Biorhythms

Greetings!

I am really intrigued with the notion of Biorhythms, see the wikipedia, for explaining human day-to-day swings in mood and ability.

As the wikipedia says it is not scientific, but I find it interesting none the less.

Would it be possible to include biorhythms in the game?

I think the hardest part of including biorhythms into the game would be the need to set a specific birth date for each character in the game that we want to compute a biorhythm for.

I'm not opposed to the idea, hells I researched and included an actual Edo era lunisolar calendar complete with seasons, holidays and auspicious and inauspicious days so I'm up for just about anything. And since they're repeating patterns you could just start each cycle at the girl's hire date for simplicity's sake, although it still seems like it would entail a lot of additional coding. But what form do you see it taking in-game? Would it affect what days a girl would be more likely to refuse to work? Or get more customer appreciation because she did her job especially well? How do you see it working?

For it to be a science, it needs consistent results from testing. Biorhythms gets the vast majority of its results from the stories of individuals. There have been a number of tests on the theory, but the results are always the same. There is no proof of the validity of biorhythms.

That aside... are you thinking of creating some sort of wave system to show when girls are having good days, bad days and days leaning neither direction? If we were to include an unprovable theory of the physiology of women in the game, hey, what about a reality concept... give the girls menstrual cycles.

Actually, if you had proposed adding menstrual cycles to the game, I would have found the concept interesting. But I really don't think that biorhythms is a good idea... mostly because it is pseudo-science and because, in the end, the waves, in a given month's period, basically average out to 0 (+100 max score on good days and -100 max on bad).


I just tossed this together... I have no pictures of individual biorhythms, but it is something like that.

But hey... those are just my 2 cents. I am a contributor, not a developer...... so... ignore me if you wish. 8-)

I'm not trying to start a major debate or anything, but as much as I both like and respect you Loup I feel I have to interject a couple of points here.

First, neither Fred nor the proponents of biorhythms ever claimed that it was hard science. At best, even it's supporters consider it a 'protoscience', meaning basically that there might be something to it if they could figure out how to prove it, making it essentially an interesting hypothesis. Personally, I have more respect for that mindset than I do for that of the so-called 'reputable' scientists who stated categorically that the hairy mountain man of Africa couldn't possibly be anything more than a myth ... right up to the 1902 discovery of the mountain gorilla.

Second, I don't think ruling something out simply because it's pseudoscience can be justified in a game full of aliens, robots, spellcasters and catgirls.

And lastly, I said I'm not opposed to the idea but neither am I sold on it. If Fred, or anyone else, has a neat idea that could possibly add something to the game I'll be more than happy to consider it but I always keep the cost/benefit ratio in mind. If it's simple to incorporate and at least a little bit cool I'll try to find room for it but if it's going to be a major undertaking to fit it in then it had better seriously enhance the game in some way.

Oh, and I'm against incorporating menstrual cycles, mainly because I don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't DIE! *snork*

I know, I went a little overboard with my discussion of biorhythm, but I get preachy from time to time. That aside, I just think giving a cyclical pattern to the individual girls' ability to "provide services" is overcomplicated. I think it would be easier to give... global cycles. You were talking about actually giving the "world" seasons. With seasons comes weather. Weather can mess with the brothel's economy. How many people will show up after a 4 foot snow storm? Or when it is 102 in the shade and the humidity is 89%? (I assume air conditioners will not exist in this world... 8-)... ) Once a week, have the program figure out the weather pattern for the next week using the average temperature for that week as the mean and giving random chance for +-X degrees each day and possible weather patterns varying from calm to full blown storm.

Loup Garou wrote:... 4 foot snow storm... 102 in the shade and the humidity is 89%...

Where does this take place? ... Other than Nebraska?

Anyway... So, looking at the biorhythm article... Well, the proposed idea is plausible, but the biggest issue I'm seeing is that the tests only took time as a factor. Many things influence human behavior, such as chemicals, lunar cycles, environment, and, of course, happenstance. Our lives are influenced by way too many immeasurable factors for there to be fixed rhythm in which we, as individuals, adhere to. This doesn't necessarily mean that we might not be inclined to follow a pattern; I just think there are too many things in this world that could take it off course.

In this case, as with the weather, it would be best incorporated as an influencing agent in the game's random factor. In other words, depending on just where this cycle is situated on a given day, the chances of your customers or girls behaving in a certain way, positively or negatively or however that particular piece of the cycle would function, increases. To be honest, I think this might add a level of complexity that I think would be both unnecessary and difficult to truly incorporate. Weather I can understand (though perhaps not so much in the extremes... well, save for some sort of special event in the game... magic and all that <.<), since this would be more... what's the word... Whatever, I can't think of a single word to finish that statement.

In closing, I think the game should focus more on what's going on in the world it takes place in rather than the fluxuations of every girl's aura, odin force, orgone, and other such pseudoscience life energy forces. I think a girl's behavior should largely be influenced by the Obedience levels and story arcs... Although... I suppose an additional statistic that describes a girl's personality (ex. Playful, Shy, Hot-Headed) could influence her behavior during certain events... Maybe...

