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I like the “Random” button because it can help spur the creative juices, but it’s always bugged me that, when you click the button, you randomize everything. This means that even when I may only want to a random selection for one or two items (like, say, I just want to randomize the character’s base skin or randomize the character’s pants), or if I don’t want certain items on my character (like, say, the horns and the tails), I do not have the option to do so. I have to take a character whose attire is completely randomly generated, whether or not I wanted those parts to begin with.
So I’d like to have the option to filter what the Random button ultimately randomizes. I’m thinking we either get a list of checkboxes to tick off or we get a second “Random” button that only randomizes that particular item. This way we can have better control over what we’re randomizing.
Just my two cents but the random function is something I tend to touch only with a ten-foot pole since it screwed several of my designs (especially while there was no way to undo its effects ;P ).
Figuring that there could be plenty of those random functions all over the interface is kind of a scary thought to me. This feels like a pretty easy way to unwillingly screw things up.
Now maybe I’m just something of a butterfingers at times… ^_^
I’d have to agree with Kelemelan here. While on the surface it seems like a simple idea, adding a new button to the UI that’s self-explanatory and won’t get pressed more by an accident is tricky, as we already have the interface kinda overcrowded. Adding this functionality as a hotkey-only would probably make this invisible for most of the users, and unusable for the ones on mobile.
The original idea behind the Random button was to give you an initial idea to work on, and not the other way around. When you only want to randomize a single layer, you can just as much select items from that layer randomly and see which works best.
I’ll think a bit more about if/how this could be implemented, but I’m not sure there’ll be a way to do this in a meaningful way. I know this is not the answer you were looking for, but for now, I hope this helps. 🙂
From my vantage point, I find it cumbersome to randomize a character and then having to go through each individual item to get rid of. I don’t know the exact number but there’s at least a few dozen items available to pick in the program which are a lot to go through- especially if you have a slow computer.
The other point is that sometimes the program randomizes the character to wear a suit *and* a top/underwear/pants/boots, etc. and sometimes it does not. So if I don’t want the suit, I’m left with- at times- a naked character.
Other times if I hit the “Random” button again, it won’t randomize certain items, typically the underwear and pants. Especially if I stay with the default options on each. The character will keep those items no matter how many times I hit the “Random” button.
Anyway, ultimately I bring up the suggestion merely to see if it could be done. I don’t know the program’s code so I don’t know what is and isn’t possible. That said, I don’t envision installing several dozen buttons or even an additional button to the interface. I’m thinking that the “Random” button simply be changed so that a dialog box pops up and gives you options for what you want to randomize, and only if you hit “OK” (which I could forsee a “Randomizer” dialog box having) will the program actually do something. Conversely, if you close that box instead of hitting “OK” it won’t do anything.
This would give the program the desired functionality that I’m requesting and it would also help solve Kelemelan‘s problem too because accidentally hitting the “Random” button won’t automatically make you lose the character. If there’s no way to implement such a feature I will understand, though I do think it would be useful in the long run.
The problem I mentioned is now already solved. There is an “undo” button. There wasn’t in the original ePics interface. 🙂
My concern with your proposal is that with many random options it’s extremely easy to lose track of what’s been randomized. The detailed proposal you just made feels safer than the original one. It also feel like an awful lot of code though.
I don’t believe epics requires that much computing power. Actually on my end it’s working badly on powerful computers and just fine on old ones (and the other way round… ^_^). I quit trying to figure this out after a while. It is what it is. My gut feeling is that simple mainstream video cards work better but don’t quote me on that. 😛
On my old computer- a 2011 laptop- the program was slow. Not unusable, but slow. My new computer is a much more powerful desktop and the program is lightning quick. Even still, it’s a bit of a pain to go through the several dozen or so items generated and have to manually pick which ones I don’t want. It’s draining “busywork” as opposed to the fun “creative” work.
I realize I wasn’t clear in my OP. I didn’t mean to suggest creating a million buttons. I should have put the pop up box idea in the first post, because that’s what I envisioned. I guess how it would work will depend on how complicated it would be to code, but maybe instead of a dialog box with a million options, there’s just two options- “Randomize Item” and “Randomize All”. I’ll leave that up to LBandy to determine.
The way Random originally worked when we released the software in 2014 was it just randomized everything with the same chance. We since made it more sophisticated, and there is now a chance associated with each layer, that determines how likely it is going to change. Most layers have a less than 100% chance, so this is why you are seeing some items remain unchanged between Random rolls. There are also several layers we decided to keep on 0% as we never wanted them to randomly appear.
Having a popup would be quite inconvenient, as if you wanted to randomize multiple times you would need to go through it each time, as opposed to how it works now, by simply pressing a button. Also, listing the categories by their names with checkboxes wouldn’t help, as they are sometimes represented differently in the actual config structure compared to how they show up on the UI buttons.
One possible solution I can imagine is converting the Random “popup” into a toggled overlay, similar to the Coloring panel, which simply lists all the category buttons and then use the active/inactive states to toggle if you want that specific category randomized. To get this done is a few days of work, and in all honesty, I can’t recall anyone else wanted the Random button to function in a more advanced way in the past 7 years. 🙂 So while I’d be happy to do it just for you alone, I also need to be able to fit this into my priorities. As I currently don’t yet have an upcoming patch scheduled for ePic, I also can’t tell if/when this could make it into the software. If I could find the time to do it, and also have other things that’d support scheduling a patch, I’ll definitely look into it.
Just for the record: I’m not finding ePic particularly slow on any computer/tablet PC/whatever I’m using (some are older than 2011 btw but I’m not necessarily running Windows…)
Where I’m having issues it’s with heating and it’s always been with heating since the creation of the software. Some computers work and overheat and some don’t and work fine.
Computing works in mysterious ways… ^_^
Okay, obviously I got my head up my *censored* today, I’ll assume you got the idea. 😛
For the record, I’m not receiving the forum’s posts today (again) and indeed I can’t edit my own posts, this feels wrong.
What happens when you click Edit? It seems to work fine for me.
E-mails also coming through here. Maybe check your spam folder if they end up there?
As for the heat, the software runs at a steady 30 fps. More is unnecessary, while further decreasing could result in some unresponsiveness.
Spam folder already checked. I got nothing.
Also tried to unsubsribe and resubscribe between my posts and it didn’t work.
Only email I got today is your post, nothing between daniel-arnold’s post (#31306) and yours (#31311). This feels wonky.
About the software, I’m certain it should run fine. Yet it’s overheating a Geforce GTX 460M card while comps with basic card work fine most of the time :P. I’m no longer concerned about that. For the time being I can pick and choose so less than 100% success works okay on my end. I can testify several computers / video cards / drivers do have trouble with it though.
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I’ve been able to edit this post. This is better. ^_^
But maybe I know what the issue is.
The Notify me option at the bottom of the page is checked, however the text at the top of the page says “subscribe”. This is extremely misleading : am I subscribed or not ? The text at the top of the page should say “unsbscribe” shouldn’t it ?
So I keep activating one and then the other and my guess is they are undoing each other’s action (just a guess).
Now I got both. Cache issue ?
I’m gonna go for cache issue because I’m editing my post to say that by “both” I meant “checked box and unsubscribed on the screen” but now that I’m editing the post the “notify me” box I’m seeing **isn’t checked**. This really feels wrong…
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