Pink Petal Games

Game Discussion => General Discussion & Download => Topic started by: graodeareia on January 31, 2012, 09:54:20 PM

Title: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on January 31, 2012, 09:54:20 PM
UPDATE July 13: link

 (http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=934.msg16681#msg16681)About a week ago a wrote a post on the WMEx thread about how I had decided to write a new WM game from scratch. For those of you that read that post and wondered if I had given up, wonder no more. I worked hard this week in order to get something out. I created this thread so that we can work together on game design (eg deciding how the game will work). I will create another thread to focus on game development (eg writing code). So in this post I will talk a little about the game design so far and what we should focus on for now.
The game design include everything about how the game works, all the rules, interections and so on. But we must not get ahead of our selves. To keep things simple and get a working game out there I think we should focus on a specific point of the game, get that code working, and then move on to something else. This will be a prototype based aproach where if people leave the team (myself included) there will be working code and design rules that others can carry on. Other advantages to this approach include early feedback (its faster and easier to fix things sooner than later), well tested code base (people can test out the features as the game matures, so that the final product is more stable) and a very important point that is to design something we can actually build. Its comom for software projects that do all the design first and code later to have severals problems on the coding fase. For instance there may be technical dificulties to executing a specific design point, and that may lead to redesign or even simply canceling features. Also, the design may become too large or too complex and that will lead to game that takes ages to complete. The prototype aproach on the other hand, will always lead to a working game, even if it has very few features. If a team abandons the project, others can pick it up and have a solid foundation to build features on top of, just like they do today with the current WM.

From now on this post will focus on the design features that I working on. Please keep the sugestions limited to the topic at hand. Will the game have feature X or will I be able to do action Y? We will see when we get there.

I decided that the best place to start will be on the girls attributes. Attributes are the core skill the girl will have. The reason why its important to start here is becouse everything else is derived from this. How good is a girls in doing a certain job? Look at her attributes. Will my girl win a fight in the dungeon? Look at her attributes. How fast will the girl get tired? Attributes. How will this item or trait affect my girl? It will affect her attributes. You get the Ideia.
Anyways, one of my my design goals is to make things as simple as possible. That way the player can easily understand how and why things are happening the way they are. WM currently has some confusing rules under the hood and its pretty hard to understand why things are the way they are. I want the new game to be more clear in that sense. So when you go buy a slave for instance, you can quickly look at her attributes and decide whats is the best girl for the job.
The skill system is WM is very similar to many RPGs. So started from there. Wikipedia informed me about the code attributes that are used in the most popular RPG systems out there. After looking at that and considering what WM actully needs I came up with 5 basic attributes, those are:

Strength (STR): Combat, Combat Damage, ability to carry heavy items (like a heavy armor or weapon), Stamina, can give penalty to Charisma
Constitution (CON) - Health and Stamina, Combat Resistance, Spell Resistance, resistance to disease and vices
Wisdom (WIS)- Discipline, Spell, Spell Damage, Spell Resistance, Charisma
Dexterity (DEX) - Combat, Spell
Beauty (BEU) - Charisma, can give a bonus or penalty to Discipline

Initialy I wanted only 4 basic attributes. BEU would not be one of them. But after a little thought I decided that a whore really needs that. So I had to add it, making things a little more complex than I initialy planned. Also for now, BEU is actually the least important attrbitute in the skill system. I plan to solve that later by adding game features that makes this attribute as important as the others. In adition to the described above all the atributes may give bonus or penalty to how good a job is executed. For instance a strong girl may be better at cleanig. A pretty girl may be a more succeful waitress since more customers will want her to be there attendent. How jobs are going to be affected will be decided when we get to designing the jobs/skill system. That should help balancing the importance of the basic attributes. The goal is that all of them should be just as important and girls with diferent attributes should be better at performing certain tasks then others.

Now for the secondary attributes. All other attributes are automaticly calculated from the base ones. That means that only the basic attributes should be set on girl packages. It also mean that evaluating a girl should be only a matter of looking at the basic attributes. There is one catch though. Traits as well as items may direcly affect the secondary attributes. So a girl with crappy basic attributes but lots of positive traits may actually be a good pick. Are the secondary attributes.

General

Stamina - base STR, CON - defines how much energy a girl has for combat and work. When it runs out a girl has to rest to recover it.
Health - base CON - How much damage a girl can take
Mana - base WIS - How much spells a girl can cast

Job related

Discipline - base WIS, BEU - how well jobs are executed, how fast a girl can learn (get experience)
Charisma - base BEU, WIS, STR - how much custormers like the girls, girls with high charisma will have more succes at tasks that require them to interect with customers.

Combat related

Combat - base DEX, STR - the chance of hiting or defending a physical attack, does not affect damage (comsumes Stamina)
Spell - base WIS, DEX - the chance to hit or defend a magical attack (Comsumes Mana)
Combat Damage - base STR - how much damage is cased on a successful Combat hit
Spell Damage - base WIS - how much damage is cased on a successful Spell hit
Spell Resistance - base CON, WIS - Spell damage taken is reduced by this
Damage Resistance - base CON - Combat damage taken is reduced by this

What I need help with

First I need feedback on the attributes described, should I add one, remove another. Should I change the base attribute thats used to calculated the others? For instance I decided not to add libido. It wasnt very clear how much it affected the game play. You could have a whore with zero libido doing 6-8 customers per period and the customers would all be happy and give tips. Sure you could say things like a girl having sex with no libido will get sad or tired. But is those kind of details important enough to justify adding another attribute, therefore making the game more complex?
Second there is one of the most important points of the game missing here. Obedience. In the original WM Obedience is linked to the girls feeling, like happiness, love/hate and also things like Spirit and Confidence. In this game we are going to have to add fealings and somehow combine that with Dicipline and make things work. I'm just not sure how that should be done. I could just forget feelings and simply add Obedience and be done. But I'm not confident that thats is the best option. So here is where most of the work should be focused next.

One more thing I forgot to mention, Attributes are based on a 20 sided dice (d20) so max is 20 min is 1. Alright in the next post I will talk about how combat works, but I still got to code a combat demo.
I have a working programa that you can play with the attributes. I will post that soon.
Update:
The Attrites demo has been updated so that now I have Revision 1 of the attributes: http://www.mediafire.com/?pr7ft1elg2650wo (http://www.mediafire.com/?pr7ft1elg2650wo)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: crazy on February 01, 2012, 12:31:19 AM
I would try and find a way to work feelings into it atleast love/hate and happiness those seem important to me.  And libido doesn't really make it that much more complex for a player maybe for you to code but still seems like it should be in there.  For combat i would consider a ranged attribute but not sure how u would add it.  Other then that things seem fine to me Im sure others will throw some ideals out there.  Read your post in EX just a minute ago and just going say they were adding lua as the scripting system to WM think doc got around 50% done with before he stopped.  But with so many people saying that things cant be done in WM cause it would be to hard to code I think you still made the right choice.  Im sure I could come up with 100 questions but ill let u post your plans before I go into anything.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Ctwo on February 01, 2012, 06:14:57 AM
Libedo seems to be a very complciated stat in WM. A girl looses some libedo when she has sex. If you have a very popular whore she'll loose a lot of libedo and will become unhappy with each sex act once it hits zero.
On the other hand, girls with jobs where they don't have sex who have high libedo get unhappy if they don't occasionally have sex. Typically you can see a matron or torturer fall into this.
I'm not saying this needs to be included or not, but if you make the game too simple people will loose interst after a few play thoughs.
One thing I've been thinking about is Super Girls. No not a girl in a cape, a woman who has perfect stats. Honestly, they shouldn't exist. Yet, through items and the over generosity of the people who make girl packages they are far too common. I think one solution would be to cap how many points are alocated to a girl. Lets just say max points is going to be 80 total, with the average person only having about 40 points to start. This way you can have some kind of item or training that improves specific stats but once a girl caps out she needs to loose a point from one stat to gain points in another.
Skills are different than stats. You shouldn't be limited on improving a skill by a stat, but rather the stat should determine both your base and how quickly you can learn that skill. So instead of wisdom being the stat that controlls how fast you can learn how to fight, it should be the base stats involved in the fighting skill (str and dex). I'd also recommend a "use to improve" system for skills. Each time you use the skill (or train in it) you either gain expereince with that skill or a chance of a skill up. Both systems have their merits and detractors. I'd suggest a weighted system where low skills improve quickly, and high skills improve slowly. That is easy to control through an experience system but can be rather tedius. For a system that gives a chance to skill up with each use I'd recommend a base of [(stat1+stat2/2)+10%]-skill (if skills are 1-20). That should make it relatively easy to start, but get much harder as you gain skill. It also reinforces that you need high stats to get high skills. Items and tutors could add to the base chance to skill up. An xp system might be more fair. Something like you gain xp based off of the degree of success plus a bonus for high stats.
Hope this gives you some food for thought.
 
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 01, 2012, 10:58:45 AM
@crazy You are kinda right to wait for more posts. In my mind there is much more information than what is posted so far. But since the post was getting huge I decided to get the out there and than make more posts later. So if you post a sugestion I might have already have thoughts about the subject. On the other hand, I would apreciate some questions as that would be a starting point for a new post. So feel free to ask away. Reguarding libido, its not about coding. I can easily get it in there, all it takes is a couple hours. I just don't see the value added as of yet. If can elaborate on good reasons to put in there great. But having a skill just to add or remove a little happiness is not a good enough reason in my opnion. As I said earlier, every attribute must be important in order for it to make the cut. For instance. I this game a trait similar to "mind fucked" or "retarded" would give a penalty to wisdom, therefore affecting charisma, dicipline, spell casting and so on. What this means is that players have to be careful when breaking the girls so as not to make her useless or at least less usefull. So breaking the girls in this game should be quite chalenging. I think that will make it more fun becouse its enough to get your S Class girl. You will also have the challenge of breaking her. As for the scripting language I'm actually using javascript instead of lua. I will get into that in a post on the dev thread.

@Ctwo Don't worry about the game being too simple. Once all the other features are added the game will become pretty complex. It seams kinda inevitable since there will be skills/jobs, itens, dugeon, management and much more. But we will get to that in the future. As regarding experience I will talk a little about that in this post since it seams relevant to the skill system.

In this post I will talk a little about the experience system, how this relates to the attributes, and about some of the information about girl that will be in the girl packs. First lets talk about girl classes. Each girl will have a class. You won't put the base attributes directly in the file. What you will put is her class and her type. The system will randomly generate the base attributes based on the girls class and type. Now some of you if not all, will already dislike this feature. How come you can't control the stats of the girls in the girl pack? Thats just aweful. Well let elaborate futher and I hope we can come to an agreement on this.

Class

The girl class is very simple. It simply defines how many attribute points the girl will have initially. Classes vary from A to F, and there is also a special class called S. Here is the break down:

F - 25 attribute points (average (avg) girl will have 5 in each base attribute (attr))
E - 35 (avg 7 per attr)
D - 45 (avg 9 per attr)
C - 55 (avg 11 per attr)
B - 65 (avg 13 per attr)
A - 75 (avg 15 per attr)
S - 85 (avg 17 per attr)

Why classes are important? To put it bluntly, it will make the game more fun. And why is that? You may ask. First there is the matter of progression. The further you get the better girls you get. At the slave market you will only find girls of class F and E. Girls sold to you by there fathers or that you find while exploring the city will also come with class F and E. That means that at the start of the game all your gilrs will be crap. Its like any RPG out there. You start of at level 1 with crapy equipment and as you progress through the game you get better skill and better items. So how can I get access to better girls? There are two ways.

Special events

When you explore the town, depending on your game progress, a special event may occur. When that happens some choices will be made by you and if you succed you will get the girl. Its similar to how you get Chun Lee in the vanilla WM. There will have to be some way to measure your progress and the futher you go the better the special events will be. This alone should give some replayability to the game, becouse if you make the wrong choices in you first try at an special event, you won't get the girl and the event will never happen again. You can then make the right choices on your next play through so that this time you get the girl. You can also cheat of course. Someone will post a walkthough at some point and you can just look it up and make the right choices on you first try, but where is the fun in that? You might also get lucky and make the right choices in your first try.

Catacombs

The catacombs will have many levels. When you assigne a girl to explore the catacombs you can choose which level to send the girl to. The game should probabily warn you when you send an unprepared girl too deep, becouse most likely she will die. The first level will have D class girls. That means that you best warrior girl will be one level below the girls in level 1. So your girl will probabily lose the fight if you send he right away. To win the fights you can do two things. Wait for you girl to level up, or equip your girl with some powerfull itens. Of course the store will only have crapy stuff at first. But a well equip E class girl, even with the vanilla items should be able to win fights in the first level of the catacombs. So then you will capture some level D girls that you can equip and level up and send them to level 2 where you will capture some level C girls. Then level 3 for B girls, and level 4 for A girls, and finally the last level where its the only place you can get the S class girls. So that means that S class girls will not be available through Special events.

I think this feature should be very fun. It should give the player a lot of satisfaction when they capture their first S class girl.

Type

Not all the girls will have average stat. So lets look a 2 F class girls.

Girl1: STR = 3, CON = 4, DEX = 6, WIS 7, BEU = 5
Girl2: STR = 7, CON = 5, DEX = 6, WIS 3, BEU = 4

You can quickly see that Girl1 would be a good at casting spells, while Girl2 would good at combat. This is what type is for. In the girl pack you can specify a type, for instance:

Girl1: class F, type mage
Girl2: class F, type warrier

The Girl1 spec would tell the game to generate a girl with 25 attribute points with the majority focused on spell casting related attributes. While the system would throw more points to combat related attributes for Girl2. So they would have skills similar to the ones listed in the examples above. What types are going to be available? Well that is yet to be decided, but surely there would be at least 4 of them. One focused on beauty and wisdom (makes for good whores), one focused on combat, one on spells and a general one that would generate more balanced girls.

Why are types important? First it give the girl package creator more control over the girl that he is making. Second it also adds replayability since the girls would be diferent each type you play the game.

Further Control for package makers

Well some package makers might think that classes and types don't give them enough control over the girls they create. They are right. Thats where traits come in. With positive and negative Traits you can further tune the girl to what you have in mind. For example if you want the girl to be a super warrior you might add some combat traits. You make also decide that this girl should not be a good whore so you add some traits that give penalty to beauty and wisdom. And then you might want this girl to be hard to tame so you add some traits that make her disobedient.

Now I will talk a little bit about how leveling up works.

A girl will level up when she reachs a pre-defined amount of experience. A girl always starts a level zero. Max level is 5. For every level up the girl gets 2 base attribute points. This points are assined automaticaly based on what skill/job she is assigned to. Each skill/job will be associated to one or more base attributes. Every week that a girl performs a task she will get some experience for that, and that experience will be directed towards whatever base attributes are associated with a given task. So for example, if you have a girl doing combat related tasks such as exploring the dungeon or covering security, then when this girl levels up she will get better at STR, DEX and CON.
Since there are 5 levels for each girl, and she gets 2 points per level at most she can get 10 points at most. So a Level 5 S class girl would have 95 attribute points, making her close to perfect. A level 5 class F girl would have 35 attribute points so she would effectily now be a class E girl. The only attribute that never goes up with level is BEU. The only way to raise that attribute is by gaining Traits. Traits will be gained randomly according to various conditions such as age, jobs/skill experience and so on. But for now lets not talk much about Traits. I just wanted you to know that they will be there and will be and important part of the gameplay.

I hope that you get the idea. And I also hope for some sugestions and constructive criticism.

Note: The current demo program available does not include Classes and Types for now you can directly change the base attribute value and see what the resulting attributes will be. Its also possible to edit a script file and change the calculation of all secondary attributes. I will get into how you do that later in a post on the Dev thread. If you know your javascript and feel adventerous take a look at the "./script/attributes.js" file. Note that you need to restart the program for the changes to take effect.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 01, 2012, 11:16:18 AM
Forgot to mention one more feature of the leveling up system.
One of the great things about hentai games is to unlock the cg. Inicially only one the portraity picture will be available, nothing else. As the girls has a type of sex a single picture related to the type of sex will be unlocked. When the girl levels up, one more picture will be made available to the portrait as well as one more for each type of sex she had.

But you might be wondering about the picture limit. Since the girl start at level 0 (one picture) and can get up to 5 (five more pictures) that means that packs would only be able to contain 6 pictures for each category. Well there won't be that limit. If there are less pictures available in the package (less than 6 per category) than thats means all the pictures will be unlocked earlier. Now if there are more than 6 pictures for a given category than each level will unlock more than one picture.

For example lets say a girl has 3 pictures for oral sex. one will be unlocked at level zero. Another at level 1 and the final picture will be unlocked at level 2. Now lets look at another exemple for a girl with 10 normal sex pictures. 2 at level 0, 2 at level 1, 2 at level 2, 2 at level 3, 1 at level 4 and the final at level 5.  So what that means is when you have sex with the girl or look at a whore job report you will see a random picture out of whatever is unlocked. Same goes to the girls gallery, only unlocked pictures will be available.

This gives the game another goal asside from the main ones. For those that might be impacient I might put and "unlock all" tag in the config file so that all pictures are available from start.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jozsi1 on February 01, 2012, 12:56:45 PM

Hi! :)


Some of my thoughts about WM II...


Statistics:



First of all, avoid the mistake of WMEx. On a D20 system, the avarage score is about 10, so the lowest girls class should has enough points for all basic stat score of 10. If not, those girls are under avarage, and will just disappoint the players. The lucky ones will just no use those girls, the not lucky ones will abandon your game. But if all girls has points for avarage basic scores, all girls will be well useable, and you can avoid the problem of all hacking your game for make their own balance.


Second, basic stats should be hardly improveable, even with items to avoid to make an "item hunting" game. Nowadays, most of games are just about item hunting, and maybe not only I am bored to that.


Third, you have to keep in your mind what will be in the focus in the game. If not the fight, then you dont need a lot of stats about it, and you dont need sophisticated battle system. In that case, the basic stats could be the following:


Stamina: STR and CON
Mental: Wisdom, Magic, Discipline
Beauty: the girls natural beauty
Nymphomania: girls "normal" sex drive


There can be some secondary stats (status showing stats):


Health: health/injury level status, recovery speed by stamina
Mana: magic fullness/depleption status, recovery speed by mental
Libido: actual sex drive status, recovery speed by nymphomania
Tiredness: working ability status, recovery speed by stamina and mental
Happiness: enjoyment status, recovery speed by mental and some other effect...
Love: pc-girl relationship


I will continue later... :) And sorry for my english. :)

Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 01, 2012, 03:23:57 PM
@ jozsi1 I've read your concerns and I agree with some of them. I've decided to make some revisions to the secondary attributes and I will post them here after this response. Regarding the low stat girls I don't quite agree with you. Below average girls do appeal to some customers.

I've seen player complaning in the WMEx threads with comments like "well this kinda of girls would only apeal to truck drivers". My response to that is: do you have anything against truck drivers? If the answer is yes then I would have to say that you are a spoiled little brat and you get out from under your mothers skirt and go see the world. Low paying jobs are what allow you to have the conforts you have at your house. Those people go to bars have their drinks and sometimes get a blowjob from an ugly whore. They are not only allowed to have fun, they will no matter what you think about them. Thats the way things are. But we are not here to discuss moral concerns. Lets go back to game design.

Another thing I dislike is how many people think that "more is better". Would you prefer to deal 100 damage to an opponent that has a 1000 life or deal 1 damage to an opponent that has 10 life? While many people would prefer the 100 damage options, either choice yield the exact same result. Both take 10% of the oponents life. My point is that its an ilusion to think that higher stats will make the game easier or better. When the game is balanced, no matter how high or how low your inicial girls are, the game will have the difilcult level that its designed to have. Those that mod those stats for the better will simply make the game easier, those that mod it for worst will make the game harder. Those that play the unmoded version will have a balanced experienced that the game designers intended. Now if the game is actually unbalanced then thats a whole diferent problem. For now since we don't even have a game, I did say you could at least give us the benefit of doubt in regards to balance and dificulty. I will concede to one thing though. The F class girls are now oficially removed. So the worst girls you will get are girls with average attributes of 7, instead of 5. Thats still bellow average but the truck drivers still want their blowjobs.

I would not like to talk about this design point at the moment but I will give a brief introduction to the Customers System in WM II. I think that shining a little light on that might help would be player to undestand more about my goals for this game.

The customers in WM II are divided into classes just like the girls. Class C custormers are of the lowest class. They have the least money of all your potencial customers. Therefore the services they buy must all be cheap. Now that the lowest girl class has been removed this customers will look for services from girls of classes E and D. This girls will charge low for their services, therefore your income at the start, since it comes only from this girls, will be very low. Thats only natural. You cant expect to open a crappy brothel with crapy girls then have Bill Gates knocking at your door.
Anyways, as your brothel gains fame and as you get better girls some of your services will apeal to B class customers. Class B customers will want girls of the classes C and B. You can still maintain the low class infrastructure since you will still have C class customers. In fact, the higher the Class customers you get, the less customers you will have of that Class. Since you charge more you can still make more money than the previous Class, that is, you will sell less, but have a higher profit. So those that are worried about low class girls in the long run, don't worry. There will always be the low class customers paying your low class girls. But, if you want, you can always get rid of the low class girls once you have enough high class ones. Doing that will only deny you of the lower class income. Another player might for instance decide to have a brothel to serve each class of customers. Hey its your game, how you manage your customers and your brothels is up to you. But one thing is for sure. All players (expect cheaters) must start low.
Than comes the class A customers. They will expect the best possible service. They the elite and expect to be treated as such. They will only take services from girls of the class A and S. They will be in low numbers but they will pay amounts to get what they want.
At last there is the S class customer. This are either very rich or very famous or both. They will only be attended by S class girls or level 5 A class girls. They will only come once in a while, in special random events, and if they have a satisfatory service you will gain something good from it.
Thats it for customer for now.

But there is still one concern that need addressing. jozsi1 Pointed out how the attribute system is too combat oriented and how that isn't suposed to be the focus of the game. After some thought I decided to make the first revision to the secondary attributes system. I don't see any reason to mess with things more I will now. If you guys can come up with them I be glad to make another revision.

Attributes Revison 1
The 5 base attributes remain unchanged.
Stamina and Mana will both join into one attribute. This is will be:
Energy - base CON, WIS - think of this as both physical and metal tiredness. Spell, Combat and any job will drain this Attribute. When it gets to zero, the girl is exasted and any futher action will result in loss of health. Rest or potions are required for recovery.
The second change is to Combat Resistance and Spell Resistance. Both will be joined into one. The new Attribute is:
Armor - base CON - reduces the amount of damage taken by this amount.
The third change is Combat Damage and Spell Damage are joined into one. The new Attribute is:
Damage - base WIS, STR - amount of damage to a succeciful attack or spell.
All other Attributes will remain unchanged for now. I will work on updating the Attribute demo for this changes.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jozsi1 on February 01, 2012, 04:29:09 PM
Hi again! :)


Now, some words about skills:


As about the stats, as skills should be designt to the focus of the game. So if the game isnt focusing combat, then no need a lot of combat skills.


Skills can be divided two group: "work" and combat skills.


Work skills can be the same of WM (sex, strip, service, oral, etc...)
Sevice skill can be based on Beauty and Mental stat (on their balance)
Strip skill can be based on beauty (and can help to raise the libido)
Sexual skills can be based on nymphomania and beauty and some of them on mental aswell (on their balance).


Combat skill can be the the same of WM aswell (combat, magic) if you dont want to give too much part of combat. If you want bigger part, you should give at least one more skill, the Domination. It can has the following effect: the combatant, who has higher domination (or win the domination  test) get extra bonus to its combat/magic skill.


Combat skill can be based on Stamina, or 2xStamina plus 1x Mental divided by 3.
Magic skill can be based on Mental
Domination can be based on 2xMental and 1xStamina divided by 3.


Skills can be based on basic stats, but I think better, if stat has effect on skills raise. For example till the half of the stat score skills can be raised at half cost. Between half and full stat, skill can be raise at normal cost. Over stat but lower than 2x stat it can be raised 2x cost. Over 2x stat score, the skill improvement cost is 4x of the normal one. Ofc, my advise based on 20 lvl skill system.

graodeareia

I havent any problem about truck drivers, except if I can I would like to avoid that job (its better for all on the roads :) ). About the stat: An usual girl in the real world has a 10 of 20 beauty (well, we usually use a 10 lvl range system, but we say 5 points to an avarage girl). You can say, an usual whore is less beautyfull than an avarage girl, but first, are you sure?! I dont know, in my real life I dont visiting them, but at the roads I usually see girls who are at least has usual looks. At 2nd, its a game. Why should a girl, who works as a whore in a game looks bad?! If you want give difficulties on the game, there are a lot of possibilities to do that, not only at stats. So, by my opinion, let the girls look good (give us some fantasy), and lets have difficulties for example at skills.


On the scores. I agree with you, I dont like when my character in a game has 7652 hit points, but normal opponents hit about 2-3000 damages/hit. It has no sense.


Customer system. I think, even truck drivers like the good looking girls better than a bad looking ones. If they not found good looking one, they use the bad one, but I am not sure, the bad looking one hasnt same number of customer as good looking one. The reason, most of truck drivers are men, so they need some "visual advertisment". But a low class customer will get only an unskilled whore, while a high class customer get not only a well looking, but charming and skilled one. A low class customer can only release, a high class one can feel himself to a charmer.


I know, nowadays its the most usual at games to start at very low. But why? Ofc, a game shouldnt start at the top, but why at very low? I guess, high class whores never worked on the streets. A bar, what opens for alcoholic people will never improve to a cafe. The customers are different, and the different type (class) ones dont like to meet with the others.


You should try to start the gamers at about middle but with difficulties. They can have at least ordinary looking, but not highly skilled girls. And they have to make decision: what class of customers they try to reach?


