devolution

Author Topic: General Discussion  (Read 3788708 times)

0 Members and 11 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline DarkTl

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4737
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #405 on: February 26, 2013, 12:47:55 AM »
She took a break to get hit on the head and spit blood. She is really happy now! we can safely award her with a retarded trait after that
Haha, excellent text for acquisition of Retarded trait, and we already have such great picture for her.
You talked about events that activate only on certain conditions yourself, so now go ahead and code it  :D

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #406 on: February 26, 2013, 01:30:23 AM »
Haha, excellent text for acquisition of Retarded trait, and we already have such great picture for her.
You talked about events that activate only on certain conditions yourself, so now go ahead and code it  :D
 

I would if we had such a pic for all girls. I will be busy for the day, but I will try to code something tonight. Plan is to improve brothels screen and logic.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 01:32:43 AM by Xela »
Like what we're doing?

Offline rudistoned

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 229
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #407 on: February 26, 2013, 04:09:39 AM »
Hey guys,

there was some talk about organizing the pictures into categories. Xela mentioned that it's a goal of this project to match pictures to picture description well (or even as close as possible?). This is also a goal of my own project, Pytherworld, so I worked on that already. Tools I developed to organize pictures and describe them in a way software can understand:

imgtag
A little application with a graphical user interface that can add user-defined tags, e.g. names for categories, to image files. Tags are stored inside image files as XMP metadata, so they will stay there even if the file is renamed or moved somewhere else in the filesystem. I was planning to add an option to export the tags in the image files to XML later.
Images can also be tagged based on the names of the folders they are in or, in mass tagging mode, based on their location in the file system.
System requirements: Windows (tested on Windows 7 64bit)
If no windows is available, it can be run from source, but you will have to install quite a few dependencies (not recommended). imgtag should run on Linux too, but I never looked into packaging it for Linux. No idea if all its dependencies run on MacOS.


ImageDatabase
Pytherworld uses a group of classes to represent the available picture repertoire. Currently, you can find all images in the database that...
...have every tag in a provided group of tags, e.g. all images with "charname - Mio", "sex - fuck" and "location - garden"
...have none of the tags in a provided group of tags
You can also rank a group of images according to how many tags of a given group of tags each image contains.
Combining these search options, powerful and detailed picture selection is possible.

The image database is a somewhat involved system, meaning it's a big chunk of code to understand, but it has been around for several months, has become quite stable, should be relatively easy to port and can be customized by subclassing it.

tagini
Tags can be defined by users via a INI configuration file. They are organized in categories so it becomes easy to ask questions like "Are there any sex-related tags on this picture". This little class reads the ini file and provides this information to the application, along with a few convenience methods for tag handling.


I tink especially imgtag could be a useful tool for this project as it is completely independent of PyTFall, can be customized by editing a text file and should be relatively easy to use because of the graphical user interface.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 04:29:14 AM by rudistoned »

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #408 on: February 26, 2013, 04:58:44 AM »
Hey guys,

there was some talk about organizing the pictures into categories. Xela mentioned that it's a goal of this project to match pictures to picture description well (or even as close as possible?). This is also a goal of my own project, Pytherworld, so I worked on that already. Tools I developed to organize pictures and describe them in a way software can understand:

imgtag
A little application with a graphical user interface that can add user-defined tags, e.g. names for categories, to image files. Tags are stored inside image files as XMP metadata, so they will stay there even if the file is renamed or moved somewhere else in the filesystem. I was planning to add an option to export the tags in the image files to XML later.
Images can also be tagged based on the names of the folders they are in or, in mass tagging mode, based on their location in the file system.
System requirements: Windows (tested on Windows 7 64bit)
If no windows is available, it can be run from source, but you will have to install quite a few dependencies (not recommended). imgtag should run on Linux too, but I never looked into packaging it for Linux. No idea if all it's dependencies run on MacOS.


ImageDatabase
Pytherworld uses a group of classes to represent the available picture repertoire. Currently, you can find all images in the database that...
...have every tag in a provided group of tags, e.g. all images with "charname - Mio", "sex - fuck" and "location - garden"
...have none of the tags in a provided group of tags
You can also rank a group of images according to how many tags of a given group of tags each image contains.
Combining these search options, powerful and detailed picture selection is possible.

The image database is a somewhat involved system, meaning it's a big chunk of code to understand, but it has been around for several months, has become quite stable, should be relatively easy to port and can be customized by subclassing it.

tagini
Tags can be defined by users via a INI configuration file. They are organized in categories so it becomes easy to ask questions like "Are there any sex-related tags on this picture". This little class reads the ini file and provides this information to the application, along with a few convenience methods for tag handling.