I agree with Vava and Loup, I'm not really concerned with the reality of it, I wouldn't even care if you said you made it up one the spot, the only thing that I think matters is the fact that the biorhythm should, hypothetically, even out. And that would just make a lot of extra coding for something that you wouldn't focus on. I'd just keep clicking Next Day without checking how their biorhythms are. This game needs more events though, something to take away from the mashing of the Next Day button.

Recall that the Biorhythm is a set of 3 cycles, each cycle has a different period, all 3 cycles start when you are born.

It is the sum of these three cycles on a given day that is an indicator of how "good" that day will be.

Very much not scientific.

alasdair69 wrote:I'm not opposed to the idea, hells I researched and included an actual Edo era lunisolar calendar complete with seasons, holidays and auspicious and inauspicious days so I'm up for just about anything.

Very good. Hopefully it will not be too difficult to implement your calendar. Why not publish a description of just the calendar, so we can start to see what will be required in the implementation? (i am assuming that this calendar is not something that is still undergoing change?)

alasdair69 wrote:And since they're repeating patterns you could just start each cycle at the girl's hire date for simplicity's sake,

I think the Biorhythm works best when each girl has a different start date for the set of 3 cycles - physical, emotional, and intellectual - so "hire date" - if that means what the words say and not something else in your game model (i haven't seen your model so i can't tell if "hire date" is something special in your world) - would probably not work out so swell, because there would be many girls with the same starting value. If your game model includes the age of each girl, then we can pick a random birth date for her that roughly corresponds to her age and will *mostly likely* be different for each girl...

alasdair69 wrote: although it still seems like it would entail a lot of additional coding.

i do not think it would be very complicated to implement.

alasdair69 wrote:But what form do you see it taking in-game? Would it affect what days a girl would be more likely to refuse to work? Or get more customer appreciation because she did her job especially well? How do you see it working?

I have not seen your game model, so I can only assume a particular model. And you know that using the word "assume" simply makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me" so is rather dangerous. But...

I assume that the basic underlying algorithm of your game model is similar, if not identical, to the current version of the game.

That is: each girl has a set of numeric characteristics, like Obedience, Charisma, Sex, .... - in the v1 and C# versions each girl has the same set of characteristics, but that is not really required. Further each building has its own set of numeric charactistics. And the leader of each building has characteristics that influence the girls working in her building.

So all of the values of these numeric characteristics - per girl for her building that is lead by someone - are used to compute the number of customers that the girl services on a given day, and the numeric level of satisfaction experienced by each customer. And then today's set of characteristics are used to compute/update the values to be used for tomorrow's game play.

I assume that the main cause in the delay in your publishing your game model is the difficulty in specifying the equations to be used in the above game play computations.

So I am proposing three additional characteristics that influence the girls ability to service customers. When the Biorhythm cycles are at a low she is more likely to refuse, when they are at a high she is more cooperative. Just using the names of the 3 cycles - physical, emotional, and intellectual - gives a indication of the manner in which I think each cycle should influence a girl's actions. It becomes a matter of how to integrate these three new numeric characteristics into whatever set of equations for the characteristic that your model is already using.

The values of the Biorhythm on any given day would not be something that the player of the game could influence. These values would change every day as the cycles unfold but they would in some sense be intrinsic to each girl. And so would operate in the game as a Randomizing factor in game play, i think.



I suspect the above discussion rambles a bit too much. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Personally, I don't think biorhythm, itself, sounds very fitting to the game. For one thing, it sounds vaguely like a form of discrimination. "You were born on XX in XX? That explains why you're so bent out of shape, today..." Like I said, innumerable factors that exist within our lives affect how we behave on a certain day. For instance, I don't think a person who would have had the most physically, emotionally and intellectually best day of his life will be at his best if someone else tossed him out into the middle of a salt desert with no food or water the night before (an example of nutritional, environmental and circumstantial factors impacting his performance, and that's not including any past experiences he may have had ("Oh, no. Not again...")). At the same time, 'biorhythm' sounds more like it belongs in a more sci-fi orientated game, but that's my opinion. Lastly, how would you figure out the biorhythms of youkai, fairies, ghosts, demons, etc.?

Since we're on the subject of behavior-influencing cycles, I think I'll suggest a cycle that could be used to influence the entire game in both plot and mechanics: the lunar cycle. Myth and folklore attached to the moon give it its own identity, and the waxing and waning of its face has always been closely associated with a wide range of phenomena that occur on our planet. Considering the fantasy elements of this game and the sense mysticism connected to the moon, the cycle could affect not only the performance of your girls, but also the encounters with other characters that you encounter during its phases (especially those with magical powers or strong ties to the moon). For the sake of simplicity, I would suggest that the moon only be categorized in game as either 'new,' 'full,' or simply 'incomplete,' with the effects of the new and full moon lasting for three days a piece in a 29 day cycle.

fred u derf wrote:Very good. Hopefully it will not be too difficult to implement your calendar. Why not publish a description of just the calendar, so we can start to see what will be required in the implementation? (i am assuming that this calendar is not something that is still undergoing change?)

