neronero's new ini_generator got me thinking.
0.3 is getting closer, so now is a good time to check if there's anything we can improve about the BK.ini file. The way it is implemented, it should be possible to extend it with full backward compatibility. Anyway, here's a few ideas from me:


One thing I've been missing is an attribute describing the origin of the girl. E.g. Temari would have "Naruto", Kasumi "Dead or Alive", etc.
I would recommend an attribute in the identity section. A good attribute name would be "Franchise", since that would be in line with the Girl Packs database, or maybe "universe".
This could even be useful to filter girls in the girl mix screen.

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Next, I dislike having to select one option for "Farm Weakness". In many of my girlpacks, there's one or two farm categories with very few images, while the others have a lot of images. E.g. my new girlpack for Camilla has images for everything but "Machine". So, I'd like to make BK pick a weakness from "Stallion", "Monster" and "Beast".

But at the moment, I have to either pick "random", or decide between the three candidates. So I usually end up just going with random, because I like diversity, and also feel like I would have tagged the other farm categories for nothing.

My recommendation would be to just go with weights, with 0 completely excluding a category, while also allowing to finetune the weakness selection. In that case, it may be easier to have multiple new attributes, like
"Farm Weakness Beast" = 1
"Farm Weakness Stallion" = 1
"Farm Weakness Monster" = 2
"Farm Weakness Machine" = 0

For backward compatibility, I would also keep the old attribute (where you have to pick only one option), but if the new attributes are also present, BK 0.3 would ignore the old attribute.

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Finally, my last suggestion is "Hair Color". The reason is that it could enable default images in the future. E.g. if a girl is missing a particular image, BK could fall back to some generic image which has the face of the girl out of focus. However, a different hair color would be very immersion breaking.

I guess the only tough choice is agreeing on a set of colors to pick from.

Quote from: Ch12 on Aug 01, 2023, 04:13 AMOne thing I've been missing is an attribute describing the origin of the girl. E.g. Temari would have "Naruto", Kasumi "Dead or Alive", etc.
I would recommend an attribute in the identity section. A good attribute name would be "Franchise", since that would be in line with the Girl Packs database, or maybe "universe".
This could even be useful to filter girls in the girl mix screen.

I think including the option to add warning tags might also be useful. Not only things like "Loli", "Furry", but also a bunch that could be auto-detected by the tagging tool like "no beach pic", "low farm pics"

Quote from: Ch12 on Aug 01, 2023, 04:13 AMNext, I dislike having to select one option for "Farm Weakness".

My recommendation would be to just go with weights, with 0 completely excluding a category, while also allowing to finetune the weakness selection.

Only one question: Why introduce a new system when the current always/often/rarely/never system of BK is used everywhere else & practically achieves the same thing?

Quote from: Ch12 on Aug 01, 2023, 04:13 AMFinally, my last suggestion is "Hair Color". The reason is that it could enable default images in the future. E.g. if a girl is missing a particular image, BK could fall back to some generic image which has the face of the girl out of focus. However, a different hair color would be very immersion breaking.

Most current fallback pictures try to not include the face. I think that works well enough. Otherwise I can think of a few more categories that break immersion here (slim vs chubby, petite vs long, small vs big breasts, pale vs tanned, smooth vs furry, short vs long hair)

Hm, you mentioning "Furry" etc. gave me another idea. Basically, we have the Girlpack Db filled with that information already. There's "Franchise", "Girl Source", "Real/Drawn", "Warning", "Art Style", "Comments" etc... It's a treasure trove of information, really.

In principle, it should be possible to link this information, but the question is how to link it reliably. Name alone is not enough, since there can be multiple packs for one girl.
Hm. I think there already is "creator" in BK.ini, but I think most Girlpacks are not using it. There's also many girlpacks without any BK.ini at all. I guess there's always imagecount...

Hm. Maybe if I find some time, I'll play around with BK's source code for the first time in a while. The girlpack database is just 250kB as a CSV, should be no problem to process automatically.


Be that as it may, I think basically, we could include most of the info in the girlpack also in the BK.ini in the future? I like the idea of Auto-generated warnings, although the question is how far you want to go. E.g. "beach" is a fairly recent tag and actually only available in the extended tagset, so "no beach" would be quite common. If we have warnings for even secondary tags, the warning probably ends up so overloaded with information that it may not be useful anymore.


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Anyway, interesting idea using "always", "often", "rarely", "never". While it does not allow as fine-grained control, it is more in line with the existing standard, as you say. And it's probably more intuitive than some number weights.

Personally, I'd probably favor numbers a bit more, but I guess I'm a numbers-loving person.

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You're got a point that there's a rabbit hole waiting if you follow the "hair color" idea. What about hair length, body weight, body height, BMI, BWH, cup size, skin tone, kemonomimi, etc. etc.
It's probably better to focus on the other ideas.

Linking it with an online database would also (even if just slightly) open the door to fancy things like user-generated girlpack ratings.

I mention "no beach pic" because not having a single one gates off a bit of the game's content (slave_beach_event). So I think it's a missed opportunity if any modern girlpack misses a beach pic. As long as that's not the case with other secondary tags, they don't need their own warnings.
We could curate a list of what warrants a warning, sometimes with a grouping of subtags, eg: "3+ missing fixations".