I tink especially imgtag could be a useful tool for this project as it is completely independent of PyTFall, can be customized by editing a text file and should be relatively easy to use because of the graphical user interface.

It's to advanced. We will use simpler system for Pytfall... This is a brilliant idea for a game with limited amount of pictures.
Like what we're doing?

Offline rudistoned

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 229
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #409 on: February 26, 2013, 05:09:52 AM »
How do you plan to match pictures to text descriptions in PyTFall?

Btw, I think my system is best suited for a game with lots of pictures. If the amount of pics is limited, it is easiest to just map a list of image file paths to every text line, so every match between picture and text has been checked by someone. My system really pays off if people add lots of pictures to it, because existing text descriptions will find their pictures based on tags. With my system, you can add new pictures to a text description without even knowing this text exists. Of course, if the tags on pictures do not describe the pictures well, the last point I made is actually a disadvantage of my system. However, sloppy picture description by girl pack authors will always lead to inferior results, whatever system you use.

Offline DarkTl

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4737
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #410 on: February 26, 2013, 05:55:36 AM »
Well, I don't know how are these tools look like, but if they able to make pictures hunting and sorting at least a little easier and quicker, I'd like to try them.

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #411 on: February 26, 2013, 07:39:10 AM »
How do you plan to match pictures to text descriptions in PyTFall?

Through picture categories like in WM.

Well, I don't know how are these tools look like, but if they able to make pictures hunting and sorting at least a little easier and quicker, I'd like to try them.

Have you actually read the suggestion?

 It is not meant to make anything easier. He is suggesting that you take every single picture for girls in PyTFall and tag it using a piece of software with GUI interface.

 It would require code to be adapted to PyTFall that I would guess take us a couple of weeks at our pace at least.

 Also, I want to final release of SimBrothel version to have at least 80 - 100 girls. Let's say 150 pictures per girl and 10 tags per picture (would hardly make sense to go through the trouble for less) and 5 seconds per tag (taking into consideration that you'd have to go get coffie, reload images, take breaks, get distracted and so on 5 second per tag is not even a realistic estimate). So that and just that comes to a workload of 200 hours if you're lucky enough to be able to work fast and without distractions. Not including the time needed to write the code enabling this to work in PyTFall.

Basically, my answer is this: If someone tags all the pictures (not willing to tag, actually completes at least 70% of all workload), I promise to do everything possible to write code to adapt Rudi's tagging system to PyTFall. Otherwise, we proceed as planned, with image categories in WM style.

==================================
Edit:
+ It makes less sense in PyTFall for three reasons:
1) Most jobs are fairly straight-forward and not very numerous. Not very difficult to match.
2) For unique quests and events (those that are meant to work just with one particular girl) specific images will can be called with one single line of code so modder can pic exactly what is required.
3) Image categories are being created automatically giving us a lot of options (not as many as with tagging system obviously). For specific events, it's easy to create a category required.

Another issue is that you cannot tag everything (or you can but it will take you 1000 hours instead of 200 and it will likely cause a mess). For an event where four girls from the same 'Origin' go to onsen  together on rest job... It's not realistic to tag that. Code will still have to be written.

I know tagging just seems perfect for OtherWorld/PytherWorld, but I made packs for WM, I edited them, I am used to them and I want the same system in PyTFall cause it will not 'feel' the same to me otherwise...
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 08:06:26 AM by Xela »
Like what we're doing?

Offline DarkTl

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4737
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #412 on: February 26, 2013, 09:00:11 AM »
Have you actually read the suggestion?
Nope, sorry, I didn't read it at all, my previous post was written by my cat walking across the keyboard. Oh, wait a sec, it says it read the suggestion before walking, so that's all right, I guess. Good cat.

As you said,
Keep in mind that the more categories like bj_deep or rest_garden
Looks like we going to use a huge amount of categoties already. Maybe even more than any other brothel game had.
Not to mention the fact that pretty much every single job or even school ideally needs its own type of pictures. And we, hopefully, will have even more jobs or some other picture-related things (dance, singing, party, who knows what else).

I don't see many differences between renaming each of them (and you should keep in mind dozens of categories we going to use) and tag system (when you select right tags from dozens of suggested by software), except the second one may bea little more convenient and quick.

Remember, SimBrothel has its own tool for creating girls, and quite handy one. I always thought wm and wm ex could use something similar too (I know, they have one, but totally outdated and less handy).
----------------------------
OK, I feel some inspiration after taking part in this discussion. Back to texts  :)
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 09:32:17 AM by DarkTl »

Offline rudistoned

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 229
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #413 on: February 26, 2013, 09:55:39 AM »
Quote
Image categories are being created automatically
Now that can't be the whole truth. I'm not familiar with the way WM sorts pictures in categories, but I'm sure a human needs to sort them at some level. Do you create a category by copying the images in a folder (so all images of the garden category are in a folder called "garden")? Do you create a category by renaming the image files, so garden images would be called "garden01.png", "garden02.png" and so on?

