Teasing software, the question

Webteases are great, but what if you're in the mood for a slightly more immersive experience? Chat about Tease AI and other offline tease software.

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duck
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Teasing software, the question

Post by duck »

Hi there! I apologize in advance for a slightly longer text, hope you don't mind :)

I was toying with the idea of creating a teasing software for quite some time now. I stumbled upon this site and Tease AI in particular a long time ago and I found the idea behind it intriguing. However, at the time it was pretty basic in functionality and there weren't many personalities to choose from. Fast forward 2 years and I see 1885 still didn't find enough time/energy/whatever to finish the version 1.0, which I think is sad, because this project has potential. When the software works, it's great, but I found several problems, just to name a few:

From user's and writer's point of view
- there are still only few personalities to speak of, it's mainly just House of Tease and Spicy
- when a personality is more complex, it always contains huge number of bugs, most of which are never properly caught by the software, resulting in frequent crashes. I saw numerous bugs even in smaller personalities, which is never a good sign..
- documentation is scarce and a bit problematic. I know 1885 did probably his best explaining the features, but I think we know it can be done better

From programmer's point of view
- there are no tests present
- the flow of the program is not protected by try-catch blocks properly, allowing bugs from the personality crash the whole program. When it comes to using community scripts, it's vital to be protected against various bugs that will inevitably occur
- quality of the code is sketchy and needs to be improved (e.g. it's not acceptable to have 20 000 lines per file)
- lack of reliable tools to complement creating of scripts

I know it probably sounds like I'm bashing on the project or even on 1885, but that's not my intent at all. I think the project itself is great and I applaud 1885 for starting it. The problem I see is that he doesn't have time for it and he is often absent. As I'm looking at his profile, it seems his last forum post is from June, leaving the project behind. For all I know, maybe he will never come back for whatever reason. I know there are some attempts to fix few things here and there, providing us with the "unofficial patches", but I don't think it's enough. The project calls for major overhaul and smaller patches will fix only minor problems.

I read somewhere that 1885 asked for 3 months before we as a community do something with the project. It has been more than 5 months now, so maybe it's time for us to move on?

So, out of a respect towards other programmer's work, especially considering this is a non-profit project done completely in his spare time, I came here to you and would like to ask you a question:

Would you prefer a rework from ground up (including tests, documentation etc.) or would that anger/hurt someone and I should focus my efforts on a different project (maybe still some teasing software, just enough different to not directly compete with Tease AI)? What are your thoughts on this?
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by Stefaf »

That's a funny post - well not the post itself, but the meaning.
I hear about rewriting from scratch all the time. The only real approach has been stalled a long time ago.

I've never planned to work on TAI this long (My initial Plan was 6 weeks :-)). I just stumbled over it and thought it was a funny idea. And as i started i asked myself: The CE version or the original? I came to the conclusion to work on the original and provide support until the other one is done. Time has passed and nothing changed here. It's still challenging to screw around with it, while hoping not to break it in pieces. :-D
duck wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:30 pm there are no tests present

Please define test.
duck wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:30 pm - lack of reliable tools to complement creating of scripts
There are tools, and they are mostly open source. The only editor i know, which is not open source is my own one (But i haven't published it yet.).
duck wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:30 pm I know it probably sounds like I'm bashing on the project or even on 1885, but that's not my intent at all.
You are speaking about technical facts - we all know about and we all talk about it and none of us wants to offend him. ;-)


I've to admit: I'm really confused. What do you want? Do you want to contribute or do your own thing?
Whatever it is, feel free to do it. The only thing that would annoy me is, if you join TAI to turn it into a commercial product. As soon as it gets to money - i'll leave.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by avatarbr »

What I can tell you is, the community it's not that big to start a lot of side projects.

While TeaseME/GuideME has a lot of scripts (helps from being more simple to create and can be imported from webteases), TeaseAI have a few Personalities and I don't know how many users (I really wanted MEGA had some downloads numbers), but I bet it's a lot smallers than TeaseME.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by duck »

Stefaf,
by a test I mean small "function" that verifies the code runs as it should. It helps to write cleaner code and, if written properly, gives you confidence along the way. You can be sure the code behaves like you wanted to and if you need to change something later on, you simply do it without fear you're breaking something somewhere else and just run tests to verify everything's alright. When it comes to large projects, it's a must.

I know there were some attempts to do this in the past and usually 1885 came back and released a patch or two, but I think it's too slow at this point. After 2 years of development there should have been at least version 1.0, not 0.5..

Of course, the project would remain completely free. I know most people would just leave and search somewhere else.