Low class customers dont want too much. A pretty face, not bad body, but they accept totally unskilled girls aswell. They come without advertisment, but pay only the least, and sometimes they make troubles.


Middle clas customers want more. They need some advertisment, and need more than a pretty face and an accceptable body. They want some skills on the girls side, and clothes what turns them on. Maybe they need some charming, even skill and parfumes. And they want safety. They pay more than low class ones, but pay not so much. The balance can be better than the low class customers, but not a big difference.


High class customers want good looking, skilled girls, who want to do that. The girls should have nice (and, ofc, expansive) clothes, what give some job the men fantasy. The girls should have charming, the customers want to seduce the girls, or the girl seduce them. So the girls need expansive parfumes aswell, and some other stuffs. The safety is paramount. Need advertising, but on a confidental (and, ofc, expansive) way. They pay well, but the costs of the service are high aswell. So the balance even better than middle class customers' one, but still, its not an income what makes rich the player after a summer.


So the game can be difficult without using the old and boring "you start as a noname nothing, and became a rich and powerfull" way. Please try a new one and give us a game whit new challanges. :)


I wish you the best luck. :)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 01, 2012, 06:33:35 PM
@jozsi1 I don't think you understand the class/type system of girls so well. If a girl is class E and has a type whore, that means she would average looks and charm (close to 10) but would have bad combat skills. Now a class E girl with type warrier, will have bellow average looks and charm, but average combat skills. And thats without counting the Traits. Traits could give and E class girls beauty above average. So even if the average skill is bellow 10, with types some of your inicial girls will have good sex oriented stats. What will you do with the other girls? Well you can put them on non-sex related jobs, like security, cleaning, exploring catacombs and so on.
Customers of diferent classes will never go to the same place. Your brothel is divided in 3 sectors. The Bar (Class C custormers), the Brothel (Class B customers) and the Casino (Class A customers). I this version of the game you will start with only the Bar. When you have enough money you Build a Brothel. And finaly you Build the Casino. Each new section is more expansive than the previous one. Everytime you buy a new Brothel you only get a new bar. You then have to build the rest as you get more money. If you have enough High class girls you can take your low level girls of the bar, put high level ones and the bar becomes attractive to higher class custormers since the price becomes too high for low level customers to pay. So this Bar (C), Brothel (B) and casino (A) is only a guideline but you can force it to a higher level if you desirer.
The reason why you start with little and get more as you advance is to give the player a sense of acomplishment. If a player can easily get what he wants than there is no sense in playing the game. Now if the player really earns what he gets than he will feel satifiction for having acomplished his goals. If you, or anyone, can sugest a better way to get a sense of acomplishment than earning your goals than I'd be interested to hear it.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: molerat28 on February 02, 2012, 12:53:26 AM
Seems like a nice game.

I was thinking maybe the option to go to the catacombs yourself and have a party of girls with you. A little simple dungeon crawling and maybe some events for that. Maybe you could form a party with girls and instead of everyone having turns it's just one attack with the cumulative damage of all the members in the party.
Are you gonna add pregnancy here?
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: crazy on February 02, 2012, 06:21:44 AM
Your brothel is divided in 3 sectors. The Bar (Class C custormers), the Brothel (Class B customers) and the Casino (Class A customers). I this version of the game you will start with only the Bar. When you have enough money you Build a Brothel. And finaly you Build the Casino.
WM 1.29 u had to build the bar and casino u didnt have them at the start like u do in 1.30 but they were going towards a custom building type system outlined here http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=215.0 it was just never finished or u would have had to buy the casino and bar in 1.30.  Which I personally thought was an amazing ideal and Im very sad it was never finished.  Would love to see something like this in WM2 and with customer classes it could help u get the better ones in by having a higher class building and if u read the post it should make sense how... at the very least a building upgrade system would be nice.

I'll throw out a few questions while I'm at it if it will help.

1. As a girl pack maker would like to know what all image catageorys u plan to have?
2. In WM they talked about spliting BDSM into submissive and domante think u might do that?
3. Also talked about having sex acts restricted by girl instead of per brothel.
4. How about a job list.  A lot of jobs have been thrown out that would fit WM that never was put into the game.
5. Any plans for non brothel buildings to run?
6. Gang plans?  Politics? those are both things i wanted to be expanded on as they are one of the things that sets this apart from other brothel sim games where u just manage whores.
7. WM really really needed more ways to aquire girls as there are so many made and so few ways to get them.  Like with higher fame have girls come to you looking for work.
8. I hate that all girls are sent to the dungeon when the brothel is full or whatever would love a middle ground for that.
9. No real way to play a nice guy in WM an plans to have a nicer route in this game?
10. Player housing plans?
11. Last one but like I said I could easily post more.  I pitch this to everyone who says there modding or working on a new WM so might aswell do to u.  Have an auction house were u can sell a girls virginity.  In the current WM virginity only cost u more money and gives u like 100 extra gold or something when the girl looses it to a customer.  Seen a new report of girls selling there virginity on ebay lol so always thought that would be worth adding to the game.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: crazy on February 02, 2012, 06:25:30 AM
Also like to say you should take some time and go thru the new features section if u haven't already may help with ideals.  Ill post a few links to ones i find worth a read but im sure there are alot more of them.
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=457.0
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=467.0
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=665.0
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=909.0
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=249.0
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=165.0

Last ill post a link to something i wrote up i had the ideal to have higher customers class by using the player house to throw parties for the rich also my arena ideal.  http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=356.0
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: CeeBod on February 02, 2012, 09:11:50 AM
I really like the idea of having different classes of girls and customers, but I think that it would also be good to have the availability of these customers dependent on your brothel locations - one disappointment with vanilla WM, was finding that each new brothel is the same as the last one, with just more rooms for your girls, so it'd be nice to improve on that.

What would work nicely with the customer class system would be to have each possible brothel location have specific effects on customer availability - eg: A cheap place by the docks would get a high number of the lowest class of customer, with demand practically unaffected by the reputation and skills of your girls (Whenever a ship comes in to port there's suddenly a whole lot of sailors that have never been to Crossgate before wanting to get drunk and get laid, and they're not fussy as long as the whore's female and cheap!) but with a high probability of petty crime, and regular trouble.  On the other hand a discrete bordello at the posh end of town will cost a fortune, probably require high bribes to make important people turn a blind eye, will have zero trouble, but will get no customers except the higher class ones, the number of will be very dependent on your reputation, and can easily be lost to rival places if they don't have a good experience (so opening a high class establishment before you're really ready to will actually hurt your business).  Giving each brothel it's own identity allows both for progression and for specialisation - even once you've got some high class girls and can afford to buy the best premises, you can still use the cheaper places like the docks as training grounds for unskilled girls - with the high turnover of customers you know you can skill a girl up there much quicker than in a high-class establishment where she'll see few customers and risk losing you reputation by not meeting the customer's expectations, but it may mean risking your best girl getting attacked, and she'll earn a lot less than she could in the high-end place.... trade-offs like that are what make any kind of management game tick! ;o)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 02, 2012, 12:43:19 PM
molerat28 (http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2351) :I thought having the player go to the dungeon himself. As much I'd like something like that it would add a lot problems to the game. For instance in this game people can really die in combat. So that means the player could die in the catacombs. I could for the sake of gameplay, make him imortal. But then there are other concerns such as: if the player is wounded would he be able to go around doind whatever he is does with no changes or would his options be limited by his injuries? How powerful would the play be? If he was too weak then there no sense in going hunting in the catacombs, but if he was too powerful then outside of the dungeons he could just do whatever he wanted with the girls and none could escape him since he would always win the fights with them. There are many other concerns like game focus, are you an admistrator running a bussines or are you an adventurer? If you are an adventurer who is running your bussiness out you are out on your hunting trips. Finally there the concern of what that really adds to the game experience. If the dungeon crawling it self is fun, then just make a dungean drawling game. If the sim part is fun, than just make a sim game. To make both fun would be a very large task and would need many more programmers. Once the game is up and running adding such features would be more feasible. For now lets stick to the sim part.

crazy (http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?action=profile;u=426) :First I'd like to say that most questions here don't have an answer yet becouse the skill/job system has yet to be designed. I'll try to explain why bellow:

1 - sex categories is very is directly linked to skills. Once we decide what sex skills will be available we will automaticaly have the sex pictures categories. I think we should delay this discussion for when the time comes to design the skill system.
2 -  see 1
3 - I don't understand the question
4 - After we have a skill system we can decide what jobs are rellated to what skill. Any job requires skill in a certain area. Therefore skills/jobs are dependent on each other. Every skill has one or more relate attribute. Performing a job gives you experience in the associated skill and that give you experience in the associated attributes (so the game knows where to asign attribute points when the girl levels up). The skill system will have its own levels and will level up independently of the girls level. So again lets leave this to skill/jobs design discussions.
5 - For now I like the idea of a player house. Also upgrades to current building would be an interesting feature. For instance you bar could start without a place for strip. Than you add a stage and that unlocks the striptease job. O you add a private room and that unlocks lap dances. Diferent buildings depend on the job categories. The more buildings/upgrades you have the more jobs are unlocked. So when we have a skill/jobs system we can decide which will be available by default and which will need a building or upgrade to unlock. For instace you could have to build a torture chamber to unlock the toturer job. Or you could build an infirmary to unlock the nurse job. Send girls to infirmary to heal faster. Building discussion is therefore delayed to skill/job discussion.
6 - In this game the city will be divided in sector or counties. Gangs will be used to control your current sector as well as attack other sectors. For your bussiness to be left alone by the authorities in each sector you will have to bribe someone important in the sector, for instance a sheriff or a local comunity leader. You can only build a new brothel in a sector you control so gangs will be a very important part of the game. Also new places may be unlocked once you gain control of a sector. For instance if you gain control of the port sector you might be able to buy slaves that are shiped from other continents by the sailers. So you gain access to a new and better slave market than the default one. That mean you can now purchase higher class girls of the new slave market.
7 - Yeah, this is related to 6. You for instance controla sector that has a highschool. You can than start selling drugs in that sector. Some girls will not be able to pay her debts and so you take them to your brothels. Somthing like that. We can discuss this when we design what sectors will be available and what will be unlocked when you control each sector.
8 - Humn. I actually like that feature. If the girls go to brothel they might refuse to work. I f they go to the dungeon you can break them before sending them to a brothel. If the girl goes to the brothel refuses to work and you try to send them to the dungeon from the brothel they can refuse and fight.  I'll have to think about that.
9 - Yes! Thats a crucial point. It relates to an undesigned attribute related point. So its the right time to talk about this. It all about how you can get obedience from girls. Thats what I can't figure out so far. If we design a feeling/obedience system that allows for a nicer route to gain obedience than the problem is solved. I need help on this point since I still don't have an answer. As for the gangs, I would like to have better ways of handling sector that you already control. For instace you could have no crime in a controled territory. That would attract higher class customers to that sector. And would also improve your reputation.
10 - see 5
11 - Virginity will be auctioned if the player wishes. Depending on your customer class at the brothel that you make the auction and the girls class the price will be higher. But there is a problem related to obedience here. What if the girl refuses to sleep with the customer afte she is sold? see 9
I took a quick glance at the posts. I'll need more time to read them later.

CeeBod (http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2333) :I like that. I already had thought of dividing the city into sectors. I can add customer statiscs to each sector. That can be a guide to what the player can provide in that sector. See crazy answer 6 for a brief description of sectors. See answer 9 for a hint of how player can influence sectors to change the customer classes available.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: crazy on February 02, 2012, 08:53:10 PM
Thats why I said I would wait for more info figured a few of my questions didnt have an answer yet lol.

3 - I don't understand the question
Okay i mean that in the current WM if u click no BDSM for the brothel then all girls cant have BDSM.  I would rather see it by girl so I can have like one girl doing only BDSM and another doing only group then another maybe doing 3 of the acts make each girl able to do what u want them to.  So they specialze in the acts instead of doing everything.  Hopefully u understand it this time if not ill try again to explain it lol.

6 - In this game the city will be divided in sector or counties. Gangs will be used to control your current sector as well as attack other sectors. For your bussiness to be left alone by the authorities in each sector you will have to bribe someone important in the sector, for instance a sheriff or a local comunity leader. You can only build a new brothel in a sector you control so gangs will be a very important part of the game. Also new places may be unlocked once you gain control of a sector. For instance if you gain control of the port sector you might be able to buy slaves that are shiped from other continents by the sailers. So you gain access to a new and better slave market than the default one. That mean you can now purchase higher class girls of the new slave market.
One of the links I gave has a post were they planed something just like that for WM so check it out might help u with that ideal.

 
7 - Yeah, this is related to 6. You for instance controla sector that has a highschool. You can than start selling drugs in that sector. Some girls will not be able to pay her debts and so you take them to your brothels. Somthing like that. We can discuss this when we design what sectors will be available and what will be unlocked when you control each sector.
That would be a nice ideal have new sectors give new ways to get girls.  And giving the drug part of the game a use is something that needs to be done if its going stay in the game.

8 - Humn. I actually like that feature. If the girls go to brothel they might refuse to work. I f they go to the dungeon you can break them before sending them to a brothel. If the girl goes to the brothel refuses to work and you try to send them to the dungeon from the brothel they can refuse and fight.  I'll have to think about that.
Well for a nice guy game having them sent to the dungeon dont make sense thats why i said like a middle ground not the actually brothel but not the dungeon like maybe a shelter or something.  Then u go there and choose were to send the girls either the dungeon or to one of brothels/whatever.  Guess u could have it something the nice guy builds.

9 - Yes! Thats a crucial point. It relates to an undesigned attribute related point. So its the right time to talk about this. It all about how you can get obedience from girls. Thats what I can't figure out so far. If we design a feeling/obedience system that allows for a nicer route to gain obedience than the problem is solved. I need help on this point since I still don't have an answer. As for the gangs, I would like to have better ways of handling sector that you already control. For instace you could have no crime in a controled territory. That would attract higher class customers to that sector. And would also improve your reputation.
Nicer route is a hard one to come up with for sure.  But i always thought the girls that u found walking shouldnt refuse to work any non sex releted job.. it dont make sense to me they want to work but they deicide that no im not going be a waitress?  So to me make the non sex releted jobs not be able to be refused.  Then the nice guy to get a girl to whore would have to buy her gifts, sweet talk her, make her fall in love with him, show her how much more money she would make just whatever it took to make them think it would be a good ideal.

11 - Virginity will be auctioned if the player wishes. Depending on your customer class at the brothel that you make the auction and the girls class the price will be higher. But there is a problem related to obedience here. What if the girl refuses to sleep with the customer afte she is sold? see 9
I took a quick glance at the posts. I'll need more time to read them later.
I guess they could refuse if there not a slave.  If they refuse maybe a hurt to the building rep and a refund of the money idk something to think on.  And yea look over them when u get a chance some of the things u said have been talked about before and maybe reading over the posts will help u come up with the way u want it to go.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Ctwo on February 03, 2012, 05:34:44 AM
A lot of game designers perfer using large numbers because it is easier to tweak things. If your basic attack does str damage, how much should a longsword improve it? 2 points? Then a dagger does 1 point? A bastard sword improves by...3 points? How about a short sword? 2 points? 1 point?
If you use larger numbers then minor tweaks are easier. Damage = (str x 5)+weapon mod+skill mod. Now daggers do 10, longswords do 20, bastard swords do 30. A sharp enchanted dagger does (10 base + 1 sharp +3 enchanted) 14 damage. Still less than a longsword (20) but more than a vanilla dagger.
Of course you can achieve the same effect by just using decimal places and displaying them, but whole numbers are easier to understand for players. Also it leads to the question how minor of an upgrade is an upgrade? Do you even consider a 0.01?
The same applies to talking about currency. Have your poor customers still pay in double digets. This allows more room to play with modifiers to how much a customer pays. A 10% modifier looks much better when your talking about 100 than it does when your talking about 4. 100 you get 110, 4 you get...4. Unless you always round up, which would lead to some serious questions when a 1 becomes a 2, but doubling the bonus still results in the same 2.
Again the same thing can be achieved by having a decimal system. Your $2 whore gets a quarter tip. Whooho. That is still a 12.5% bonus!
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 03, 2012, 06:46:35 AM
Question: How do a quote a previous post?

Ctwo (http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1212) :
I though about larger numbers and how items would be affected. Here is the thing, currently Health is calculated as 2xCON. So it will go beyond the d20 system. In game it will probabily range from 10 to 30 for most girls. Items might be able to boost beyond that. If I find that thats too little we can make 3xCON. Health and Energy are not like the normal attributes since when they run out its a big problem. The main gameplay system is based on a d20 for rows (any sort of test), but Heath and Energy are not used in tests, that is, you will never make a dice row with you Health or Energy points. So that allows for damage to be a little higher and still be reasonable. Another important point is that while you can raise you damage with equipments you can also raise your armor. The armor will be subtracted from damage so that also gives a little room to make damage higher. Finally damage from items can be a range instead of a single number. For example:

Dagger - Damage 1-2
Short Iron Sword - Damage 1-4
Short Steel Sword - Damage 2-4

So you make a better item that only has a better min damage and that the max is the same. When damage is calculated you add the caracters base damage with a random number in the range of equipment. So for a character with base damage 3, equiping a the Iron Sword from the example would yield damage of 3-7, while a Steel one would yield a 4-7 total damage. Considering an oponent with 3 armor, the damage he would take from the Iron Sword above would be 0-4, and from the Steel Sword  it would be 1-4. So you can see that the final damage aplied in this examples are very little, so advanced items could go well beyond that. But item creators could go well beyond that for advanced items. For instance they may give +1 STR. That would affect many stats other them damage, making the caracter much more powerful.

Right now I'm working on styling the application so that it looks better. The goal for the next version is to add styles to the interface, a better font, and also Characters Classes and Types. That would be version 0.02. Version 0.03 will add Combat. The Combat demo will have a few sample itens and spells so by then you will be able to see how items affect combat. Thats a little spoiler right there. There will be spells in the game. Characters can learn spells from scrolls you find or purchase. Spell will be something like:

Zap: Energy 2, Damage 1-3, Dificulty 0
Fire Ball: Energy 4, Damage 2-5, Dificulty 2

The Energy is how much energy is spent to cast the spell. The Dificulty is a penalty to the Spell atributte when doing a Spell row. Spells cannot be defended like physical attacks. The only way to defend a succesifull Spell row is to use a defensive Spell. Like:

Counter Spell: Energy 2, Dificulty 2 - Cancels a ofensive spell

Well something like that. Anyways, that the reason I wanted to have separate Spell and Combat damage inicially. But for the sake of simplicity I joined them into one. Spell damage will also be absorved by armor so the final damage will not be so big. Some non-wizard characters may also use some spell to give them a temporary buff during combat. For instance:

Crouching Tiger : Energy 2, Dificulty 1 - +1 DEX for the rest of the combat
Hidden Dragon : Energy 2, Dificulty 1 - +1 STR for the rest of the combat

Anyways this are just some ideas for the spell system. Once the system is up we can have an external file with all the spell and modders can experiment with until we figure out a balanced list of spell. Wizards and Warriors of the same Class will need so have equal changes in combat so a lot of tunning may be needed to equipment and spell in order to make than balanced.

One more important point. Itens and Spell can have minimal required stats in order for a character to use them. This should also help in the balance. Becouse if you could use a super sword with a Wizard character he might become overpowered. The same goes for spell and Warrior characters. For example:

Long Steel Sword: Combat +2 , Damage 3-8, Required: STR 10

Bind: Dificult 3, Required: WIS 10 - Oponent is unable to take action for 2 turns

Hope you like what I'm trying to do here. Sugesting and contructive criticism are always welcome :)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: crazy on February 03, 2012, 07:08:49 AM
Question: How do a quote a previous post?
Should be a thing that says quote on the top right of each post.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 03, 2012, 07:16:13 AM
Should be a thing that says quote on the top right of each post.

Nice, Tnx
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: DarkTl on February 03, 2012, 03:44:50 PM
There is a lot of suggestions already, so I just want to add a couple of them.
First of all, molerat's idea to send a party of girls in catacombs is quite interesting. Without player, of course, just 2-4 girls. I don't know how are you calculate battles outcomes, but let's say the more girls in the party, the more enemies they're able to meet in one battle.
Also you may add one more battle class. I thought about such plenty of shadow characters as rogues, ninjas, assassins and so on. For example, warrior's main stat is Strength, while rogue's is Dexterity (or Agility, or something else). They may be able to use different spells (traps, skills, gadgets, maybe weapons), which require Dexterity.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 03, 2012, 04:16:33 PM
First of all, molerat's idea to send a party of girls in catacombs is quite interesting. Without player, of course, just 2-4 girls. I don't know how are you calculate battles outcomes, but let's say the more girls in the party, the more enemies they're able to meet in one battle.

The combat system is turn based so adding 2 girls to a simgle party would mean they would each take their turns for every one turn of the enemy. I thought about party already I'm just not sure of the balance problem. Maybe you party like 4 lowlevel girls they can easy beat a high level one. That would allow the player to send parties to lower levels of the catacomb right at the start of the game. The player would than capture some high level girls too easily. It should be harder the deeper you go so there is a progression. But there are possibilities to address that problem. For instance girls in the catacomb would always run away from fight they cannot possibily win. So when your party does find a battle it will be against another party. That would mean that when you win a party battle you get a lot of stuff at the same time, but you still cant go deeper as a full party of high level oponents would wipe you out. But this system creates other problem. First the player could capture too many girls/items too fast. That could be solved by making party encounters more rare than single encounters. The second problem is a more technical one. The battle AI for party would have to be much more advanced. But its a possibility.

Also you may add one more battle class. I thought about such plenty of shadow characters as rogues, ninjas, assassins and so on. For example, warrior's main stat is Strength, while rogue's is Dexterity (or Agility, or something else). They may be able to use different spells (traps, skills, gadgets, maybe weapons), which require Dexterity.

This might be interesting. I don't know the amount of work involved but I will definetly look into that possibility.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Froggy on February 04, 2012, 01:33:51 AM
An idea I had before, and I know this would be really out there in terms of development, but please hear me out:

Integrate SWF into a (optional) paper-doll style utility for creating pictures for random girls.  A basic body (nude), a shorter one for the "lolita" trait too, maybe even a "curvy" body as well.  Overlays for traits such as "big boobs" etc.  A few common anime hair colors (black, blond, red, blue, green, pink, etc).  Now put it into three or four skin tones (ala Sims 2 style).

From there you can have actual graphics for items in the game that can be attached to your girl's paper-dolls.  Dresses, weapons, armor, shoes, etc, could all be easily stapled on (and removed) as needed.  So on and so forth for anything else you may want to add later, such as cat ears, demon girls, etc.

Now this may seem like a lot of work but I feel it has advantages over the current system, which namely revolved around scrounging around the internet for random hentai/ecchi pictures and (this is the part where things fall apart) finding matching pictures for basic, sex, S&M, beast, group, pregnant, etc.  Finding a picture is easy; finding a matching set for all those is pretty much impossible unless you feel like becoming an artist and doing them yourself.

So as long as you're going to become an artist, why not go for the method that lets you reuse you art effectively forever through variation & randomization?  Plus your distinct, random girls will actually look a lot more distinct and random.  Because right now if I've got three different bunny girls pulled from the catacombs, it does not matter what their stats, outfits, traits, or gear is - they're all going to look exactly alike because they're all going to be using the exact same picture.

I don't know about you, but I've gotten to the point in the game where I pretty much ignore the art itself.  I get sucked into the "tycoon" aspect & end up overlooking the hentai aspect.  A good paper-doll SWF utility built in might make me notice again, because between the random variables and my own decisions about what to give the girls, they would be changing & evolving into new distinct looks as I'm playing.  I would become a participant in the art and not just an observer - and so would everyone else playing the game, too.

Again, I know this would probably seem like a lot of work, but honestly if you look around (and can stomach) at the innumerable "cutesy/glitter" SWF paper-dolls out there that are apparently being cranked out by every vapid 13 year old girl on the planet... well, let's say the difficulty can't be that hard, can it?
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Froggy on February 04, 2012, 02:24:01 AM
A few more, stat related this time:


Skills, Traits and Experience: Branch experience and levels into different areas of expertise, similar to before, but a little different.  Instead of "service" have there be things like "masseuse" "bartender" "security" "waitress" etc.  When experience gets full, they raise a level in that skill area only.  Learn by doing.

Ah but here is where it gets interesting: Traits would affect the rate of skill gain.  A high "combat" skill would gain skill in "catacombs" faster.  "Combat" and "charisma" makes for faster learning in "security".  "Beauty" and "Agility" would effect skill gain in "Stripping" and so forth.

So having high traits would not give a girl an instant-profit effect.  Rather, it would make the girl advance in some skills faster.  Having a low trait would not lock a girl out of a job, either, it would simply make her take much longer to get good at it.

Libido: Actually leaving that in but altering it's functionality to keep it interesting.  "Libido" would be a fluctuating stat.  It would continually increase until the girl actually has sex.  Having sex would satisfy her & thus lower her libido in proportion to how good the sex was for her.  Other traits could modify this, too; for example, "nymphomaniac" would increase libido at x5 speed, while a trait like "frigid" would make it lower at only 1/3rd normal speed.  So how does affect the game?  A girl with a higher libido would earn more tips whilst whoring, naturally, due to enthusiasm.  A girl with a lower libido would make less.  Higher libido would be more likely to willingly put out for the player avatar, low libido would "have a headache."  And (this is where things get a bit too realistic) a girl with a high libido for too long may just start boning the customers even if not assigned as a whore.  Which could be a problem when your star waitress, for whom being only a waitress you felt no compulsion to buy anti-preg potions for, starts screwing the customers behind your backs and gets herself knocked up.  Or diseased.  Or both.  Conversely, girls with high libido gain (see "nymphomaniac" above) would naturally make better whores because they'd make more tips per day (since their libido is refreshing faster, they'd enjoy more sex with customers before becoming pooped-out boring lays by the end of their shift).