The only change that needs to be made to my calendar, so far as I know currently, is that I need to tack some more on to the end of it, after Day 300 and wrapping back around to Day 001. When I did it, I kinda sorta forgotted about sandbox mode, where you can actually play year-round. I’m not real sure how to go about sharing it, since its current form is a series of tables in Word and I don’t think those can be attached to posts, but I’ll see what I can come up with. To tide you over in the meantime though, once I had the calendar locked all I did was map each day to one of the 300 days of the game with certain holidays occurring on certain in-game days and different random events related to either the holidays or the season/weather possible on certain days or ranges of days (i.e., ‘Days 001-040: Heavy rains keep most people indoors, very few customers.’ ‘Day 148: Market Festival: Many more customers available, a wider range of items available for purchase and some items available at reduced prices.’ or ‘Days 186-190: Greater chance of a girl getting sick after playing in the snow at Snow Festival.’). As for the auspicious/inauspicious days, those are mapped to specific game days too and the chance of a random event would be the same as any other day, but the odds of it being either a lucky or unlucky event would be greater on the corresponding days (which means the program needs some way to differentiate between good and bad random events).

fred u derf wrote:I think the Biorhythm works best when each girl has a different start date for the set of 3 cycles - physical, emotional, and intellectual - so "hire date" - if that means what the words say and not something else in your game model (i haven't seen your model so i can't tell if "hire date" is something special in your world) - would probably not work out so swell, because there would be many girls with the same starting value. If your game model includes the age of each girl, then we can pick a random birth date for her that roughly corresponds to her age and will *mostly likely* be different for each girl...

You’re right, hiring several girls on the same day would result in identical cycles, which I imagine would kind of defeat the purpose (although with 1000 girls and only 354 days in the year there’s going to be a little of that anyway). Currently, I haven’t worried about the specific age of each girl so much as the general age range (underage, younger, normal and older) but it shouldn’t be that hard to determine most of their actual ages. Specific birthdays though are going to be few and far between so would need to be assigned.

fred u derf wrote:I assume that the basic underlying algorithm of your game model is similar, if not identical, to the current version of the game.

That is: each girl has a set of numeric characteristics, like Obedience, Charisma, Sex, .... - in the v1 and C# versions each girl has the same set of characteristics, but that is not really required. Further each building has its own set of numeric charactistics. And the leader of each building has characteristics that influence the girls working in her building.

So all of the values of these numeric characteristics - per girl for her building that is lead by someone - are used to compute the number of customers that the girl services on a given day, and the numeric level of satisfaction experienced by each customer. And then today's set of characteristics are used to compute/update the values to be used for tomorrow's game play.

You know, I should put biorhythms in now just as a reward for your ability to dumb all that programming down to the point where even a tech-illiterate like me can understand it. *snork*
For some reason, I’m reminded of the following exchange from Deep Blue Sea:

Preacher: "Einstein's theory of relativity. Grab hold of a hot pan, a second can seem like an hour. Put your hands on a hot woman, an hour can seem like a second. It's all relative."
Scoggins: "I spent four years at CalTech, and that's the best explanation of general relativity I've ever heard."

fred u derf wrote:I assume that the main cause in the delay in your publishing your game model is the difficulty in specifying the equations to be used in the above game play computations.

More or less, among other things; mostly though, it’s due to time constraints. See, my day starts at 5am, when I get up and start getting ready for work. I leave the house about 6am and catch a bus, get to the station and wait around, then catch another bus to be at work by 8. I work until 4pm, then repeat the process in reverse to finally get home about 6. I shower, relax, eat, do laundry, etc, and watch one or two hours of TV a night (as much as I love SimBrothel I am not missing Lost, Ghost Hunters, Mythbusters, Supernatural or Smallville for it). Then, I spend a couple of hours working on some aspect of the game and finally crawl into bed about 1am to start the whole mess over. I’m typically off Sunday (90% of which I spend sleeping, to make up for only getting about 4 hours of sleep a night through the week) and Monday (when I run errands, pay bills, do my shopping, etc). The bottom line is that I only have about 15-20 hours a week to spend actually working on the game, and it’s split up into chunks of 2 or 3 hours at a time here and there, which is hardly the most efficient way of going about things. Nevertheless, progress is creeping along and I really am doing the best I can.

fred u derf wrote:So I am proposing three additional characteristics that influence the girls ability to service customers. When the Biorhythm cycles are at a low she is more likely to refuse, when they are at a high she is more cooperative. Just using the names of the 3 cycles - physical, emotional, and intellectual - gives a indication of the manner in which I think each cycle should influence a girl's actions. It becomes a matter of how to integrate these three new numeric characteristics into whatever set of equations for the characteristic that your model is already using.

The values of the Biorhythm on any given day would not be something that the player of the game could influence. These values would change every day as the cycles unfold but they would in some sense be intrinsic to each girl. And so would operate in the game as a Randomizing factor in game play, i think.

