Mating Rituals

[_Z_]

Perhaps if we take the chat out of this topic and discuss the suggestion we can get something done. TJ is capable of deciding if he wants to implement a suggestion, he does not require members dragging him into suggestions as an excuse for anything.

 

Now shall we try to discuss the pros and cons instead of attacking each other?

 

[danicast]

I was curious about how many mating rituals would be necessary for 100 dragons breeds paired with each other in couples. I got as a result in an online Combinatorial Calculator: 4950 mating rituals. Well, that's a lot. I wonder how much this will overload the whole game system.

[TheGrox]

I was curious about how many mating rituals would be necessary for 100 dragons breeds paired with each other in couples. I got as a result in an online Combinatorial Calculator: 4950 mating rituals. Well, that's a lot. I wonder how much this will overload the whole game system.

That'd just be one for each pair, though. What about separate ritual texts for female x male and male x female of the same two breeds (ie male magma x female vine would give different than male vine x female magma)? You can double that number. And if you want different things for refusals, no interests and eggs produced... More than one line for each pairing (to make things more interesting)... That's a lot of different ritual texts.

 

(Of course it'd be a bit less than your 4950, because I don't think there's exactly 100 breeds, and obviously drakes and pygmies can't be paired with the normal breeds, but it'd still be a lot)

 

That's assuming one is done for each pair of breeds. You could just do a generic one for each breed, which would cut down on work a lot, but then it might not always fit with the other breed so well.

 

Overall though, it still seems a lot of work.

Edited June 10, 2014 by TheGrox

[whitebaron]

I was curious about how many mating rituals would be necessary for 100 dragons breeds paired with each other in couples. I got as a result in an online Combinatorial Calculator: 4950 mating rituals. Well, that's a lot. I wonder how much this will overload the whole game system.

you really only need 1 line per breed to make this a lot more customized than it is. there's of course no limit to what could be done (potentially multiple lines per specific pairing, say 5 per possible result), but as usual, that would be up to TJ to decide.

 

I would not worry to much about people who can come up with those lines - DC has a very creative userbase. All TJ would have to do would be to have some kind of quality check, best done by some trustees who work in dragon requests anyway like sock, or maybe even some volunteers. I am pretty sure, if there was an open call for lines to be created, gaps can be filled within DAYS.

[olympe]

I was curious about how many mating rituals would be necessary for 100 dragons breeds paired with each other in couples. I got as a result in an online Combinatorial Calculator: 4950 mating rituals. Well, that's a lot. I wonder how much this will overload the whole game system.

I have absolutely no idea how you got your numbers - but they're definitely wrong. Because you can simply split the description of the mating rituals of male and female. Which means you'd need only for lines for each breed:

- male tries to woo female

- female tries to woo male

- male accepts courtship and responds

- female accepts courtship and responds

 

The last two lines for each breed - the responses - could even be identical to the first two lines - with one sentence in between stating that the 2nd dragon in this pairing likes what (s)he sees. So, for 100 breeds, that would be no more than 200 lines. Plus a handful of custom lines for no interest, no egg and refusal that can be the same for all possible pairings.

 

The breeding message - in the case of succes - would then be combined like this:

[Dragon 1] does his/her thing to woo the chosen mate. [Dragon 2] is impressed/interested/intrigued. [Dragon 2] does his/her thing to respond to the courtship. [Dragon 1] and [Dragon 2] breed to produce an egg. (Current message.)

[danicast]

I have absolutely no idea how you got your numbers - but they're definitely wrong. Because you can simply split the description of the mating rituals of male and female. Which means you'd need only for lines for each breed:

- male tries to woo female

- female tries to woo male

- male accepts courtship and responds

- female accepts courtship and responds

 

The last two lines for each breed - the responses - could even be identical to the first two lines - with one sentence in between stating that the 2nd dragon in this pairing likes what (s)he sees. So, for 100 breeds, that would be no more than 200 lines. Plus a handful of custom lines for no interest, no egg and refusal that can be the same for all possible pairings.

 

The breeding message - in the case of succes - would then be combined like this:

[Dragon 1] does his/her thing to woo the chosen mate. [Dragon 2] is impressed/interested/intrigued. [Dragon 2] does his/her thing to respond to the courtship. [Dragon 1] and [Dragon 2] breed to produce an egg. (Current message.)

No, my numbers are reasonable. I'm not taking in consideration "general" descriptions such as "gold male takes female silver for a meal and they decide to mate", "stone male takes female water for a meal and they decide to mate", I'm thinking in some specific lines written specifically for that breed of dragon because mating rituals are specific for different animals even if they belong to a same species. So, a gold needs a line to mate a white, a different one to mate a turpentine, a different one to mate a silver and so on. Then we need different lines for gold males and gold females because they don't act the same in a mating ritual. So I calculated a combination of 100 dragons in pairs and reached that number.

Maybe you have to multiply by 4 in the example that you are providing.

[whitebaron]

broken down for those who want numbers, which is honestly really unneccessary for the discussion at hand:

 

we have currently 4 results per breeding.

 

1) we can alter it so that we have 4 results per breed, so whenever a gold dragon is used for breeding, it displays one of the golds messages.

 

makes x*4 messages needed.

 

2) we can alter it so that we have 4 results per gender per breed.

 

makes x*8 messages needed.

 

3) we can alter it so that we have one result for every combination (bad idea, anyway)

makes x*(x-1)/2 * 4(8) messages needed.

This one is pretty unrealistic, not only in terms of numbers, but also its not like (d/m) ating typically works - people have their set pickup lines and behaviours, animals too - they don't vary THAT much with differing mates.