Magic:  Magic should be an interesting stat, an asset in some girls and a liability in others, depending on how it is treated.  Magic could be used to enhance the effects of items that the girls (not the player) feel have a positive effect (beauty rings, combat enhancers, healing potions, etc) while lowering the effects of items that girls (not the player) feel have a negative effect (slave bracelets, control collars, mind control effects, etc).  So one one hand a high magic girl would be a bonus so long as she is willing to work for the player, but when she decides to get rebellious she becomes a lot harder to control as well.

Bribery: Who says it has to be gold?  Make an option for "government discount"  Your brothel now services the mayor & the cops for free.  Bribe effectiveness is based on how satisfied they are with your girls.  (TMI: This is one way that real professional pimps/madams do it.)

Beasts: Okay I've captured some beasts but what if I, personally, find beastality to be icky & don't want to have it my brothel?  What do I do with these critters?  Well, I could sell them to a zoo ($, positive public image) or I could have animal pit fights for gamblers ($$$, negative public image).

Inventory Management: Highlight girl's traits that are being given/altered by currently equipped items.  Easier to remember which traits are natural and which one's a item-based.

Legitimate Front: Money laundering effectiveness should be based as a percentage of legitimate income the place is bringing in.  Meaning that the Bar (and anything else innocent business you feel like adding) should have it's income create the first variable that effects how much of the income of the Brothel (and other not-so-innocent businesses) can be laundered.  A very profitable Bar (and Gambling Den, if gambling is considered legal in your game) could launder more money from the shady end of your income flow.  Likewise, if your Brothel is bringing in twice as much money as your Bar/Gambling Den, then expect to be able to launder a lot less - and gain more Suspicion from the government as well.  (TMI: Again, this is how reality tends to work.)

Jealousy: Having six different girls thinking that you're "their true love" should (at least potentially) cause problems -  just ask any musician.  Higher love should require higher upkeep/pay/gift bribes/etc to maintain as the number of girls that like you increases, otherwise is begins to decay back to indifference.

Philanthropy: Okay so you've got the mayor in your pocket, but what about the general public?  Well, there is obviously advertising, but what about your image?  Donate some money to the temple, or the orphanage, or a homeless shelter, etc.  Your good/evil ratio in the public eye will improve, and possibly even make it easier to recruit new girls because of it.  Again, in real life, look at how many soup kitchens Al Capone sponsored "out of his own pocket."  Why did he do this?  Because a bum who relies on you for his next meal is not going to tell the cops squat when he sees you sticking a large bag into your trunk.

Monster Girls vs Human: Give your brothel an "Exotic" rating based on the ratio of how many of these two types of girls you employ.  Then assign a similar rating (random) to customers who come in.  Some people may find your circus to be great, while others may be freaked out.  Over time, that random variable in customer tastes will change to whatever your brothel's rating is (basic economics of supply & demand), but the change would indeed take some time.  Completely changing your staff overnight may have negative consequences.

Legality: Akin to a "difficulty" setting, but more tailored to the game.  When starting a new game, decide what kind of city you're in.  Is it a wild freeport where prostitution, gambling, beast fights and slavery are all perfectly kosher?  Or is an uptight temple-dominated area where everything is considered a crime, there is no slave market, and the government is always up in your grill?  Or is it somewhere in the middle, for instance, gambling is legal (so your Gambling Den would never get raided by the cops) but the Brothel itself is still verbotten (and thus at risk)? 

This would, naturally, effect everything from bribery to public opinion to how many customers you get per day.  Before writing either side off, though, consider that the "anything goes" town is going to require you to have a lot more girls doing security & gangs stuck on guard duty as well, while in a strict town one you've spent enough to put the mayor in your pocket then you're now on easy street & pretty much immune to acts of violence from the opposition.





Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jozsi1 on February 04, 2012, 05:27:03 AM
Hi again! :)


Graodearia


I understand your idea about stats, but I have an another point of wiew. An 20 range system, a lowest grade girl has avarage 7 points to her basic stats. To make my problem simple, take the idea, the girl have 4 basic stat, 2 of her sexual job, 2 of fight. If we give her the normal avarage score to her sexual job related stats, it means, the girl will have 2 stat with score of 10, and 2 stats with score of 4. So the girl will have a normal looks, and sex drive, but mentally and phisically will be extreme week. That means, she will be tired from a very few work, and will get back her work ability slowly. Thats why I recommend to use a bit higher scores. If the lowes grade is 9 avarge points to basic stats, it means a normal look and sex drive can be combined a close to normal stamina and mental stat, so that char can work about avarage amount.


The other problem is the randomity. If the number of points are too low, and the stats have randomoty, then it can be easily some characters, whose are totally useless. For example 9 and 6 with her job related stat and 7 and 6 of the other jobs.


The problem is the beginning. At start, I guess the players wont be able to get higher grade girls, only lower ones. And there can be a problem, when a player dont find any girl for rounds for an important job, because the randomity gives him only girls who arent able to do that. So an unlucky player must hack the game somehow (restarts, overwrites, etc...) to survive the first rounds, or have to abandon the game. While he probably done all well, just did not get the required resources for solve the situations.


But there are an another way. You can give all girls about the same number of points (maybe avarage 11). The difference of a grade F and an A girl is the traits. Low grade girls dont get too many positive traits, and almost all of them compensated by negative traits. High grade girls can have advancement by their uncompensated positive traits, so they can do their jobs on a better way by their special abilities, not by their basic stats.


I know, I show a different statistic system than you use, but as I pointed to you, the fantasy game based stat system focuses on battle system, but the game will be a brothel simulator, not a conquer the world and kill the dragons one. :)


So thats why I recommended you the stamina - mental - beauty - nymphomania based statistic system.


Gl for developing! :)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: DarkTl on February 04, 2012, 01:34:30 PM
First the player could capture too many girls/items too fast. That could be solved by making party encounters more rare than single encounters.
Well, you can limit amount of girls which can be captured in one turn (after all, 2-4 girls can't guard more than one or two prisoners). Even if you don't use party system, low level girl still can't guard even one prisoner well enough.
You can also allow only one party on each catacomb level, or just one party at all.

And about AI, it would be great to have a good one, but perhaps it isn't necessary. Perhaps it would be more interesting to send into catacomb an organized group of girls, even if you need to use more simple battle calculations. Or maybe not, I'm not sure.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: CeeBod on February 04, 2012, 03:10:44 PM
The combat system is turn based so adding 2 girls to a simgle party would mean ... The player would than capture some high level girls too easily. It should be harder the deeper you go so there is a progression.
Well one possible workaround could be to have the party reduce in size by one for every level descended - someone has to stay up top securing the rope-ladder/trap door/path back to safety/whatever excuse you can think of.  That way a party of 4 low level girls would be overpowered against the first level, and would give the player a reliable way of getting basic loot and the lowest level monster girls with less risk than just sending one girl, but if they try to reach the fourth level only 1 girl will be able to actually fight down there (and she'll definately get her arse handed to her, alone at that level!), as the rest are keeping the exit route clear.  Another option - same principle different excuse, with more wiggle room for balancing would be to have a requirement for prisoner guarding or loot hauling reduce the number of fighters.  You can even have it done as a player decision made each level:  "Your party clears the first level capturing 1 monster girl, xxx gold, and items x, y, and z.  Do you wish to descend to the 2nd level with 2 girls? (2 are needed to guard your captures & loot)".  Either way you can then set the max party size and balance to make sure that only a group of fairly high level girls has the chance of being able to get 1 or 2 of their number down as far as they need to be for a chance at capturing one of the elite girls.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: DarkTl on February 05, 2012, 04:13:06 AM
Btw, if AI for party battles will be too much trouble, then the first girl can fight, second one (with high dexterity) can search for traps (hidden doors, items), third one can guard prisoners and so on.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Ctwo on February 06, 2012, 06:13:17 AM
So is this going to be a combat oriented game? While I think it is an important aspect of WM it isn't really the main focus. Too much control over it would detract from running the brothels I would think?
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Shilo on February 06, 2012, 08:09:06 PM
Yeah, the game should not be all about combat. It should rather be like the original Sim Brothel games and their enhancements with additional focus on optional combat (and potentially gangs). And the ability to enhance it with custom girl packs, which has always been a strong point of this game compared to similar ones.


Maybe some of the features of this Sim Bro iteration might give you some ideas:

Played the latest SimBrother v2 version and it's really good. Maybe we can grab some ideas from there. ;)

-The game has a big part of it's gameplay devoted to the player's interaction. Every day do you get a fixed number of Action Points (AP). Actions of the player in town require one AP each, for instance visiting the shop, the slave market, visiting locations (you can search several places in a location and sometimes find a bit of items and gold there, but it's more like a gamble since in 2 of 3 cases won't you find anything) and interact with girls.

-Instead of instantly hiring the girls in town for your brothel, you first need to romance them. Every location of the town has different girls available and the girls change their location every week. You start as stranger and have to lure them with smalltalk, jokes, insults, money, gifts from the shop, touching and kissing to become your girlfriend. Afterwards you can have sex with them and/or try to hire them for your brothel.

-Each girl has different characteristics that decide what kind of things she likes and what she doesn't. Attributes are "religious", "nerd", "slutty", "meek", "stylish", "lolita", their hair color and many more. Slutty girls will like it if you insult them to be a slut, religious girls don't like it if you talk dirty and lolitas prefer jokes on a "kids" level rather than the more complicated adult ones.

-When customers come to the brothel, each of them has an exact desire that he hopes to get pleased. Usually those are in the form of "Customer A wants a [handjob] from a [religious][nerd][blonde][none] girl. Whether or not the customer will be satisfied after his visit and increase the reputation of the girl and building depends on how many of the desired attributes a girl fulfills that is working there at the time of his visit and how good her skill points are at the chosen discipline (handjob). The more attributes match, the better the outcome. However, the girl still has a random chance to make the customer happy with her charm, depending on the amount of skill points for that.
You can assign one specific style to the advertising of each individual building, allowing you to control a bit what the customers want that will enter a particular brothel and thus making it more efficient to group girls of the same style in the same building.

-Girls also have a skill tree. Gaining XP and leveling up will occasionally award a point for that skill tree to the girl, so she can choose special abilities like "Naturally wet: Never needs lube", "Super tight: Sex with customer will always give at least a satisfied rating", "Lucky: May randomly find money when taking her time off work", "Girl is friendly and gains +1 charisma", "Nurse: Other girls in the same building heals faster". This is additional to stat points that can also be spent freely and are earned with every level up.

-Projects: Big projects like creating a book, calendar, photo session or movie cost a lot of time and money and need the player to work daily on them, as well as occupying a certain number of girl for the time of their creation. The stats of the involved girls influence the quality of the result.

-Not all brothels are equal. The first is just a wooden shack and has space for maximum of two bedrooms and a bathroom, which needs to be build separately. Later will you buy a cave which is suitable as dungeon for BDSM sessions. Before that can't you satisfy the [Fetish] demand. Once rooms are added to the building, they can be further equipped with better furniture. The old shack has only straw beds available and a bucket of water in the bathroom for slightly increased hygene level, but later houses allow more expensive furniture and more rooms like bars, casinos and so on. You can also buy way more buildings in that game than here, but they start off really shabby and you need to work your way up instead of starting with a real house like here. And things become really expensive in the end, but that guarantees a long endgame.

-It even has some kind of story goal: pay back a depth to some mafia guys. The dept is $500k and you have 5 years.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Ctwo on February 07, 2012, 08:17:07 AM
Since we're talking about combat anyways...
I think parties of girls is a bad idea. If you allow a chance for girls to be killed and/or injured during catacombs trips your increasing the chances of not just the girls in the party getting killed, but the girls your hunting too. Also ballancing how a party of girls interact with encounters vs a single girl gets complicated. I think its better to judge each girl invidivually though you might give a small bonus to combat if there are multiple girls of the same grade exploring the catacombs. In effect they form a party but the outcome is determined per girl, so having other girls there gives a minor bonus but doesn't override the basic senerio.
Also hitpoints. I think it might be better to offer a base number + con/str modifier. So HP = 20 + [10 x (level-1)] + con + str for example. Weak girls are at a slight disadvantage but there isn't a huge difference between them and high str/con girls. This is good since low str/con girls will also have lower natural defenses. If girls have naturally high defense and HP vs girls with naturally low HP and defense then you'll always win against lower str/con girls but never higher without an exceptional amount of equipment and luck.
That also bring up the question: Are girls always injured after combat? How many rounds are fought in each combat? Pre-determined number or some kind of give-up mechanic? There might be a second pool similar to HP used when a girl enters combat. Lets call it Will for now. Will = (beauty+wis+dex)/2. Each girl can take Will damage before any HP are lost. This way girls with high non-combat stats have a chance to be captured before they get beat up too much. Girls with high str/con will have higher defense too so they will take less damage per attack so their lower will lasts longer than a low defense/high will girl.
The A to E rating system for girls is a good way to introduce girls, but that system shouldn't limit girls you have from advancing stats or skills. I'd propose that there be a method to train girls to exceed their current ranking. It should be a slow process so it is faster to seek girls of a higher rank normally instead of training girls up. It might even be linked to gaining enough XP before you train the girl. For example lets say girls are capped on how much skill they can achieve based on their stats. Max skill = (stat1 + stat 2 +level)x5. Once a girl reaches max skill and has at least 1 level they get an option at a trainer to increase stats. After 4 weeks the girl looses a level but gains 0-3 points in stat1 and stat2. This way a girl has to have a lot of work before they can begin to climb ranks and the player is loosing a lot of work income from one of his best girls to get an improvement. Without this kind of system you won't see any girls from most series being introduced before B rank, with a huge number of S class girls. Not having any unique girls until the eng-game would be booring and very disappointing.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: graodeareia on February 08, 2012, 01:28:21 AM
There is much talk about the combat. I tried to write a post just explaing the combat in order to make things clearer, but it seams a bit complicated. You guy can continue your discussion, be sure that I'm reading and taking things into consideration. The only way to make combat clear is release a combat demo. But I traveled for a few days and so I got no work done this weekend.
This game's goal is to make a better WM, not to make a completely diferent game. Therefore the focus will still be managment, not combat. Its much easier for us to to take a look back on all the was done by the original developers and expand and enhance the original experience than it was to develop the game originaly. The fact that the game has a more well thought out combat system does not mean combat will take a bigger row a in the game. It might take a little bit bigger of a role in the final game, then in the vanilla WM but it will never be the focus. But when discussing attributes, combat becomes an important topic. When discussing other parts of the game, combat will be less important or completely ignored. The importance of combat is mainly related to how important it is to explore the catacombs. Catacomb exploration will be the main form to get new higher class girls, but not the only one. So it will probabily be ok to completely ignore the catacomb if a player wishes. But just becouse a player can choose to ignore a part of the game doen't mean that part should not be well thought out. Those that want to make it an important part of their games should have fun doing so. Managing of your combat dedicated girls should be complex enough for players that want to exercise their expertise on this aspect of the game, but simple enough so that those that wish, can quickly set things up or just ignore it.

Right now I'm working on some graphics assets. And I suck at it. Having a hard time geting something resonable out. But its necessary to get at least something that looks more like game and less like a bussiness app. After I make some of the grapichs and incorporate it into the dema I will work on the combat system. When that gets released I hope it will all fall into place and you guys can then get a better view of what combat will look like in this game.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jozsi1 on February 15, 2012, 12:09:06 PM
Hi all! :)


I guess we should reconsider our focus. This game will be a brothel simulator, not a battle one, wont it? So I think we should discuss the "jobs" in the game, how will it works etc...


I think, the traits should have the bigger effects on their jobs, not the stats. By my opinion, the traits can provide better balance than stats.


What is your opinion?
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jozsi1 on February 21, 2012, 02:20:23 PM
Hi all again :)


I have an important idea about the WM what I want to share. In my opinion too many girls in the current WM games. I mean, even the 1st brothel has 20 rooms, the newers have more and more... I believe it could increase the enjoyment of game, if there arent so much rooms in the brothels, and it could depend on the style of the brothel.


I mean, for example a luxury type brothel for rich customers need only a few rooms. Maybe 1 for the Matron, 1 for the security, and maybe 3 or 4 for the "working" girls. Each of them provide "full" service (massage, strip, maid and sex).


A brothel for a middle class customers can have a bit more numbers of room and more separate tasks for the girls. 1-1 for matron and security, 5-6 rooms for sex, 3-4 for strip, waitress, bar, etc...


A brothel for the low class customers can have the highest numbers of room, and highly separate tasks. 1 for matron, maybe 2 security. 5-6 for sex and 5-6 for the bar / gambling hall.


Please think about it :)


Best regards
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: fires_flair on February 21, 2012, 11:54:16 PM
you can have as many or as few girls in the brothels or game as you want. you don't need to download or keep more then you want.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jozsi1 on February 23, 2012, 12:07:09 AM
Hi :)


I am afraid you missunderstood me. I was talking about the rooms of the brothels. And current WM games supports the high number of rooms / girls game style only.


So I was talking about lets make a change, the numbers of the rooms should be contarvertory contact with the social level of the brothel. High grade brodel low numbers, low grade one high number.


BB :)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Atrun on February 25, 2012, 01:08:05 AM
If you plan to mess with the building setup, then I suggest the number of rooms be the least of it.  In order to have the buildings realistic as far as I see it, there are a few criteria I can think of:
1. Size/Area, this is the square footage of a building/land, thus affecting how many rooms can be built for that building.
2. Quality, The difference between sectioning off a warehouse for your brothel, or buying a mansion.
3. Area of town, If you build a fancy brothel in the slums, you're still going to mainly get scumbags, whereas a shack amidst the town mansions probably won't get much business either.

I would also suggest that there be multiple options at various levels of influence.  You may be able to buy the small, somewhat fancy townhouse and turn it into a brothel, or buy the larger but less attractive apartment building and therefore get more rooms at a lower rate of customer attraction/customer pay grade (which would be another idea, richer customers that pay more for better whores, poorer ones that can't afford the good ones-careful where you put them)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: bobjohn on February 29, 2012, 07:08:51 PM
hm... your attribute system is a good move in the right direction but you still have more attributes than necessary that doesn't add much to game-play or immersion


try this


Physical - everything physical: carry weight, combat, whatever
Mind - everything magical: spells, spell damage, discipline, whatever
HP - just pure hp:  taking damage lowers hp, doing jobs cost hp, spells cost hp, hp recovers as a percentage
Charm - whatever whore stat


damage resistance/mitigation whatever is a mechanic that doesn't really make a game more fun or add strategic depth.  Just a archaic filler mechanic designer have been using for years


I can assert that you don't really need secondary/derived attributes too.  Things like obedience or libido can easily be replace by some traits or be remove all together. 


you also might want to increase the max attribute.  20 is way too low for modern game.  Gamers like a sense of "progression".  Meaning numbers should increase (and increase frequently) for players to feel like they are on somewhere.  100 or removing an upper bound all together create satisfaction.

Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Shilo on February 29, 2012, 09:41:55 PM
hm... your attribute system is a good move in the right direction but you still have more attributes than necessary that doesn't add much to game-play or immersion


try this


Physical - everything physical: carry weight, combat, whatever
Mind - everything magical: spells, spell damage, discipline, whatever
HP - just pure hp:  taking damage lowers hp, doing jobs cost hp, spells cost hp, hp recovers as a percentage
Charm - whatever whore stat


damage resistance/mitigation whatever is a mechanic that doesn't really make a game more fun or add strategic depth.  Just a archaic filler mechanic designer have been using for years


I can assert that you don't really need secondary/derived attributes too.  Things like obedience or libido can easily be replace by some traits or be remove all together. 


you also might want to increase the max attribute.  20 is way too low for modern game.  Gamers like a sense of "progression".  Meaning numbers should increase (and increase frequently) for players to feel like they are on somewhere.  100 or removing an upper bound all together create satisfaction.

[  ] You understood what people like about the original WM gameplay.
[X] You want a dead easy game without any challenge and shallow game mechanics.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jhhk on March 11, 2012, 07:44:57 AM
You mentioned that the catacombs won't be the only place to acquire higher-class girls, and I kinda wanted to touch base on that. In the original game the places you could get girls were from the catacombs, the slave market, kidnapping, customers who couldn't pay, getting a girl pregnant, and random encounters wandering in the city. Now, in the first game there were girls that you could only find in the catacombs, the slave pens, or anywhere else; so my question is, do you intend to make it so that certain girls are exclusive to other methods? For example, Character A can only be found thru kidnapping, whereas Character B can only be acquired by fathering a child, and Character C must be gotten thru customers defaulting on the bill.

Also, what about new methods of acquiring girls not found in the first game? I remember someone wishing that the leaders of rival organizations were female, and that you could acquire them once they were defeated. Perhaps that could be a way to obtain exclusive, ultra high-class women? Maybe said rivals could also have henchmen or assassins that, once defeated, you could claim.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Ctwo on March 20, 2012, 06:29:50 AM
If you plan to mess with the building setup, then I suggest the number of rooms be the least of it.  In order to have the buildings realistic as far as I see it, there are a few criteria I can think of:
1. Size/Area, this is the square footage of a building/land, thus affecting how many rooms can be built for that building.
2. Quality, The difference between sectioning off a warehouse for your brothel, or buying a mansion.
3. Area of town, If you build a fancy brothel in the slums, you're still going to mainly get scumbags, whereas a shack amidst the town mansions probably won't get much business either.

I would also suggest that there be multiple options at various levels of influence.  You may be able to buy the small, somewhat fancy townhouse and turn it into a brothel, or buy the larger but less attractive apartment building and therefore get more rooms at a lower rate of customer attraction/customer pay grade (which would be another idea, richer customers that pay more for better whores, poorer ones that can't afford the good ones-careful where you put them)
You might want to go a bit further and have a "Releator's Office" that rents or sells buildings. Rent should be 1/100th of the cost of the building. Selling a building should give you an option to take half value now or wait 2-12 weeks to get full value. Buildings should have fields for neighborhood (other buildings in area: residential, buisiness, docks, industrial, resort, entertainment, religious), income area (low, middle or high), starting and max rooms for whoring (current/max), appearance rating (affects income level of customers, the better the appearance the better the customers attracted), number of possible amenities and any current amenities (max number: current amenities). Price (rent/own).
Buildings shouldn't just stay available for sale, but should be like the slave market. Everytime you visit new buildings are available. Prices should be determined by the combine value of all other factors. The neighborhood and income area should be the leading two values with rooms having a smaller effect. Appearance and amenities should be adders. So some formula like: [area X income X (current + max / 2 ) ] + appearance + amenities + amenities value = property value.
Amenities include special rooms that can have a positive (or negative) effect on the brothel. Some amenities would earn income, others would come with weekly costs. Some amenities would require some girls to work the amenity, others are benifits from just being there. Some examples would be: adding a bar (requires 2 girls min/6 girls max. generates a seperate customer list and generates a small profit, attracts customers), restraunt (like bar), stripping stage (like bar), garden (adds to building's appearance, raises girl's stats), gambling (requires workers, may loose money but tends to gain a profit, doesn't attract customers but instead gains more money based on the brothel's number of clients), drug den (lowers girl's resistance to performance, lowers girls health over time, makes a profit, lowers attractiveness of the building but raises the number of customers, possability of being busted by police/guards), gym (girls stats slowly improve, girls need more rest), study (girls stats slowly improve, girls need more fun), pool (girls have more fun, small chance of stat improvements), clinic (girls are less likely to be injured, get pregnet, or suffer from other bad health effects. Girls recover faster from injuries. Has a weekly cost for medicine and a nurse/doctor).
Some amenities should affect all of the brothels. For instance if you build a clinic the other brothels could use it too. Generally the effects of each amenity should only affect the girls in that building. Also you should be able to assign more girls to a building that it has rooms, but only allow prostitution equal to the number of rooms availalbe. Maybe max girls per building should be max room+max amenities because girls could use the potential room to live in even if it isn't ready for business use?
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Journeyman1 on March 20, 2012, 03:44:07 PM
Ok I noticed some talking about the good reputation style and how to get some of the girls from it and treat them.  Just a few ideas on that.  How about rescuing an unruly slave or criminal from a execution through bribes and at the stake of your own reputation that they can be made to see the better view.  Another would be to rescue/buy a slave from a horrible mistreating master or slave owner.  Rescue a girl from a rival gang attack.  Send a warrior/gang into the catacombs in search of an abducted girl.  I was also wondering since I'm pretty certain that the girls can be come pregnant in this version as well by the player.  What will happen with the male offspring?  Will they be put in charge of a gang, form their own gang, help you to manage a brothel like that of a matron, or help you to break unruly slaves/girls like that of a torturer.  Maybe trained as assassins to steal or kill your rivals security teams/girls so their brothel loose face.  When you defeat a rival or a rival is defeated by another will their be a chance for you as the player to maybe pick up some of the slaves/girls who are now homeless and jobless due to the attack assuming they were not picked up by the group who destroyed your rival?  Good rep would be to shelter the girls/slaves that have been brutally attacked if your rival attacked another rival/or could be made to look that way.  Bad rep would be a raiding party to round up all girls/slaves and kill any gangs so no witnesses other than your men.  Just some ideas i don't know how hard some will be to implement in game.  I am so out of practice coding that i have no clue how hard or difficult this would be to put in the game at this stage and time.  Some of it i think would be easy others more difficult.  (Haven't coded in any language in 14yrs or better, alot has changed.)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Badger on March 25, 2012, 01:02:41 AM
You mentioned that the catacombs won't be the only place to acquire higher-class girls, and I kinda wanted to touch base on that. In the original game the places you could get girls were from the catacombs, the slave market, kidnapping, customers who couldn't pay, getting a girl pregnant, and random encounters wandering in the city. Now, in the first game there were girls that you could only find in the catacombs, the slave pens, or anywhere else; so my question is, do you intend to make it so that certain girls are exclusive to other methods? For example, Character A can only be found thru kidnapping, whereas Character B can only be acquired by fathering a child, and Character C must be gotten thru customers defaulting on the bill.