As far as cost/benefit analysis goes, it’s all background programming which puts it in your court; if you’re okay with doing the extra work then I have no objections on that front. Before making a final decision on implementation though, there are still three areas that need addressing.
1) Generally speaking, what degree of affect would it have on the game itself, how much of what sorts of bonuses and/or penalties would accrue with roughly what frequency?
2) A lot of the girl roster are rather blatantly non-human, so how would demons, monsters, fairies, elves, robots, etc be handled?
3) And while the players wouldn’t be able to influence a given girl’s biorhythmic cycles, they should be able to predict them. I’ve striven at every juncture to include an element of strategy to the gameplay, for instance breaking Themes up into Types (Foreigners, Schoolgirls, MILFs, etc) which draw in customers and add customer satisfaction, Themes (Empowered, Outgoing, Roleplayer, etc) which reduce overhead in one or more areas or increase the benefits of certain types of activities and Traits (Adventurer, Contrary, Obedient, etc) which make each girl more unique. Even if they can’t control biorhythms, their affects should still be noticeable and predictable enough for the players to take into consideration when deciding what girls to put together in what brothels in accordance with their own specific strategy for winning the game.

And as a final note, don’t get too disappointed if you can’t hammer all the details into a coherent and consistent proposal just yet. I’ve already got a stack of ideas set aside just waiting for SimBrothel 3!!

Vava wrote:Like I said, innumerable factors that exist within our lives affect how we behave on a certain day. For instance, I don't think a person who would have had the most physically, emotionally and intellectually best day of his life will be at his best if someone else tossed him out into the middle of a salt desert with no food or water the night before (an example of nutritional, environmental and circumstantial factors impacting his performance, and that's not including any past experiences he may have had ("Oh, no. Not again...")) .

I agree completely, but just because an outside influence might supersede a developmental factor doesn’t mean that the factor in question should be summarily ignored for all the days when no such outside influence would be present. This game is being made by the fans and for the fans. Fred is a fan. He has an idea he’d like to see incorporated and would be responsible for doing 99% of the work to implement it himself anyway. If he can forge it into a reasonable proposal that wouldn’t hurt the game in any way and might even make it a little bit cooler/better/more fun/whatever, then I haven’t heard any reasonable argument yet as to why it shouldn’t be at least considered. I’m not saying it’ll definitely be included, but at the same time neither am I dogmatically closed off to the very notion.

Vava wrote:Since we're on the subject of behavior-influencing cycles, I think I'll suggest a cycle that could be used to influence the entire game in both plot and mechanics: the lunar cycle. Myth and folklore attached to the moon give it its own identity, and the waxing and waning of its face has always been closely associated with a wide range of phenomena that occur on our planet. Considering the fantasy elements of this game and the sense mysticism connected to the moon, the cycle could affect not only the performance of your girls, but also the encounters with other characters that you encounter during its phases (especially those with magical powers or strong ties to the moon). For the sake of simplicity, I would suggest that the moon only be categorized in game as either 'new,' 'full,' or simply 'incomplete,' with the effects of the new and full moon lasting for three days a piece in a 29 day cycle.

Sounds like another cool concept, and like all cool concepts it can become either a great addition or a rancid piece of crap depending on how it’s designed and implemented. So I’ll put the same challenge to you that I put to Fred: I know you well enough to know that you’ve probably got a ton of half-formed ideas floating around in that melon of yours so forge them into a solid proposal that describes (at least roughly)
1) method and difficulty of application and
2) frequency, nature and extent of benefits and/or penalties to all the various types of girls in the game.
Then we can kick it around here and I’ll make a final decision based on all the information presented. Fair enough?

Vava wrote:Personally, I don't think biorhythm, itself, sounds very fitting to the game.

Ok. That is fine with me. Your opinion is just as valid as mine. Not a problem.

Vava wrote:For one thing, it sounds vaguely like a form of discrimination. "You were born on XX in XX? That explains why you're so bent out of shape, today..."

Discrimination? Huh?

Are women in today's real world that suffer from PMS discriminated against?

Are airline pilots whose circadian rhythm (24 hour clock) is upset due to flying across multiple time zones discriminated against?

Ditto for those individuals that must work a rotating set of shifts.

Discrimination, I don't get it...

Vava wrote:Like I said, innumerable factors that exist within our lives affect how we behave on a certain day. For instance, I don't think a person who would have had the most physically, emotionally and intellectually best day of his life will be at his best if someone else tossed him out into the middle of a salt desert with no food or water the night before (an example of nutritional, environmental and circumstantial factors impacting his performance, and that's not including any past experiences he may have had ("Oh, no. Not again...")). At the same time, 'biorhythm' sounds more like it belongs in a more sci-fi orientated game, but that's my opinion.

I hope, if you read carefully my posts regarding the addition of Biorhythms, you will see that I meant for the values of the 3 cycles to be just additional values amongst the many others that (hopefully) Alasdair has defined for the girls. It is simply meant to be more information to take into consideration when determining the quantity and quality of each girl's daily work. I happen to think that it would be an interesting way to add randomness without being truly random.

Vava wrote:Lastly, how would you figure out the biorhythms of youkai, fairies, ghosts, demons, etc.?