Quote
It is not meant to make anything easier.
My suggestion is definitely meant to make handling pictures easier. If my tools actually can make handling images easier depends on what you want to do with them in PyTFall. That's what I'm trying to find out here.

Quote
He is suggesting that you take every single picture for girls in PyTFall and tag it using a piece of software with GUI interface.
You can do that with imgtag, yes. You can also use the folder method I described above (whole foldertrees are supported, so you can add several tags to each image this way; Adding more than three is tiresome, though).


Quote
80 - 100 girls [...] 150 pictures per girl and 10 tags per picture [...] 5 second per tag
So you would spend 50s to select 10 tags? How? I sort my picture files by character, so all tags describing the looks of the character are added based on the location of the image in the file system. In the GUI, I choose a location, an activity, one or two tags describing other characters in the image and a clothing style. Takes maybe ten seconds (4-5 clicks) and I end up with 7 tags from the file's location in the file system and 4-5 from the GUI.
Even ten seconds is a long time for 15000 pictures, so if the information is not needed in PyTFall, I would not invest the time. However, I can't imagine how you will match the description of what's happening to the picture if all you have is one category the picture is in. For example, if you are looking for a picture for a whorejob, and you fetch a picture from the "whorejob" category, how can you tell if the picture shows one or a group of customers, or a bedroom, a park or a bar as location, or even a male or female customer? Are you going to have conglomerate categories, e.g. "WhorejobOneManBedroom"?

Quote
+ It makes less sense in PyTFall for three reasons:
1) Most jobs are fairly straight-forward and not very numerous. Not very difficult to match.
2) For unique quests and events (those that are meant to work just with one particular girl) specific images will can be called with one single line of code so modder can pic exactly what is required.
3) Image categories are being created automatically giving us a lot of options (not as many as with tagging system obviously). For specific events, it's easy to create a category required.
1) I disagree, unless you plan on having a lot more generic description than I thought you would.
2) I agree. This usecase should not be solved with tags.
3) Human action is unavoidable, as explained above. Calling this process "automatic" is misleading.

Quote
to adapt Rudi's tagging system to PyTFall
This is an option, but not required to use imgtag. I could also add an export feature to imgtag that allows saving the "image category information" in a format PyTFall understands, e.g. XML.


Quote
Well, I don't know how are these tools look like, but if they able to make pictures hunting and sorting at least a little easier and quicker, I'd like to try them.
Well, none of my tools make picture hunting any easier. I don't really see what kind of tool could do that, unless one wrote a specialized version of google picture search.
They do help with sorting, however. The more keywords/tags/categories you want to add per image, the more help imgtag is. IMHO, more than three keywords per image file are terrible to pull of if only folders are used for sorting.

EDIT: I'm currently uploading my most stable version of imgtag into my dropbox folder. I've used this version successfully for some time now, so I know it works at my machine. It should also work on other Windows PCs. It still has a few bugs and is slow for large images (those problems are fixed in the dev version, which is not ready yet for other reasons). imgtagGtk comes with dummy tags and some random pictures, so you can try it right away. In order to use it, you would have to enter your own tags in settings.ini. I could do that for you if you feel that is too much tinkering.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 10:18:17 AM by rudistoned »

Offline CherryWood

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 643
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #414 on: February 26, 2013, 03:58:25 PM »
Ok, I add my option too
Basically, my answer is this: If someone tags all the pictures (not willing to tag, actually completes at least 70% of all workload), I promise to do everything possible to write code to adapt Rudi's tagging system to PyTFall. Otherwise, we proceed as planned, with image categories in WM style.
We planned to rework all of the girls. That means I have to look at every one of sakura/hinata/tenten pics again and choose category for it and rename it. Adding tags instead will only take a bit more time, so I don't see this as a problem at all if we choose to use them. (for me I mean, I'm not commenting need for new code)
--------------


From my experience I believe tags will not make creating girlpack easier, because "final  sorting" part is just a fraction of the required time to create one. I tried that program and I can't imagine using it before 90% of the work is already done. But because of the same reason, it's not a bother either.


Current system is working nicely now. I can see only one issue and that is when it comes to picture that should belong to more categories. This is a very minor problem in still relatively small number of categories in current version, easily solved by duplicating that picture. From my own modder perspective, for girl specific events it's easy and sufficient.

