Adventure Creator original thread

[iksanabot]

Hey Tlaero,
Let me get back to describing my preference of a sex animation mechanism.

Imagine and animation in which the prevalent movement is in a straight horizontal line (So maybe a man-standing/woman-kneeling blowjob, or doggy-style sex).

Imagine we are going to animate the main movement with 5 images, each progressively showing movement from beginning to end of the animation, and then reversing, and so on. For these five images, there are five receptive fields (hotspots) on the screen so that the player moves through the animation by sweeping the mouse across the screen in the same motion as the animation demonstrates (horizontally). This is obvious, but the hotspots are laid out like this"

111111222222333333444444555555

and though they can be made bigger or smaller to make hitting the appropriately line easier or harder.

Now imagine that for each of those "main" images/hotspots, you have an image that shows slight deviation off the line, perpendicular to the correct motion (in this case vertically), and the corresponding hotspots are in the location that would lead to the deviation, so now the path of receptive fields looks like:

1a1a1a2a2a2a3a3a3a4a4a4a5a5a5a
111111222222333333444444555555
1b1b1b2b2b2b3b3b3b4b4b4b5b5b5b

So now, if this animation is showing a BJ, staying in the main path shows a smooth in and out motion, but if the player deviates from the main line to enter into receptive field, for example, 3a, the image shows the woman's head going a little high, and suggests slight discomfort from the woman, and maybe the man is hitting teeth. There could be audio and dialogue options that make the deviation more salient. The point is, you have these images that show deviation without causing the player to drop the animation, but further deviation does cause the animation to drop, and the player must grab it and begin again. Thus, the player is entirely focused on the animation because cues that they are going off course come from the animation.

What do you think? Could this be done smoothly in AC?

Thanks for all you do,
iksanabot

[Wolfschadowe]

I'm enjoying the new AC, and the image viewer. Seems to be working well and I haven't encountered any problems so far.

The new button layout on the image viewer is much easier for my brain to handle with the separation.

I find myself hitting Next -> set, next -> set a lot. What do you think about porting the basic functionality of the prev/next buttons directly to AC? Maybe just as small, unobtrusive < > buttons on the same row as the coordinates labels under the image? That way, if there is a string of sequential images, our workflow could be to change the page name, tap the ">" button for the next image, Change the top text and bottom text/targets, and hit save.

[tlaero]

Just updated AC to 6.6 (same link as before). Minor changes I wanted as I used it. In ImageViewer the arrow keys cycle through images (same as clicking the Next and Prev buttons), and Ctrl-H toggles the image hide. Also a bug fix in the memories if you click recall before you store.

Wolf, I don't think it makes sense to move some of the ImageViewer functionality into the main view. I think we should either have a separate imageviewer like now, or we should move the entire ImageViewer functionality into the main view. My original intent for ImageViewer was to be able to make the images really large so I could see the full detail, but in usage I'm actually keeping them roughly the same size as the main view. So it's not out of the realm of possibilities to join them. It would make the UI more complicated there, though. Also, the way it is, you can put the image viewer on a separate screen if you want. Do you have a strong preference?

Tlaero

[tlaero]

Iksanabot,

That would certainly be doable. It's kind of similar to the circle controls in DwE. To make it easy for non-developers to use, though, I'd probably need to add some code to _functions.js.

I guess what you really want is a full grid of images and the ability to choose the number of vertical grids and horizontal ones separately. Your example may have been 5 horizontal and 3 vertical, but maybe someone wants 5x5, etc.

A challenge is that you'll quickly get to a huge number of images, which will slow down the page load, especially when playing online like on LOP. If you got enough images, you'd even slow it down when played from the local hard drive. And making all the images line up correctly so the animation is smooth when you move between them would be a huge pain (the code is easy, but the posing and rendering isn't).

Then you get into the typical economics of time issues. Would the players prefer one animation with 3 lines like you suggested, or would they rather 3 single line animations for 3 different scenes? No matter how easy the coding is, the art cost is such that you'll always be making that tradeoff.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

It would make the UI more complicated there, though. Also, the way it is, you can put the image viewer on a separate screen if you want. Do you have a strong preference?