Also, what about new methods of acquiring girls not found in the first game? I remember someone wishing that the leaders of rival organizations were female, and that you could acquire them once they were defeated. Perhaps that could be a way to obtain exclusive, ultra high-class women? Maybe said rivals could also have henchmen or assassins that, once defeated, you could claim.

I also really like this idea.  Being able to obtain girls through certain events or challenges would add another goal-based aspect to the game that I think a lot of people would enjoy.  Capturing random girls from rivals would weaken them/make them more hostile towards you, while also having unique "key" girls that can only be obtained through the destruction or assimilation of that clan.  You might even consider gaining unique girls through more political means like trading with non hostile groups based on the girls' value.

On a similar note, I think the girls should have not only a monetary value, but a trade value relative to other girls.  The trade value could reflect their monetary value but would be on a simpler scale, such as 1-5 or 1-10 "value points" (so you could potentially trade two girls valued at 3 and 4 for a single girl valued at 6).  The number would only be considered when trading the girls for other girls, however, depending on your relation with the group you intend to trade with, they might be willing to trade for a slightly lower or significantly higher value of girl/girls.

Another possible way of obtaining girls could be through favors owed by politicians, or even extortion of more corrupt politicians.  This would not only add another method of building your personnel but would also give a purpose to the "disposition" stat and the level of political influence.

I make all of these suggestions because I think they would add to the strategy of the game, making it somewhat more intellectual and really adding depth to the "business" aspect you would expect to be involved in running your character's establishment.

I know some players just want a simple "click 1000+ times to become the whoremaster" gameplay, but I really would like for it to take a little more work to get the girls I want and to actually feel like I've accomplished something once I own everything in the game. 

I want girls to really feel like prizes for victory or wise business decisions and outside party relations.  This would also make girls an extremely important asset and less expendable than they currently are since they would even have a trade value.

What do you guys think?  I'd appreciate some feedback about my perspective, maybe if anyone else would like to see the game take this route.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: jhhk on March 26, 2012, 07:54:35 AM
I fully support the the idea of turning each girl and her images into a reward, and in fact making it so that most girls can only be acquired through game-play.

As a side-note, I am looking forward to when this project reaches the point where we can start creating the girls, because I am sitting on a rather large collection of character image sets I created with the intent of making characters for WM 1. With a sequel in the works though, I would rather wait for the new game.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: CeeBod on March 31, 2012, 08:18:18 AM
I've been playing Sim Brothel 1x lately, and one thing that has that WM could do with is the girls' weekly schedule planners - allowing easy selection (via drop-down) of jobs for each girl for each day of the week.  The thing is that Sim Brothel 1x plays 1 day at a time so it doesn't really need a weekly planner so much, whilst WM has each turn being a week but with only 2 shifts to select for, really feels more like it's also 1 day per turn.

IMO effective use of a weekly job planner could really add to the game, as well as simplifying quite a lot of things:  Fatigue can be simplified by having each girl require a certain number of shifts as "rest/time off" per week, depending on her stats & talents - so an average girl would maybe need 4 half-day shifts off in a week, whilst a girl with high Constitution and talents like Construct or non-corporeal would be fine on just 1 shift resting per week.  That way you can ignore fatigue calculation most of the time, and simplify it the rest - if the girl gets the required amount of time off there's no need to calculate fatigue.  Overworking (set less shifts as rest than required) adds to fatigue and unhappiness, over-resting (set more to rest) recoups them, simples!
 
Similarly libido/sex weariness can be simplified as the number of shifts per week a girl can work as a whore - that could be a soft limit that results in penalties if you go over, or it could be a hard limit that stops you selecting more than the girl's maximum completely.  A useful side effect to this would be forcing the player to develop and make use of the non-whore jobs, and also manage the rotation of girls across multiple jobs to keep them earning, unlike the current WM vanilla situation of set all to whore as default and just manage fatigue. 
 
Disobedience and refusing jobs can also be tied in with this - overworking, and working at or above (if allowed) her libido limit will increase the chance of a girl refusing to work, extra rest and working less shifts as a whore reduce the chance.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: drake on March 31, 2012, 11:54:40 AM
I actually like the above ideas about the planner.  Of course I am assuming that it wouldn't be too hard to code? Hopefully not.  And more importantly, is this still being worked on?
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: ShikinamiFan91 on April 11, 2012, 02:39:41 PM
I've been playing Sim Brothel 1x lately, and one thing that has that WM could do with is the girls' weekly schedule planners - allowing easy selection (via drop-down) of jobs for each girl for each day of the week.  The thing is that Sim Brothel 1x plays 1 day at a time so it doesn't really need a weekly planner so much, whilst WM has each turn being a week but with only 2 shifts to select for, really feels more like it's also 1 day per turn.

IMO effective use of a weekly job planner could really add to the game, as well as simplifying quite a lot of things:  Fatigue can be simplified by having each girl require a certain number of shifts as "rest/time off" per week, depending on her stats & talents - so an average girl would maybe need 4 half-day shifts off in a week, whilst a girl with high Constitution and talents like Construct or non-corporeal would be fine on just 1 shift resting per week.  That way you can ignore fatigue calculation most of the time, and simplify it the rest - if the girl gets the required amount of time off there's no need to calculate fatigue.  Overworking (set less shifts as rest than required) adds to fatigue and unhappiness, over-resting (set more to rest) recoups them, simples!
 
Similarly libido/sex weariness can be simplified as the number of shifts per week a girl can work as a whore - that could be a soft limit that results in penalties if you go over, or it could be a hard limit that stops you selecting more than the girl's maximum completely.  A useful side effect to this would be forcing the player to develop and make use of the non-whore jobs, and also manage the rotation of girls across multiple jobs to keep them earning, unlike the current WM vanilla situation of set all to whore as default and just manage fatigue. 
 
Disobedience and refusing jobs can also be tied in with this - overworking, and working at or above (if allowed) her libido limit will increase the chance of a girl refusing to work, extra rest and working less shifts as a whore reduce the chance.
This is a very good idea.  There should definitely be an emphasis on each job.  That said, the way I'd do it is by giving each job a unique function.  That said, I'm a little rusty on the game mechanics, so I can't really give any ideas as to what those unique functions would be.  Sorry.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Jasuke on April 12, 2012, 11:07:48 PM
I'm assuming this project is still on-going since no-one said otherwise. And it looks pretty good thus far. Though one feature that I would think could make the game little better is the involvement of the player in things within the game; like for example having a bunch of stats on the player and allowing the player to certain number of actions per week and for example go into the dungeon himself and based on that include a battle mechanic to make the game more fun, other thing could be to be able to choose the gender of your so called "whore master" and such. These suggestions mostly are based on other games of this nature that have done similar things to a positive result.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Tantor on April 22, 2012, 01:13:31 PM
I just found this thread and something mentioned early on worries me.  I understand in combat that the is no difference in 1 vs 100 or 100 vs 10000 in values, BUT girl levels and catacomb levels are not things of the moment like combat but values used by the player to measure game progression.  the lowest level of the catacombs holds the best girls and therefore should only be reached by mid to late game.  the problem is with only 5 levels you are spending years of game time on each level.  This can give the player a feeling of spinning his wheels and getting nowhere. I would suggest splitting each section into 5-15 levels to give the player a feeling of accomplishment and advancement while still controlling how soon the player has access to high rank girls.  The same thing can be said about the girls levels too, with only 5 levels it will seem like they either max out to fast or aren't progressing at all, I would suggest 20 levels with something similar to what is done in D&D with attribute increases every 4 but other minor bonuses given on the other ones.  I know the numbers seem like fluff but games need some padding on their bones.  Because even if there is no difference between your lvl 5 girl and my lvl 20 in values it still gives the player a better sense of achievement to have reached lvl 20 instead of only lvl 5.

But in the end this is all just pacing stuff and probably won't be relevant till much later. ;)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: blind on April 24, 2012, 09:53:11 AM
                        graodearia you are a gentleman and a scholar.  Thank you for doing this project.

I've read through your posts and I'm excited to see the final outcome.  A few things I would like to ask are:

1. Your class/level system for the girls, would it be possible to have a girl start as - Class E lvl 1 - then reach - Class E lvl 5 - and have an option to advance to - Class D lvl 1 -, that way you can continue to progress girls.  If that's not the case and I can think of reasons why it would be, can there be a very rare one time use item to enable it?


2. I read the combat system post and think it's an amazing idea, I really like the idea of spells learned.  My question is can there be a similar thing for combat?  I know you listed temporary buffs they can "cast" but I was thinking more along the lines of Combat abilities such as "Dragon Punch" in place of the magic equivelent "Fireball".


Thanks again.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Lloyd on April 29, 2012, 05:54:01 PM
Just wondering if this game is still being made, but i have to agree with graodearia. The combat is not the main focus. and you are a blessing my friend.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Orden on May 03, 2012, 04:59:53 PM

Hello,


It's a good news that you rebuild the whole game from scratch but I think this discution about girls stat is not a good starting point. I played Whore Master and found it fun but I also played Slave-Maker, Marvel-Brothel and Sim-Brothel. Slave-Maker is great and well finished, Sim Brothel 2 on the contrary was beta a long time but its latest rebuild is good. You have to think about what is Whore-Master compared to similar games.


WM is not a collection of girls stats, it's:
   Brothel-Management (like SiBr)
   Gangs and territory
   Submission and torture in dungeon (submission but with more violence than in Slave-Maker)
And for me each mechanism should intereact with the others. For me WM it's Sex + Violence.


The stats and traits systems in WM1 was a bit too complicated, I had to read the source and create a manual myself to realy enjoy the game. You have to imagine that the player will not fine tune all the 20 characteristics. If you chose to create 6 combat traits, you have to create a real turn-based combat game or just have one "combat" skill. With 6 skills you have to show each turn in a dramatic way; if you plan to only diplay the combat outcome, just use one combat stat.
The skills are only here to support a game mechanism, if it's not used, or if it's too close from another stat, just remove it.


For example: the trait big-boobs, what should I do with it ? Sure a customer can be a fan of big-boobs but it's only a random event. In SimBr you can advertise Big-Boobs on radio to get more of theses customers. In WM it's just a random bonus, you have no decision to make about it.


I think players don't like too much game mechanism, but they like the richness of the world and the discoveries. Instead of creating too much stats, you can have special habilities that are not present at the beggining but are nice to discover to keep the pleasure of playing. Theses features should be well explained when they are used the first time.

Here are my sugestions:
A: Don't show unfinished features.
B: The core game should be reduced with 25 well detailed girls. It will be easier to download. Additional packages should be available allong.
C: Create a small documentation about the core mechanisms of the games. All the rest should be explained on the spot.

I hope WM2 will keep it's specificities and increase its playability.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Lloyd on May 04, 2012, 06:23:12 PM
Orden....... i think your fucken brilliant.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Orden on May 04, 2012, 07:23:41 PM

I want to dig a bit more the idea I have about what made WM original in comparison to other games. For me it's the mix of violence and sex:
As a player I found fun to get a character depicting a normal woman to start and to push this character to more extreme practices. You are rewarded with hot descriptions and corresponding images. For this the submission of each girl should be progressive and the discovery of each girl should be progressive also.
We can imagine a game where you have a city divided into districts. Each district is dominated by a mafia thanks to gangs. Each district can have a house an girls can work in houses or in the street of the district. They can also have non sexual jobs to start.


You have to conquer the districts to get the girls and you can also steal girls in other brothels. Once a girl is yours, she will not accept any job or any practice. You have various means (dungeons) to make her accept the most lucrative practices.


To sum-up: I conquer with gangs => I get the girls => I convince and train them => I get the money => I pay the gangs to conquer


In comparison with the current game mechanics:
- Girls will not accept to work as a whore since the beggining, they can start as a waitress, maid, dancer... Create a normal girl story, the life "before".
- Make clear the link between what the girls accept to do and all the domination actions in the dungeon.
- The most extreme pictures are available only when she accept extreme practices (beast, group)
- Gangs can scout to display where the houses and the girls are.
- Keep pregnency but daughters should not be used as future whores, but they can rather be kidnapped and used as such by rivals.
- Simplify the combat system, remove magic, nets, weapon level, healing potions, anti-preg medecine stock management.
- Remove grand theft and dungeon exploration in the first version. I should be added as a special plot and not as a generic game mechanism. Events like "raped by monsters" are nice.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Aika on May 05, 2012, 01:01:01 PM
This thread's been receiving a lot of attention lately. The last time the OP was online was 2 months ago, so I'm not even sure this project is still active. If it is I would offer to help, but until I hear something from the OP I'm going to assume this is dead.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Xela on May 09, 2012, 11:04:25 AM
This thread's been receiving a lot of attention lately. The last time the OP was online was 2 months ago, so I'm not even sure this project is still active. If it is I would offer to help, but until I hear something from the OP I'm going to assume this is dead.

 Yeah, most people don't realize how much time and skill you have to put in into creating a game like WM... Most projects die off fairly quick, I mean, even WM wasn't properly finished :)

 There are other WM2s being made out there, stay put, someone will make one eventually.
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: necno on May 26, 2012, 06:54:32 AM
I'm gradually working on a WM2 official. Although it is going to be different game. It is still at least 6 months from having anything to show since it incorporates a lot of procedural generation.
These things definitely take time, I wrote the original WM in about a week and still have no idea how I did it though the first release didn't work (released it on hongfire originally).

I've always been surprised at how popular it became. The next game is going to have more polish to it and is being written in C#/XNA. I won't go into too much detail since it is still very much
in an experimental phase but it has more rpg elements, alife simulation for townsfolk/workers and kingdoms(they mostly just influence prices of trade goods), procedural dungeons and explorable
environments.

The city is also procedural although not so much variation.

That is about all the information I can give out as it is like I said about 6 months from having much to show, I'm working at a company involved with game development now so time is
a little constrained so don't expect updates frequently. Also birthright is still being worked on although in a very limited rate (also it will first be released on android devices which is a little
different). Neway, can't wait to see what these other WMIIs will come up with and fully support them (indeed they did ask permission from me to start them which I ok'd)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: kenoichi on May 26, 2012, 07:51:43 AM
this sound great... ^_^
but to be honest with you...
you shouldn't have mentioned that you're working on a new WM... (official WMII) till you were near releasing the first version of it...
as it will only cause people to ask for more info, release date and any small amount of information about the game and progress
now i myself can't wait to see anything about this and of course i can't wait till its going to be released ^_^
but even with the new style of the game i do hope that it will still allow building and expanding of the brothels and other structures

anyway keep up the good work and keep us informed about the developement when you find the time or when you think its appropriate to release more info ^_^
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Xela on May 26, 2012, 11:04:00 AM
Good to know that there will be an official second version although it is weird as the first one never went out of beta.

I'm gradually working on a WM2 official. Although it is going to be different game. It is still at least 6 months from having anything to show since it incorporates a lot of procedural generation.
These things definitely take time, I wrote the original WM in about a week and still have no idea how I did it though the first release didn't work (released it on hongfire originally).

I've always been surprised at how popular it became.

Procedural generation sound complicated :( But games like WM have always been popular, stat raising and favorite anime characters, what's not to like?

The next game is going to have more polish to it and is being written in C#/XNA. I won't go into too much detail since it is still very much
in an experimental phase but it has more rpg elements, alife simulation for townsfolk/workers and kingdoms(they mostly just influence prices of trade goods), procedural dungeons and explorable
environments.

The city is also procedural although not so much variation.

That is about all the information I can give out as it is like I said about 6 months from having much to show, I'm working at a company involved with game development now so time is
a little constrained so don't expect updates frequently. Also birthright is still being worked on although in a very limited rate (also it will first be released on android devices which is a little
different). Neway, can't wait to see what these other WMIIs will come up with and fully support them (indeed they did ask permission from me to start them which I ok'd)

Yeap, we did ask for permission and ours will also have RPG elements, random tiled dungeons and explorable environments (but in 2D) and I am fairly sure ours will be built on inferior algorithms to procedural generation. Kind of hoping we'll have a beta sooner then 6 month :)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Romanul on May 28, 2012, 07:44:54 AM
It's good to hear you're working on WMII. WM is my favorite indie game. I can't believe you've coded it in a week.  :)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Xela on May 28, 2012, 08:53:47 AM
It's good to hear you're working on WMII. WM is my favorite indie game. I can't believe you've coded it in a week.  :)

A non working first release on hongfire should be doable in a week  ::)
Title: Re: Whore Master II
Post by: Ctwo on June 01, 2012, 06:51:44 AM
Great to hear that an official WMII is being worked on Necno. Hopefully it goes a lot stronger than a lot of the other 2 projects that have just fizzled.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on June 30, 2012, 05:31:39 AM
First thing I'd like to say is that I kinda abandoned the project. After I decided that Qt wasn't the right tool for the job I restarted the project using QML/C++. I watched some tutorial videos and things looked pretty good. I was certain QML was the right tool Then when I started the project I realized that it wasn't going to be as nice as I would like. Techinical things always look awesome on presentations. But when you get your hands dirty you realise that presentations only look nice becouse the things done are simple and standard. Sudenly you can't find out how to do the simplest of things. And it sucks. But there is also the other problem. And for me the other problem is worst then the first. The other problem is art. Although I might have a little bit of talent, I don't have pacience for it. I also don't know how to use the art tools like drawing program becouse I've never bothered to learn. So while trying to make some graphics for the game I got really frustraded. And thats when I stoped working on the project.

A few months have gone by and I started to slowly do a few things. I gave up on doing some of the art I wanted and instead searched the internet for some assets I could use right away. Then I started to do some things with QML as a test. At first I got stuck trying to do some basic things, but instead of giving up, this time I searched around and found a way to do whatever I was having trouble with. I'm still a few days of work away from posting a demo. My next demo will be very simple, but much more insteresting then the first one I posted. I've got some graphics now. It doesn't look good, but at least it looks like a game. I still had to do some things in paint programs but only simple stuff. So I've attached a print screem of what I'm working on.

I'm not looking for sugestions on the game at the moment. I've got my hands full with what I'm working on at the moment. However I've made this post for a few reasons. First I needed to rename my game. Necto had contacted me though pm a few days after I started this thread. He told me that he was working on a new game and that he would use WMIII as the name and let me keep the WMII name. But releasing a version 2 of a game just to have a version 3 be released at a similar time doesn't make any sense. So it was decided that he would use the WMII name and I was to rename my project. But then I stoped working on it and things got a bit messy. So now I've chosen a new name. It should be refenced as WMX instead of WMC since the x version looks better :).
The second reason was just to tell you guys that the project is still active. So for those that posted here, know that your post will not be in vain.
The last reason is that I'm looking for an artist. If anyone here has some skill in design or drawings they would be welcome. I prefer that the tools used should be free stuff. The reason is that if someone else wants to contribute they can easily pick up the tools and get started.
I use Inkscape for vector art, and Paint.net for images. One could also use Gimp, buts its too complicated for me. In any case post here if you think you can help with the art. If you do I will then tell you what I need and give you feedback on your work. I won't necessarily use anything you make. But if you have some skill and/or are a hard worker I'm sure we can use your work in the project.

One last thing feel free to ask me about the screen I posted. And if anyone wants the sourcecode I can post it in the dev thread, but at the moment all I've got is a few hundred lines of code that don't really do anything usefull. But it could be interesting if you want to take a look at some QML code.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on June 30, 2012, 07:21:33 AM
 Great thing to know more people are working on designing similar games!
 Good luck and keep us updated on the project.

 On the similar note, our programmer put together costumer code and fixed some bugs, I am not going to translate the current version as there are still no real playability in the game but at this point we are not far off a version with some simple functionality :)
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 02, 2012, 08:22:44 PM
EDIT: Added a higher res image of the new artwork and corrected some typos

Hey guys,

I'm making this post for 2 reasons, to show some new art work and to talk a little about how QML will be great for modders.

The first attached image shows the new stuff I made. The frame around the caracter as well as the health and energy bars. Took me a really long time to make them since I made them from scratch, using Inkscape. This is the first complex piece of art I made, since the rest is picked up from the internet and then altered for my use cases. Anyways I think it looks pretty good for a programmer. What do you guys think? Of course a designer would do better but since there isn't one I will keep on trying to do my best. The biggest problem is time. I didn't track the time, but I'm sure it was more than 10 hours. I spent have of the time struggling with Inkscape, one forth the time actually creating the stuff and the rest ajusting.

Now lets talk a little about QML. First I'd like to tell you guys about how simple it looks for modders to work with. All the files are plains text files. There is no compilation involved in the QML side of things. Of course there is still the core of the game, that will be made in C++. But I found out, and experimented with, making C++ classes available to QML. I created a simple Girl class in C++ and then created a sample girl in QML using the C++ class. This is what the QML code looks like for creating an instance of the girl class:

Code: [Select]
import QtQuick 1.1 import WMXGirls 1.0 WMXGirl {
girlClass: WMXGirl.E
girlType: WMXGirl.Warrior
name: "Amanda"
desc: "Description of Amanda"
age: 18
}

The "import WMXGirls" command is all that is needed to make the C++ code available to QML.  After that code is created in QML I can import the class instance to C++ and do whatever I want with it there as if I had done everything in C++. So maybe you are wondering what this has to do with modding. Well there are many important things to notice:
Now that sounds great but what about making changes to the game interface? How will QML make that easier. Well to show this I will talk a little about those health bars you see in the attached image. Those are not static images, they are in fact QML components. And they are pretty smart. For example I use the same component to make both the health and the energy bar. Take a look at this code:

Code: [Select]
WMXBar {
id: healthBar
anchors.left: attributes.right
anchors.top: parent.top
anchors.leftMargin: 10
height: 416
imageHigh: "../images/health-high.png"
imageLow: "../images/health-low.png"
value: 40
maximum: 40
}

Thats all the code that was I needed to write to define the health bar. The "anchors" you see are used to position the bar. Then I define the height, provide the image files fill the the health bar a maximum health value and the current health value. The component will then fill the bar with the image acording to the ratio between the current value and the maximum value. It will also display those values. If the bar is bellow 30% it will use the low health image instead (provided the the "imageLow" variable). So what if a modder wanted to resize the health or energy bar or even add a new bar to represent some other value? Well see for yourself. I will change 2 lines and you can see the result in the second attached image. The changes applied where "value: 10" and "height: 200".
As you see the health bar got red (the "imageLow" was used to fill the bar), thats becouse 10 is less then 30% of 40, also the health bar resized seamlessly to the new height. Looking at that you might thing I had to write some serious C++ code to creature that health bar component. But instead I only had to write about 80 lines of pure QML code. It didn't even require a single javascript funtion. So as you can see modders will be able to do some pretty advanced UI code without even touching the dreaded C++.

Right now its still early for me to release a new demo but I will keep you guys updated on my progress. Hope this post picked the interest of some of you. If you have some questions fell free to ask. And of course I welcome some feedback on the new screenshots.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 03, 2012, 03:47:34 AM
Looks interesting... didn't expect modding could be so simple knowing that you're coding a game in C++.

Waiting for new updates!
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 04, 2012, 06:08:08 PM
Hey people,

So first I quickly talk about a attributes update that I've made. The Discipline attribute was used to determine how fast a girl get experience in a job and how well that job is executed. I then realised that if such a skill existed girls that had low Discipline would be crap since they would be slow to learn and would also have a penalty in any job they were assigned to. So I couldn't really see how that would add to the game or make it fun. So I'm dropping that all together. Then comes Strength. Contrary to Discipline that was required for everything Strength is only required for Exploring Catacombs and Security. Maybe Torture and Cleaning. But in general it was the most underused attribute in the system. So I decided to drop that as well. The Constitution attribute, which is related to health and resistence will now also be used as Strength. I think maybe Constitution will be renamed as Vitality, the only reason being that Constitution is a very long word. Also there is a change to Charisma. Initially it was a Secondary attribute calculated using Beauty and Wisdom. But I realised that Beauty and Wisdom are not really related to Charisma. You can have a girl thats inteligent and beaultiful, yet is a selfish bitch. So now Charisma is a primary Attribute and there are no secundary attributes anymore. The new list of attributes are:

Vitality - Its the physical constitution of one's body. It determines the amount of Health and Energy a character has as well as how strong the character is. In adition it indicates a character's resistence to disease, poison and damage. Vitality is also used to determine the rate at which Health and Energy regenerate.

Agility - Ability to move quickly and easily. Its used in many things from combat to stripping to sex and basic anything that involves manual work, balance or swiftness.

Wisdom - Is a characters mental acuity, knowledge, and is used for all intelect related tasks. Some related jobs are Game Dealer, Advertisement, Matron just to name a few. Its also used to calculate Energy and Energy regeneration, since one can get tired in the mind as well as in the body. Wisdom was also used to cast spells but I might drop support for spells, see bellow.

Beauty - Is a characters physical attractiveness. It include everything from face to body to hair and skin. Its importance is obvious in WM.

Charisma - Defines how charming and elegant a character is. Also how well the character relates to other person, their ability to talk and convince others. Is important for every job the has direct interaction with customers and also some performance jobs (like singing).

Thats all. The system is simple enough, but not too simple. Maybe I could make Charisma and Beauty into one attribute. But then you wouldn't be able to have a pretty girl thats a bitch. And those types of girls could provide some fun since you would have to find a way to make the pretty bitch become more friendly. Now as you see Wisdom seams to be the least important attribute in the game. And I might even remove it or create more jobs that require Wisdom. Some jobs could be Manager (makes things run smother, that is, raises the customers satisfaction and make the other workers more eficient), Accountant (help avoid taxes), Nurses (heals the other girls) and probabily many more. Wisdom can also be prerequisite to use some items. For instance in order to equip a certain Codex the girl might have to have to have a certain minimal Wisdom in order to understand the book.

