General Discussion

[DarkTl]

If you remember SM3 gameplay, there are many events when something happens at the beginning of the day, before you even have a chance to do something else. Atm I tie these things to the main screen, but of course it's not a reliable solution.

[Xela]

That is not reliable even as it stands now if you don't allow for >= day. I see no good way around that, especially if we allow MC exploration. It's one or the other and proper MC exploration is prolly a better bet.

[DarkTl]

By reliability here I mean not time but space 
Main screen looks like a placeholder because it still has tons of free space that could be used to show or control something instead of showing the same image in high resolution. So I'm not even sure if we'll continue to return there after ND screen.

Also, in cases when we need to just update the quest log (and thus advance quest because some time passed) and nothing else, nothing prevents us from doing so inside ND screen at some special tab.

[Xela]

By reliability here I mean not time but space 
Main screen looks like a placeholder because it still has tons of free space that could be used to show or control something instead of showing the same image in high resolution. So I'm not even sure if we'll continue to return there after ND screen.

Also, in cases when we need to just update the quest log (and thus advance quest because some time passed) and nothing else, nothing prevents us from doing so inside ND screen at some special tab.

I have plans some plans for the screen but if don't pen out, we may remove it in favor of a building screen I guess.

[Xela]

Game is unstable atm, I left a bit of SimPy land out somewhere... gonna try to fix it tonight.

===>>
Done, saving should be working again. This is crap... I need to religiously prevent Ren'Py and SimPy lands from crossing, those errors are really hard to trace down.

[Xela]

I've archived most threads in the design section, some of those designs did no longer exist in up to date PyTFall or had been changed completely.

[DarkTl]

Our weapon attacks actually have a menuname field that should be used in gui. Yet the game never uses it, for mobs and for characters.

[Xela]

It should? We use it for menu, not gui... I should have called it shortname then

[DarkTl]

To be precise, current names are fine too if you can insert a space between Sword and Attack in SwordAttack via strings manipulations 
They look weird without the space.

[Xela]

Right... it's not a good idea because we may get attack names in the future where splitting strings on caps is no longer safe/desirable. We can add menu names just for the normal attacks I guess.

[Xela]

I'll try to keep the building interface generic somehow for all upgrades (brothel/club/bar/guild and etc.). I don't like the idea of guild having it's own unique interface because that interferes with concept of the game.

So there are "building" properties and there are "business" properties:

Building:
- Slots (indoor/outdoor).
- "Stats" (Dirt, Fame, Rep, Security, etc.)
- Buttons (Add a business, Advertise (if appropriate), Items transfer (will be moved to the top stripe), Finances, Maintenance, Sell (may be a good idea to move it to Realtor))
- List of active businesses. I am thinking about limiting a number of those somehow.
- Manager.
- Tooltip.
- Name.
- Picture of a building.

===>>
Businesses (upgrades):

- Expansion Upgrades.
- Slots (How much slots they are using).
- Controls (business related, this can be very broad).
- Moar?
- Tooltip...

===>>
Any thoughts?

[DarkTl]

We don't really have an option to form and send multiple teams to multiple locations outside the guild, it has to be unique in its own way 

I can see the building screen, it matches your description. Now define "business".

[Xela]

We don't really have an option to form and send multiple teams to multiple locations outside the guild, it has to be unique in its own way 

I can see the building screen, it matches your description. Now define "business".

Well... that's debatable. We are somehow treating SE as some super business but you could just as simply start a cleaning service and form/send "teams" to do jobs. Or split whores in the brothels into groups who'd focus on different acts or send them to "parties" to entertain guests. Even in the club, it might be possible to setup who does what, when. It would not be any harder to code than SE and you can have a lot of events and effects there as well. Guild is easier to imagine because there are similar things in many other games but if you use imagination, a lot can be done for other building as well.

So, I am thinking about how to set all of that up... assuming we'll have better sex ind. related businesses in the future, as well as stuff like crafting/workshops and etc., it is worth considering if we want to use one generic screen setup for all businesses or make special screen designs. Their controls obviously all have to be different but I can prolly come up with one generic screen layout pattern for all of them...

[DarkTl]

Hm. Yeah, it makes sense to try to use similar gui.

Also, like I said, define business. I mean ingame concept, if we have a bar and a srtipclub in the same building, they count as two or one business?

Besides, I don't understand how girls_list screen will work for multiple buildings. Atm we just see all characters. I suppose it might be useful too, but I figured buildings should show only characters inside them, or it becomes hard to imagine who's where.

[Xela]

Also, like I said, define business. I mean ingame concept, if we have a bar and a srtipclub in the same building, they count as two or one business?

These is a brief explanation here: http://www.pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=3703.msg37332#msg37332

You can look at it like this:

Building is a holder for global stats like security/dirt/total space/rep/fame (although we may move fame/rep to businesses). In that space, you can build "businesses" (aka main upgrades). Those are brothels, guilds, bars. You can have one of each in every building but I may limit that by types or plain amount in the future.

Those businesses have extensions (aka sub upgrades).

The whole system is still being revised/upgraded but that is the general setup.

Besides, I don't understand how girls_list screen will work for multiple buildings. Atm we just see all characters. I suppose it might be useful too, but I figured buildings should show only characters inside them, or it becomes hard to imagine who's where.

Just like it was before, I'll update filters there to make more sense before the release but you get a full list which you can sort by building, base trait type and some other stuff.

===>>
In Beta, all chars will have these properties:

.home (place where they live).
.workplace (building where they work).
*business (I have not decided on it yet, if we allow assigning to businesses directly, this will become a thing, right now this exists only in my mind ).
.location (a slightly more complex property which resolves where they are at the moment, that can be home or work or exploring or city or slavemarket and etc.).

.action (None/rest/job, this determines what the char is supposed to be doing).

So... what do we do in the businesses?... This:

- First we check for so called "priority" workers. Those are chars that are located inside of the building and have the EXACT same job set as action as is required.
- Then if desirable, we check for "any" workers. Those are all workers in that location that would agree to do the required job but are set to do something else (other than rest obviously and none (I made that implicit, it prolly should not be)).

The idea is to check for priority first and if that fails, go with any. There will be an option in chars control for individuals and building wide to only allow priority to be used, but that is usually a disadvantage. I am not sure if it will be allowed to bind workers to a specific business as well, prolly not, at least not for beta.

==>>
This is the plan for now anyway...