Descriptions

So, I've managed to convert the old Arena method of figuring out people's stats and descriptions to a number of simple 'to say' phrases.  This saves a ton of effort on the part of Inform itself.

You see, with the old system, everyone had a set of stats.  Then, every turn, riht after changing those stats, and again before examining them, it would run through every person in the game and figure out what their stats were, run through a bunch of tables, pick out the corresponding text, and plug it into the person's description.  Very wasteful.

In the new system, they still have similar stats, but Inform already knows what to say for each level of each stat.  No more repeating through a dozen different tables all the damned time, no more lines of text assigned to individual people, and so forth.

I have also done the same thing with the descriptions from TG-Tads.  This is mostly because they are nicely written, and do pretty much everything I wanted to do with Arena anyway.  I'm still unsure if I'll use the TG Tads version, or my own.

The issue now is with clothing.  In the old system, clothing was just text.  Every outfit was a seperate table with different levels starting with masculine and normal, and working it's way down to super feminine.  All the tables were randomized at the start of play, so you never knew who would be wearing what.  This was done for replay value.

Now, I really want to make clothing actual things you can interact with.  Take em off, put em on, set em on fire, whatever.  And I can do that pretty easily too.  Already have the code for it.  The trouble is making it reflect the TFs to the body, as well as being able to actually TF the clothes themselves.  Hard to do.  I could be ineffecient and make it replace something with a different article of clothing, which I'd have to set up in advance.  Or I could say to hell with it, and not have it change clothes at all...or I could stick with it just being text.  This would probably be the only tables used for descriptions in the game.

I am leaning toward using the seperate pieces of clothing and just having the TF done to it be pretty minimal, while setting up different things to say depending on how TFed the person wearing it is.  That perfectly fitting shirt and slacks, for instance, will not be nearly so perfectly fitting when you have been reduced to 2'8" tall with GG cup tits and a nice hourglass figure.  It's just...tricky.  Might need to consult with some of my fellow Inform7 TF writers to figure this one out.

Once I've got a fix for the clothes, I think I can actually start (or resume, rather) coding on this.

P.S. Note to self: update the damned outline.