Come on, Please! This is an imaginary game world. Right? Is really any harder to believe that the fairies in our world happen to have been Created with biorhythms just like the other non-fairy folk have biorhythms. Or another way of stating my point would be: If you accept that fairies exist, is it really any harder to accept that fairies have a biorhythm?

alasdair69 wrote:
As far as cost/benefit analysis goes, it’s all background programming which puts it in your court; if you’re okay with doing the extra work then I have no objections on that front. Before making a final decision on implementation though, there are still three areas that need addressing.
1) Generally speaking, what degree of affect would it have on the game itself, how much of what sorts of bonuses and/or penalties would accrue with roughly what frequency?
2) A lot of the girl roster are rather blatantly non-human, so how would demons, monsters, fairies, elves, robots, etc be handled?
3) And while the players wouldn’t be able to influence a given girl’s biorhythmic cycles, they should be able to predict them. I’ve striven at every juncture to include an element of strategy to the gameplay, for instance breaking Themes up into Types (Foreigners, Schoolgirls, MILFs, etc) which draw in customers and add customer satisfaction, Themes (Empowered, Outgoing, Roleplayer, etc) which reduce overhead in one or more areas or increase the benefits of certain types of activities and Traits (Adventurer, Contrary, Obedient, etc) which make each girl more unique. Even if they can’t control biorhythms, their affects should still be noticeable and predictable enough for the players to take into consideration when deciding what girls to put together in what brothels in accordance with their own specific strategy for winning the game.

1) no impact. biorhythm is only intended to be used as part of the computation of quantity and quality of each girl's daily work. how ever you wanna compute bonuses and/or penalties at what frequency is not meant to be altered by this.

2) everyone who works in the game world will have a biorhythm. If I must accept the existence of monsters in the game then I do not see that requiring those monsters to have a biorhythm is any bothersome stretch of the imagination.

3) yes the game GUI will need to be able to display the biorhythm values. probably today's value and the values for a few days into the future (say a week's worth of values, assuming the game calendar has the concept of a week).

Alasdair, just MediaFire your spreadsheet like we do every other file.

And I'm not concerned with players who are sandboxing over 300 days having to worry about events, there's the annual ones, and the random ones. Don't get me wrong, maybe some sporadic ones set for Day 378 or something, but I wouldn't be concerned with over 300 as much as before it.

As far as Biorhythms are concerned, It would be something like this, right?

Spoiler:

Having all 3 fields affecting performance, where somedays, you'll do amazing, others, not so much, and everything in between. Forgive the quality, whipped that up in MSPaint really quick. And the wavelengths are all estimates, I don't know how they'd actually come through. Those numbers are really simple, so they relapse really quickly. 1.5 days, 2.5 days, and 4 days.

Raed wrote:
As far as Biorhythms are concerned, It would be something like this, right?

yes, except that the cycles are generally a month long not a week. at least they are for the human pseudo-science version of biorhythms.

Of course, if we choose to incorporate the biorhythm concept into our game, we can make the cycle length be anything we want ----- but need to be sure each of the 3 cycle have *different* periods because that is what makes them so nicely random, yet not random....

fred u derf wrote:

alasdair69 wrote:Generally speaking, what degree of affect would it have on the game itself, how much of what sorts of bonuses and/or penalties would accrue with roughly what frequency?

1) no impact. biorhythm is only intended to be used as part of the computation of quantity and quality of each girl's daily work. how ever you wanna compute bonuses and/or penalties at what frequency is not meant to be altered by this.

Hokay, let me try this again. You say that it will be “part of the computation of quantity and quality of each girl’s daily work”, right? How? I know how Obedience, customer availability, etc will factor into computation of quantity and how Charisma, Sex, etc will factor into computation of quality, but how will biorhythms?

fred u derf wrote:

alasdair69 wrote:2) A lot of the girl roster are rather blatantly non-human, so how would demons, monsters, fairies, elves, robots, etc be handled?

2) everyone who works in the game world will have a biorhythm. If I must accept the existence of monsters in the game then I do not see that requiring those monsters to have a biorhythm is any bothersome stretch of the imagination.

It’s not, on that much I agree with you although I think the robots shouldn’t have biorhythms since they’re artificial constructs. But it’s also not a bothersome stretch of the imagination to expect demons, fairies, et. al. to have other biorhythms. I don’t know enough about the subject to know whether this is a stupid question or not but would there be some way to subtly adjust the mechanism to make non-human entities slightly … different?

fred u derf wrote:

alasdair69 wrote:3) And while the players wouldn’t be able to influence a given girl’s biorhythmic cycles, they should be able to predict them. I’ve striven at every juncture to include an element of strategy to the gameplay, for instance breaking Themes up into Types (Foreigners, Schoolgirls, MILFs, etc) which draw in customers and add customer satisfaction, Themes (Empowered, Outgoing, Roleplayer, etc) which reduce overhead in one or more areas or increase the benefits of certain types of activities and Traits (Adventurer, Contrary, Obedient, etc) which make each girl more unique. Even if they can’t control biorhythms, their affects should still be noticeable and predictable enough for the players to take into consideration when deciding what girls to put together in what brothels in accordance with their own specific strategy for winning the game.

3) yes the game GUI will need to be able to display the biorhythm values. probably today's value and the values for a few days into the future (say a week's worth of values, assuming the game calendar has the concept of a week).

Well, I didn’t mean showing a graph or anything so much as just making the affect noticeable if the players are paying attention. Sort of like, “Rukia always gets complaints on every third Tuesday and that’s tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just give her the day off”. Gross oversimplification, I know, but I hope you get the idea.