What I want is to find out, if I'd have ANY community backing me up if I come back in few months with a working version or not. It's a big project and if I'm to spend on it months/years, I need to know if I have an audience for it or I'll be left alone with words "we have original Tease AI, go away, we never asked for this"... During development I'd also need some feedback loop with people interested in writing content for the software. I'm interested in ideas, feature requests etc.
I looked at the source code and in my opinion the only way is to rewrite the thing and rethink some of the approaches. At first I considered only writing a personality or two for the existing software, but after looking at the documentation and other people's scripts, I found out I'd go mad. As 1885 is absent for 5 months and we can't ask him directly, we'd probably have to choose a different name for it too, at least temporarily...

avatarbr,
I know, that's why I'm here asking these questions. If people aren't interested in this, there's no point in wasting my time on it. But I think this project has a real potential and we could all benefit from an active development. If we managed to make scripting for the software a bit easier, fixed bugs, reworked its architecture, used WPF instead of WebForms and so on, I believe we could attract more content writers and subsequently more people using the software. There's a serious lack of good programs that can do what Tease AI does.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by pepsifreak »

Do you intend on keeping the current script "format"? I think that is key as far a community backing goes. A lot of writers here sound burned out/busy with other things, and requiring a rewrite on their end too may not be the best thing to hear, but that's just what I observe around here. Writers may actually perk up if there are more features and easier tools to make content.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by ostermanblue2 »

Do it! I would use it.

What's missing from the current one, that are features that should be added? Let me hit you with the moonshot bucket of evil characteristics a tease software could have...
  • The ability to radically expand the program with plug-ins.
  • Machine learning algorithm that optimizes the personas with data from multiple users.
  • The ability to collect data about users from sensors.
  • It should be able to read the browser history, keyboard strikes, and clicks of its users in order to inform itself about their preferences.
  • The ability to remotely control sex toys.
  • Ideally, each AI persona would have its own electronic coin account that users would contribute to. That coin would be used to maintain its databases and pay for advertising. The money would be managed by the program itself.
  • The program would also offer to manage the finances of its users... :innocent:
Ok I took it pretty far into wet dream land there, but basically, ramp up the amount of feedback loops possible from various sources of information.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by FATALES »

I also considered creating a website in the PHP + Javascript programming language
For me teaseAI does not work according to my ideas.
House of Tease:
Images give me accidental even when I tag them , when he talks about tits, he shows me a blowjob when the program goes down.
At the beginning of the dominatrix he puts questions ,a good idea to add pictures, would like more of such questions
Wicked Tease: He or she still runs a card game or the like

My idea is that AI will react more:
- adjusts the stroke time accordingly when it writes the edge
- If Dominatrix asked you or you like hairy pussy and you answered yes you'll use these images more often (she's search for your fetish)
- random season , if you make a mistake you want cbt, anal play, edges, etc.
so it could happen that in one session for example cbt was less or would not be at all, the program could also respond to time during the day. Add exercise, shower, massage, threesome, bondage, ballgag , your birthday , party, storyline tasks.

Maybe I could reprogram or help redesign TEASEAI but somebody would have to put me in the way the program works.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by Stefaf »

duck wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:35 am by a test I mean small "function" that verifies the code runs as it should.
Now that you mention it, it seems obvious. I've never thought about doing something like that, but none of my programs is that big. Nice idea!
duck wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:35 am I know there were some attempts to do this in the past and usually 1885 came back and released a patch or two, but I think it's too slow at this point. After 2 years of development there should have been at least version 1.0, not 0.5..
In the meantime it became open source and several people have worked on it. The reason why it is not that fast, is because the community isn't that big and most of the people have other priorities. Most programmers want to create scripts and use them. I'm not sure about pepsifreak, but i think i'm the only one who hasn't even finished a single script yet. So WE are the reason for 0.5.
Spoiler: show
Funny fact: until Patch 50 or so, its Assembly Version was 1.0.0.0! As we started semantic versioning i told him that it's just a number and nobody actually cares about it - If i had known that before. :-D
So if you start your own "whatever": keep in mind, that you'll most likely be on your own. I don't have the intention to rewrite something that big, from scratch and support it afterwards.

What platform do you plan to use?
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by duck »

pepsifreak
It's definitely one of the things I'm considering and hugely depends on whether we'd like to treat this project as a continuation of Tease AI (2.0?) or if this should be just a similar, but independent, project. I think we could use existing Tease AI as a starting point and move on from there. That way current content writers could use their knowledge to create some personalities and then we can maybe create new functions, slowly modify old ones.. Whatever would be needed.

ostermanblue2
thanks for the encouragement! :) Honestly, the more ideas the better. I don't promise to implement every single idea, but I'd definitely consider doing it if there are enough people interested in it. We could probably create a separate thread for feature requests later, where we will discuss these ideas in more detail.

FATALES
I know, I read your post earlier. It was one of my "final motivations" I needed to actually do something about this. I considered the website approach, but I think it would be a bit problematic. There are several reasons for that:
- the current project uses many images, but I doubt people have the license to use any of them. If the project was created as a website, we would either need to create these images for the project (find models who're comfortable with all the kinky stuff and nudity) or buy a license for every single image used
- you proposed free hosting, but if it becomes popular, it won't be enough at all very soon. Also many hosting companies have a very strict rule: "no sexual content"
- this is a very.. specific project. Many people probably wouldn't feel safe having their conversations stored on some remote machine. I could make whatever promises, but there will still be that factor "what if...?". When you have the software on your machine, people usually feel more safe about it
- money... Hosting, domains, SSL certificates and other things cost some money. The bigger the project would get, the more money we would need to pour in, every single month
- ...

