. ?
Can we say "essential" rather than "core". Otherwise I foresee confusion with the CoreTraits resource file.
I think Essential would be anything that reflects species (demon, catgirl, construct) or anything that affects game mechanics (beyond a stat boost, or a customer fetish). So "sterile" would be essential because it stops a girl getting preggers. Big Boobs wouldn't since all it does is boost looks. So, on that basis:
ESSENTIAL
Sterile # game effect
Dependant # game effect
Cat Girl # species/origin
Demon # species/origin
Incorporial # species/origin
MILF # seems right
Fragile # game effect
Mind Fucked # game effect
Construct # game effect
Half-Construct # game effect
Tough # game effect
Horrific Scars # stats, but seems to belong here
Quick Learner # xp
Slow Learner # xp
Shroud Addict # game effects
Fairy Dust Addict # game effects
Viras Blood Addict # game effects
Aggressive # game effects
Assassin # potential game effects
Sexy Air # game effect
AIDS # game effect
Chlamydia # game effect
Syphilis # game effect
Tsundere # game effect
Yandere # game effect
Fearless # game effect
Iron Will # game effect
NON-ESSENTIAL
Big Boobs # stat boost
Strange Eyes # fetish
Puffy Nipples # fetish
Perky Nipples # fetish
Charismatic # stat boost
Charming # stat boost
Different Colored Eyes # fetish
Long Legs # fetish
One Eye # fetish
Eye Patch # fetish
Futanari # fetish
Optimist # stats
Pessimist # stats
Fleet of Foot # stats
Small Scars # stats
Cool Scars # stats
Cool Person # stats
Nerd # fetish
Clumsy # stats
Fast orgasms # stats
Slow orgasms # stats
Strong # stats
Psychic # stats
Cute # fetish
Strong Magic # stats
Lolita # fetish
Nervous # fetish
Not Human # fetish
Adventurer # fetish
Great Figure # fetish
Great Arse # fetish
Small Boobs # fetish
Good Kisser # stat
Nymphomaniac # stat
Elegant # stat
Fake orgasm expert # stat
Broken Will # stats
Masochist # stats
Sadistic # stats
Lesbian # stats
Twisted # fetish
Meek # fetish
Manly # fetish
Merciless # fetish
So, that would be about 50% of all traits are essential. A few of those you could argue either way, but overall, I'm not sure that essential traits are scarce enough to make the distinction worth while.
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I'd put the addictions on the non-essential list - they're too easy to add or get rid of to be a major consideration for girl creation. Diseases too. Sexy Air is also a little too general IMHO to be "essential". Aggression, Fearless, Tough and Iron Will could be nixed... same for Fragile, the Learners, Tsundere and Yandere, maybe even Assassin. The idea, I assume, is to make the essentials be *really* essential, and I don't think any of the above are necessary to describe any particular girl, although the last half-dozen are somewhat debatable. My goal would be to make the list really be as small as possible, and contain the REALLY, REALLY essential points of describing a girl: that means physical traits ONLY. Mental ones can be kept as semi-random, but if a girl is a demon that really shouldn't change from game to game.
As for ones that *should* make the list, I'd say One Eye and Not Human.
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Fair points - I was trying to be consistent in the way I sorted them, but I think i'd agree with all of those.
Must have missed "non-human". that should definitely be on the essential list.
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Let's try that taking your suggestions into account. I left Iron Will and Fearless in because some girls ought to be a pain to break.
ESSENTIAL
Sterile # game effect
Dependant # game effect
Cat Girl # species/origin
Demon # species/origin
Incorporial # species/origin
Mind Fucked # game effect
Construct # game effect
Half-Construct # game effect
Tough # game effect
Horrific Scars # stats, but seems to belong here
Iron Will # game effect
Not Human # fetish
Fearless # game effect
NON-ESSENTIAL
Fragile # game effect
Assassin # potential game effects
Aggressive # game effects
Big Boobs # stat boost
Strange Eyes # fetish
Puffy Nipples # fetish
Perky Nipples # fetish
Charismatic # stat boost
Charming # stat boost
Different Colored Eyes # fetish
Long Legs # fetish
One Eye # fetish
Eye Patch # fetish
Futanari # fetish
Optimist # stats
Pessimist # stats
Fleet of Foot # stats
Small Scars # stats
Cool Scars # stats
Cool Person # stats
Nerd # fetish
Clumsy # stats
Fast orgasms # stats
Slow orgasms # stats
Strong # stats
Psychic # stats
Cute # fetish
Strong Magic # stats
Lolita # fetish
Nervous # fetish
Adventurer # fetish
Great Figure # fetish
Great Arse # fetish
Small Boobs # fetish
Good Kisser # stat
Nymphomaniac # stat
Elegant # stat
Fake orgasm expert # stat
Broken Will # stats
Masochist # stats
Sadistic # stats
Lesbian # stats
Twisted # fetish
Meek # fetish
Manly # fetish
Merciless # fetish
AIDS # game effect
Chlamydia # game effect
Syphilis # game effect
Tsundere # game effect
Yandere # game effect
Quick Learner # xp
Slow Learner # xp
Shroud Addict # game effects
Fairy Dust Addict # game effects
Viras Blood Addict # game effects
MILF # seems right
Sexy Air # game effect
So that gives us 13 essential traits. If we set a default cut-off of 15 (the current max appears to be 30 rather than 60) then all the essentials could be preserved, with room left over for a couple of random ones. This could be workable :)
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I hope you're still intending to make the whole trait-limit thing an optional thing that the player can turn on or off. Especially since your list of Essential Vs. Non-essential is pretty much based around gameplay, while to most girl creators gameplay is (I think) less important than character design (for example, things like "eye patch" or "tsundere" are often a defining trait of the character)
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I hope you're still intending to make the whole trait-limit thing an optional thing that the player can turn on or off.
Yes. I'm not trying to coerce anyone into anything here. I'd like to make sure there's always room for the game to add traits, and I'd like to encourage girl creators to be a bit more frugal with their use of traits. On the other hand, I accept that different people enjoy the game for different reasons. I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment of the game.
Especially since your list of Essential Vs. Non-essential is pretty much based around gameplay, while to most girl creators gameplay is (I think) less important than character design (for example, things like "eye patch" or "tsundere" are often a defining trait of the character)
mmm... See, I'd have said that the visuals gave you all the eye-patch cues you need. You look at the picture, you see a girl with an eye patch, job done. The only thing the trait adds to the game is that you get a few more customers with eye-patch fetishes, and most people can probably live without that.
As regards "tsundere", I tend to agree, but then we need to draw a line somewhere.
Maybe the solution is just to post "lite" versions of the various .girls files and be done with it.
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Within the game itself, I really think you only have 2 options: do nothing, or add an option to prune all but X traits randomly.
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So that gives us 13 essential traits. If we set a default cut-off of 15 (the current max appears to be 30 rather than 60) then all the essentials could be preserved, with room left over for a couple of random ones. This could be workable :)
That's really too few. The idea was to make it so the girl builder has to really consider what's important to the girl while letting them go wild with the fetishes. The diseases and addictions I can see pulling, but the rest of letmein's suggests are, frankly, wrong. They should be left in there as they define the girl as a character, and are generally NOT fetishes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
<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'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 (http://pastebin.com/m4f2c4d5e) 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
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Cool beans.
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snip
I like that, actually. It would be easier to impliment and wouldn't piss the girl creators off as much. Nice idea.