Raed wrote:And I'm not concerned with players who are sandboxing over 300 days having to worry about events, there's the annual ones, and the random ones. Don't get me wrong, maybe some sporadic ones set for Day 378 or something, but I wouldn't be concerned with over 300 as much as before it.

Oh, I’m not worried about it or anything and it’s not even a major undertaking. I just need to extend the auspicious/inauspicious days to the end of the year (there’s a set formula for which days are what) and put back a holiday I deleted when I realized it fell outside the 300 days of the game. Then the whole thing can just loop because I refuse to fool with that damn lunisolar calendar again to generate another year. Wanna know why? Here’s why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunisolar_calendar

alasdair69 wrote:It’s not, on that much I agree with you although I think the robots shouldn’t have biorhythms since they’re artificial constructs. But it’s also not a bothersome stretch of the imagination to expect demons, fairies, et. al. to have other biorhythms. I don’t know enough about the subject to know whether this is a stupid question or not but would there be some way to subtly adjust the mechanism to make non-human entities slightly … different?

Somehow I am not that bothered by a robot having a biorhythm. If the robot is enuf human-like that it can have sex with a human (and the human actually enjoys it) then also being enuf human-like to have a biorhythm is not a big deal to me.

It seems that I am the only one that is not really bothered by whether or a not robots, monster, demons, fairies, or whatever non-human character you have actually has a biorhythm. I guess we just have a flag associated with each character in the game that indicates whether or not that character has a biorhythm.

alasdair69 wrote:Hokay, let me try this again. You say that it will be “part of the computation of quantity and quality of each girl’s daily work”, right? How? I know how Obedience, customer availability, etc will factor into computation of quantity and how Charisma, Sex, etc will factor into computation of quality, but how will biorhythms?

would need 2 additional game-wide parameters and 4 additional parameters for each character in the game.

Game-Wide:

1) the year in which the game is being played under your calendar. your calendar needs to be defined as a (probably) large number of years. Hopefully every year is the same length, say 300 days --- no leap years please! and now we identifiy the oldest character in the game and project backwards in game time to identify the date on which our world was created (as many years as needed to have sufficent age for the oldest character). Say we have a character, Fredricka, who is known to be 10000 years old. We might decide that we are playing the game in year 12345 AA (anno alasdair) and that Fredricka was born on day 45 of the year 2345 AA. Stated more simply, on any given day in the game we need to know the age in days of any character that has a biorhythm.

2) and, game-wide, we need to decide on the weighting factor for the computed biorhythm. well actually probably should have 2 weights, one for quantity (call it w1) and another for quality (call it w2).

Now for each character:

1) the number of days since the Orgin AA (anno alasdair) of the day of her birth, call this b;
2) the period of her physical biorhythm cycle (randomized but close to 23 days), call this c_p;
3) the period of her emotional biorhythm cycle (randomized but close to 28 days), call this c_e; and
4) the period of her intellectual biorhythm cycle (randomized but close to 33 days), call this c_i.



Now, when computing the quantity and quality metrics for a given character on a given day, we do the following:

a) for any given day we know its date under our calendar AA (anno alasdair) and can determine how many days have passed since the Origin of our world AA, call this t.

b) we compute the physical cycle, p = sin( 2 * pi / c_p * ( t - b ) )
c) we compute the emotional cycle, e = sin( 2 * pi / c_e * ( t - b ) )
d) we compute the intellectual cycle, i = sin( 2 * pi / c_i * ( t - b ) )
(the above three values - p, e, and i - will each be in the range -1.0 to +1.0)

e) we average the three values, a = ( p + e + i ) / 3.0
(we still have a value between -1.0 and +1.0 inclusive)

f) we may need to scale the value of a into a range that is consistent with whatever values you are computing for quality and quantity.

g) so now we can compute a final value for quantity, q1', and quality q2'. assume your values, however you compute them (please post your equations) are q1 and q2 respectively:

q1' = q1 + w1 * a
q2' = q2 + w2 * a

and now the quantity of sex for a particular character, q1', and the quality of sex, q2', are ready for use in your other equations for game play (please post your equations)



I now have posted my equations as you have requested.
please, Please, PLEASE post yours!

fred u derf wrote:

alasdair69 wrote:Hokay, let me try this again. You say that it will be “part of the computation of quantity and quality of each girl’s daily work”, right? How? I know how Obedience, customer availability, etc will factor into computation of quantity and how Charisma, Sex, etc will factor into computation of quality, but how will biorhythms?

would need 2 additional game-wide parameters and 4 additional parameters for each character in the game.

...

I don't think he meant computer programming, I'm 90% sure he just meant how would it calculate in with factors like obedience, or something like that.

And I think, if we're going to add biorhythms, we minas well add unique ones. Instead of everyone having the same biorhythm formula, mix it up for different things. Not even for the sake of a robot having one, but just to add a difference between girls.

In the first game, you didn't really care who you were buying, because everyone could be hammered into the same mold. So I think it would be good do have something more unique. Make demons biorhythm wavelengths shorter and angels longer while removing robots'. I think it's a good idea.

