Proposal: Configuration Screen

[DocClox]

I'm beginning to think there's a good case for a configuration screen in the game, so players can adjust some game details to suit their style of play. There are some arguments going around that are basically issues of style. These may be best solved by letting people set their own thresholds for some values

Some things that I've been thinking of:

Tax Rate
Beautyweighting for random girls
Max Traits loaded from file (or created for random girls)

I'm also tempted to throw in an option to have masochistic girls respond positively to force, since that seems to be another recurring debate.

If we do this, what else would people like to see? I don't promise we'll include everything, or even do it at all, but I'd like to get an idea of what players see as the problem areas.

[zodiac44]

That is an excellent idea.  Maybe include preset defaults for Easy/Average/Hard modes for certain variables that affect difficulty (tax rate, max traits, beauty, customer count [high/medium/low rather than a specific number], aggressiveness of opponents, etc).

[DocClox]

Yeah, one of the reasons I'd like to do this is so we can get a better idea of what would be good settings for easy/average/hard.

Customer frequency and rival aggression both sound like worthwhile additions.

[letmein]

Perhaps it is just my computer, but your formatting seems to have disappeared.  Let me re-list your suggestion, to see if I have the right of it (and, of course, comment)...

Tax Rate
Beauty weighting for random girls
Max Traits loaded from file (or created for random girls)
Customer frequency
rival aggression


To the overall idea:  I don't see why this would be a *bad* idea, although if everyone customizes the game to their liking it might make balancing an issue.

Going down the list...
1) Sure.  Simple difficulty modifier, especially since (as has been stated elsewhere, by lots of people) money is basically a nonissue right now since it's so terribly unbalanced.
2) Meh...   I wouldn't focus on just randoms, if you're going to do this.  I've talked about this slightly in the thread for this, but basically my opinion is to alter it for all girls or not at all.
3) Maybe.  Depends on your implementation.  Would you take a random set from the givens, or just the first few?  Would this include a total cap?
4) I, personally, wouldn't mess with this too much since customer frequency is already modified by lots of things, several of which I suspect are buggy.
5) I'm not entirely clear what you mean, here...  would you just be increasing attack frequency?  How about power of attacks?  Overall rival power?  First date of attacks?  Number of rivals?  Frankly, rivals are pretty ignorable at the moment, which is ironic considering they're the "victory" condition.

[zodiac44]

By allowing customized difficulty settings, we would pretty much be throwing the idea of balancing the game out the window.  We could balance it for the default settings, but beyond that we would be trusting the user to self-balance the game for his (her?) own tastes.  I don't think that's a bad thing, either, even if the player can completely unbalance the game by changing the options.  Some players will just want to play casually and get their thrills from ostensibly running a brothel filled with hot anime chicks.  Others will want to play the game for its own sake and enjoy the rewards of their play.  Some will even want to ratchet things up and beat their heads against the wall trying to make any money at all in the game.  I don't see why we can't cater to all three types.

To address specific concerns:

3) Traits would almost have to be randomly picked off the girl's list.  Otherwise, traits that are near the top of the CoreTraits file will appear more often than those towards the end (as the girl editor writes them in the same order as the traits file).
4) So what if other things modify customer frequency?  Eventually any bugs will be worked out.  Higher frequency just makes the game easier, as the player has to put fewer girls on other duties to draw in customers.  Reducing customer frequency would make the game much harder.
5) Who knows what this means now?  As I understand it, rivals are going to get some sort of makeover anyway at some point, so we have an option to change how good they are at doing whatever it is that they do.

[letmein]

4) well, the specific example I'm worried about are jobs; some of them are tied into increasing frequency and once the new building stuff is done that will apply even more.  I wouldn't want to make some jobs unnecessary, or vice versa.  Perhaps that's not really a big deal, I dunno...

[DocClox]

Perhaps it is just my computer, but your formatting seems to have disappeared.  Let me re-list your suggestion, to see if I have the right of it (and, of course, comment)...

That's about right. That was supposed to be a bullet point list. Dunno where the bullets went.

To the overall idea:  I don't see why this would be a *bad* idea, although if everyone customizes the game to their liking it might make balancing an issue.

What zodiac44 said As long as we're not running PvP, I can't see it much matters.

2) Meh...   I wouldn't focus on just randoms, if you're going to do this.  I've talked about this slightly in the thread for this, but basically my opinion is to alter it for all girls or not at all.

Agreed. Makes more sense to scale beauty for all of them

3) Maybe.  Depends on your implementation.  Would you take a random set from the givens, or just the first few?  Would this include a total cap?

Probably wouldn't cap the total number, so you can still add traits in-game. For unique girls, my instinct is to take them off the top. That way the designer can put the traits he or she feels are most important to the character conception at the top.

4) I, personally, wouldn't mess with this too much since customer frequency is already modified by lots of things, several of which I suspect are buggy.

Possibly. I'd probably multiply the base chance before any other adjustments are added, so it shouldn't be too complex.

5) I'm not entirely clear what you mean, here...  would you just be increasing attack frequency?  How about power of attacks?  Overall rival power?  First date of attacks?  Number of rivals?  Frankly, rivals are pretty ignorable at the moment, which is ironic considering they're the "victory" condition.

Well, I was thinking of increasing the relative chance that rivals choose to attack the player rather than each other. They'll still bounce at the moment if you have your guards maxxed out, but that's a separate issue

3) Traits would almost have to be randomly picked off the girl's list.  Otherwise, traits that are near the top of the CoreTraits file will appear more often than those towards the end (as the girl editor writes them in the same order as the traits file).

I will admit, I've not looked at most of these in any great detail yet. Are traits always stored in the order they appear in CoreTraits? That would make the option a lot less appealing to my mind.

[letmein]

Oh, yeah, like *that* helps.  Exactly how many nested quotes is that?  Either way, it's way too many for me...   this shit has got to stop.  I'm not going to stay up past 3:00 working on homework ever again...  I'll take the F, it's just not worth it.   Although, if I just pull an all-nighter, I'll at least get some neato hallucinations, which might be nice.  Sleep deprivation can do some neat shit to your mind.

[DocClox]

That's teach me not to use the preview button ... well, it would if it worked. Should be better now

And yeah, sleep dep can be interesting, but it's not good for you long-term. I say that from personal experience.

[letmein]

On point 3:  the trick is that old girls might not have been designed with that in mind, and since exodia at least seems to be against the idea completely I doubt he'd go back and do it, or bother making that consideration in the future.  I'd go random, but with a very small list of essential traits that are always included if they are in the list - this is discussed elsewhere.

[zodiac44]

I will admit, I've not looked at most of these in any great detailyet. Are traits always stored in the order they appear in CoreTraits?That would make the option a lot less appealing to my mind.

I thought I responded to this, but I guess I didn't, so here goes.

Yes, traits are stored by the editor in the same order as the CoreTraits file.  Creators can manually edit the order with a text editor, but that would take forever.

[DocClox]

Yes, traits are stored by the editor in the same order as the CoreTraits file.  Creators can manually edit the order with a text editor, but that would take forever.

Ah. Bugger. Oh well, scratch plan A, I guess

[necno]

I like the idea of configuring various things and having been working on an option pane for 1.30. So far all you can do is change the resolution in-game but after 1.30 it would be a good place to add all this.

[DocClox]

Sounds like a plan