I think you have some very good ideas though and maybe we could implement at least some of them :)

Stefaf
some people take tests to even higher level - they base the whole development process around test suits (test driven development (TDD)), but I think that won't be necessary. Either way, tests are a good way for making sure it still works, no matter who or when made the change. It can't catch 100%, because the tests are still written by a human, but it's usually good enough and can help a ton.

So we can thank YOU it's still not 1.0? :D ;) A semantic versioning can help to show what stage the project is currently in, the extent of the current patch (if it's just minor fixes or something bigger) etc. It's true most people don't care about it, but I'm a programmer, it's my job to care :P

I know I will be mostly on my own, but I'm fine with it. I can progress at my own pace and don't be too stressed about blocking someone else's work on the project. I'll mostly need help when it comes to getting feedback from the community, feature requests and stuff like that. As I have a full-time job, I don't expect to finish in a week or something like that, it will obviously take some time, but I think we can slowly get there and have a version that will be maintained, modern and fully supporting its content creators and end-users.

When it comes to platforms, I'm considering two approaches:
1.) write it in C# (WPF), which would mean less work, but usable only on Windows machines
2.) write it in C# .NET Core version (for logic), which would probably take a little more effort, but would result in huge portability (Windows, Linux, Mac, maybe even phones), we would "just" need to adapt the UI for other platforms. I could potentially do it for Linux, but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in that option. I saw some questions about availability on other platforms, but it wasn't that often, so I'm not sure about this yet. Do you know people who would really benefit from this? Or is it just 1-2 guys?

Also, can someone contact 1885 to ask him if he's ok with all this? I'd like to "upgrade" this project, not make enemies or something... I know he put a lot of effort in the project earlier (and other people too) and I don't think dividing the community would help at all if he ever comes back and would be mad at me.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by Notay »

Unless I went about it all wrong or things have changed, 1885 does not want a competing project.

I would advise against it, until you hear otherwise form 1885.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by duck »

Notay, I know, it was like that 2 years ago when you asked him, the project was just starting etc... But now he's been missing for 5 months. That's why I'm curious if someone can contact him directly to find out what are his plans with this software. If he wasn't absent right now, I'd ask him directly myself, but I don't have any means of reaching him. q55x8x said back then that we should shape it further as a community, but I don't think it contradicts a rewrite if it helps the project. My intentions are not to steal it from him, but to improve it and make some progress. Not for him, not for myself, but for the community of people who are into stuff like this.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by Daragorn »

Honestly i doubt that asking someone who created something if he minds someone doing a parallel project which will in the end do the same and more would end in a positive answer from anyone :-D

But 1885 has been long gone since months, it already happened in the past and would probably happen again if/when he comes back, so i doubt you'll ever get the chance to ask him.
I was one of those keeping up with development when he was absent, and also working with him when he came back; all i can say is that he disappeared all of a sudden one day when, the day before, we were talking about stuff he wanted to introduce....so i doubt he will reappear anytime soon.

As stefaf said, there have been not many people working on it and all of us did it in our freetime; currently i have no more time to dedicate to development of teaseAI and i doubt i will have much in the near future...so i think it is just stefaf right now working on it.

Having said that....sure, a better version, more manageable to expan, with better bug checks and possibly more features would be nice to have but, as i said, i don't think it would have 1885's favour (understendably)....but if you think you can do, why not?

I have to say though, that i agree with what other user said about scripts: there are not many scripters around and i highly doubt they would take the hassle to go through 300+ modules/scripts and rewrite them to have them working for another program,
So i think that, if you want to do it, your first priority would be to make sure that your program is compatible scriptwise with teaseAI and/or create some tool that will convert old scripts in the new format because, otherwise, i doubt it'd have much content to play with anytime soon (but i am not a scripter, so i'll leave that to them :-D)
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by NEGEV »

I think this is great idea. Eventough 1885 might be upset it is a community project now. If we want to make the decision to begin from scratch again than that is our decision now. As I see it if your delivers on its promises then their will be more scripters a option to convert the scripts would be nice but ultimatley not necessary.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by magie686 »

If your interested, I have the start of a Haskell port that I have been working on on and off for a bit.
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Re: Teasing software, the question

Post by duck »

Daragorn
I don't know, if I made a project for the community and I couldn't develop it further, I'd be glad if someone expanded on the idea. I don't have any problem stating 1885 as the original creator and give him all the credit for it (or even send him his share if we ever enable optional donations), but I'm not sure about waiting when/whether he'll come back.

Compatibility with existing scripts looks like a must at this point, some people took a long time developing their personalities, though I think it should be possible to create an alternative parser, so the new syntax (if needed) would be supported as well and people would have the choice of using whatever feels more comfortable. I'll see during the development what would be the best approach.

magie686
unfortunately I'm not familiar with Haskell. How far did you get with it?
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