And I rambled a bit there, I know.

fred u derf wrote:It seems that I am the only one that is not really bothered by whether or a not robots, monster, demons, fairies, or whatever non-human character you have actually has a biorhythm. I guess we just have a flag associated with each character in the game that indicates whether or not that character has a biorhythm.

To be quite frank, I’m not really bothered by whether or not anybody has a biorhythm. I’m just free-associating ideas here on different possible ways that your idea can be implemented from a creative standpoint, because that is, after all, the area I’m in charge of.

fred u derf wrote:would need 2 additional game-wide parameters and 4 additional parameters for each character in the game.

fred u derf wrote:please post your equations

etc, etc, etc, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Right, before I begin let me say this: all those points you gained by dumbing down your explanation for me before? You just lost them all by making my brain bleed. LOL I don’t think you quite grasp the sheer magnitude of my ignorance when it comes to programming, I come up with ideas and a general sense of how they work together to accomplish the objective but I have a better grasp of string theory than I do the nitty-gritty of telling a computer how to implement them. That’s your department. And equations? Don’t have any, not in the sense you mean anyway. I know my limitations and am not about to try and tell someone who knows more than I do about the job how to do it. For the most part (I got a little specific with the ranking formulas and whatnot, but that’s about it), I just delineate a set of factors that influence an outcome, indicate which have more or less influence than the others, then stand back and let you guys do your work. With that being said, I do have a pretty good grasp of math, and after spending an hour or two messing around with your formulae I have a couple of observations/suggestions.

1) As much as I love the ‘anno alasdair’ shout out (that was cute), you don’t really need it. It only determines two factors in your equations (t and b) and they’re always used together: ‘t - b’, which always results in the age in days of the character.
2) Your calculations for computing each cycle are identical with the exception of one variable (c_p, c_e or c_i) and once you average the results of those calculations it’s generally within 10% of the value you’d get if you just averaged those three variables first and ran the calculations one time.

I don’t want to step on your toes or anything, it’s your idea after all and you’re the one who’s going to have to do all the work to implement it, but for ease of application, especially since we’re not exactly dealing with hard science here, you might want to just simplify it down to a single formula:

q = sin(2*pi/ca), where q = the quality variable from biorhythms, c = the average cycle length and a = the age in days of the character.

Raed wrote:I don't think he meant computer programming, I'm 90% sure he just meant how would it calculate in with factors like obedience, or something like that.

Ding! Ding! We have a winner, that was exactly what I meant. But it’s all good because after fiddling with the formulae for a while (and lying down to let the ensuing migraine pass) I think I’ve got it figured out. More or less, anyway.

Raed wrote:And I think, if we're going to add biorhythms, we minas well add unique ones. Instead of everyone having the same biorhythm formula, mix it up for different things. Not even for the sake of a robot having one, but just to add a difference between girls.

In the first game, you didn't really care who you were buying, because everyone could be hammered into the same mold. So I think it would be good do have something more unique. Make demons biorhythm wavelengths shorter and angels longer while removing robots'. I think it's a good idea.

Once again we’re on the same wavelength Raed, that was exactly what I was getting at. I know some people have expressed concern over having monsters and demons in the game but despite the occasional tail or wings or what have you when you get right down to it they’re all just girls, even if a few do look like they’re done up for Halloween. I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to make them more unique, which is why I’d really like to include biorhythms if we can work the kinks out: essentially it’s just a sort-of-but-not-really random way to indicate whether any given girl is having a good or bad day, something which happens to us all and does affect our performance. I think the generic, ‘click next day’, aspect of the game can only be improved by implementing something like this.

In the event that altering the wavelengths for non-human characters is feasible, here’s another excerpt from my game model containing a description of the various other species included in the game:

• Bakemono: One of the mildly supernatural shapeshifting animals native to the deep forests, they take a mostly human form (although still with obvious animal characteristics, typically ears and a tail) to interact with other races. Even in this form though, they retain their intrinsic preoccupation with ‘creature comforts’ such as food, sleep and sex. Mostly sex. Most bakemono are obtained through the Slave Market and are enspelled to be unable to take on their fully animal form to prevent their escape, but as long as they have a good home, good food and good sex (mostly sex) they generally don’t seem to mind being someone’s ‘pet’.
• Demon: The daughters of Amatsu Mikaboshi, the heart of evil and god of corruption, are accursedly beautiful and seductively passionate, but occasionally a few grow tired of torment and repent, as such, their ways, seeking nothing more than friendship and the freedom to indulge their lusts. Almost exclusively obtained through the Slave Market but one must be cautious: some were simply captured and magically restrained and haven’t repented anything.
• Elf: More Tolkein than Keebler, elves are generally tall and slim, although often with disproportionately large breasts, and sport an array of skin, hair and eye coloration far wider than that seen in humans. Perhaps because of their longer lifespans or the fact that they worship the primal Old Gods, they tend to have a laid back attitude towards most things but can be fierce warriors when pushed too far. The majority are obtained through the Slave Market but several take up the profession of their own free will as well.
• Fairy: Rare and magical beings who inhabit enclaves in the wildest and most remote regions of the world, frolicking with each other and the beasts and spirits of the woods, they resemble human or elvish girls or women (no one has ever seen a male fairy, giving rise to much scholarly discourse and lewd speculation regarding their reproductive practices) with the addition of insectoid wings and sometimes antennae. They are invariably more than a little kinky, proudly bisexual and only obtained through the Slave Market, where cold iron has been used to block their arcane powers.
• Homunculus: Mioya in general and Mardukane in particular thought it had seen it all, but in recent years something new appeared in the Slave Markets. Homunculi are artificially created people, conglomerations of gears and springs and potent enchantments that can do anything biologically created people can do, with the probable exception of bear children. Anything at all. No one knows their origin except perhaps the Slave Brokers, who refuse to discuss the matter, but with a couple of dozen already known and more showing up periodically, it looks like they’re here to stay.
• Monster: Mioya, like much of the world, is a land of magic and wonder and many preternatural entities inhabit the fringes and lonely places. But with the unrelenting advance of civilization the fringes keep getting pushed farther and farther back, and places once lonely now find themselves full of human life. As a result, more and more strange beings are being forced to coexist with mankind if they want to survive. Vampires, snow women, succubi, oni, intelligent animate dead and even stranger things are slowly becoming a more common sight in everyday society but few of them know how to make their way and many end up in the Slave Market.

