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Monday, March 26, 2012

Productive Babbling

I love productive mornings.

So some of the bugs that I reported as fixed from the update yesterday where, in fact, not fixed. I don't know why; the only thing I can think of is that I had a couple of RAGS crashes when I was working on them, and the crashes evidently erased some of the fixes that I had made, which is annoying. Apparently, that six minutes I lost was a very productive six minutes. Notably, you still don't get paid as a personal secretary or office girl, and one of the options when overhearing co-workers is still borked. I'll go back and cross those off the update list. They'll be fixed in the next update.

In other news, multibreasts are indeed showing up in the description...incorrectly. Still, it's better than not showing up at all, and I've fixed it. There's also a problem where using the Set Body Shape action to change your breast size gives you multibreasts, whether you got them or not. I've also fixed that. ES jewelry not working sometimes is something I've tested over and over, and wasn't able to get to work, but nevertheless, I adjusted some things so that hopefully it won't be a problem in the future (I doubt I'm that lucky, though). Really, the only reported bug that I haven't fixed at this point is the beach causing underwear to become unwearable, and that's just because I've been lazy about looking at it this morning. The good news is that I think I know why it's not working properly, so I should be able to fix it.

And finally, the constantly decreasing non-natural charisma has potentially been pinpointed. I just need to take a look at it, and hopefully I'll be able to fix it.

But that's not why I felt productive this morning.

I felt productive this morning because I got apartment cleaning almost completely implemented this morning. I added the Cleaning skill (along with a couple of other variables). That was easy. Then I set up a function call to run at the beginning of each morning to check if you cleaned the day before; if you did, cleanliness stays where it is (unless it was at 20, in which case it will always decline to 19). If you didn't, it decreases by 1. It then activates the "Clean" command in each room in the apartment, which has three sub-commands: Tidy Up, which increases cleanliness by 1 up to 14, Clean Up, which increases cleanliness by 3 and takes one time block, and Thoroughly Clean, which is only available if, at the beginning of the day, cleanliness is less than 10, and which increases cleanliness by 7 and takes two time blocks. All of these options also add points to the Cleaning skill.

I added the cleaning supplies, which have no actions currently, specifically so that I can check to see if they've been purchased. If they have, the cleanliness goes by up an additional +2, regardless of which action you take.

In what I think is a clever little bit of programming gymnastics, if you have "unlocked" the maid side job, then cleaning skill can go up to 100. If you haven't, then you can only increase cleaning skill to 50. Took a bit of working to figure out how to do that, but I managed it, and as an added benefit, came up with a way of determining what, if any, side jobs the player has unlocked. Currently, there's only three side jobs planned (Maid, Musician, and Thief), but it makes it somewhat easier to add others if they come up. I also set it up so that, if you're close to or have maxed the cleaning skill, then you won't lose skill points from the pool. So if you're at 48 points in the cleaning skill, haven't unlocked Maid, and choose the Clean Up option (which adds 3 skill points), then the game first of all checks to see if you have at least 3 points in the skill pool. It then recognizes the fact that you only need 2 more points to max the skill, and only deducts two points from the skill pool. I'll eventually do this with all other skills as well, so that you won't waste skill points if you've maxed out a particular skill.

And, in a stroke of potential brilliance, the room descriptions for your apartment include the state of cleanliness. That's not brilliant, though. What's brilliant is that as the apartment gets cleaner, the color of the text changes to a brighter shade of green (with blue as 20), and as it gets dirtier, the color of the text shifts towards red. So you don't even really need to read the text, instead getting a visual reminder of how clean/dirty the apartment is solely through the color. Should make keeping track of things somewhat easier.

So, all in all, I've got the apartment cleaning thing mostly complete. I just need to make some additional changes to the Slob trait and automate showering, and it'll be done. I might even have it done tomorrow, at which point I can move on to implementing the actual Maid job. Did you say Maid clothing? I think you did. Or rather, I did. You know, whatever.

14 comments:

  1. you should add a counter trait to slob such as clean freak

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    Replies
    1. Actually, I just completely forgot to mention that. I do have a Neat Freak trait planned.

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  2. You've mentioned crashes with the RAGS editor several times now. Is the stability of the editor that bad right now?

    I'm just curious. I've been considering my own RAGS project lately, but I don't want to spend the money on it if it has stability issues (nothing ruins my creative spirit more than having recreate data from a crash)

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    Replies
    1. Actually the stability problem isn't RAGS itself, it's the platform that's running it. When I'm not at home, I'm using a severely underpowered netbook, and with RAGS using up so many very limited resources, it's prone to cause instability in the system, resulting in a crash. I can usually anticipate it, but sometimes it sneaks up on me.

      On my PC, I haven't had a crash since I updated to 2.3.0.0

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    2. Thanks for the reply, that's useful to know. I had a crash or two with a slightly older version of RAGS, but I haven't gotten back around to it since it was fully updated to 2.3.0.0.

      Thanks again!

      Delete
  3. Possible bug relation: after several 'days' of play, most of my character's jewelry unequips (behaves as if it's int he jewelry box, not on my char). If others are having that issue, that might explain the NN Charisma drop and the ES jewelry not working (both clit and nipple slots unequip). Not sure what causes it, or I'd give you some more detail.

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    Replies
    1. So, jewelry unequips all on it's own? Like when you go to sleep, or it's one specific action that you take?

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    2. The beach does that to me, picking 'wear jewelry' from the jewelry box will reequip the saved jewelry set, but leave anything not in that set in inventory and unequippable. Same issue underwear has, as far as I can tell.

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  4. Hey AM, what about people who are Red-Green spectrum colorblind?

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    Replies
    1. They'll have to choose the blue ending.

      Seriously though, I hadn't thought about it. Can't really cater to everyone and everything, though.

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    2. Can't you just put couple of asterisks, or dots after the room name depending on the cleanliness?
      Zero if cleanliness > 15
      One if cleanliness> 10
      Two if cleanliness > 5
      Else three.

      This in addition with color change should be good enough for anyone.

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  5. Amazing work AM. Looking forward to it. Productive indeed.

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  6. Posted this in the last post but a bit late so I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but uh, I'm still having trouble with the shrinking events. I might have just missed it, but I think it went right into the second one. And then I couldn't get it to trigger any of them afterwards.

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  7. Possible bug:
    Hoop earings colide with upper ear silver rings, and diamond studs. But I can wear diamond earings and hoop earings.
    On plus, after going to beach and trying to put on jewelry I ended with hoop earings and diamond earings but diamond studs remained unequipped in inventory. Cannot remove, cannot wear.
    Before I tired to put hoop earings with diamond earings and diamond studs on. Mayby that's why.

    ReplyDelete