My current game build setup is 3 monitors. 2 landscape and one portrait. Currently, when I'm working, I have the AC Main Window on the center landscape monitor, to the left is the portrait monitor (1024x1280) that is split vertically between the image viewer and game view, which works surprisingly well. And then to the right on the third landscape monitor (AKA the laptop's actual screen) I keep my storyboard that I'm working from.

The main benefit that I get from the image viewer is the second image. When I add descriptive text to a page, I sometimes like to describe the differences between images from the previous page to the current page. (i.e. Faith sets down her drink and.... or Emily turns toward you...) Having the second image makes that easier. Also, using the filter to separate images so that the previous and next buttons are more applicable. So my preference would be the separate viewer. I don't think porting the full functionality to AC would be beneficial when considering the impact to the ui. I had been thinking that small prev/next buttons would be useful for AC, but unless it can somehow pull the filter from the image viewer window, the usefulness of even the <> buttons drops significantly.

I've found myself using the multiple memory functionality a lot more than I thought I would, and 4 memories feels about right. I think a "Clear All" memory button would be useful. (Not sure clearing a single memory would be useful) and some indicator that a memory is stored in that location would be helpful also. Maybe update the button label with an * if there is a memory stored?

[tlaero]

Yeah, I used it quite a bit last night and like having the separate window for ImageViewer better. It helps my flow and has made me less prone to the mistakes I generally make (either overwriting an existing page or skipping one). I think I'll stick with the separate window. The bypasses turn red when there's something in them. It would make sense to have the memories do the same. What do you think should change, M1R, M1S, or both?

I can change the number of memories by changing one character in the code, so if you find you want more, it's trivially easy for me to add them.

What's the benefit of clearing them?

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

I can change the number of memories by changing one character in the code

Four seems about right.

It would make sense to have the memories do the same. What do you think should change, M1R, M1S, or both?

Agree, red makes sense, especially for consistency. I think both would be best.

What's the benefit of clearing them?

Technically, none. Mentally, sometimes is nice, psychologically, to be able to wipe the slate, so to speak. I know I can overwrite to my hearts content, but then I get inside my head sometimes worrying about what I'm overwriting, and trying to keep in my head which I'm overwriting, and what order and will I need to keep it and...well on and on. Or...Wipe and start fresh with the memories.

Wolfschadowe

[kexter]

Very minor thing but could you make AC trim all leading and trailing whitespace-characters from all text (top, hotspots, responses) when saving a page?
Before the "\n" to "<br>" conversion happens, so that accidental empty lines are trimmed from the end of the string. Also, multiple spaces could be merged (because in html they are parsed as one anyway). Oh, and spaces from around "<br>"s could be removed too. Didn't check where it would be most convenient to add these transformations (maybe repurpose/rename AdventureCreator.ConvertJS() to handle all these, so you won't have to modify all the getters).
Not a super important and certainly not an essential feature, just something that bugs me every once in a while. Thanks.

[Mortze]

One thing that could be usefull for me, but you might call me nicky-picky, is in Game Viewer, you have the Prev Image and Next Image buttons to navigate through the images in your Images file. For me it would be even more awesome (awesomer?) to navigate through the pictures with the keyboard right and left keys instead of having to click on Next Image for example.

[tlaero]

Kexter, I think at the very least, watching for extraneous \n's and removing them would be good. I keep finding extraneous <br> in my toptext.

Mortze, AC 6.6 lets you navigate image viewer images with the arrow keys. If the focus is on a button or the filter box, hit TAB and it'll change to the image. Then the arrow keys do next and previous images.

Tlaero

[Mortze]

Mortze, AC 6.6 lets you navigate image viewer images with the arrow keys. If the focus is on a button or the filter box, hit TAB and it'll change to the image. Then the arrow keys do next and previous images.

It sure does. I was still on 6.4. Thanks, that helps lots!

[Mortze]

I don't know about you but I work with a lot of copy/paste for te text.
If for Current Area and Table entries there is a X to erase the text by clik I found nothing alike for the Text field.
Would it be useful for everyone else?

[Wolfschadowe]

If for Current Area and Table entries there is a X to erase the text by clik I found nothing alike for the Text field.

Now that I think about it, a clear text button for the top text would be kind of nice.

Wolfschadowe

[kexter]

And I just noticed that Ctrl+A (Select All) does not appear to be working on the text field. It works for most of the other fields.

[tlaero]

When you folks are saying "Text" field, do you mean the 4 line toptext box or something else?

Tlaero