Succubi are demons.

alasdair69 wrote:
1) As much as I love the ‘anno alasdair’ shout out (that was cute), you don’t really need it. It only determines two factors in your equations (t and b) and they’re always used together: ‘t - b’, which always results in the age in days of the character.

yes, the age in days of the character on any given game day is the key. i thought i said this, sorry for not being clearer.

alasdair69 wrote:
2) Your calculations for computing each cycle are identical with the exception of one variable (c_p, c_e or c_i) and once you average the results of those calculations it’s generally within 10% of the value you’d get if you just averaged those three variables first and ran the calculations one time.

Nope. The average sum of a set of sinusoids of differing periods is *NOT* the same as the sinusoid of the average of the periods.

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier and all of the mathematicians and engineers building upon his work can not really be (and, fortunately, are not) that wrong.

Your telephone, your radio, your television, maybe even the power to your house strongly depend upon the way sums of sinusoids actually work together.

Most (well maybe just alot) of today's electronics very much depends upon the duality of functions in the Time domain vs the Frequency domain --- the essence of the Fourier Transform ---- which very much builds upon sums of sinusoids of differing frequencies.

And it is not in the manner that you assert.

alasdair69 wrote:I just delineate a set of factors that influence an outcome, indicate which have more or less influence than the others, then stand back and let you guys do your work.

well maybe it is time to finally do just that - eh?

Loup Garou wrote:Succubi are demons.

Yes, at least in Western traditions they are. And bakemono (one of those pesky Japanese terms for which I haven't been able to find an adequate English equivalent) are 'youkai', which is what 'monster' was before I grotesquely oversimplified it. Unless we want this to turn into a treatise on demonology and/or Japanese folk mythology there's going to have to be some give and take, so I went with the Rosario+Vampire model and put succubi in with the youkai/monsters. If it's that big a deal to anybody we can be all Christian about it and make them demons, but all three succubi we have so far (Kurumu, Morrigan and Lilith) have always been characterized in-continuity as monsters. *shrug*

fred u derf wrote:yes, the age in days of the character on any given game day is the key. i thought i said this, sorry for not being clearer.

Oh you did make that much clear, but your formula, as presented, required calculating the age of the world and subtracting the time since that point that the particular character was born before doing anything else. I was just pointing out that doing so results in the age in days of the character anyway so why not just skip a couple of steps and start there.

fred u derf wrote:Nope. The average sum of a set of sinusoids of differing periods is *NOT* the same as the sinusoid of the average of the periods.

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier and all of the mathematicians and engineers building upon his work can not really be (and, fortunately, are not) that wrong.

Your telephone, your radio, your television, maybe even the power to your house strongly depend upon the way sums of sinusoids actually work together.

Most (well maybe just alot) of today's electronics very much depends upon the duality of functions in the Time domain vs the Frequency domain --- the essence of the Fourier Transform ---- which very much builds upon sums of sinusoids of differing frequencies.

And it is not in the manner that you assert.

*sigh* At no point did I say that they were the same. I simply said that they were “generally within 10%”, at least in the limited experimentation I did with a set of formula that made my head hurt about a theory I barely understand. A theory that 99% of the scientific community considers to be about a half step sideways from Flat Earth theory anyway. If this were a scientific publication then specific accuracy would be paramount, but it is not. It is a game about cartoon hookers. As such, I was merely suggesting that a reasonable approximation might be sufficient for in-game purposes and much simpler to implement. Your mileage obviously varies. Ce la vie.

fred u derf wrote:well maybe it is time to finally do just that - eh?

You know, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not aware of just how pompous and insulting you’re coming across as. I understand the frustration of having an idea picked apart by others and of wanting to get started but not having anything to work on yet, but it’s exactly this sort of confrontational ‘my way or the highway’ attitude that made it impossible to get anything accomplished on the other forum. I refuse to apologize again for taking my time making sure my game model is the best it can be and I refuse to add any ideas to it until I’m satisfied I understand how they will affect everything else. Seeing as how I’m pretty much the only person who even bothered to consider biorhythms when you first suggested them, I hope you can respect that.