The 1.29 Todo list

[DocClox]

Quite the to-do list there! I'm really excited to see it all come about. Can you be more specific as for avatar size? 100x100 is a general standard. This forum uses 65x65. Slavemakers (darkening and slightly blurring the portraits) might work well in this case as well.

I forgot to reply to this in all the excitement. 100x100 looks about right. The image will be just like any other WM image, so it should take .jpg or .png files. It's easier to use .pngs for transparency, at least on small images.

@fixet - not to worry, bishi gangs are not on the roadmap

[fixet]

@mehzerz

I may have come off wrong, as you seem to share doc's interpretation of my words, which is really not what I intended, and am sorry for
like I said, I am not challenging doc's position, or doubting his competence, or thinking of complaining to anyone

I do not have a problem with the story, narrative, his style of writing, endings, nor am I fearing it turning into an adv, because, frankly, there is about 0 chance of that happening

the only thing I have a problem with, as I have said, are the solutions to the difficulty issue, which seem to be more about limiting what I can do at certain times, rather than providing true challenge
this the impression I got, and you may not share it, but I stand by it

I actually wrote a rather long text on the ways to improve the gameplay across the board, trying to tie everything together, keeping to the format we have now, before these threads were created
but, when I re-read it, I realized it was too complicated/annoying, and that the majority of people probably wouldn't like it, so I scrapped it
it was like the 4X of whores, minus the space

I will try to bitch less and contribute more in the future, and I am sorry for any damage I may have caused and/or bad impressions I left

[Lorde]

@mehzerz

I may have come off wrong, as you seem to share doc's interpretation of my words, which is really not what I intended, and am sorry for
like I said, I am not challenging doc's position, or doubting his competence, or thinking of complaining to anyone

"I am The Jackal. {Waves gun around plane thread} YOU KNOW WHO I AM!"
sorry for hijacking again. This will be the last I say on the subject but it needs to be said.

I do see it the same way Mehzerz and Doc see it. You came into the conversation with out knowledge of what went down before and "backed the wrong horse" as they say. This isn't to say that everyone was ganging up on someone. Just that we all knew something was going to go down and frankly, rule number one of message boards is you don't keep screwing around with people that are part of the dev team and or administration.

A lot of people here where a victim of an exo temper tantrums and it was getting old. You where too and to your credit you just rolled with it. (Calling your post a useless rant would piss most people off. You went meh. I shook my head and went "again"?) Me, I ignored him as much as possible. But he was just like that and it didn't matter who you where. And it finally got to Doc with this thread. There is only so much needling someone can take. (And no, it wasn't just this thread. I'd say go through Exo's posting history but he deleted his account so that's not possible now.)

the only thing I have a problem with, as I have said, are the solutions to the difficulty issue, which seem to be more about limiting what I can do at certain times, rather than providing true challenge
this the impression I got, and you may not share it, but I stand by it

This point has been made, my solution was to pop things into a config file that you want to change. This way you can take out all the limiters and play as you see fit. However there are a lot of us that want the challenge not having the game handed to us on a platter would bring. Give us that much. 

I actually wrote a rather long text on the ways to improve the gameplay across the board, trying to tie everything together, keeping to the format we have now, before these threads were created
but, when I re-read it, I realized it was too complicated/annoying, and that the majority of people probably wouldn't like it, so I scrapped it
it was like the 4X of whores, minus the space

I will try to bitch less and contribute more in the future, and I am sorry for any damage I may have caused and/or bad impressions I left

  Write it anyway. The nice thing about this board is it really is a   melding of ideas. Most of them are chaotic. But that's the good thing.   It ends up being a think tank of ideas the Dev's can dip into and say   "this works" "This doesn't work" "this is awesome" "This not so much".
 
  Problems arise when one members idea's get not used and they start   insulting other members ideas and insulting the devs. And this can   happen without that member realizing it.
 
  Look at me, I'm selling my 1 gang idea in the gang thread pretty damn   hard. But I'm not going to flip out and start dispensing angry fortune   cookies(one lines of text. Usually insulting)  to other threads if it   isn't incorporated.  I'll just live with it. 
 
  You seem like the type that would just live with it as well. So you   probably don't have to keep apologizing. Lets just move forward.
 

[Mehzerz]

Yep, looks like I misunderstood what you were trying to say fixet, I apologize for that. But lorde pretty much already said everything that I had planned on saying so we don't need to go in further about it.
But to reiterate the config options thing. Any "limits" are pretty much changeable in the config options, so there shouldn't be too much concerned about limits. As far as the discussion over difficulty... I don't recall anything mentioned in there that Doc completely agreed with. I can see why someone may be concerned with limiting how much space is in the brothel. (That's one I was pushing for) or maybe even the tier list. (Better girls aren't so common) but other than the tier list I don't recall Doc saying there's much in there that he wanted to do. Traits could be something else that would concern you, but again they'd be modifiable so it wouldn't be too big of an issue.