Now I like to ask some feedback on Spells. In the original idea there would be lots of characters that could do magic. You would then equip scrolls to teach diferent spell for the characters. It took me quite a while but I finaly realised that magic doesnt have a much of a row in the game. After all, a Wizard character is just another type of combat related character. From the point of view of the player Wizards and Warriors would do the exact same thing, be used for Catacomb exploration or Security. So it doesn't add much in terms of gameplay. All it does it require a diferent set of items (since Wizards and Warriors would be equiped diferently) but in the end the benefits are the same. Also it adds to the complexity of the Battle AI. And if the player had to choose one of the 2 characters for a combat job, it would be difficult to tell if the Wizard was more or less combat capable then the Warrior. So it could bring confusion. The only real reason to keep magic in the game would be for non-combat spells. For instance a spell could be used to make a girl more attractive. Once you aquire a scroll for that spell (from a store or exploration) you could equip it to a character and the character would use those spells before they would do a job that benefited from it. Basically it would be like adding a makeup or perfume that could be used indefinetly only requirering energy (to cast the spell). The problem with this is Energy. If the AI isnt top notch a character could use up all the Energy it has casting spells and sudenly be too tired for work. Becouse when the Energy runs out a character might refuse to work (just like tirredness in the original WM). So what do you guys think? Should I keep the spell system with all its potencial problems and questionable benefit? Should I rework it, and if so, what changes do I need to make to make it more fun and relevant? Or should I just drop it like I intend to?

As always I'll be glad to hear any feedback on the current attribute system.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 04, 2012, 07:41:22 PM
Now I like to ask some feedback on Spells. In the original idea there would be lots of characters that could do magic. You would then equip scrolls to teach diferent spell for the characters. It took me quite a while but I finaly realised that magic doesnt have a much of a row in the game. After all, a Wizard character is just another type of combat related character. From the point of view of the player Wizards and Warriors would do the exact same thing, be used for Catacomb exploration or Security. So it doesn't add much in terms of gameplay. All it does it require a diferent set of items (since Wizards and Warriors would be equiped diferently) but in the end the benefits are the same. Also it adds to the complexity of the Battle AI. And if the player had to choose one of the 2 characters for a combat job, it would be difficult to tell if the Wizard was more or less combat capable then the Warrior. So it could bring confusion. The only real reason to keep magic in the game would be for non-combat spells. For instance a spell could be used to make a girl more attractive. Once you aquire a scroll for that spell (from a store or exploration) you could equip it to a character and the character would use those spells before they would do a job that benefited from it. Basically it would be like adding a makeup or perfume that could be used indefinetly only requirering energy (to cast the spell). The problem with this is Energy. If the AI isnt top notch a character could use up all the Energy it has casting spells and sudenly be too tired for work. Becouse when the Energy runs out a character might refuse to work (just like tirredness in the original WM). So what do you guys think? Should I keep the spell system with all its potencial problems and questionable benefit? Should I rework it, and if so, what changes do I need to make to make it more fun and relevant? Or should I just drop it like I intend to?

As always I'll be glad to hear any feedback on the current attribute system.

 It's to late to write a proper reply, I'll do that when I wake up but can you be a bit more specific on what the endplan is for the game? What will gameflow will be like, are you planning to introduce new functions like NPC or Final Fantasy type battles as an addition to autocalc battles? It's difficult to give feedback on magic if you don't know what the game will look like in the end and where else it may be useful. 
 In any case, first idea to spring into my mind was placing magic on different stat than Energy (Line Mana (or MP) in normal WM). Then you can add items that only decent magicians could wear (simple 'if' check in the code) and those items would drain MP every turn in return of increasing other stats. That way you can simply write a code so a magic girl would use MP restorative items when low on Magic Points and there will be no need for overcomplicated AI.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 04, 2012, 09:40:34 PM
What will gameflow will be like, are you planning to introduce new functions like NPC or Final Fantasy type battles as an addition to autocalc battles?
One of the reasons the combat system doesnt have a demo yet is becouse I'm still deciding things like this. Having or not having magic in combat will drastically change the battle AI code. But one thing I can tell you for sure is that the combat will always be auto-resolved. The only thing I might provide if people find interesting is the option to see what happened in the battle after the fact. The battle events will be displayed in text in some form like:

Turn 1: X attacked, but Y defended
Turn 2: Y attacked and caused 5 damage
...
Turn 10: X attached, critical hit! X wins!

I can provide such a description becouse thats how the battle will be, turn by turn. But both combatents will be controled by the AI. The player will not see or participate in the combat. In the summery you see after the week is over, something very similar to what you have today in WM, you can see that combats happened. There could be a button after each combat report where you could see the combat details. Regardless if this button is there or not, for the player, combat will be like it is today even if internaly things are very diferent. So in the end sending a Wizardor or a Warrior  to the Catacombs will be the same for the player. The only diference for the player is that if he just got a new spell scroll for his wizard character he could potentially look in the combat details and see how his wizard used the new spell, how much damage it did, how many turn it took for his Wizard to win or lose the fight. But i'm guessing that most players will never want to see the combat details, as it can be very time consuming and very little information can be gained from it. Of course if your characters are constantily losing battles you might want to look at the details to see how much damage your characters are taking and causing to help you properly equip your character before you send them to the Catacombs again.

  In any case, first idea to spring into my mind was placing magic on different stat than Energy (Line Mana (or MP) in normal WM).
 
Originaly the game would have Mana for magic and Stamina for tirredness. That was later simplified in a unified number called Energy. People thought the game was becoming too combat oriented and over complicated. You can read about the change somewhere in this thread.

Then you can add items that only decent magicians could wear (simple 'if' check in the code) and those items would drain MP every turn in return of increasing other stats.
 
I don't wanna sound cocky but I'm a pretty good programmer. I would never consider complicated anything that required a simple "if". But I can garantee that adding magic the the battle AI will require much more than that. For instance if there are many available spells what to choose from? The one that cause more damage or the one that gives a bonus to your stats or the one the gives a penalty to your oponent stats? How about managing the MP consunption so that the MP doesnt run out before the battle is over? I can certainly program a resonable AI for battle with both magic and weapons but adding magic will make things at least 2-3 times more complex. But in the end its not about complexity. If I had had no feedback the game would be much more complex then the current design sugests. Its about adding value. Does magic add any value? Does it make the game more fun or chalenging? Those are the things I want to answer before I decide to keep magic. In practice if players use Wizards as just another type of Warrior, than its not worth the efford to add, not only that but having two diferent things that do the same thing make the game confusing and unintuitive for the players.

It's to late to write a proper reply, I'll do that when I wake up but can you be a bit more specific on what the endplan is for the game?
 
I will wait for your reply I hope I've cleared some of your doubts so that you can give a more informed opnion. Anyways, thanks for the replies. Ever since I came back here your are the only one that has given me any feedback.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 05, 2012, 08:20:08 AM
Ever since I came back here your are the only one that has given me any feedback.

Well, I think that the main reason for that is this:

------------------------------------------------------

Finished Sim Indie games:

SlaveMaker
SlaveMaker 2
Sim Brothel
Hentai Highschool (3 versions I think)

Games with working version that still develop new content and/or updates:

WM (Patches and new Content)
OtherWorld
SlaveMaker 3
MisBro
SimBro 1x
SImBrothel: Revival

Games that are being developed:

WM 2: Official
WM: Cathexis
Legends of Alkion (Also unofficial WM2 originally)
PytherWorld


 I prolly missed some as well :) And those are indies, one team is developing a similar game that they are planning to sell commercially that is by their promises supposed to be pretty good...
------------------------------------------------------

 So there is a bit of fatigue... I like to get involved and see how projects develop and how different people approach game building + I kinda like Pink Petal Forums :)


 As for magic, from the sound of it, it is best left out as you suggest since there will be no user controlled battles and managing spells and mana will simply add an unwanted micromanagement issue. Magic is kind of useless in WM and only gets in the way, it would have been better I think but WM was never properly finished. The only real counter argument for cutting magic out of the game I can think of is that many characters from games and anime (that an indie sims like WM are based around) have magic in one form and another... Maybe a trait: Magical or Strong Magic that increases other stats could substitute absence of magic itself.

People thought the game was becoming too combat oriented and over complicated. You can read about the change somewhere in this thread.

 This is actually awesome (as it creates variety). It is a completely different approach if compared to Alkion. I think that the opposite is true, I am a member of most of the indie development communities and what I see everywhere tells a different story. Many stats adds flavor to girls and differentiates them from each other. Combat orientation is also welcome in most games, you see people asking Daisy (OtherWorld Developer) when combat will be back and I don't think I've ever seem someone asking for combat removal. About the same is true for SM3.

 In any case, it is impossible to make a game everyone will be happy with. My biggest issue with you design is an apparent lack of classes updates. I prefer to pick a couple of characters in every game and max them out, giving them best items, best care, best jobs and so on. Also lots of interactions. If you cannot advance a girl from lower classes to class S, my way of play is close to impossible to do but like I've said, making a game everyone will like is close to impossible as well.

 
As always I'll be glad to hear any feedback on the current attribute system.

 You're oversimplifying attributes but that is not a bad thing. In my mind first rule should be that a game is not illogical and not counter-intuitive. Your design is both logical and makes sense so there is little I can add.
 
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 05, 2012, 09:46:07 AM
You're oversimplifying attributes but that is not a bad thing. In my mind first rule should be that a game is not illogical and not counter-intuitive. Your design is both logical and makes sense so there is little I can add.
Initially the Attributes were much more complete. The reason for that was not really realated to WMX. I wanted to reuse the system to make another game in the future. That other game would be combat oriented. As I got feedback I decided that I should really focus the Attributes on WMX and in the future, if I decide to make the other game, I will just have to reimagine the whole Attributes thing. WMX is a logical sequel to WM, that is, its focused on management. So adding to the Attributes just creates more micromanagement. The most important reason for simple management is that I want time to go by really fast. I want one game play session to spam decades. Since each turn only takes a week a player will have to play hundreds of turns before he completes the game. So a few turns, like when you open a new Brothel or expand your current Brothel might take a while. But most turns should pass by really fast.

My biggest issue with you design is an apparent lack of classes updates.
There is not techinical issue with adding class upgrades. It would be quite simple indeed. Just wait until a character level up to max then promote the character to a new class. The only problem with that I that I kinda wanted to force player to find ways to get the higher class girls. The players should have to work for that. If I allow class upgrades a player might just buy a few girls of the slave market and sit back and relax until his girls level up to S class. But maybe thats a good thing, it allows player to take another approach to the game, that is, they will have more freedom to play as they want intead of being forced into a certain path. What do you think?
Another approach could be middle ground approach. There could be a special rare potion or some other special item that allows a maxed out girl to change classes. That would allow the player to upgrade a few select girls but since the item is rare, he would still have to find ways to get more higher class girls.

The only real counter argument for cutting magic out of the game I can think of is that many characters from games and anime (that an indie sims like WM are based around) have magic in one form and another... Maybe a trait: Magical or Strong Magic that increases other stats could substitute absence of magic itself.

I'll try to find a way to make magical character special somehow. Maybe have items that only them can wear. Or something else. I any case, since you are the only one I can bounce ideas of, and you agree with the removel, than combat magic is gone. But as I said I will make magical character diferent from non-magical ones in a way thats adds fun to the game. Maybe I could still have spells, just none that are combat oriented.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 05, 2012, 11:33:38 AM
Initially the Attributes were much more complete. The reason for that was not really realated to WMX. I wanted to reuse the system to make another game in the future. That other game would be combat oriented. As I got feedback I decided that I should really focus the Attributes on WMX and in the future, if I decide to make the other game, I will just have to reimagine the whole Attributes thing. WMX is a logical sequel to WM, that is, its focused on management. So adding to the Attributes just creates more micromanagement. The most important reason for simple management is that I want time to go by really fast. I want one game play session to spam decades. Since each turn only takes a week a player will have to play hundreds of turns before he completes the game. So a few turns, like when you open a new Brothel or expand your current Brothel might take a while. But most turns should pass by really fast.

 What value do you see in a game where you just get to click 'Next Turn' button? One of the most serious problems with WM is not a wide variety of stats, traits and other attributes... it is the lack of content such as NPC, Events, Some form of a storyline and so on. I am not entirely sure who would want a fast game and why...? WM can be fast as hell, just get a good girls setup, a matron and some decent gangs and click 'Next Turn' 10 000 times, you'll have no serious issues and your money will be at around 50 000 000 or possibly even more... What is the point in that I am not certain? How many people think that game speed outweighs depth of girl's character, stats, traits, flavor and so on. You can code in interesting projects for multiple girls to work on or dialogues and ability to give gifts, do events/quests for girls you meet in the city to get enough disposition so they would befriend you or agree to work for you and so on. That is 'good' kind of micromanagement, not repetitive and very interesting... also time consuming but not in a bad way.

There is not techinical issue with adding class upgrades. It would be quite simple indeed. Just wait until a character level up to max then promote the character to a new class. The only problem with that I that I kinda wanted to force player to find ways to get the higher class girls. The players should have to work for that. If I allow class upgrades a player might just buy a few girls of the slave market and sit back and relax until his girls level up to S class. But maybe thats a good thing, it allows player to take another approach to the game, that is, they will have more freedom to play as they want intead of being forced into a certain path. What do you think?
Another approach could be middle ground approach. There could be a special rare potion or some other special item that allows a maxed out girl to change classes. That would allow the player to upgrade a few select girls but since the item is rare, he would still have to find ways to get more higher class girls.

 I think a variation of another approach is best. Drop classes, they don't sound human or fun. Instead use some form or variation of:

1) Beggar
2) Nomad
3) Peasant
4) Foreign Citizen
5) Citizen
6) Nobel
7) Almost Royalty

or something along these lines. Basically what defines a girl in this manner is a piece of paperwork issued by some local authority (NPC). Higher classes paperwork costs sh!tloadz of money. This way player would still look for better girls and have an option to assent any girl he is fond of up the social ladder. Also would eliminate classes, good thing as Class E or Class S do not do well in a game like WM, to impersonal and plain.

I'll try to find a way to make magical character special somehow. Maybe have items that only them can wear. Or something else. I any case, since you are the only one I can bounce ideas of, and you agree with the removel, than combat magic is gone. But as I said I will make magical character diferent from non-magical ones in a way thats adds fun to the game. Maybe I could still have spells, just none that are combat oriented.

 Well, this is a good thing and will differ the game from other games as well. Maybe traits as I suggested earlier:

 1) Battle Mage (Battle Stat increace)
 2) Witch (Charisma, Beauty increase)
 3) Miko (Magic healing, Increase to Nurse or similar trait)

and so on. If you are not adding userguided combat to the first game, magic is pointless stat that will get in the way more than help, especially if game is created under your concept of minimizing amount of attributes, a concept that can turn into a very good game in the end.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 05, 2012, 06:28:04 PM
What value do you see in a game where you just get to click 'Next Turn' button? One of the most serious problems with WM is not a wide variety of stats, traits and other attributes... it is the lack of content such as NPC, Events, Some form of a storyline and so on. I am not entirely sure who would want a fast game and why...? WM can be fast as hell, just get a good girls setup, a matron and some decent gangs and click 'Next Turn' 10 000 times, you'll have no serious issues and your money will be at around 50 000 000 or possibly even more... What is the point in that I am not certain? How many people think that game speed outweighs depth of girl's character, stats, traits, flavor and so on. You can code in interesting projects for multiple girls to work on or dialogues and ability to give gifts, do events/quests for girls you meet in the city to get enough disposition so they would befriend you or agree to work for you and so on. That is 'good' kind of micromanagement, not repetitive and very interesting... also time consuming but not in a bad way.
I completely agree with your statement. Any game that allows you to just click "Next Turn" over and over sucks. Well there are many things that prevent that from happening. Specially the gang wars. In this game the city will be divided into sectors. Rival leaders will control some sectors and other sectors will be neutral. As the game progresses some leaders will die and other will grow their control of the city. If you just sit back, sudenly your oponents control so much territory that you get overrun and lose the game. Yes in this game you can actually lose to rivel gangs if you aren't actively managing your gangs.
There is also the cap provided by classes. If the player is not getting more girls, training them and expanding his bussiness, he will always have low class girls. Low class girls only attract low class customer and so you will never make any real money. Basic if the player wants to progress he has to make more money and that requires better girls, so the player has to actively manage his bussiness. In sumary do nothing and you lose.
On the other hand doing meaningfull things to manage your bussiness should be quick. That is, the player should be able to get what he wants done with the minimal amount of clicks possible. If the player can quickly set things up on turns where he is only doing basic things, that means time will progress fast. On some turns players will the player might have to do some heavy lifting and so that might take a while, but one most turns the player will just visit the market, look at the reports, equip and put the new girls to work and pass the turn. Those tasks should be easy and quick to do.
Well thats the goal. When we have a playable game it could require a lots of tunning and refining before that can be achieved.

I think a variation of another approach is best. Drop classes, they don't sound human or fun. Instead use some form or variation of:

1) Beggar
2) Nomad
3) Peasant
4) Foreign Citizen
5) Citizen
6) Nobel
7) Almost Royalty

or something along these lines. Basically what defines a girl in this manner is a piece of paperwork issued by some local authority (NPC). Higher classes paperwork costs sh!tloadz of money. This way player would still look for better girls and have an option to assent any girl he is fond of up the social ladder. Also would eliminate classes, good thing as Class E or Class S do not do well in a game like WM, to impersonal and plain.

I like to only add a feature if it brings real game play options. Girl classes serve a very specific purpose in game play. Its not meant to limit a girl's power. It's linked to the customers that will visit your bussiness. The more wealthy the customer's want the better girls. What does that mean for the player? He has to find a way to aquire better girls if he wants the richer customers. Thats one of the chalenges of the game. It doesnt have anything to with Class this or Class that. It has to do with Attributes. Rich customer want beautifull girls serving them. So they don't care what Class the girl has they care that the Beauty Attribute is high or that other attributes are high, depending on the service he needs. If I give a girl a Noble title so something like that, she will still be as ugly or as beautifull as she was before the Tittle. So the customers will like her as much as they did before she had the Tittle. Now if I get a Beggar girl with really nice Attributes and nice clothes, rich custormer will want her even if she was a beggar. In summery girl Classes serve to limit the power of the inicial girls. As the player progresses he can get more powerfull girls, that is, girls of higher classes. Classes are just one of the ways that will allow for the player to progress in the game (by having more higher class girls), but not the only way. Conquering territory, building new stablishments, upgrading his current stablishments are some of the other ways a player can progress. In the end the players focus in this game should be his bussiness as a whole and not individual girls. Sure if the players want a few features that allow them of favor some of his favorite girls thats fine, I will put that in the game if needed. But the main goal is to be more like a tycoon game, and so individual girls a just one of the many assets the player has. In the end of the game the player should have an empire where individuals girls are just a drop of water in the sea.

Well, this is a good thing and will differ the game from other games as well. Maybe traits as I suggested earlier:
I'm not really worried about individual traits. Traits will be external to the game. By that I mean that modders will be able to create Traits in QML using a plain text editor. So simple Traits like that can be added to the game with a few lines of code, without having to recompile the game. So if the comunity feels like changing, removing or adding a Trait they can easily do it in a couple of minutes. Only complex traits will require that the engine expose a feature to modders so that they can then add traits that use that feature. As the comunity requests this features I will add them.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 07, 2012, 06:12:15 PM
Hello people,

Today I had a great idea. Recently I decided To drop combat magic from the game, becouse it would have the same efect as regular combat and since combats will auto-resolve just like in WM, magic would only add to confusion on the part of the player and complications on the programming side of the thing. But WM has a lots of characters that are very focused on magic. So I had to find a way to make magical characters important even if magic is not used in combat. In adition there is no mana in this game, so using energy for casting spell could make the character exausted, so I had to find a way to make magical characters interesting without involving spell casting. Xela sugested the adition of Traits specifically for magical characters. Well while those Traits could be a good adition for the game it was not enough to make magic relavant in the game. Another problem is with the Wisdom Attribute. Its not really used enough in the game so I needed to find a way to make that more important.

So my ideia is this. In the game it will be possible to expand you brothel and also upgrade diferent sections of it. I decided to add one new section that can solve a lot of problem. The player will be able to build and Alchemy lab. Only character with Magic or Strong Magic trait will be able to work there. This build will initially enable on new job after the player builds it, the Alchemist job. Puting girls to work on that job will allow the player to produce some potions. Acording to the girl Wisdom, more potions will be produced per turn. Initially a player will only be able to produce basic potions. But as the player buys or finds new recipies other potions will be available for production. At a later point in the game the player can upgrade the Alchemist lab. At that point a new job will be unlocked. Only characters with Strong Magic trait will be able to work in this job. The new job will be Enchanter. The player can select an equipment (like a sword or an armor) to be enchanted. After a while if the enchanment succced the item will have permanent bonuses provided by the enchantment.

So of course when I actually implement the Alchemist lab many details will have to be sorted out. I. But what do you guys think of this Idea?

Edit: I'm currenly working on a Trait system so that modders will be able to define Traits outside of the C++ code. I'm also working on the code that generate Girls based on the girls files (that will be part of the girls packages). Once this is done I will work on connecting Sqlite to the code so that game can be saved to the database. That will be an important feature. For instance from the data in the database the it will be possible to generate graphs the show the players progression in many aspects like Income, Taxes, Profit and many other stats. When I get the basic database code done I will post an update showing a new screenshot and talking about the next step.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: zuhydruh on July 08, 2012, 01:48:54 AM
Well the addition of the alchemist lab and enchanting sounds like a good work around to me in solving the magic issue.


i don't really have much to add on to it since it seems my ideas run pretty close to Xela's ideas or at least they have in the past few posts.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 08, 2012, 05:47:56 AM
 Right... but that is exactly why I asked if you were planning other elements in the game that would make use of magic. If there is an enchantment altar and alchemy lab, absence of magic as a stat itself would be counter-intuitive. I suppose that anything more than traits to describe girls and give a slight boost to their stats is an overkill if you want to drop magic as a stat.

 You yourself admit that you are trying to give magical flavor to many girls that use some form of magic in games/anime but you will in no way or form achieve that with Alchemy and Enchantment. The idea is to connect a girl in players mind from inside of your game to a familiar character from Anime, that is one (One of many, but very relevant I think) of the reasons why WM and similar games using well known characters get so many people interested and involved. I cannot picture many of those characters working in a lab or brewery.

Most Anime/Games break characters in:

- Magical Fighting Class
- Magical Healing Class
- Dark/Light Magician Class

Top two are self-explanetory while bottom one uses some form of magic to help/hurt people in other ways than bodily harm. In any case, I cannot see most of those characters in a workshop. So since you are asking for thoughts... I think that simple traits that effect stats will serve by themselves better if you are dropping magic and Alchemy/Item Augmentation should ONLY become a part of the game if you are making magic true part of the game!
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 08, 2012, 05:58:00 AM
i don't really have much to add on to it since it seems my ideas run pretty close to Xela's ideas or at least they have in the past few posts.

LoL

That is likely because I've spent to many time on Indie dev forums and chatroom throwing ideas around... there is a bunch of nominators that most communities want/like in Sims :)
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 08, 2012, 01:04:57 PM
Wow I kinda of disappointed. While the Alchimist Lab/Enchanting Altar can be a fun feature, the main reason for it was to satisfy the players thirst for the "role playing" aspect of the game, so that magic characters fell "magic". But if that is not enough, then we are back to ground zero on that aspect.

The main problem with combat magic is that it doesn't add to the game if combat is auto-resolved. On the contrary, its makes things less intuitive and confusing. The reason that combat will be auto-resolved is because of how long a turn takes. If the player where to control battles, one turn (a week of time) could take as much as a full hour in real time. So whats the problem with turns taking so long? Well I've have read lots of posts in  few threads that crazy linked here. Lots of the discutions are around pregnancy and the children that are born. So if each turn take too long that means that pregnacy will take a really long time in real time. For instance, lets say a full pregnancy cicle takes 40 weeks and the player spends an average of 30 mins per turn. That mean from the time a girl gets pregnant to the time the child is delivered it will take 20 hours of play. That is simply not acceptable. That will make pregnancy useless and since so many people care about that, the game will not appeal to those people.

It is important to notice that I'm not making the game for myself. By that I mean that I want the comunity to enjoy the game but also allow then access to the features they would like to have in the current WM but can't becouse its too complicated/time consuming to implement. I'm trying to design a game where it should be easy to add those features. For intance I decided to save the game to a database becouse amoung other things, it will be able to easily track who is the child of who and also, of course, who is the mother of who. In my mind that doesn't really add to the game play, but it does add to the "role playing" aspect, where people can do things like having a  mother/daugther threesome and stuff like that.

So in summery I thought the Alchimist Lab/Enchanting Altar was a feature that would make magical girls important without adding time consuming micro managment or time consuming combat. But a feedback like "I cannot picture many of those characters working in a lab or brewery" it becomes clear that those features do not fill the "role playing" gap for magical charcters. I guess its back to the drawing boards.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 08, 2012, 02:21:08 PM
Wow I kinda of disappointed. While the Alchimist Lab/Enchanting Altar can be a fun feature, the main reason for it was to satisfy the players thirst for the "role playing" aspect of the game, so that magic characters fell "magic". But if that is not enough, then we are back to ground zero on that aspect.

It is a great feature! I said that we are also making a WMlike game in Python and it will have both Alchemy and Item Augmentation. It will also have Artifact lab that will play a big role in the game. But it is a fun feature as a filler, not as a main magic outlet, game will 'feel' very incomplete and awkward with just that feature representing magic.

