Appeal to animation creators - Please give your animations useful names

[Zasz]

This has been bothering me for some time now. Many animation names are confusing or don’t say at all what they’re for and some are even misleading. This is especially important for climax animations. Well, it is for me because of the mod cumshine where climax animations trigger other things seperate from WW.

 

For example, animations with the term “floor” in them. Some of those are actually on the floor while others are standing. When Sims are standing, they’re not on the floor. So the name ends up suggesting a position that isn’t used. It makes searching by context more frustrating than it needs to be.

 

Then there are chains of animations that belong together but the names don’t reveal what they’re for like “U Makin Me Wanna Fuck U” or completely cryptic letter chains (looking at you, Mike). I get the idea of themed animation chains but at least make it possible to intuitively recognize what the animation does. Animation names can be long enough to keep both the theme and the purpose.

 

Right now I’m looking at an animation called “makeoutbehind_floor_02.” The name suggests the Sims make out with one behind the other on the floor. In reality both Sims are standing. A change to something like “Makeout behind 02 – Kissing, groping & rubbing” would be much clearer while preserving the theme. Small changes like that significantly reduce searching time when you have a lot of animations, even when searching by context.

 

And finally, roles in the names. Players are supposed to give their Sims roles and the animations already show roles under their name in the list. So why write the roles into the name itself?

 

My game says I have around 17k animations by now but I don’t think that number is accurate even with my 85 animation files. So you can imagine how frustrating this gets, even with the ability to rename animations. I don’t want to sound entitled, but renaming animations to make them recognizable isn’t something end users should have to do. Be it animations for WW, moving boxes, warning labels for sponges or doorbell names. I did it anyway, for the sake of my sanity.

Please, creators. Consider the impact this has on users. Im still grateful for all the animations you offer even though I want to slap you (gently) sometimes 😘

[Jyratx]

Brooooo, FINALLY another who gets it. It's infuriating as hell to try and build animation playlists and having to manually test every single one that I haven't seen already to figure out what the hell it's supposed to be because the names of the anims in question either tell me nothing or tell me nothing with extra steps. It's just as easy to type a few extra letters so that "She Loves it" can become "Cowgirl: She Loves it" or some such. What context am I supposed to derive from an anim name like, for example, "Freakin' Out on the Dick"? Is it cowgirl, is it reverse cowgirl, is it even any kind of cowgirl... what? It'd be nice if I didn't have to guess... I got tired of guessing and testing so I just started ignoring any animation with a non positional name and focused instead on the ones that I didn't have to do any guesswork on - which sucks, because I could be missing out on some really fantastic anims. 

Edited March 30 by Jyratx

[flybox]

I'm not saying you guys have no point, but at least a decent chunk of what you're looking for is easily taken care of by the native WW context sorting when you select an animation. You want a cowgirl scene, you select the cowgirl context, you want a cumshot, you select the cumshot context, etc. I know it doesn't cover every detail you might want to search for, but it gets you pretty close.

 

I think the most useful names are the ones that provide thematic context that you can't search for in WW. Like a series of animations named "Netflix and chill" (or whatever it is called), that adds information about what sort of vibe the animations are going to provide that WW can't tell me.

[Zasz]

10 hours ago, flybox said:

I'm not saying you guys have no point, but at least a decent chunk of what you're looking for is easily taken care of by the native WW context sorting when you select an animation. You want a cowgirl scene, you select the cowgirl context, you want a cumshot, you select the cumshot context, etc. I know it doesn't cover every detail you might want to search for, but it gets you pretty close.

 

I think the most useful names are the ones that provide thematic context that you can't search for in WW. Like a series of animations named "Netflix and chill" (or whatever it is called), that adds information about what sort of vibe the animations are going to provide that WW can't tell me.

Unfortunately the context menu isn't always reliable because I found many animations that don't belong into some categories and even editing the tags doesn't help or we can't assign the proper tags.

 

Cowgirl scenes might be usually cowgirl scenes. But the handjob, blowjob, cunnilingus, doggy and a few other categories involving the term "floor" are often pure guesswork whether they are standing or on the ground animations. THAT is the major point.

 

So we are dealing with three problems here. Wrong tags, inability to assign proper tags and inaccurate names for animations.

[SAFMeiko]

It would be great if this issue could be contained within English culture, but non-English speakers sometimes can't understand it from the context. You need to look at the GIFs beforehand to understand, but there are so many of them that it's quite a task.

The lack of preambles, warnings, and detailed explanations is somewhat similar to male-oriented hentai culture.

[PeterMcPhallus]

I would be happy to edit the tags, flags, categories, names, or whatever other metadata WW uses to organize the animations myself (in my own local collection), if only there were a way to do that.

[Zasz]

1 hour ago, PeterMcPhallus said:

I would be happy to edit the tags, flags, categories, names, or whatever other metadata WW uses to organize the animations myself (in my own local collection), if only there were a way to do that.

We can edit the tags and names. Shift - click on a sim during sex wicked whims and then select the proper option.

But the problem remains that many animations remain in the wrong categories or cant have specific tags for no apparent reason.

[TURBODRIVER]

I certainly don't see the naming issue ever getting better, unless you have more players complaining about it to the animators. Same with misconfigured roles or lacking tags.

From my perspective, I don't expect anything to actually improve, the creator has to care about the quality of packaging as much as the quality of product.

What I am hoping to see is improvement through detection and automation, which is a massive and complicated project, but I do have some fun working on a solution that will automatically fix tagging and roles. This will not only help active creators, but ones that have retired too. Of course that won't fix names, but perhaps with detailed and correct configurations, names could be omitted or become less important.