My suggestion to you mr. fixet is to go into that thread point out what ideas concern you, and either write a suggestion that would work better, or just point out why you don't like it. This IS a discussion forum after all.

[Mehzerz]

I forgot to reply to this in all the excitement. 100x100 looks about right. The image will be just like any other WM image, so it should take .jpg or .png files. It's easier to use .pngs for transparency, at least on small images.

Ok so I guess you're not looking for any particular cropping or anything but just the images themselves. I went ahead and made a few quick ones. The gallery is found here: http://img687.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=58a04f9cd1d95c344ea0599.png


The 5pt stroke was added later to hide the white edges you'd normally see. Since cutting out characters is such a pain, anyone with gimp or what have you should be able to use the selection tools and quickly cut out the person. Then add the stroke to hide the white edges you missed. If however your image background is another color you may have more to deal with. You could go in and use the paint bucket to fill them with white, or you could continue to cut away at the character in an attempt to make them perfect. Either way is fine, but I personally prefer the quicker route.

[Lorde]

Ok, grabbed some Profile type images off pixiv. I'll post them in a gallery on Imagevenue and I'll update that gallery from now on. Not sure how you want me to announce an update though. This thread, PM, or a new thread. You choice Doc. 

Usable Images.
 

[Mehzerz]

Awesome. Already got a few running! Nice going Lorde. I went ahead and did Cammy since I figure the easiest way to test portraits would be to use the existing Cammy script. I think the conversation image needs to be in its own folder, otherwise it'll just get confusing. Any NPCs should probably have their own folder as well. Just throwing them in Characters would look so cluttered.


Cammy can be found here: http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/7716/e5c2be3fbeaf4ceabd9eb82.png
Any other girl portraits can be found here: http://img571.imageshack.us/g/e5c2be3fbeaf4ceabd9eb82.png/ (At the time of this writing there are none)
Any NPC/MC potential portraits here: http://img824.imageshack.us/g/58a04f9cd1d95c344ea0599.png/

[DocClox]

Excellent! You know, it hadn't entirely occurred to me that the girls are going to need their own thumbnails. Might be an idea to have a Thumb*.jpg category in the pictures folder. With maybe Thumb1.jpg, Thumb2.jpg and then ThumbHappy.jpg, ThumbAngry.jpg etc as emotion specific versions. I could do something like this:

Code: [Select]

    wm.message(
         speaker = wm.girl,
         emotion = "angry",
         position  = "left",
         text       = "You'll never get away with this you monster!"
    )

and set it up so it looked for the girls angry thumbnail, then for a generic thumb, and then for a profile pic to scale down. For shopkeepers you'd just give the image name

Code: [Select]

      wm.message(
           icon = "potion_vendor.jpg",
           position  = "right",
           text       = "I don't have anything in stock that could dominate so strong a will - but I know a man who might be able to help you."
      )
 

[Lorde]

Excellent! You know, it hadn't entirely occurred to me that the girls are going to need their own thumbnails. Might be an idea to have a Thumb*.jpg category in the pictures folder. With maybe Thumb1.jpg, Thumb2.jpg and then ThumbHappy.jpg, ThumbAngry.jpg etc as emotion specific versions. I could do something like this:

Hmm, why not just give lua the ability to call a specific image from a girls folder. This would do two things.

• Don't have to rename images or add new ones to existing girl packs.
• Script writers probably have a specific image in mind so letting them call (whateverit'snameis.jpg) might work out better.

Of course, script writers could just include the thumbangry and thumbhappy with their scripts.  (Ack defeated my own argument)


Also, have some more images for the gallery. I'll post that up in a few.

[DocClox]

You could do that anyway ... umm .. no not as proposed. No reason why not though. mmm... ok

[Mehzerz]

Excellent! You know, it hadn't entirely occurred to me that the girls are going to need their own thumbnails. Might be an idea to have a Thumb*.jpg category in the pictures folder. With maybe Thumb1.jpg, Thumb2.jpg and then ThumbHappy.jpg, ThumbAngry.jpg etc as emotion specific versions.

Though I like the idea, Lordes got a point. There's no way all the modders are going to add all those images in their packs. Too much searching and cropping. However, I love the idea. I wouldn't count it out, I'd say anyone who would go so far to add such images should have the right to do so.


When I did the thumbnails I had expected them to be like the little portrait windows you get for your slave trainer in slavemaker. I never counted on actually "seeing" your character speak. So I just made windows of it. The thumbnail idea would be perfect to that effect, so whenever you had to make a decision it'd show your portrait. Or whenever someone talked it'd show theirs.