The main problem with combat magic is that it doesn't add to the game if combat is auto-resolved. On the contrary, its makes things less intuitive and confusing. The reason that combat will be auto-resolved is because of how long a turn takes. If the player where to control battles, one turn (a week of time) could take as much as a full hour in real time. So whats the problem with turns taking so long? Well I've have read lots of posts in  few threads that crazy linked here. Lots of the discutions are around pregnancy and the children that are born. So if each turn take too long that means that pregnacy will take a really long time in real time. For instance, lets say a full pregnancy cicle takes 40 weeks and the player spends an average of 30 mins per turn. That mean from the time a girl gets pregnant to the time the child is delivered it will take 20 hours of play. That is simply not acceptable. That will make pregnancy useless and since so many people care about that, the game will not appeal to those people.

??? What games did you play with FF Style type of combat taking that long? It shouldn't take more then 1 - 3 minutes, maybe 5 minutes tops. Or do you mean by battle some sort of exploration/rougelike engine?

This is an example of a battle engine written in Python for RenPy (Alpha v.5 or v.6): https://www.dropbox.com/s/o4fsd2bphkyztlr/BattleEngine%20Demo-win32.rar

For user guided combat you could simply add something like this and make exploration logical. For example you were talking about 'levels' in Catacombs. You could force player character along with a team of girls to 'clear' a catacomb level first and only then, after defeating level boss(after 5 - 10 fights), could you send normal girls for exploration and item hunting on their own. Also a number of quests given by NPC's in the city that would have to be resolved by player guided combat... Rest? Autocalculate rest of the battles, that way you can insure that player can have some fun fighting but players will also not be FORCED to fight every single turn themselves.

In any case, that is one way you can add combat without ruining the game, similar feature was included in first release of Otherworld and was very well liked. Daisy decided to remove it later since it was to simple and to buggy I guess...

It is important to notice that I'm not making the game for myself. By that I mean that I want the comunity to enjoy the game but also allow then access to the features they would like to have in the current WM but can't becouse its too complicated/time consuming to implement. I'm trying to design a game where it should be easy to add those features. For intance I decided to save the game to a database becouse amoung other things, it will be able to easily track who is the child of who and also, of course, who is the mother of who. In my mind that doesn't really add to the game play, but it does add to the "role playing" aspect, where people can do things like having a  mother/daugther threesome and stuff like that.

WM was supposed to have Mother/Daughter code but that was never implemented. I don't think it is a very important feature to a lot of people, but people keep asking if pregnancy will be a part of every damn hentai sim game on every forum so I guess it is important to add this feature. I would prefer to see user guided combat thou... it is what's really missing from every indie game out there and also something that would make an awesome addition to practically every game.

PS: I know that SlaveMaker has combat but it is to simple to be counted as such :)

PS2: Another thing you can play with if you decide to go with userguided combat are action points, player will have to decide if he wants to spend those interacting with girls/shopping in town or hunting for items in the Catacombs, I think that is a logical step up for next generation version of WM. But on the other hand you wanted to make a faster game oriented around concept of 'purer' simming that I suggest, also a great design. It's always up to programmer in the end to decide.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Marquis on July 08, 2012, 03:14:47 PM

Were you planning on having 'team' combat? For example, if three girls explores the catacombs on the same shift they're considered a team. Two girls on security on the same shift are a team.
If so, magic could be integrated meaningfully into auto-combat at a strategic level.


Let's say a team with a battle mage can inflict damage for a number of rounds before a warrior can close. A warrior against a mage would take damage while closing but if she survives, could easily kill the mage (if she has no combat skill). A healer could reduce damage during the combat helping warriors survive while closing. A warrior with some magic skill might reduce the ranged damage.


All of this can be 'behind the curtain' but gives the player reasons to put a balanced team on security and/or exploration.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 08, 2012, 03:41:54 PM
Were you planning on having 'team' combat? For example, if three girls explores the catacombs on the same shift they're considered a team. Two girls on security on the same shift are a team.
If so, magic could be integrated meaningfully into auto-combat at a strategic level.


Let's say a team with a battle mage can inflict damage for a number of rounds before a warrior can close. A warrior against a mage would take damage while closing but if she survives, could easily kill the mage (if she has no combat skill). A healer could reduce damage during the combat helping warriors survive while closing. A warrior with some magic skill might reduce the ranged damage.


All of this can be 'behind the curtain' but gives the player reasons to put a balanced team on security and/or exploration.

You can do the same with slingers/archers without magic... Does it make sense for logical combat is the real question?

Another thing, while multiple girls on the team is an interesting concept, the idea here if I am not mistaken was putting a girl in charge of your gangs? Both is an overkill in one game, no need to make the design to complex.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 08, 2012, 03:54:27 PM
  ??? What games did you play with FF Style type of combat taking that long? It shouldn't take more then 1 - 3 minutes, maybe 5 minutes tops. Or do you mean by battle some sort of exploration/rougelike engine?
 
I've never played a community based game that include combat so I don't really know whats out there. My experience comes from playing computer/console RPGs for more than 20 years. Many games that I played have long combat sequences, specially boss fights. I'm 31 at the moment and I started gaming on Atari 2600. Also my favorite games are either simulation games (tycoon style) or rpgs. Since this game is tycoon oriented with RPG elements I believe that my experience could add a lot to the game. Anyways, I think that if there were player controled combat, it would be in the style of a game called Drangon Quest. In Dragon quest boss battles can be quite time consuming. For each character's turn you have a simple menu with options like "Attack", "Spell", "Item". You choose the action for each character, see the results and then the enemy chooses the action for his characters and you see the results, then its your turn again and so on. Its quite easy to implement such combat style and the way I'm designing combat is actually well suited for that. The combat will already be turn based with an action being picked for each character's turn. Instead of the AI choosing the players action, the player would choose. The AI would still have to be implemented for the enemy, so the amount of work would increase. But I think the amount of work needed for the whole game would only increase by something like 10%. Of course 10% of a the total time is still quite a while. One thing that I like to mention is that even if there is player controled battle, the player himself will not take part in the battles. I mentioned the reasons somewhere in this thread. And of course, player controled battles must be optional so that some player can choose to ignore the combat if they want.
 

The problem in regards to time is that later in the game you could have mutiple characters exploring the catacombs. Even if the combat takes 3 mins, having 5 battles to fight in one turn would take 15 mins. If the player has to control the security related battles then that adds more time. If the gang wars are player controled, that adds even more time. And then the player still has to do all the managment required by the other parts of the game. So if you add it all up the turn will take quite a while.

I don't think it is a very important feature to a lot of people, but people keep asking if pregnancy will be a part of every damn hentai sim game on every forum so I guess it is important to add this feature.
In my WM playthrough I always auto-buy anti-preg drugs and simply ignore that aspect of the game. But from all the posts out there it seams lots players find that to be quite important. I can't ignore what the people want. So as I meantioned that forces me to make turns that last only a few minutes in most cases. Also there is the Age factor. In WM age is not important. I WMX I wanted age to be more important. That is, in real life most man prefer younger looking girls simply becouse after 30 or so, gravity takes it toll, wrinkles start to be noticed and stuff like that. On the other hand, there are lots of people that like more mature girls hence the things like MILF fetish. So I would like in game time to progress faster so that girls could become old. That would allow for Traits to have age restriction so that older characters would lose some youth related Traits (eg Firm Body) as they age and gain some mature oriented Traits (eg Wise). If would be cool to have old whores teaching the new ones in a whore school type setting. So ideally, I wanted a single complete play through game to spam something like 50 years. In the end the player is an dirty old man (like the owner of Playboy) with a big house, in the style of the Playboy mansion. I'm still unsure if thats the path the game should take but in theory it sounds interesting.

One last thing. I enjoy turn based combat a lot. I mentioned to you how I was originaly designing the skill system to later reuse in another game. This other game would be like pokemon. It would be in the WM world and the story would be that some inventor created a pokeball like device that can be used to capture defeated girls. So the player would be an adventurer, exploring the Catacombs fighting and capturing the characters and later using those same character to fight other battle. In a context like that combat would be uber important. But WM combat is just one of the forms to aquire more girls and items. Putting a lot of efford in that will just mean that the actuall game takes much longer to be playable. And what I really want is to have a simple playable game that can then take a the direction that is pointed out by the comunity. So instead of making a full featured game and then releasing it, I prefer to make a simple game that allows people to submit new content. And then expand that simple game to include the features that are most wanted. With that aproach I can't really invest too much in any given feature. I'm hoping that the sum of lots of simple features will be greater then the sum of a few complex features.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: Xela on July 08, 2012, 04:19:32 PM
No userguided combat it is then :)

 In any case, presentation is what really sells it. Gameplay and interface/controls are at least as important as new features in the game... Those are what really needs to be logical, simple but interesting , repetitive but with small variation to keep players playing without getting bored. Everyone seems to be discussing new features but keep forgetting to talk about what gameplay will be like and what interface controls/graphics will be like.

 Any thoughts or are you leaving those for later? The reason I am asking is that there have been games in the past that were remade with new features, more pics but flailed because controls and interface was poorly designed...
   
 
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 08, 2012, 04:25:06 PM
Were you planning on having 'team' combat?
That idea has already been discused in this thead before. While that could be very interesting there are quite a few problem that that could cause. There where also sugestions on how to overcome those problems. But in the end you have to ask yourself how much is combat important in a game like WM? If it insn't that important then why invest so much development time in it?

Also as Xela noted ranged combat can be simulated even without any combat spells. And as for healing, any Warrior can carry a few vials of potion that he can use to heal during battle. The main problem with using this advanced tatics in when deciding a team or equiping a character is how will the player know if the choices he made yielded any results? All he sees is the result and not the actual battle taking place. So say a charater adds a Healer to a team. Then he passes his turn and he sees that his team beat some monsters. Does that mean his choice to add a Healer was tactically correct or does it mean that the enemies his team faced where simply weak? Its hard for the game to give players any feedback on his tactical decisions if combats are autoresolved. Its also hard for a player to judge what character he will send to Catacomb mission. Say he has 2 spare girls and 2 jobs he needs done. One is cleaning the other is combat. Looking at the stats of a Wizard and the stats of a Warrior how can a player really tell which one of those would be better suited for combat? Well he could estimate how much potencial damage the Wizard could deal the the enemy before the enemy closes in. Then he would have to figure out if the Wizard could survive long enough to kill the enemy before he dies. And then make a similar estimation for the Warrier character. But he would also have to consider that the enemy could also be a Wizard in which case his estimations would be completly diferent. So either the player would have to pull out a spreadsheat to help him take that decision or he would have to simply take a change and randomly make a choice. I summery think Wizard character cause more confusion in the player then they add to the game if the combat is auto-resolved.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 08, 2012, 04:47:27 PM
In any case, presentation is what really sells it. Gameplay and interface/controls are at least as important as new features in the game... Those are what really needs to be logical, simple but interesting , repetitive but with small variation to keep players playing without getting bored. Everyone seems to be discussing new features but keep forgetting to talk about what gameplay will be like and what interface controls/graphics will be like.

 Any thoughts or are you leaving those for later? The reason I am asking is that there have been games in the past that were remade with new features, more pics but flailed because controls and interface was poorly designed...
I make bussiness application for a living so I have a lot of experience making easy to use interfaces for many purposes/use cases. So I intend to use that experience along with the experience I have playing hundreds of games to make the user interface as easy to use and intuitive as possible. Of course since the game will be made incrementaly decisions that where taken earlier in the process might become obsolete in the long run, so I will have to constatly go back and fix the interface as the game gains features. But that kinda or reworking is typical in applications that are prototype based and generally considered worth it by the community that uses those approachs (this is called agile development).
The presentation side of things are a whole diferent thing. My graphical design skills are limited at best. Unless we can get an artist or designer in the team that aspect of the game will really suffer. But recently I download Slave Maker 3 and Otherworld and from what I can see in the games, also considering the original WM, I won't be behind that quality of work. In fact I believe my graphics will be of better quality then that. But for instance take the russian wood skin for WM. My work will be much worst then that. I can't even get close to that kinda stuff.

As for planning I'm currently working of the character screen. The one you will see when you click on the "Girl's Detail" button. So I'm making graphics for that as I add content to it. Just like the art work I posted here. As the screen get more content, for instance I'm working on Traits so I will add them to the Char Screen, I will make more graphic assets for it. The goal is for everything to be "ready to ship" as it gets made. Of course things will be enhanced as I go along, but in general I intend to do the Inteface/Graphics as I implement each screen. Using that aproach whatever is ready is usable right away. As I add content the the Char Screen I will post update screenshots here.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: zuhydruh on July 08, 2012, 11:02:32 PM
ok i am not sure how to do the blue boxes of other peoples text that aside.


About magic if it's not going to be in the game make up some form of story why most forms of magic don't work that well hopefully resolve most of the magic character issues that may come up. though then again i do like more story/depth to the games i tend to play.


i know it was said that turn based combat wasn't going to in the game though i was going to suggest why not give the player a choice if they want to take part in the battle or auto resolve it. for example at the end of week a player sees all the records of stuff that went on that week at the bottom there is a button called resolve battles which brings up a different page and allows the player to choose which battles they actually want to do and which they will just let auto battle if the player doesn't even want to look at it they just check a box in options and the game will automatically auto resolve all battles for them and show the results in the records page.


Aging, pregnancy, and interactions all three of theses are important well to me at least. Aging is an inevitability since time will go by though i am hoping there will be potions, items, and traits that can help with that such as something that will make the user younger, older, or immortal. i don't expect such items to be easy to get plus any item that may add a trait such as immortal could possibly have some nasty side effects. I find interactions with the girls/npcs on the individual level to be important. maybe i want to take a girl to dinner to make her like me some more or maybe different styles of meaningless sex with or without protection (because there are those of us that just want to knock them up). hopefully there will be a good number of interactions a player can do with individual girls. some girls in the original WM gave me enough trouble that i didn't really use them for work since they had a nasty habit of disobeying, killing/wounding people, and well more so over a pain to work with. instead of getting rid of them i just sent them to the dungeon to break their minds or wills preferably their will and used them for myself to knock up over and over again and put the daughters to work or sell off. (yes i can be rather evil)


well those are my ideas and some of my interests.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII)
Post by: graodeareia on July 09, 2012, 12:12:16 PM
ok i am not sure how to do the blue boxes of other peoples text that aside.
At the top right of each post this is a quote button

About magic if it's not going to be in the game make up some form of story why most forms of magic don't work that well hopefully resolve most of the magic character issues that may come up. though then again i do like more story/depth to the games i tend to play.
I expect that at some point of the development cycle someone steps up as a writer for the team. That person will be resposible for righting dialogs texts, story, descriptions and so on. If I have to do that myself the game will probabily have a shallow story with simple text and dialogs. The reason for this is that I got my hands full already and don't have time for that kinda stuff.

i know it was said that turn based combat wasn't going to in the game though i was going to suggest why not give the player a choice if they want to take part in the battle or auto resolve it. for example at the end of week a player sees all the records of stuff that went on that week at the bottom there is a button called resolve battles which brings up a different page and allows the player to choose which battles they actually want to do and which they will just let auto battle if the player doesn't even want to look at it they just check a box in options and the game will automatically auto resolve all battles for them and show the results in the records page.
Today I decided to take a diferent route for the combat. I will add a pool here and the comunity can decide if they want player controled combat or auto-resolved combat.

Aging, pregnancy, and interactions all three of theses are important well to me at least. Aging is an inevitability since time will go by though i am hoping there will be potions, items, and traits that can help with that such as something that will make the user younger, older, or immortal. i don't expect such items to be easy to get plus any item that may add a trait such as immortal could possibly have some nasty side effects.
What I'm really aiming to create is not a full game with all the content. I going to create all the tools so that the comunity can add content them selfs. The way that that is going to work is that I intend to have a core team of content creators that create the "official" content of the game, the content thats available with each release of the game. But any modder can and should be allowed to create any kinda of content and post those for people that want to download it. The official content comes with the game and other content can be download at will by the players. This content will include traits, girls packages, story, itens and basically most of the games content.
So as far as what Traits or Items will be available, the up to the modders and content team. I will just make sure that all the programing is there to suport that content.

I find interactions with the girls/npcs on the individual level to be important. maybe i want to take a girl to dinner to make her like me some more or maybe different styles of meaningless sex with or without protection (because there are those of us that just want to knock them up). hopefully there will be a good number of interactions a player can do with individual girls. some girls in the original WM gave me enough trouble that i didn't really use them for work since they had a nasty habit of disobeying, killing/wounding people, and well more so over a pain to work with. instead of getting rid of them i just sent them to the dungeon to break their minds or wills preferably their will and used them for myself to knock up over and over again and put the daughters to work or sell off. (yes i can be rather evil)
For interaction I'm looking at some other games for inspiration. Games like Otherworld and Slave Maker offer some better player/character interaction the the original WM does. So you can expect some quite good interections. Of course, as with everything in this game, when I do implement interections I will take community feedback and tune it so satisfy the most demanded features.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 09, 2012, 12:22:33 PM
Ok since so many people (actually only about 4 :)) said they would like to see some turn based combat I added a poll for it. The poll will run for a week or until I start to work on combat, which ever comes first. If you care about this aspect of the game, just place your vote on the poll. Whatever option is most voted will be what the game has.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: Xela on July 09, 2012, 02:52:11 PM
Ok since so many people (actually only about 4said they would like to see some turn based combat I added a poll for it. The poll will run for a week or until I start to work on combat, which ever comes first. If you care about this aspect of the game, just place your vote on the poll. Whatever option is most voted will be what the game has.

 You're a weird guy :)

 It's like asking a bunch of bears if they like honey... There is a bunch of features that 70 - 80% of pretty much any community would like to see in the game, ability to fight a good turnbased battle every now and then is one of those things and as an advocate for FF style combat in any new generation sim indies I welcome the poll!

 On the other hand don't rely on public opinion for all of decisions for your game, there is always a danger that game will start turning into something you don't like and you may loose interest in making it. Generally I think you have a very good grasp on game logic and your own concept, going to far off course might not lead to a better game at all...

 It's summer and there are not that many people around, week might not be enough to get enough votes to get a clear picture.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 09, 2012, 05:23:18 PM
It might not even be a week. If I start the combat code I will freeze the poll at whatever it is.
I don't care about a clear picture. Whatever is decided is whats its gona be and that is that. If someone ever complains in the future I will just point out the the poll results and move on.

As far as listening to the comunity I only care about people that are talking in the threads as things happen. There is an expression in my country for that: "You can't arrive late to the train and want to sit by the window". Those people that were involved in the design discussions have a saying, I consider them to be designer along with me. If someone comes in the future and says something about a feature thats already been worked out I will just say that the community already decided on that and that that person is late to the party. But ultimatly the decision is always for the core team to make. And right now I'm the only member of that team. So anything that will go against my plans for the game will simply not be included in it.

On combat especificaly I figured out a way to make turns long and yet allow for in game time to pass quickly. Each turn will pass month of time instead of a week. So if the turn takes 15 mins average, the player can still advance a years time in 3 hours of game play. Of course some people might think that 1 month is too long but in this case you can't have your cake and eat it too. There is simply no way to make a full playthrough last a few decades and have things like player controled combat if turns advance only a weeks time. This is one case where a person saying he prefers that turns last a week won't matter. That is, if player controled battles win the poll, turns will last a month. The reason for that is becouse I said so.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: Zylo on July 10, 2012, 11:26:41 AM
It took me a while but I finally read through this thread.

I think combat wouldn't be that bad, but it needs to be short, diverse and modern feeling.  I agree that it shouldn't take up the majority of game.  It also needs to be diverse enough to be interesting and modern enough so it doesn't get to tedious.  I'm a firm  believer in features that have an appreciated effect.  I was fine with the auto-resolved battles but now I think about my behavior
 regarding it, i would skip over the summary or I would get frustrated cause the gangs would engage into a battle that they prob. couldn't ever win (Don't know cause it wouldn't display the enemy stats).  I think the nice balance between these two would be controlling the unit maneuvers into combat but allow it to auto-resolve once it engages.  If the battle is still going on by the end of the turn, the player could retreat or press the attack.   
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 10, 2012, 01:30:42 PM
Personaly I don't think combat is an important part of the game. A player will tipically only have 5-10% of his work force in security or exploration. As his bussiness grows that percentage gets shorter and shorter. So I don't think its worth the efford/reward on the development front. Large amounts of work will be required to create an engaging combat experience, and while that  might bring some fun combat sequences for the player, in the end and if the player wins, all he gets is gold, items and possibily new girls. But he will also have other ways of getting that from other sources like shops, slave markets and more. So the player will invest a significant amount of his time into combat for a reward that he doesn't really need (as there will be quicker and easier ways of aquirering those things). Of course the game could offer some items/girls that will only be available through exploration but there will be other items/girls that will only be available through other means as well.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe combat itself will be the reward the player needs. I mean winning a battle can give a sense of acomplishment and fullfilment, especially if the odds are against you. And then there is always the Gang Wars aspect of the game. Player controled combat could add more fun and engagment in that area. I am thinking that if combat is player controled I will add a job of Gang leader so that Gang Wars can become even more fun and engaging. But of course, that will also add to the development time of the game.

All that player controled combat will cost me is development time.  I simply have to put a large amount of work into something that many player will skip or will completely ignore. But then player might also ignore other features of the game. WM is a game that offer many diverse aspects of gameplay and players can choose to focus on the ones he most enjoys and still be successful. In the end, the way that combat is handled won't interfere with any of my design goals for the game. Thats why I will leave that choice to the comunity.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: Xela on July 10, 2012, 02:13:23 PM
Personaly I don't think combat is an important part of the game. A player will tipically only have 5-10% of his work force in security or exploration. As his bussiness grows that percentage gets shorter and shorter. So I don't think its worth the efford/reward on the development front. Large amounts of work will be required to create an engaging combat experience, and while that  might bring some fun combat sequences for the player, in the end and if the player wins, all he gets is gold, items and possibily new girls. But he will also have other ways of getting that from other sources like shops, slave markets and more. So the player will invest a significant amount of his time into combat for a reward that he doesn't really need (as there will be quicker and easier ways of aquirering those things). Of course the game could offer some items/girls that will only be available through exploration but there will be other items/girls that will only be available through other means as well.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe combat itself will be the reward the player needs. I mean winning a battle can give a sense of acomplishment and fullfilment, especially if the odds are against you. And then there is always the Gang Wars aspect of the game. Player controled combat could add more fun and engagment in that area. I am thinking that if combat is player controled I will add a job of Gang leader so that Gang Wars can become even more fun and engaging. But of course, that will also add to the development time of the game.

All that player controled combat will cost me is development time.  I simply have to put a large amount of work into something that many player will skip or will completely ignore. But then player might also ignore other features of the game. WM is a game that offer many diverse aspects of gameplay and players can choose to focus on the ones he most enjoys and still be successful. In the end, the way that combat is handled won't interfere with any of my design goals for the game. Thats why I will leave that choice to the comunity.

Combat is a great diversion and adds variety to the game! Also, community can create interesting and engaging quests that can never be as fun without userguided combat. That is simply a fact, not an opinion. Opinion is for example that I believe that your work if the vote will be in favor of combat will not be skipped by many players and will be enjoyed by a larger part and because of that belief I am shocked that we are now split 60/40... I always though it will be more in the lines of 80% to 20%... Maybe a lot of people simply don't see the potential it brings as original WM does not have real quests other than requests you get from Mayor's office. If new generation WM will have NPC and those NPC will be able to issue their own quest requests or ask for help and so on, u.g. combat can add a whole new dimension to the game that cannot otherwise exist...
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 10, 2012, 05:42:44 PM
I hadn't thought about the Combat/Quest relationship. In fact I thought very little about Quests. I wanted to use Quests mostly as a hidden guide for the players. For instance Quest could compel the player to build new sections or upgrades to his brothel. For example a Quest to produce a vial of healing potion would require that the player build an Alchemist Lab. Or a Quest to aquire a new territory would stimulate the player to use Gangs to his benefit. Or a Quest to capture a monster girl would invite the player to Explore the Catacombs. Quests would be a way to introduce to the player diferent aspects of the game as he progresses. Its kinda of a tutorial but not a external one, but one thats part of the game itself. Of course I plan to introduce a sort of a quest framework so that the comunity could create whatever Quests their hearts desire using an scripting language, in this case javascript. Modders will be able to write Quest Scripts and player will then download this Quests and install them in their game without any technical knowledge.

I can't and don't want to try to predict what sort of things modders would create with such a tool. But for certain Quests, such as the ones you are sugesting, the game engine and quests framework would have to have support for. That, and features like combat, can be as complicated as one desires. The more complete and rich the Quest system is the more work will be required to make it. But once its ready, it should be relatively easy for anyone that can use javascript to create elaborate Quests. So while I agree that an advance Combat and Quest system open up a whole new world of possibilities there always has to be a balance between the possibilities unlocked by a feature and the amount of work required to implement such a feature. After all I've got a whole game to make, and so far I'm the only one working on it.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 13, 2012, 01:18:53 AM
Ok this post a just a quick update on what I'm working with at the moment. I've got a prototype for the girl file (from the girl package) that looks like this:
Code: [Select]
import QtQuick 1.1
import WMX 1.0
WMXCharacter {
     girlClass: WMXCharacter.C
     girlType: WMXCharacter.Worker
     name: "Mari Illustrious Makinami"
     desc: "Description of Amanda"
     age: 18
     traits: [
         Trait { name: "Charismatic" },
         Trait { name: "Fragile" },
         Trait { name: "Nerd" },
         Trait { name: "WrongTrait" },
         Trait { name: "Elegant" }
     ]
}

The "WrongTrait" you see there is just a test on how to haddle situations where a modder wrote the wrong name in the Trait list. This Traits are defined in another file. The Trait file looks like this:
Code: [Select]
import QtQuick 1.1
import WMX 1.0
Item {
     WMXTrait {
         name: "Charismatic"
         desc: "She is a natural born leader, negotiator, diplomat, and fast talker. Damn, she's smooth."
         charisma: 2
         beauty: 1
     }
     WMXTrait {
         name: "Elegant"
         desc: "She's got style and flair."
         charisma: 2
         wisdom: 1
     }
     WMXTrait {
         name: "Fragile"
         desc: "This girl is fragile and gets hurt or tired easily."
         vitality: -2
     }
     WMXTrait {
         name: "Nerd"
         desc: "Bookish and clumsy, but kinda cute all the same."
         vitality: -1
         agility: -1
         wisdom: 2
     }
}


In each Trait you define you specify the bonuses or penalties to each attribute. In this prototype those are the only options. I the future I'll add many more Trait property so that modder can add a like "isSterile: true" in the Traits they create for that Trait to give sterility. The options that will be available initially will be decided later but when the time comes I'll ask help from the comunity on what Trait properties should be available to Trait creators.

