The color criteria.........

[jadeyes41]

Hello Troy,

I was wondering what's the criteria in the game for some colors to appear.

I've noticed that grey and mint green are on later stages in the game.

Also in the bride addon I've noticed that the only shoes that appear are the denim, black & white and white ones. I made one of them pink and I've never seen it on the game. Checked the .dat file but to me it seems alright. Maybe you can help me a little and check it to see if everything is ok. The other ones doest not appear either except for the blue, magenta, lavender combination.

Well maybe I'm impatient, but you tell me!

Thanks,

Jade

[TroyHepfner]

Hi Jade, you're right, certain colors do not show up until certain levels in the game, so obviously if one of your clothing items has a color that isn't available yet, you won't see it. But even then, the more clothes you add, the more the game has to pick from so it could be awhile before you see a new item.

Here are the levels in which the colors are introduced (E/M/H)

Level 1/1/1: red, green, blue, yellow, white
Level 2/1/1: violet
Level 3/1/1: tan
Level 4/1/1: pink
Level 5/1/1: orange, denim
Level 6/2/1: turquoise
Level 7/3/1: dark green
Level 8/4/1: lavender
Level 9/5/1: brown
Level 10/6/2: magenta, black
Level 11/7/3: mint
Level 12/8/4: gray

Also, you can check the fclog.txt file to see if there are any errors. If not, then you can assume the game loaded it fine. In that case, you just have to play it for awhile before you see it.

[Marleen]

And that can be QUITE a while, I noticed !!

I have another color-question ; don't know of this is the correct place to ask, I ended up here trying to find out what color appears when.

Do the colors you use have to be EXACTLY the colors you mention in the .dat-file , or are the two independent ? I am trying to ' smuggle' a bit with softtoned colors that I don't wanna show up in a white/black/denim piece, so it can be used with any other color. So, even though the item LOOKS denim and green, it's just denim and - even worst - a beige/orange-item should appear as ' black' .

Is that possible , or am I asking a bit too much of the system ?

( I made a white, black (not black) denim (not all denim) and all colors (not all colors) teddybear for my nightwear-outfit, but so far only the white has turned up. I gave them semi-transparent colors from the color-palette, but in de .dat-file I just mentioned the colors I want them to 'act' like. )

[TroyHepfner]

The two are independent; however, it can be confusing to players if you use one color in the image and then a different color in the .dat file. The player will see the color visually and wonder why it doesn't play the way they expect in the game - either 1) they'll see the color, try to play the piece on a corresponding doll, and get confused when the game won't allow it (because the .dat file told the game it was a different color), or 2) the player won't think they can play a piece because the colors don't visually match (in which case they'll miss out on some possible moves, or worse yet, they'll think there are no moves even though the game isn't over yet).

It's usually best to account for all of the colors you used in the .dat file, and to not deviate too far from the color palette (the player needs to be able to match your piece up with other similar colors).

[Marleen]

What I tried to do was make a non-white teddybear that fits with ALL outfits. Therefor, I called them denim, white and black, and gave the fourth one all colours. So, if someone would try to put the bear on a matching color, it would always fit.
The only difference is that with the multicolored bear, you could then add all other colours. But that can serve as a bonus that is not yet in the game.
With the left mousbutton, it also says what ' color' the bear acts like.
Maybe if I ever put them up here, I should say something about it in the post where I place the file, so whoever downloads it, knows how it 'functions' .

They have not yet been tested, because I've only ran into the white and the 'denim' bear so far, but this might give an indication of what I'm working on :

[TroyHepfner]

Very cute! Good job!

I understand now what you're trying to do. The game's matching rules would mean that you should add all of the colors to the .dat file that are in the bear. The downside of that is that the bear wouldn't show up until the later levels, when all the colors are available. On the other hand, if you put white in the .dat file but the bear has all colors in it, then players might think they can now play any color on that doll, and that wouldn't necessarily be true. For instance, if you had a blue hat on a doll and then played your bear, the game would treat your bear as white so the doll would still only accept blue. But players might think they can now play any color on the doll.

As an alternative, you might consider making a bear with these colors: red, blue, yellow, green, violet, and orange. These are the 6 primary colors, and many of them are paired with other colors in various clothes (blue with turquoise, red with pink, green with dark green, and violet with lavender). So choosing these 6 colors would mean the bear would show up in level 5 (easy) and level 1 (medium and hard), and it would match a lot of clothes. And with all 6 colors specified in the .dat file, the player would then be able to play lots of additional colors and color combinations on the doll.

[Marleen]

Oh, that is a great tip ; I will definitely use it. The denim (mostly denim) black and white bear work fine. It's the all-colored-one I have not been able to test yet.


Hmmm, looks like somehow my DAT-file got screwed up ; I'm suenly missing several tags and spaces. Quick to fix through ; probably happened while zipping ??

But...I've been able to test all my bears now and they ALL work. Cool.