Also if we can't find enough shop keepers we can always just color edit them. lol call them twins or brothers/sisters, triplets however many shops there are. Could make for funny conversation too.


Though to disagree with Lorde, I'd rather have the thumbnails seperated... well I'd rather have ALL the images in their own categories. But, finding images of sex and adding potential thumbnails could be a huge pain if they were all together. Calling specific images to show emotion COULD work depending on the image. If the image has a lot going on shrinking down that image to 100x100 in-game isn't going to do much for it.


So yeah, I'd rather have a thumbnails folder, and an NPC folder while we're at it.

[DocClox]

Though I like the idea, Lordes got a point. There's no way all the modders are going to add all those images in their packs. Too much searching and cropping. However, I love the idea. I wouldn't count it out, I'd say anyone who would go so far to add such images should have the right to do so.

That's why I thought we'd have a fallback sequence, so it used an emotional one first, failing that a generic thumbnail, and failing that a profile image. So by default the mechanism would work with existing girls, but also anyone who wanted to create a girl with a particular dialog sequence would be able to add supporting images.

When I did the thumbnails I had expected them to be like the little portrait windows you get for your slave trainer in slavemaker. I never counted on actually "seeing" your character speak. So I just made windows of it. The thumbnail idea would be perfect to that effect, so whenever you had to make a decision it'd show your portrait. Or whenever someone talked it'd show theirs.

Well, I wasn't thinking of animation. Just to allow different thumbs for different emotions if people wanted to do that. A lot of adv style games do that, and I thought it would be a useful option. But apart from that, just a little image to pop up and show who's talking

Also if we can't find enough shop keepers we can always just color edit them. lol call them twins or brothers/sisters, triplets however many shops there are. Could make for funny conversation too.

I think I'd be happy with one or two generic shopkeepers that got used for everything where there wasn't a dedicated image. Same for goons and other generic types.

Though to disagree with Lorde, I'd rather have the thumbnails seperated... well I'd rather have ALL the images in their own categories. But, finding images of sex and adding potential thumbnails could be a huge pain if they were all together. Calling specific images to show emotion COULD work depending on the image. If the image has a lot going on shrinking down that image to 100x100 in-game isn't going to do much for it.

Yeah, a proper thumbnail will be better.

[Lorde]

Ok, so my idea probably is the worst possible way to implement this. XD

Though it is very true that girl pack creators shouldn't have to add a ton of images to their packs. This should be handled by the script creator themselves. My after thought idea of script writers including the proper thumb images with their script is probably the way to go.

It's less for you to program and script writers will just end up doing something like that anyway. If not, it will just fall back to the default image set as you say.

Also: More images. Grabbed a few monster images and one of a psycho karate butler. (Every Crime lord should have one.  ) Not to mention a wonderful image of a school girl watching TV. that I can't figure out why I can't stop staring at. But  mostly these images are random, so pic the ones you like doc.

[Mehzerz]

That's why I thought we'd have a fallback sequence, so it used an emotional one first, failing that a generic thumbnail, and failing that a profile image. So by default the mechanism would work with existing girls, but also anyone who wanted to create a girl with a particular dialog sequence would be able to add supporting images. 

Brilliant! I'll work up some generics, and have a set for Cammy. So we need, Angry, Happy, Shocked? Embarrassed/blushing?

Well, I wasn't thinking of animation. Just to allow different thumbs for different emotions if people wanted to do that. A lot of adv style games do that, and I thought it would be a useful option. But apart from that, just a little image to pop up and show who's talking 

Yeah, excuse my poor phrasing I didn't mean animation, I meant ADV style where the character pops on screen to the right and then has a dialogue box. I didn't think the MC would also need a picture for that. Since he'd never be directly talking to us. Then again, I suppose he could do just that in the intro. You'd select your MC from there anyways, might as well show his/her/its full portrait for the selection.

[DocClox]

Brilliant! I'll work up some generics, and have a set for Cammy. So we need, Angry, Happy, Shocked? Embarrassed/blushing?

Angry, happy, blushing/horny, sad, tired, shocked/frightened ... I can't think of anything else offhand. The system is open ended though, so if a girl has an event needing something not specified, it can be added in for that girl. And if it uses an emotion that isn't available, the system just uses a generic thumb.

  Yeah, excuse my poor phrasing I didn't mean animation, I meant ADV style where the character pops on screen to the right and then has a dialogue box. I didn't think the MC would also need a picture for that. Since he'd never be directly talking to us. Then again, I suppose he could do just that in the intro. You'd select your MC from there anyways, might as well show his/her/its full portrait for the selection.

Oh, I see what you mean. I'm a bit slow today. Yeah, if nothing else it'll be handy to be able to show the PC's pic when he's speaking to someone - help reinforce the feeling of a dialogue.