Re: PyTFall (Ren'Py)
Phew... One thing at a time
Thanks for the feedback again!
The main idea behind the game is to include and balance out several possible play-styles. The other side of the coin to people who might be intimidated by that is that there are people who welcome that. For example on the dev team, CW dislikes slavery/slave training and everything slave related... he enjoys events, dating, girlsmeets and those types of things. Dark loves exploration, items, combat. Most girlsmeets are Ren'Py scripted by CW, most battle/items related stuff is created by Dark in xml/json. I work on the code to make adding all that stuff possible for none programmers basically.
We've agreed not to force the player on any specific path, other than that we discuss new features a little bit but rarely actually ban stuff from the game. I wanted to allow arena betting as well but Dark thought it would be a way to mine gold for people who's just save/reload the game so we decided to leave it until post Alpha at least. You can have two AI team fight each other no problem and noone would mind if you wanted to add anything to the game that doesn't create a fork of: (4 example) either kill a slave or it's a game over. As long as there is an option of either kill a slave/continue paying but my cool mod ends here, it should be fine. Also anything can be discussed first...
We've been prototyping map and area exploration for the future btw, this images are from the game, features were too raw to include into the Alpha:
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- Any file that starts with items and ends with .xml and is inside of that folder will be loaded and added to items.
- I am not a programmer and never worked with XML schema so I have no idea what that's like or how is it even useful. I've only learned how to code with this project (and still am learning new stuff).
- Legacy issue, we've started with XML, then Matt came along and showed me how to do the same with JSON in 1/2 of the time and 10x the convenience I did it with XML, I forgot what XML was was since then. He spent couple of month with the team, mostly teaching me how to code stuff properly, introducing us to version control and making sure nothing remained in my sh!tty code structure that would make future development impossible. After I could take care of stuff myself, he left.
Maybe the save file size can be decreased. Especially at the cost of save loading time, just loading the tags database every time new game starts will cut the filesize in half I think. Also on unrelated issue, when I've reported file size to Ren'Py developers, their first, second and third reactions were: "Not bloody likely" but they've never seen the game. I'll analyze it properly when I get the chance. It's 17 MB in open text format so that takes a while to go through. We never had trouble tracking errors so far and transferring save files from PC to PC is impossible at the moment (it's fairly easy to fix though, all content that does not exist on receivers end would have to be deleted and tag database rebuilt).
There is a learning curve with any new game mods.
I am not sure that I understand/share the other concerns.
It should be done in Ren'Py script mostly, only advanced stuff requires Python.
Remember the scene when you first enter the Slave Market? There is a conversation where Blue moves to the left, Stan appears and they're talking.
Code:
$ g = Character("Blue", color=blue, show_two_window=True)
g "We usually try to prevent customers from seeing anything they might find unpleasant."
g "But that weasel Stan is always trying to push 'unfinished' product."
g "I mean what's the point? Reputation is much more important!"
$ s = Character("Stan", show_two_window=True)
show npc blue at bottom_quarter_right
with move
show npc2 stan at bottom_quarter_left
with dissolve
s "Hey, hey there!"
s "Is there anyone here talking about me?"
s "Just the cool things I assume!?"
g "What the hell are you talking about? Those slaves were a disgrace to our good rep!"
s "Temper, temper my dear... quality of those slaves are your problem."
s "Keeping the cash flowing, gold rolling so Mr. Big satisfied, is mine!"
s "I am going to get some measure of todays lots and what we can get for them!"
s "Don't bother our prospective clients and go play with your slaves while {color=[red]}I{/color} take care of real work! <Smirks>"
This is the whole code that governs that, animated movement and replacing pictures included. In open text format... If modders want to have it easier than this, they might have to do a whole bit of searching for a game or a system that would allow it.
I am aware that the game world is an issue, we've been postponing decisions about that for far too long but with no native English writers on the team, it'll prolly continue until we start creating content that is directly related to that, like a main story. Basically there are very free rules in the world right now and if someone wants to add event revealing more about the world, noone on the team will mind.
Clicking Help on the game menu should lead you to our part in the WM forum, repo is closed (many people were downloading it and we closed it off as we started adding NPCs and events so they would be a surprise, it was open for 5 or 6 month before that time) but PM me your username on SourceForge and I'll add you to it.
Yeah, you're prolly right but I wanted the Alpha to be the out-of-the-box kinda package. Inexperienced computer users have trouble even placing new girls into the correct folder.