[Zasz]

I’m genuinely glad the topic caught your attention. Its one of those areas where players feel the effects every day, so having your perspective on it is highly appreciated.

 

What I dont understand yet is why naming can’t be included in the same kind of standards you already enforce for tags, roles, and package structure. You clearly have rules in place for those areas and creators follow them because the mod requires it.

Wouldnt it be possible to expand those rules to cover naming conventions as well, at least for active creators? Retired creators obviously need a different solution, but the current inconsistency mostly comes from people who are still producing content.

 

This project sounds promising and Im curious what it will look like in practice. If it makes it easier to find the right animations in the heat of the action, Im all for it.

[FauxFurry]

There was once a catalogue of animations on this site but that has not been updated in years. Experiencing how difficult it can be to keep such an ever changing list updated, I can understand why. It still might be worth making a community thread which everyone can contribute to rather than leaving it up to a single user.

[TURBODRIVER]

20 hours ago, Zasz said:

I’m genuinely glad the topic caught your attention. Its one of those areas where players feel the effects every day, so having your perspective on it is highly appreciated.

 

What I dont understand yet is why naming can’t be included in the same kind of standards you already enforce for tags, roles, and package structure. You clearly have rules in place for those areas and creators follow them because the mod requires it.

Wouldnt it be possible to expand those rules to cover naming conventions as well, at least for active creators? Retired creators obviously need a different solution, but the current inconsistency mostly comes from people who are still producing content.

 

This project sounds promising and Im curious what it will look like in practice. If it makes it easier to find the right animations in the heat of the action, Im all for it.

 

I'm not sure what rules or enforcement you have heard about, but the most there is are standards, which are not strictly followed either. The biggest mistakes were the complexity of configuring animations early on, and is the lack of conventions for configuring animations. I have never aimed to enforced any specific way animations should be made, mostly focusing on providing more and improving what exists. These decisions, or lack of them, came with its benefits and the pointed out detriments.

 

Privately, I always recommend to any modder to focus on presentation, that being naming and visuals. I've commissioned projects that improved naming, tagging, and roles of existing animations by hand, on top of very primitive automation solutions. And the project aiming to automatically fix mistakes and actually do it well has went through many iterations and still requires a lot of work, but it will likely just be another step towards improvement.

 

It's difficult for me to see some of the issues getting better, unless they weren't issues from the beginning. If anyone from the community takes the initiative to improve names of animations, the override system in WW exists and comes with shareable files. I would be glad to include them by default in the mod.

[Zasz]

As a mere user of mods I assumed there were some basic rules modders and animators had to follow when their content interacts with WW. I assumed wrong.

 

Would you consider making a simple post that outlines a few minimal naming or presentation guidelines? Not strict rules, just clarifications. Something lightweight that modders could follow voluntarily so the user‑facing side becomes more consistent.

 

Ive already started renaming animations on my end. I have around 17,000 across 86 files and only managed to rename a tiny fraction so far. Its a huge task for any single user. But if there were a small set of official guidelines, it could become a community effort instead of everyone reinventing their own naming logic.

 

Btw, is it the "personal.json" file thats shareable?

[DXing]

[Arbitrary Theme Name] [Position Abbreviation(s)] [Stage] [Roles]

Eg.

"Dick Freakout CG 01 (FM)"
"Dick Freakout MS 02 (FM)"
"Dick Freakout MS CG 03 (FFMM)" (multiple positions)
etc..

I believe theme names are still a good thing, because even if on their own it can be hard to guess what the animation is, they still help memorise which animation is what, once you've already seen it. Eg. "Dick Freakout CG 03 (FFMM)" is a lot easier to remember than "CG03FFMM"

Adding Roles to the title is mostly unnecessary information IMO, as you already have it on the descriptions. But frankly I personally like them, as I find them easier to see. And it can help if you're creating similar enough animations, so like:

"Handcuffed O 01 (FF)"
"Handcuffed O 01 (FM)"

Adding locations to the title also doesn't help IMO, for two reasons. Firstly, because you will only be seeing the animation anyway, if you're already on the location. And secondly, because whenever creating an animation, you can set multiple viable locations for it, (eg. DINING_CHAIR, TABLE_COFFEE, etc..), but they all would share the same title.

I also don't think adding "Climax" as a stage adds much, unless it is for some whatever reason, outside of the Climax category, as some animations are. But apart from brevity, I don't see an issue.

Suggested abbreviations (using Actions list )  : 

ST - Standing
SI - Sitting
SW - Sideways
UD - Upside Down
CY - Carry
KN - Kneeling
MB or MST - Masturbation
BJ - Blowjob
DT - Deep Throat
CL or  CUN - Cunnilingus
RJ - Rimjob
LK - Licking
FG - Fingering
69 - Sixty Nine
FS - Face Sitting
TJ - Titjob
TH - Thighjob
BT or BTJ - Buttjob
DG - Doggy
MS - Missionary
CG - Cowgirl
SP - Spooning
PB - Pronebone
PD - Piledriver
SR - Spitroast
KS - Kissing
SPK - Spanking
CK - Choking
GP - Groping
TS - Tits Sucking
TO - Toes Sucking
FX - Flexible
DP - Double Penetration
PEE - Peeing
FT - Fisting
SQ - Squirt
CS - Cumshot
CP - Creampie
CI - Cum Inside
CIM - Cum In Mouth
BKK - Bukkake