But if there is a plan to add a lot of generic repeatable events and messages that can take advantage of pictures belonging to more then one categories and more advanced sorting, there's no doubt that tag system would be great for that.
So it all come to question how much of these we want to add and how hard is to code this new system, and I don't know anything about that.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2013, 04:46:13 AM by CherryWood »

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #415 on: February 26, 2013, 04:05:44 PM »
Do you create a category by renaming the image files, so garden images would be called "garden01.png", "garden02.png" and so on?

That's fairly close to it, yes.


Ok, lets say someone actually tags 15000 images... What's the next step? Can you explain me two things in Laymans terms:

1) How do we transfer these image tags into a Python class?

2) How do we call such an image?

It still seems like an insane idea to me... workload seems monstrous, it's like Daisy's approach to game design, to spend an year to slightly improve two or three things in the game instead of adding new kickass features...

I'll see if I can write at least 50 lines of code today before my head turns itself off completely :)
Like what we're doing?

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #416 on: February 26, 2013, 04:27:47 PM »
So it all come to question how much of these we want to add and how hard is to code this new system, and I don't know anything about that.

Neither do I... In any case, I agree that our system as it is today kicks ass of every SimBro system and WM and most likely OW as well...

Remember, SimBrothel has its own tool for creating girls, and quite handy one. I always thought wm and wm ex could use something similar too (I know, they have one, but totally outdated and less handy).
----------------------------

...... yes, but I also remember another thing: That version of SimBrothel can only tell difference between profile picture type (Of which it allows one per game) and a max 8 more pictures that are not tagged or defined at all... basically that means that game is displaying text that girl gave a nice BJ while picture might show her being raped by a lizard.  ???
Like what we're doing?

Offline DarkTl

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4737
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #417 on: February 26, 2013, 05:05:44 PM »
2) How do we call such an image?
As far as I understand, for now WM as well as PyTFall analyzes pictures in the characters folders during start-up and and creates a database. I know nothing about Python class, but since rudistoned says he "could also add an export feature to imgtag that allows saving the "image category information" in a format PyTFall understands, e.g. XML.", let's say such pics database will be created by his software, not the game, as a separated XML file inside character folder. So if you want normal sex, you call a random image with <nsex> tag or something.
 
That version of SimBrothel can only tell difference between profile picture type (Of which it allows one per game) and a max 8 more pictures that are not tagged or defined at all...
Wanna make a better editor for PitFall?  ;)

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #418 on: February 26, 2013, 05:13:14 PM »
As far as I understand, for now WM as well as PyTFall analyzes pictures in the characters folders during start-up and and creates a database. I know nothing about Python class, but since rudistoned says he "could also add an export feature to imgtag that allows saving the "image category information" in a format PyTFall understands, e.g. XML.", let's say such pics database will be created by his software, not the game, as a separated XML file inside character folder. So if you want normal sex, you call a random image with <nsex> tag or something.

That question was aimed at Rudi, all two of us can do is guess :)

Wanna make a better editor for PitFall?  ;)

I want to, but I want to create this game even more. Editor can be built as part of a game later.
Like what we're doing?

Offline Xela

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6893
  • "It's like hunting cows"
Re: SimBrothel: -PyTFall- Dev Thread: Writers needed!
« Reply #419 on: February 26, 2013, 06:28:27 PM »
==================================

Ok, my 50 lines of code for today are done...

Lets land our alien picturetagging spaceship for a moment and figure out a more down to earth issue at hand:

What fininsial stats do we need? This issue has been raised by GodDra once before. Me being a nub, not even considering that we may require such a thing, today way the first day I wrote a line of code with that in mind.

My next objective is to make a brothel screen a little bit prettier, add some stats and info to it.

Possibility 1:

I suggest the WM approach:

 - We add Brothel's profit to the brothel screen
 - We make sure that amount of cash earned and spent (per girl/per brothel/per event) is displayed in next day texts.

Workload 3 - 4 hours.

Possibility 2:

- We keep track of earnings (Work) and expenditures (Upkeep, wages, school fees, advertising, upgrades etc.) for the duration of the whole game and add that number to girl's profile screen and brothel's screen.

Workload 4 - 6 hours.

Possibility 3:

Same as possibility two but we log that info on per category bases and make a separate screen to access that info.

Workload 6 - 10 hours.

Possibility 4:

We create a new powerful recordskeeping class and record as much info as possible, like what job was performed on what day and how much a girl or brothel have made lost.

Workload 30 - 40 hours.

Possibility 5:

We rewrite the whole game and record everything...

Workload ? - ? hours. It's be done before the end of the world... I hope :)


I vote for option 1, maybe two. Any thoughts or requests? I'll be prolly coding this part next.
Like what we're doing?