Suggestion: Character Gender Mark

[Mats Berglinn]

For those who have played games like Sam & Max: Hit the Road or The Curse of Monkey Island you may notice that if you for example give a random item to some character the main character says "I don't think he would like that" or "I don't think she would like that" or that you try to pick up a character and the response is "He's not my type" or "She's not my type" depending on the characters are male or female. I was thinking of that you could use a marker for wherever a character is a male or female (or maybe even genderless for animals, ghosts and unnatural beings) so that in the "unhandled_event" you can script that the character says "I don't think he would like that" or "I don't think she would like that" instead of filling in every characters give iventory interaction or picking up character (especially in games with lots and lots of characters, like in my upcoming game Caribbean Mysteries where there will be about fifty characters). It's also easier to make voices for games like that since you can't split up lines in voice dialog, like "I don't want to give that to (name here)" (if you have played SuperScottishHero's Pixelhunt you will understand what I mean).

Don't you agree that would be great?

[Gilbert]

Don't you agree that would be great?

Actually I'm rather confused at whether you're asking for opinions on if this is a good idea, or you're asking for help with implementing this in your game.

But since you posted in this forum I'll assume it's the latter.

One way that I just thought of is to use properties, (e.g. add a "Gender" property, if you have only 2 sexes you can just use a Boolean one, otherwise use integer property).

But since unhandled_event() has only 2 parameters, it wouldn't be able to retrieve which character you had just clicked directly, one lazy way is just to check what character's at current mouse position, for example:

function unhandled_event (int what, int type) 
 {
Ã,  //blah bla bla ...
Ã,  if (what==3) {
Ã,  Ã,  if (type==0) { //Look at character
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  int tgender = GetCharacterProperty (GetCharacterAt(mouse.x,mouse.y), "Gender");
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  if (tgender==0) { //female
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Display ("She's just an ordinary woman.");
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  } else if (tgender==1) { //male
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Display ("Just another man.");
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  }
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  //Blah...
Ã,  Ã,  }
}

If you're using V2.7 it will be (don't know if it works like this, I'm not going to invest on V2.7 at the moment):

function unhandled_event (int what, int type) 
 {
Ã,  //blah bla bla ...
Ã,  if (what==3) {
Ã,  Ã,  if (type==0) { //Look at character
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  int tgender = Character.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y).GetProperty("Gender");
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  if (tgender==0) { //female
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Display ("She's just an ordinary woman.");
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  } else if (tgender==1) { //male
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Display ("Just another man.");
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  }
Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  //Blah...
Ã,  Ã,  }
}

[Mats Berglinn]

Actually I was asking for opinions on the idea rather than asking for help (but it does say Suggestion in the subject's title). Well, I'm still using 2.62 since Prosikto's SCUMM templates doesn't work on 2.7 and therefore not used to how 2.7 works.

[Gilbert]

However, I don't think that's necessarily implemented, as I pointed out, it can be quite easily done with properties already. (well, gender of a character IS one of his "properties", right?)

[Mats Berglinn]

Hmmm... maybe I could give it a try.

[Pod]

I think this falls under the idea of what I asked the other day, namely Extending Built-In Types.

As then you could just create a new inherited type, or extend the current type and add a boolean gender field.

[simulacra]

Or go queer and refuse to. :p

[edmundito]

I think the point is that it can be implemented with AGS at the moment using the properties.

Besides, it actually should be the other way around. You as the player should be able to do anything to a character, and then the character should refuse.

Like, uh, "Interact with woman", then the character would try to hit on her and she'd be like "w00t", you know?

[monkey0506]

Actually the interactions that take place depend on the developer's preference and the game itself.  But I think that this would be a reasonable request.

[simulacra]

"Interact with transgenderist"

"w00t?"