 

 

I think people tend to focus to much on numbers, anyway. The more important question is: is that something you'd like, even if its just 5 generic lines instead of the 1 generic line? I for one am for diversity, even though i might not read most of them ever.

[Fuzzbucket]

If it is very generic - as in if you breed a white to anything else, you get the white "display" message, and the success message is also standard for whites who bred - people will be bored with it all in no time.

 

If every time you breed a white to something else - as in to a green gives one "result" message, a nhiostrife another - and if you breed a nhiostrife to white and get ITS "display" message rather than the other way around, that "result" message too will be different - that might be rather more interesting but very hard work to set up and implement. THAT is where you would need vast number of different messages - but the vanilla alternative really isn't that exciting, to put it mildly.

 

Don't get me wrong - I still don't care one way or the other, and I still wouldn't read the messages so you'd notice - just saying that there are two extremes to this, and I'm not actually sure there is even a middle way !

Edited June 10, 2014 by fuzzbucket

[olympe]

Well, I was thinking along the breed-specific pick-up lines, to be honest.

 

A male frilled dragon, for example, will usually show off its frills in order to impress its mate - whether that mate is another frilled dragon or a silver. And even though the silver would usually expect a gift of meat, she might simply be impressed with the frill's display and decide she likes him anyway. And do whatever silver females do in order to show this.

Edited June 10, 2014 by olympe

[TheGrox]

Surely just going breed specific is going to be awkward for certain breeds, though. I mean, a breed that lives in water may well climb out onto the shore to do it's mating ritual with a land dwelling dragon, but I doubt it would do that for another water dragon.

[olympe]

Well - if it was going to present a kill to another dragon, the line doesn't need to mention where this happens. And if the dragon does something like a water dance (of the seven veils), then the other dragon would have to be able to watch - either be looking on from the shore, or flying above, or by watching from a nearby cliff.

[Mondat]

I do not think we need to explain everything though, considering we steal dragon eggs and record information but I do not know where we keep our adult dragons in the DC canon anywhere (what about the people who have 3000 dragons? Do we rent beach areas to keep our different water dragons there?). Yet we are able to breed them and use BSAs whenever we want.

 

Therefore I think it would be sufficient to know that a water dragon does a water dance, no matter what breed the mate is or the place.

[Obscure_Trash]

I worked at a similar site for two years as head admin so I am thinking of the implementation side too... it'd just be a few extra lines of text to invent or copy from the request, at least as I'm picturing it, and I can't imagine this sort of thing being terribly hard to code, but lôrd knows, I was wrong about that sometimes back then.

I understand your concern but I thought that people can/have to come up with mating behaviour for Dragon Requests anyway, so there might not be a "sudden flood with extra information".

 

I apologize for my lack of clarity. By being flooded with work, I meant having to go through and add all the ones for the breeds we already have, not having to add a line or two for new dragons.

 

Some more thoughts... it could work like this. Each breed could have the following added...

 

A line for producing an egg with a member of its own species

A line for eggmaking with ä different species

A line for breeding but no egg with own species

A line for breeding no egg with other species

A line for no interest, could probably be the same as now and generic

Refusals could remain species generic or be customized

And the code would be set to use the current generic lines if the species specific ones for the relevant breed were left blank.

 

It wouldn't have to be written more specifically - that is, say, red x black and so on. You coúld just have bits in the text that automatically fill in with the names and/or breeds of the dragons being bred.

 

You've written a lot more options than I personally think need added, though. My personal choice would be no more than 2 -3 per breed tops. I mean, tbh, I really just scan for an egg, no egg, or refusal. Even if new lines are added, I'm not going to spend much time reading them for entertainment. As a few others mentioned, when I breed, I'm looking for eggs - the text is of minor concern to me, lol.

 

IMO it'd be worth it if he wants to enrich the world, which, given all the work going into the Encyclopedia and suchlike, it seems to me like he does. Of course that doesn't mean this sort of thing fits into his vision, but it's worth suggesting.

 

I'm not really sure I'd count this under "enriching". It's stuff we already know - it's just flavor text. Things like the encyclopedia I'd put as enriching since we'll get to learn new things. o3o

 

~

 

Like I said, I'm not against this, I just don't want it to get unwieldy. I agree with the suggestion to keep the result (refusal, no success) a part of the message with any specialized text to keep things clear.

 

This is yet another suggestion where I think making it optional is just complicating things and is not necessary.

 

And since I see it came up again, I really don't think it's going to be a big deal to add one simple line of text without going against creator wishes. If there's no specific mating information, does the breed need more a more specific breed message line? If there is mating information, isn't it easy enough to add a line that fits perfectly fine with that information? If there isn't information, perhaps a general mating line depending on the dragon's breed behavior would suffice - and will that really go against the creator wishes? I highly doubt it. If a creator is still around and is that specific about the line they want added, they can suggest the line themselves. :3

[Mondat]

Bumpus for more input~

[Completely forgot about this thread, oops. Updated the first post as well.]

 

[cbussiere]

Oh man, I'd love this. Normally I don't read the text either but I would if it were something fun and interesting like this.

 

Since implementing individual linesfor every dragon would probably take a while, why not just have (or start with) a selection of generic lines? Not as accurate to the breed, and there'd still be contradictions to iron out (since Deep Seas can't strut and Terras don't have wings to display, etc), but it would be easier. Then if the creators want they can write lines for their dragons and submit them to TJ, and they can be applied at a more leisurely pace than having to give every dragon individual lines in one big update. I have no doubts the community could write (and hopefully agree on) all the messages, but I imagine we'd need approval from who made each dragon.