Finally I would like to show a new screenshot displaying some of the new artwork I made. It took me a really long time to make this graphics but as I learn how Inkscape works I'm getting more done in less time. Notice that aside from the girl portrait, the silhouette and the equipment icons, I made everything. Also notice that none of the artwork is definitive. I will tweak it a lot and possible completly replace some of the stuff. Also I'm trying to find a way to add some colors in there but with no success so far.

There is still a lot of content that must be added to this screen before its done but little by little I'm getting closer. The values showed in the screenshort are already being generated from the Girl file, but currently the Trait bonuses and penalties are not being aplied.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: Xela on July 13, 2012, 03:15:17 AM
Looks good! Most people today have widescreens thou, you might want to keep that in mind from day one but it can be adjusted later.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 13, 2012, 12:22:03 PM
Looks good! Most people today have widescreens thou, you might want to keep that in mind from day one but it can be adjusted later.
I'm still deciding what to put where. There is still content like class, type, age, Traits, skills and possibily more. I'm already able to display the Traits but to do that I need some graphics as well as some programming. QML is a new technology and most of the investment has been put into mobile devices (since it was developed by Nokia). For desktop you have to make everything from scratch including the most simple controls like buttons. So for the for Traits and Skill lists I will have to create a control that has a scroll bar (I will have to program the scrollbar by hand). After I add all that stuff the screen will grow a lot. The major problem I'm having right now is layout. I can't figure out where to put stuff so it it looks good. So for the screenshot I just showed everything I had done without worring about placement. Its really easy to move stuff around since all the stuff (for instance the protrait + frame or the health and energy bars) are all components that I can give instructions and the move anywhere with a couple line of code.

By the way monitor is 1680x1050 so the game currentily ocupies a tiny fraction of my monitor's screen area.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: Xela on July 13, 2012, 01:38:35 PM
I'm still deciding what to put where. There is still content like class, type, age, Traits, skills and possibily more. I'm already able to display the Traits but to do that I need some graphics as well as some programming. QML is a new technology and most of the investment has been put into mobile devices (since it was developed by Nokia). For desktop you have to make everything from scratch including the most simple controls like buttons. So for the for Traits and Skill lists I will have to create a control that has a scroll bar (I will have to program the scrollbar by hand). After I add all that stuff the screen will grow a lot. The major problem I'm having right now is layout. I can't figure out where to put stuff so it it looks good. So for the screenshot I just showed everything I had done without worring about placement. Its really easy to move stuff around since all the stuff (for instance the protrait + frame or the health and energy bars) are all components that I can give instructions and the move anywhere with a couple line of code.

By the way monitor is 1680x1050 so the game currentily ocupies a tiny fraction of my monitor's screen area.

Girl equipment screen should be separate from girl management screen in the future, but overal graphics look really good. Those elements will look great whereever you put them. One thing is that picture frame shouldn't be layered above picture itself, that kind of 'cuts' the eye.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 13, 2012, 03:33:01 PM
I wanted to create a screen where you could manage everything related to a character. The so the two reasons why the equipment component is there are becouse first its character related and so if I wanted to manage every aspec of a character in a single screen it would have to be there. Sencond and most importantly I wanted to give the player feedback on what effect a equipment has on the charater. So when the player is selecting a equipment all stats that got bonuses relative to the current equipment would turn green while all that would get worst if you change the equipment would turn red. That sort of feedback is present in many games and its only possible if you can see the stats while you are selecting an equipment. For example if you where selecting an equipment that gave bonus health the maximum health number (on the right side the the health bar) would turn green.

But as you imagine its quite simple to move the component into another screen if we find it necessary. Its also possible to reuse the stats componets in the other screen to allow some feedback.

As for the frame cuting into the portrait it was no accident. But I agree the it doesnt look good. But if I add color to the frame so that it becomes opaque it might look much better. So while I try to figure out a good way to use color I'll leave that in there. If I can't figure out a nice way to add color and the art stays just as it is, black outlines, than I will have to remove that.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis (renamed from WMII) - Plz vote on the combat poll
Post by: graodeareia on July 16, 2012, 10:24:06 PM
Well the voting has ended and player controled combat won. But you can see there is quite a lot of people that prefer for the game to focus on managment aspects. So that makes my job harder. I will work hard to try to find a balance where players that are ignoring combat will still be able to have an experience that feels both fun anc complete while ofering a good combat system for those that want to enjoy it, but it wont be easy and that probabily means that the game will take a longer time to be ready than I anticipated.

Now I want to talk a little about the Feelings system. Feelings include things like obedience and love for the player. Until now I've avoided this important aspect of the game becouse I had no idea how to solve it. The Attribute system does a pretty good job to measure how well a girl will perform her work. But it doesn't cover the willingness of a girl to perform it. This is quite important to the original game. The only purpose of the dungean is to break a girl before you send her to work. Of course there is the aspect of fullfiling a player's twisted fantasies, but as a game designer I can only focus on the gameplay side of things. So today I had some thought about the subject and came up with a proposal to solve feelings issue. First there are 3 main feelings stats:

Obedience - quite obvious, its the character willingness to do what she doesn't like or want to do. If a character wants or likes to do something she doesn't need to be obedient in order to do it. Obedience is always good from a players perspective. Idealy all girls should have high obedience so that they will work on anything the player wants. But if the player needs the girl to work on a job she likes than she doesnt need to be obedient. It might be counter intuitive but slaves will not necessarilly have high obedience. For instance if I capture you and strap on a leash and call you my slave will you do anything I tell you to do? Of course not. And so the same aplies to the game, characters that just became slaves will also not do as they are told. They must be tamed or broken before they become good slaves.

Moral - the characters moral standards. For example having an orgy is not considered ok by a character with high Moral. Unlike Obedience, Moral should not always be low. A character with low moral might be a good whore or torturer. But low Morals also means that the character is more likelly yo get involved with drugs (and so become addicted), but also might steal from you and even betray you. Betrail is a special event where a character receives a bribe from a rival to sabotage your bussiness. So idealy the Moral of a character should be high for some types of jobs and low for others.

Spirit - measures how much a character is willing to stick to her principals, that is, its harder to make a character with high Spirit become obedient or imoral but it also reflects a characters confidence. Basicaly Spirit measures how hard or how long it will take you to break a character but also how much self confidence a character has. During combat if your characters with low Spirit meets a powerfull enemy she might panick and run away from the fight. Or during a stage act (like singing, or striping) a girl might feel too ashamed becouse she doesnt trust in her skill or he beaty enough and might just ran away from the stage. This sort of panick situations do not take into consideration the Obedience since when you panick you don't usually stop to think about the consequences before you do something you might regret. Ideally a player should try to break a girl's Spirit during training (while raising Obedience or lowering Moral) and after training is done, a player should do things to raise the characters Spirit in order to raise her confidence. Some traits are related to Spirit, for instance "Iron Will" will give a bonus to Spirit.

Now some of you may have noticed that the is a conflit in this system. Take character "A" for instance. "A" is a character with high Obedience and high Moral. So will "A" participate in an orgy or some other imoral act? The answer to that is: maybe. While the girl "A" wants to obey her master she doesn't want to go against he moral code. When this type of conflit happen her Spirit will also be taken into consideration. If "A" has a high Spirit she is more willing to stick to her moral code. Now if "A" has a low Spirit she has a higher chance of breaking her moral code. Now lets take a look at character "B". "B" has low Obedience and low Moral. If you tell "B" to do some imoral act, will she do it? Again the answer is maybe. Since she is not obedient she might refuse the order just to piss of the player or becouse she doesnt like or want to do the activity, but since she has low moral she doesn't have any problems with the job.

With this 3 stats the feelings system is not complete. There is still things like happiness, love, hate and fear. Since 4 adicional stats would make the game overcomplicated I reduced it to two adicional stats. Fist there is the happiness. Anytime you do something a character doesnt like happiness will decrease. Anytime you do something a character likes happiness will increase. A character with average happiness will perform normally. A character with low happiness will be less productive and also might take a penalty to Charisma and Beauty. A character with high happiness will improve performance and might get a bonus to Spirit and Charisma. As for love and hate, both are a single stat. A girl can either hate the player, be indiferent or love the player. Hate also includes fear. So a girl that hates the player will also fear the player and so that will raises Obedience. A girl that loves the player will have bonus to Spirit and Obedience. Since love increases Obedience the player might use that to his advantage asking to the girl to perform imortal acts, that will in turn decrease a girls Moral stat. So it will be possible for a player to train a girl while still being good to her.

Obedience, Moral and Spirit will be measured from 1 to 7. Hate/Love and Happiness will vary from -3 to 3. So if Hate/Love is zero that means the character is indiferent to the player, while negative means hate and positive means love. Love/Hate will be displayed on the screen with heart icons. Three hearts means deeply in love, while 3 broken hearts means she prays for your death every morning. Happiness will be displayed as smilies. 3 Happy faces means very happy, while three sad faces means very sad.

The specifics of how, this 5 stats will affect diferent aspects of the game is yet to be determined. But I wanted to layout the basics so you guys could give me some sugestions.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 17, 2012, 04:01:44 AM
The specifics of how, this 5 stats will affect diferent aspects of the game is yet to be determined. But I wanted to layout the basics so you guys could give me some sugestions.

 This is up to you really, with issues like these you will get 100 opinions from 100 people and most will be different. It is close to impossible to find a common denominator so my suggestion is to stick to your plan. Everything looks logical and a lot will depend on actual implementation of this system, functions and algorithms that will calculate these stats and how these stats relate to eachother and effect other aspects of the game.

 It is otherwise pointless to give advice at this point because I would simply suggest to add 5 more stats, some people would want to add 10 while some will advice you to remove everything but love/hate and obedience :)
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: akab on July 17, 2012, 05:19:24 AM

I think that you have found 5 parameters be sufficient to represent the feelings of a girl.
Obedience, moral, Spirit, Hate / Love, Happiness.
I also find that the explanation of how you intent to use them is at least ... logic.


In the meantime, I wish you " May the wind be ever at your back" and thanks for your efforts.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 17, 2012, 12:30:59 PM
Yesterday I made a quick mock up graphics for the Feelings system. Attached are some screenshots. Beware that the graphics will probabily change for this since all I did is get the Attributes boxes and change it a little and then I made some icons. Also again I'm not sure where to place stuff so I just put them anywhere. But I think that seeing it on the screen might give you guys a better idea of what I intend to do with the feelings system. The values of each feeling stat are random in each screenshot.

Will also notice there is now the description text for the character with its own graphics. Unlike the feelings graphics I actually took my time with this graphics since its a more permanant solution. I even have coded the scrollbar (with its own new graphics) that apears automaticaly only when the description is too large to fit the area. For this shot I left the equipment component out.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 17, 2012, 01:29:43 PM
Yesterday I made a quick mock up graphics for the Feelings system. Attached are some screenshots. Beware that the graphics will probabily change for this since all I did is get the Attributes boxes and change it a little and then I made some icons. Also again I'm not sure where to place stuff so I just put them anywhere. But I think that seeing it on the screen might give you guys a better idea of what I intend to do with the feelings system. The values of each feeling stat are random in each screenshot.

Will also notice there is now the description text for the character with its own graphics. Unlike the feelings graphics I actually took my time with this graphics since its a more permanant solution. I even have coded the scrollbar (with its own new graphics) that apears automaticaly only when the description is too large to fit the area. For this shot I left the equipment component out.

Since I am learning how to code I would appreciate if you could post code for the crossbar. I am learning Python but I can usually 'read' C++, I am just curious what scrollbar code looks like :)
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 17, 2012, 02:06:43 PM
You C++ reading skill won't help you in this case. As I've stated before the user interface is being coded in a declarative language called QML. It's actually the same language that I posted before when explaining how will the character and traits file look like. So the scrollbar was enterily coded in qml + javascript. I tryed to find an example on the net but couldn't find anything helpfull. So I came up with my own implementation using the same concept. First I made the graphics. the 2 arrows with a line conecting them. Displaying the arrows look like this:
Code: [Select]
BorderImage {
         id: arrows
         source: "../images/scroll-arrows.png"
         anchors.fill: parent
         border.top: 14; border.bottom: 14
         verticalTileMode: BorderImage.Repeat
     }

What the BorderImage element does is to display an image so that when the image grows the part that are on the borders stay stuck in the borders with the same size, now the middle part of the image can expand or repeat. In this case I said that the top 14 pixels shoul stay static (eg the top arrow) and the bottom 14 pixels should stay there (eg the bottom arrow) and that the middle part (eg the line that connects the arrow) should repeat.

Then I made the ball that you can drag:
Code: [Select]
Image {
         id: scrollBall
         width: 12
         height: 12
         anchors.top: parent.top
         anchors.topMargin: 14
         anchors.horizontalCenter: parent.horizontalCenter
         source: "../images/scroll-ball.png"
         property int minimum: 14
         property int maximum: scrollBar.height - 26
         MouseArea {
             id: mouseArea
             height: 14
             width: 14
             anchors.horizontalCenter: parent.horizontalCenter
             anchors.verticalCenter: parent.verticalCenter
             drag.target: scrollBall
             drag.minimumY: scrollBall.minimum
             drag.maximumY: scrollBall.maximum
             // On click remove the vertical anchors to allow scrolling
             onPressed: {
                 scrollBall.anchors.top = undefined
                 scrollBall.anchors.topMargin = 0
             }
         }
     }

So this has the dragable ball image and the image is anchored to its parent (eg the container of the arrows) just bellow the top arrow (hence topMargin). The MouseArea element is a 14x14 square that is sensitive to mouse events. In the event of the mouse button press I remove the vertical anchor so that the image can then be moved vertically. I also added the "drag" property to the mouse area to tell it to enable draging of the image verticaly by giving it a maximum and a minimun Y coordenate (eg just bellow the top arrow and just above the bottom one).

With that code I made the scrollbar that can grow to the size of its parent element and has a dragable ball. Then there is the code the actually moves the text around when the ball is draged. But since I don't know if you are interested in QML (or just curious about C++ itself) then I won't post the rest of it here. But if you are interested in QML I can make a post explaining how I scroll the text.

Here is the complete scrollbar code
Code: [Select]

import QtQuick 1.1
 Item
 {
     id: scrollBar
     width: 12
     height: 50
     property int visibleHeight
     property int scrollableHeight
     property int scrollTopMargin: getTopMargin()
     visible:  {
         var scrollArea = scrollableHeight - visibleHeight
         return scrollArea > 0;
     }
     function getTopMargin() {
         if (visibleHeight && scrollableHeight) {
             var scrollArea = scrollableHeight - visibleHeight
             if (scrollArea > 0) {
                var scrollDistance = scrollBall.maximum - scrollBall.minimum
                 var currentDistance = scrollBall.y - scrollBall.minimum
                 var scrollFraction = currentDistance / scrollDistance
                 return -1 * Math.ceil(scrollFraction * scrollArea)
             }
         }
         return 0;
     }
    Image {
         id: scrollBall
        width: 12
         height: 12
         anchors.top: parent.top
         anchors.topMargin: 14
         anchors.horizontalCenter: parent.horizontalCenter
         source: "../images/scroll-ball.png"
         property int minimum: 14
         property int maximum: scrollBar.height - 26
         MouseArea {
             id: mouseArea
             height: 14
             width: 14
             anchors.horizontalCenter: parent.horizontalCenter
             anchors.verticalCenter: parent.verticalCenter
             drag.target: scrollBall
             drag.minimumY: scrollBall.minimum
             drag.maximumY: scrollBall.maximum
             // On click remove the vertical anchors to allow scrolling
            onPressed: {
                 scrollBall.anchors.top = undefined
                 scrollBall.anchors.topMargin = 0
             }
         }
     }
     BorderImage {
         id: arrows
         source: "../images/scroll-arrows.png"
         anchors.fill: parent
         border.top: 14; border.bottom: 14
         verticalTileMode: BorderImage.Repeat
     }
}
 
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: ptb_666777 on July 17, 2012, 02:21:26 PM
Quick Q?  Is the WMII.exe just a stat preview? should I add it to something?

quick opinion, more complicated game play makes a better game if it means something in the game.

the paper doll inventory Idea is PIMP!

Lastly, sorry about any hopes being raised by my post
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 17, 2012, 03:03:45 PM
Quick Q?  Is the WMII.exe just a stat preview?
The initial design had secondary attributes that where calculed from primary attributes.  So the wmii.exe was a demo to test diferent ways to calculate the secondary stats. The new design (the one in the screenshots) has no program posted as of yet. Its just a completely new program since I even changed the programing language, initially it was writen in C++/Qt for everything now its a C++/Qt backend with a QML frontend (eg user interface).
Besides the language change there were also many revisions to the attribute so now its pretty diferent then the original concept. So basically wmii.exe is trash. The reason I've not posted any new version is becouse I'm waiting for something more meaningfull to post instead of just a simple program that doens do anything.
I'll only post the code now if someone is interested in looking at the code itself and not the exe it generates.

quick opinion, more complicated game play makes a better game if it means something in the game.
I'm trying to make the game as simple as possible while keeping true to the original game spirit. But some far the game is already quite complex with 5 base Attributes plus 5 feeling related stats and there will also be some combat related stats. I've found that keeping true to the original game and making things simple are two oposite goals. So I'm trying to find a balance.

the paper doll inventory Idea is PIMP!
While the paper doll idea might be good its a little beyond me. All I'm going to do is provide one single image for all girls (that image is a silhouette image I picked up from the internet). Also the items wont fit like they do in a paper doll game it will be pretty similar to what you see in the screenshot but with new icons. Its just impossible to find the icons needed for this game off the internet. There simply arent things like ligerie icons laying around. I could certanly do the programing involved to get a more paper doll like feel, but to get all the art together would be though. Maybe if an artist joined the team something like that could be done. But for now I'm gona focus on basic inteface graphics and programming. Later I'll make a basic set of icons for equiment and clothing and thats all. Any adicional icons will need to be provided by the community.

Lastly, sorry about any hopes being raised by my post
I don't quite get this, what hopes are you raising?
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 17, 2012, 03:25:32 PM
 Thanks for the code, I got the general idea.

 By the way, since there will be battles, is magic back on the table? I think it was agreed that magic is a needed stat if it ca be used in several places in the game.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 17, 2012, 03:46:27 PM
Magic will be back but I'm not sure if I want to get complex with it. Maybe it could be really simple like regular combat is. Regular combat does damage based on the weapon and on the characters constitution (since with the current attributes constitution also means strength). Wizards could do damage based on wisdom plus the staff that he is holding. No adicional energy would be needed to cast spells (just like no adicional energy is used for each attack of a warrior) and wizards would only have one magic attack.
If I do it like that Wizards and Warriors will be the same thing except one will use sword the other staff and one will have high constitution while the other will have high wisdom. Now If I wanted to get complicated I could add scrolls to teach new spells to wizards and also have spell casting cost energy or mana. But I'm not sure if its worth the investment in both time to develop but also time balancing out everything so that both wizards and warriors of the same level have similar amount of power in combat.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: ptb_666777 on July 17, 2012, 03:50:18 PM
I don't quite get this, what hopes are you raising?

Was mostly an assumetion that others are as eager to see a beta as I am. Idk was for the lurkers (not the member named lurker)

Icons and art I could help with if you don't mind it being . . . "Borrowed" I can also nav photoshop decently but I have a.d.d. pretty bad so dependable is not me. I can find stuff tho. Give me some guidelines and I'll find you some icons.

I am guessing since this isn't going to be sold, borrowed stuff would be ok. If not it can always be changed slightly and be free of copy rights. Wish I could do more but code is rather attention thirsty and I . . . O look a broken crayon.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 17, 2012, 04:04:33 PM
Magic will be back but I'm not sure if I want to get complex with it. Maybe it could be really simple like regular combat is. Regular combat does damage based on the weapon and on the characters constitution (since with the current attributes constitution also means strength). Wizards could do damage based on wisdom plus the staff that he is holding. No adicional energy would be needed to cast spells (just like no adicional energy is used for each attack of a warrior) and wizards would only have one magic attack.
If I do it like that Wizards and Warriors will be the same thing except one will use sword the other staff and one will have high constitution while the other will have high wisdom. Now If I wanted to get complicated I could add scrolls to teach new spells to wizards and also have spell casting cost energy or mana. But I'm not sure if its worth the investment in both time to develop but also time balancing out everything so that both wizards and warriors of the same level have similar amount of power in combat.

? If you are thinking about coding battles to be that simple, it may be a good idea to start a new poll :)

By battles most people I expects wanted to see main hero (players) standing beside 2 - 3 characters fighting some monsters in turn based style of combat, preferably with some effects and music :)

If you are planning 1v1 fights similar to WM, userguided combat will not likely be an improvement to the original idea of having it being calculated like in WM.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 17, 2012, 04:56:54 PM
I
By battles most people I expects wanted to see main hero (players) standing beside 2 - 3 characters fighting some monsters in turn based style of combat, preferably with some effects and music :)

If you are planning 1v1 fights similar to WM, userguided combat will not likely be an improvement to the original idea of having it being calculated like in WM.

Party based combat will be possible but the player will not participate. He will be able to send expeditian parties to the dungean (I think max of 4 girls, maybe 3) and that party will meet a party of enemies and the battle will ensue. Initially player will have 3 options in the menu:

Attack
Defend
Item

That menu will pop once for each charater each turn. Turn order will be determined by highest agility (in case of tie some other criteria will be used). The player will be able to see the Turn Cards on the top left of the screen (a portrait of each character ordered by turn order). After the current character chooses an action his card will move the the end of the queue and the next character (be it player controled or an enemy) will chose his actions and so on.

If the player chooses the Attack option, the computer will calculated if he has a successiful hit or not. If he does not the enemy will do have a simple animation indicating that he evaded or defend the attack. If its a hit a simple hit animation will play (one for physical and one for magical attacks) along with a number displaying the amount of damage dealt.

If the player chooses to defend he will raise his chances of defending the next attack but will also get a chance to counter attack (counter attack is just like a regular attack but happens automitically on the enemies turn after a successfull defence).

If the player choose items he will see a list of consumable items that character is carring and then he can select one to use. Some items will heal party members (like potions) other might give a temporary buff (like an attack or damage bonus) and there might even be offensive items (like a bombs or something).

Combat continues until all members of one of the parties is down.

Before the battle begins a player may try to flee from the battle. A test will be made. If the player succeds he escaces unharmed if he fails he can will receive some form of penalty and will have to fight the battle to the end.

Now this is the simple version of combat where there are no specific spell to choose from. If there are spells a new menu entry will apear for wizards called Spell. There the player can choose a spell from the list of spells available to that character. What follows is similar to what happens when you use an item. But energy or mana will be used and unlike items, spells can fail. On the other hand to keep the game balanced warriors characters will have a Special menu option where they can choose a special move that uses energy and can fail but deal much more damage or give a buff to a party member. Warriors would than have some way to learn this special moves from things like books.

The same combat sytem will be used for gangs but with a small diference. When a gang battle happens the player will have 2 cards in the turn queue. One for his gang and one for the gang leader. Everthing combat will follow normaly with the menus and so on. Gangs will be able to use items they have but they won't be able to use Special or Spell even if the those options exist. Now the gang leader will be a full character and so will be able to be used in the same way any character is used in the Catacomb battles. The main diference is that the gang leader can only be attacked after the gang that is protecting him has fallen.
So after you select to attack you can only select the gang as target. But maybe, in the advanced form of combat, Specials and Spell can target the leader even if the gang is still there. In that case, taking out the leader will make the gang disband and the battle will end.

So the basics of combat will be the same for normal or the advanced version. With that in mind I will first implement the simple version of combat and release a demo. After that I can get some feedback and maybe implement the advanced options. Maybe I'm naive, or I enjoy old schools RPGs too much, but I think that even the basic combat system will be quite fun and will give the player a good level of chalenge. Between choosing which enemy to attack first (eleminate to weak monsters first or focus on the main enemy), to either attack or use a buff item, to defend or to use one of you last vials healing potion it can be quite enjoyable experience.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Popuri on July 17, 2012, 05:18:13 PM
If I may.  One thing I've considering when planning my own game that 'Magic' is too specific a term.  Something I've played with is replacing 'Magic' with 'Special' and 'Mana' with 'Energy'.  Maybe a girl uses magic.  Maybe she's got some kind of super science.  It's a non-specific catch-all way to represent something other than physical combat.

Also, your graphics look great.  Has me looking at my tinkering and going :(  Going to read through this thread in detail a bit  later...but if you want an assistant on this bounce a PM my way and I'll see what I can do.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 17, 2012, 05:43:34 PM
Icons and art I could help with if you don't mind it being . . . "Borrowed" I can also nav photoshop decently but I have a.d.d. pretty bad so dependable is not me. I can find stuff tho. Give me some guidelines and I'll find you some icons.

I am guessing since this isn't going to be sold, borrowed stuff would be ok. If not it can always be changed slightly and be free of copy rights. Wish I could do more but code is rather attention thirsty and I . . . O look a broken crayon.
Right now I welcome art contributions more than code contributions. I quite picky with my code. I often rename or rearrange code to make it feel more organized. Right now the code is changing too much, and contributors might have a hard time working with me at this moment. When I have a more stable code base then contributors will be very welcome, but right now only the most adventurous ones should step up for the job. For instance I've thrown away quite a lot of code that I made myself and later decided to to it in some other way. I know some sensitive people might be ofended if I throw some of their code away.

As for the icons, all the icons I'm using in the screenshot are from a single icon package I found it on the internet. The package is royalty free so there arent any borrowed icons right there. I intend to distribute only non-copyrighted content with my game. Then I expect that there will be a person in my team that will take that, join it with some comunity contributions and create a base distribution. After the player downloads the base distribution he can then download adcional content if he wishes. What I'm building is not a game complete with content. I'm building a game engine that allows the comunity to contribute content to. So for the game engine part of things I only intend to use either custom made or royalty free content. Besides that there is another problem. I'm trying to keep a cohesive art style. It might not be great but its well integrated. That means all art follows the same guidelines and so on. If I use many diferent iconsfrom diferent sources the items will all look like they don't belong together. But as with all content in the game players will be able to contribute there own item packages and anyone that wants can download it. They don't need to follow any guide lines to do that. Its there content and they make it like they want it. Hell even I might download a cool item package the someone makes available here. But for the base distribution all icons will follow the same art style. That can be done in two ways. Get a single roalty free icon packed (that way all icons have the same style) and expand it or create every icon from scratch.

One more concern about icons. I'm not sure what the dimentions should be. Right now for testing purpose I'm using 32x32 icons. But they are quite small, maybe its better to use 48x48 icons. Then there are some icons the might look better if they are not square shaped. For clothing, underware and armor it might be better to use icons the are higher then they are wide. So if some of the icons are 32x32 the other could be 32x50 or if some are 48x48 others could be 48x70 or something on that line. I still haven't decided on that.

Was mostly an assumetion that others are as eager to see a beta as I am. Idk was for the lurkers (not the member named lurker)
A beta is quite a long way out. Even if this thread is months old I stoped working on the project for a long time. I only got back to work a few days before I released the first screenshot of the new version (that was released on June 30th).  So with less then a month in development I've not been able to advance very far. What the comunity will see instead of a beta are small demos to showcase diferent features. The first demo will showcase the combat system. If real life doesnt get in the way I might release it in a few weeks (maybe a couple if things go well) but if it does then that time will be much longer. Right now I'm working a lot on the game but I'm unemployed. If I get a job then I will prob reduce the time to weekends. So the luckers are gonna be lurking for quite a while before they can get their hands dirty. This thread is mostly for people that want to contribute the game design by providing cool ideas and insights. People that want a game right now should look at one the the mods for WM or just hope that some of the other games in developments delivers a beta.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 17, 2012, 06:08:01 PM
 Oki

 Well, even a simpler combat engine might be fun... your graphics design is pretty awesome, it's a good call to stick with it. Other skins can be created at later time.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: ptb_666777 on July 17, 2012, 09:14:41 PM
If input and Ideas are what your after at this point then I can do that. I am very new here, but I have been a gamer since Atari.
One thing I would like to see is item surpassing the stat or skill limit. Like your going with a max of 20, but my worrier's maxed  and the "Magic Panty's"  give her an extra point in whatever but it is already at 20. I feel this is very important in late game play and early on if your lucky or save up for something in the shop. It is one of my major dislikes with wm. Another thing would be special traits, like in sim brothel one of the girls never took damage, another could see max customers(a few had this skill at final level) These are traits that did more than add stats and it was awesome. The ability to activate the traits with ap points was lost too. They should also push past the 20 max. I am not an rpg fan, but if these battles would deliver like 2% chance of epic item, I would be Happy to click thru for hours. As long as it was optional and profitable.  If your going for two worrier classes then spells are a must, but damage isn't. Instead you could do things like slow, sleep, drain, heal ect. Weapon effects are a must as well. this means both "fire damage" and "fire resistance". so at very least 10 extra stats from just the basic idea(elements earth, fire, water, wind, spirit). these can be added by items and not a base for girls. That way your high dollar hoe who never leaves your brothel won't have a need for fire resistance. Since the some of the girls being used in this have there own special moves and powers this will allow people to create them later on.

on to the non fighters. Personally, I don't like your idea of classes. My very first girl should be my strongest/best earner late in the game. If not then training her is mostly a waist of time, unless her grade can improve with items or spells or something similar. A system of two separate levels one for combat and one for whoring would be cool. I liked the extra skills in wm and I agree with crazy that each girl should be able to have different sexual preferences. I personally don't wanna "do" a chick who likes having sex with horses. I also think there should be different rates for different services. Since you can't give a whore 20 bucks then have a donkey brought in or a bus full of collage kids (18+ of course). I believe age was touched on and I agree paying more for a younger girl should be part of it. them getting old and not getting any or very few customers and them dieing would be cool. I also think a matron should be over 30 that way the beginning of the game would have you spend more time micro managing, then later in game when you get an aged girl you can spend more time fighting. Pregnancy is dumb, but seems like it should happen. I think they should be off work longer and have a huge chance of leaving.(not run away but permanently leave the game) this would incurage more anit-pregs and better girl management. age should start at one, but whoring should not be allowed till 18 (u.s. age) they should also try to whore in the streets and get busted at a very high rate or return pregnant starting at around 14ish. Drugs should be a constant problem for the young'ins too. A way to stop this would be prep schools, fighting schools, magic schools exct. that way you get a high quality whore\fighter when she comes of age. Training centers are lost in wm instead relying on interactions, I hate this. Crazy is trying to add new buildings to partially train and make some money and it is what I like most of what he did/doing.

last on my short list is gangs, In my head I see a squad leader who can be equipped with weapons and a few support items. he himself would not fight, but command the rest of the squad. if a squad was over powered there would be a small chance of the squad leader fleeing but more often be killed, possibly interrogated leading to you getting robbed(gold and/or items) or having girls kidnapped.  Maybe even flip sides and attack your weakest areas. imagine spending half the game getting you squad leader leveled up, sending him into the catacombs equipped with very expensive equipment and having him being mind controlled and tearing down you shiny new whore house. ok well maybe that's to much, but a squad leader for management of individual gangs. Maybe even some traits for them.

 
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 18, 2012, 12:10:04 AM
@ptb_666777Unlike some people that write whole paragraph to express something that could be said in a sentence, it seams you change subject with each sentence. I'll try to address most of your concerns with this post. Beware that it will be quite long.

Quote
One thing I would like to see is item surpassing the stat or skill limit. Like your going with a max of 20, but my worrier's maxed  and the "Magic Panty's"  give her an extra point in whatever but it is already at 20. I feel this is very important in late game play and early on if your lucky or save up for something in the shop. It is one of my major dislikes with wm. Another thing would be special traits, like in sim brothel one of the girls never took damage, another could see max customers(a few had this skill at final level)
I Have not figured out how all rolls of the game will like. By roll I mean a test against the characters attributes to see if that person succeeds in a task. But the dice roll is its based on the max attribute number, so if max is 20 I will do the rolls with a 20 sided dice (a virtual dice of course). So suposing a girl will dance and lets say dancing involves agility. Say the girl has 10 agility. I roll a 20 sided dice. If the dice roll 2-10 the dance is successfull. If it hits 1 its a critical failure (the girl could fall for instance). If it hits 20 its a critical success (the girl makes an extra tip for instance). If rolls are like this, and it probabily will be, a girl with 20 in an attribute has only one change of failure, to hit 1, since you achieve success with any roll from 2-20. A girl with 50000000000 attribute still has only one chance of failure, hiting 1. So it doesnt make any sense to go above max. Sure I could show a higher number in the character page but that would give the player a false impression making him think that that higher attribute will make his girl better. When a girl is maxed out in an attribute the best option is to just use the equipment in another girl thats still bellow max, you will always have another girl that needs that equipment. With that said I'm actually thinking of rasing the attribute cap to 30. That will mean that high level girls will still have room from improvement and equipment. The way it is right now S class girls start of with some attributes already maxed out. And I don't think thats a good thing. So yeah you can be sure that I'm thinking about those types of things.

Quote
Another thing would be special traits, like in sim brothel one of the girls never took damage, another could see max customers(a few had this skill at final level) These are traits that did more than add stats and it was awesome.
WM does have special Traits like Imortal that mean a girl never ages or Incorporeal means a girl doesnt take damage in combat. I intend to ask the comunity what Trait properties they want in the game, and then the comunity can use this Trait property to build any Trait they like. They can make a thousend diferent Traits if they wish provided that there is a Trait property that tells the game engine what the Trait does.

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The ability to activate the traits with ap points was lost too
Right now I'm thinking about leveling up the girls automaticaly acording to what they actually do in the game. So if you put a girl to clean the floor her stats will go up to make her a better floor cleaner and she will gain Traits that also add to her profession. It doesnt make much sense for the player to give a floor cleaner a Trait like "Cute" since the maid is not looking after her beauty, she is just doind hard labor. But of course magical Items and Potions can give Traits so thats always an option for the player.

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If your going for two worrier classes then spells are a must, but damage isn't. Instead you could do things like slow, sleep, drain, heal ect.
Spells like those might exist, it just depends on how far I take the magic system. I talked about that a little in my last post to Xela.

Quote
Weapon effects are a must as well. this means both "fire damage" and "fire resistance". so at very least 10 extra stats from just the basic idea(elements earth, fire, water, wind, spirit). these can be added by items and not a base for girls. That way your high dollar hoe who never leaves your brothel won't have a need for fire resistance. Since the some of the girls being used in this have there own special moves and powers this will allow people to create them later on.
This sort spell type and spell type resistance will not be in the game. A large number of people have voted that they don't care for combat. So I'm not gona add even more features to make the game less apealing to that crowd. Even if those features are cool they belong in a more combat oriented game.

Quote
on to the non fighters. Personally, I don't like your idea of classes. My very first girl should be my strongest/best earner late in the game. If not then training her is mostly a waist of time, unless her grade can improve with items or spells or something similar. A system of two separate levels one for combat and one for whoring would be cool.
I'm thinking about the classes thing. I'm not gonna remove it since its an essencial feature for girl package creators. Its how a creator can specify how good a girl will be inicially. If she is good the system will make sure she is harder to get. If the girl is bad the system will make sure she is easier for the player to acquire. Catacombs will also have levels and the deeper you go the higher class girls you will fight against. It will also play a role in the Gang Wars. Player can fight for control of sector of the city. Once he gains control of that sector he can use the facilities that are there. Sectors that are harder to control will have places that offer higher class girls. That is an important feature of the game. It means that initially the player will start with low class girls and as he progresses he will have access to better stuff. What I'm thinking about is making classes just for package creators. I will probabily rename it to something like Inicial level or something. And so for the players they will not even know that Classes exist. A girl could then level up to higher levels than 5 and with itens it would be possible to max out a low class girl. Player seam to want that ability. Personally I've never thought that would be important. In the end game when you control 100 girls or more micromanaging a single girl seams pointless as that will have very little effect on your performance. Also since you will have too many high level girls it would mean that probabily the player would have high level girls serving low class customers for a cheap price. That also doesnt make any sense. After all why would the player deny himself the revenue from all the poor and middle class customers? But if players like that sort of stuff than so be it.

Quote

I liked the extra skills in wm and I agree with crazy that each girl should be able to have different sexual preferences. I personally don't wanna "do" a chick who likes having sex with horses. I also think there should be different rates for different services. Since you can't give a whore 20 bucks then have a donkey brought in or a bus full of collage kids (18+ of course).
There will be some ways to tell what a girl likes and what she dislikes. Its an important part of the feelings system. A girl with low Obedience will skill work just fine if you put her to do something she likes. This likes/dislikes could also be used in tests to see if a customer likes a particular girl. But I haven't thought too much about how the likes and dislikes will be in the game so I'm still thinking about that subject.

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believe age was touched on and I agree paying more for a younger girl should be part of it. them getting old and not getting any or very few customers and them dieing would be cool. I also think a matron should be over 30 that way the beginning of the game would have you spend more time micro managing, then later in game when you get an aged girl you can spend more time fighting.
Age will be an integral part of WMX. Each turn will pass a month of in game time so that years will go by quickly (I think something like 1 to 3 hours of play per year). One full playthough should spam several decades. I've many ideias about how the Age will affect the game but for now I'm not gonna talk about it since the ideas are still undeveloped. But I like to hear sugestions on the subject since that helps me in the design.

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Pregnancy is dumb, but seems like it should happen. I think they should be off work longer and have a huge chance of leaving.(not run away but permanently leave the game) this would incurage more anit-pregs and better girl management. age should start at one, but whoring should not be allowed till 18 (u.s. age) they should also try to whore in the streets and get busted at a very high rate or return pregnant starting at around 14ish.
I don't care about pregnacy either. And I still don't know what to make of it. But it will be a part of the game since people care about that stuff. I'm not giving much thought about at the moment since I've got a lot on my head with stuff thats more urgent (stuff that I'm gonna work on soon or am already working on). When the time comes you will know.

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Drugs should be a constant problem for the young'ins too
Things like drugs have more to do with the feelings system then with age. Girls that are sad might look for drugs to cheer up. Girls that have low Moral might use drugs becouse they don't give a shit. But it will have a little bit to do with age. As girls age they gain Wisdom and girls with higher Wisdom are more likely to avoid drugs.

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A way to stop this would be prep schools, fighting schools, magic schools exct. that way you get a high quality whore\fighter when she comes of age. Training centers are lost in wm instead relying on interactions, I hate this. Crazy is trying to add new buildings to partially train and make some money and it is what I like most of what he did/doing.
There will be lots of ways to train girls in WMX. Some will be inhouse. That will the player can build expansions to his brothel like a whore school for instance. He can then assign Teacher and Students. The Student will learn more if her skill level is further from the Teachers skill level. Thats also one of the ways old characters can be used effectively, that is as teachers to younger characters. Probabily that will also be schools in the city. But a player might have to control a sector in order to send girls to that school. Sending girls to schools in sectors that you don't control might lead to your girls being taken by rivels.

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last on my short list is gangs, In my head I see a squad leader who can be equipped with weapons and a few support items. he himself would not fight, but command the rest of the squad. if a squad was over powered there would be a small chance of the squad leader fleeing but more often be killed, possibly interrogated leading to you getting robbed(gold and/or items) or having girls kidnapped.  Maybe even flip sides and attack your weakest areas. imagine spending half the game getting you squad leader leveled up, sending him into the catacombs equipped with very expensive equipment and having him being mind controlled and tearing down you shiny new whore house. ok well maybe that's to much, but a squad leader for management of individual gangs. Maybe even some traits for them.
Gang leader will be in the game and will fight in battles. But they will be protected by the gangs during fights. I explained this Xela in my last post to him. Also Gang leaders will be full characters. You will be able to use one of your girls as gang leaders. So they will have all the attributes/skill/traits/feeling that any character has. There might even be male characters in game so that Gang leaders could potentially be males. It also allow for male sons of the player to be used for that purpose. Even if there are male characters there will be no male vs male sex. I don't have anything against gay content but I'm not inclined to put that sort of stuff WMX. But of course given that there will be male characters it should be farely easy for the comunity to change it to make a gay version if they wish to do that. But I'm still not sure about male characters. Maybe all gang leaders will be female and whore will only have daughter and no sons. I'm still have to think about that.

Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 18, 2012, 12:32:39 AM
If I may.  One thing I've considering when planning my own game that 'Magic' is too specific a term.  Something I've played with is replacing 'Magic' with 'Special' and 'Mana' with 'Energy'.  Maybe a girl uses magic.  Maybe she's got some kind of super science.  It's a non-specific catch-all way to represent something other than physical combat.
Old versions of the game had Stamina for tirredness and Mana for magic. Later that was Joined into one stat called Energy. So thats already in the game. The blue bar represents the energy while the green represents the health. As for 'Magic' and 'Special' it really depends on how deep the combat system will be. Initially none of that will even be there. After I implement the incial combat demo I might look into that. But it makes sense since Warrior characters would have a "Special" and magical characters would have "Spell". Since its a case of either/or than it makes sense to just add one name for all.

Also, your graphics look great.  Has me looking at my tinkering and going :(  Going to read through this thread in detail a bit  later...but if you want an assistant on this bounce a PM my way and I'll see what I can do.
Tnx for the complement.
Good luck with reading the thread in detail. Its pretty long. In fact if you want to contribute and are already going to read everything it would be awesome if you posted a single concise post with the main points that where already discussed and decisions that where taken. Right now its all in the big mess that is my head but for new people comming to the thread it would be awesome. It would even help me to organize my ideas better.
What are you coding on? Java, C#, C++? Some of your sugestions are in line with what I was already doing so if you know C++ or are interested in QML/javascript it might make sense to join effords if ower games share most of the goals.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 18, 2012, 12:48:23 AM
Oki

 Well, even a simpler combat engine might be fun... your graphics design is pretty awesome, it's a good call to stick with it. Other skins can be created at later time.
Lets take it one step a a time. Making something simple and well designed and incrementing on it later is easier than making something very complex from scratch. In fact a common problem with software development (even in huge companies like IBM or Microsoft) is planning lots of complex features before any work is done and then later, for the lack of time or funds, delivering a product that has a bunch of half baked features and lack lots of the "cool" stuff that was initially planned, and is also plagued by bugs. I prefer to work on small simple things that can be delived to the comunity for testing, and smooth things out as I get feedback and bug reports while also adding more stuff.

This approach has a few advantages. First by the time the game is done it will all be working fine, well tunned and mostily balanced. Second if identify your design mistakes early and can change directions while seeing such a flaw in the later stages when the features are already ingrained in the product usually means that you have to use "work arounds" instead of implementing things properly to begin with. This "work arounds" tend to require adicional "work arounds" and things can just snowball out of control. Its a new product version that removed a feature from the previous version. Usually this means that the code had too many "work arounds" to be fixed and so its removed althogether. Third and maybe most importantly, if I get caught up in real life or lose interest in project, people will have a working well tested codebase that they can then carry on.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Dagoth on July 18, 2012, 04:50:21 AM
Since I am learning how to code I would appreciate if you could post code for the crossbar. I am learning Python but I can usually 'read' C++, I am just curious what scrollbar code looks like :)
Apologies for the minor off-topic here, but you could always check the scrollbar code for WM itself on SVN.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 18, 2012, 05:43:34 AM
@ptb_666777Unlike some people that write whole paragraph to express something that could be said in a sentence, it seams you change subject with each sentence. I'll try to address most of your concerns with this post.

LoL

Well, sometimes it's a good thing to lay out ideas in a more complete form, stating pros and cons.

------------------------------------------------------------

Not going to comment on every post/reply since there are 100+ options to approach every aspect of the game and so far most of them have been decided one way or another. I still want to clarify my position on this:

I'm thinking about the classes thing. I'm not gonna remove it since its an essencial feature for girl package creators. Its how a creator can specify how good a girl will be inicially. If she is good the system will make sure she is harder to get. If the girl is bad the system will make sure she is easier for the player to acquire. Catacombs will also have levels and the deeper you go the higher class girls you will fight against. It will also play a role in the Gang Wars. Player can fight for control of sector of the city. Once he gains control of that sector he can use the facilities that are there. Sectors that are harder to control will have places that offer higher class girls. That is an important feature of the game. It means that initially the player will start with low class girls and as he progresses he will have access to better stuff. What I'm thinking about is making classes just for package creators. I will probabily rename it to something like Inicial level or something. And so for the players they will not even know that Classes exist. A girl could then level up to higher levels than 5 and with itens it would be possible to max out a low class girl. Player seam to want that ability. Personally I've never thought that would be important. In the end game when you control 100 girls or more micromanaging a single girl seams pointless as that will have very little effect on your performance. Also since you will have too many high level girls it would mean that probabily the player would have high level girls serving low class customers for a cheap price. That also doesnt make any sense. After all why would the player deny himself the revenue from all the poor and middle class customers? But if players like that sort of stuff than so be it.

And more specifically:

Player seam to want that ability. Personally I've never thought that would be important. In the end game when you control 100 girls or more micromanaging a single girl seams pointless as that will have very little effect on your performance. Also since you will have too many high level girls it would mean that probabily the player would have high level girls serving low class customers for a cheap price. That also doesnt make any sense. After all why would the player deny himself the revenue from all the poor and middle class customers? But if players like that sort of stuff than so be it.

 I have already addressed this in previous posts but I would like to clarify the reasons one more time. The thing is that game is not filled with 'generic' characters that have no meaning to the player. They are filled with Anime/Game characters, that in turn means that many players will base their play on their familiarity with girls they know instead of stat factors.

 That brings up another issue, some players want to develop favs from the start that means a low class is needed. Others want favs to be top characters by default, meaning high class BUT is you couldn't level up a low class girl, that would simply mean that you favorite character could never exceed capacity of some random one that have no meaning to you. Also you would have to wait a long time until you could get to your favs if you simply gave all of them the highest class in the game. Stuff like this is often a game breaker to many players and fixed classes are not worth it.

 To sum this up, many players will spend time fixating on specific girls through out the whole game even if there is only a little gameplay benefit or no benefit at all. Noone is suggesting that someone will micro all girls as you state in your post but I suggested a very good reason I think why many players would want to micro a few specific girls nearly every turn throughout the whole game. That is something I think you should keep in mind as you plan and design.

 PS: Just for the record, your concern was that some girls will have to work with poorer costumers... this is obviously a matter of game mechanics and will turn out exactly as you code it. Rest depends on each player 's gameplay. In my play only girls that I 'know' will make it into the top brothel that I own, rest will likely be stuck in lesser brothels even if they are A Class, S Class or even 'Z Class' :)
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 18, 2012, 05:53:10 AM
Apologies for the minor off-topic here, but you could always check the scrollbar code for WM itself on SVN.

.... you would think I'd known that with all the time I've spent going over WM code hunting for ideas for Alkion...

Since we are using a pretty decent flamework with a scrollbar coded in I never even though that WM should have a scrollbar as well :)

Thanks for advice, I'll look for it tonight, maybe check out some other graphical/output elements in WM as well.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 24, 2012, 11:27:45 AM
I just moved and didn't have internet for few days until today. So I was wondering Xela, what exactly did you have in mind for a turn based combat system? I ask that becouse you seamed pretty disapointed with what I have in mind but I can't really figure out how it could be much diferent then what I'm planning to do, so plz enlighten me.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 24, 2012, 11:52:34 AM
I just moved and didn't have internet for few days until today. So I was wondering Xela, what exactly did you have in mind for a turn based combat system? I ask that becouse you seamed pretty disapointed with what I have in mind but I can't really figure out how it could be much diferent then what I'm planning to do, so plz enlighten me.

LoL

Not sure I am fit to 'enlighten' anybody. From what I understood you only are planning to allow one on one combat, I was thinking about allowing up to four or maybe even more allies and enemies. I'll throw together a battle on a python b-engine I poster earlier to show you exactly what I mean tonight, I'll be busy for a couple more hours but will have some time afterwards.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 24, 2012, 12:54:25 PM
I
Party based combat will be possible but the player will not participate. He will be able to send expeditian parties to the dungean (I think max of 4 girls, maybe 3) and that party will meet a party of enemies and the battle will ensue.

As I before party based combat will be possible.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 24, 2012, 02:02:47 PM
As I before party based combat will be possible.

I misunderstood that post. It's all good then, You also said that you were planning to do use portraits, it will be more fun if full height transparent pngs are used. Rest sounds great.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 24, 2012, 02:07:41 PM
Your chars will use portrait. The enemy on the other hand might use a png. I'm not sure yet. But if that happens it will be a little harder for package makers
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 24, 2012, 02:41:23 PM
Your chars will use portrait. The enemy on the other hand might use a png. I'm not sure yet. But if that happens it will be a little harder for package makers

Your call, I don't think it will matter for modders.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 29, 2012, 02:36:41 AM
Hey people!

Recently I got a little stuck in WMX development. The reason for that is becouse I did not know what to do next. Its not that I don't know what needs to be done but the fact that there is too much to be done. So I decided it was time to make a plan. Originally I wanted to work on the game until I had a combat demo and then release that for testing and feedback. But now I'm thinking about doind a release before that. the reasons for that will be explaned later in this post but for now I will tell you guy what is done so far:
To get to the basic combat demo the are still a few component that need to be in place. Those are:

So with this plans layed out I know what needs to be done and so I've decided to soon ask for some help with testing. For that I will release a demo what is already don plus Items file, Save game and function Equipment component. With that demo you guys can help me find bugs in the system while I work on the combat demo. You guys can also give me feedback on the graphics and all features available in the demo. I think sorting out that stuff before the combat demo can lead to a greater quality combat demo as well as avoid having to fix too much stuff at once since the combat demo will include all fixes and enhancements made in the previous demo. Since I already released a demo in the past (even if the code was completely rewritten) and that demo was version 01, the next demo will be v02.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on July 29, 2012, 09:27:10 AM
Interesting choice, developing battlesystem first. Any idea on when to expect the v02? Like week/weeks/month?
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: graodeareia on July 29, 2012, 08:33:55 PM
Any idea on when to expect the v02? Like week/weeks/month?
Its very hard to say. My experience with C++ prior to project is one small project I did back in college (about 10 years ago). But at least I've read a couple books on C++ but unfortunately those books were read at about the same time I did that project. As for Qt and QML my experience is zero before this project. Now regarding database I only have experience with enterprise grade stuff (MS SQL Server and Oracle). For this project I'm gonna use either Firebird or SQLite. Besides that I'm going to use database in an embedded context were before I've only used the server versions. So I'm pretty much sailing uncharted waters for this project. So any estimation I make is just a guess. That being said with 10 years experience programming in varios languages/platforms I would guess between 20 to 40 hours of work. But then comes the other problem, I don't have a fixed work schedule. Sometimes I go 2-3 day without any work. Some times I work 6 hours a day for 3 days in a row. So lets say I work an average of 2 hours a day and assuming the work case scenario (40 hours) that would put the release to about 20 days from now. But as I said that is a very rough estimate.

Interesting choice, developing battlesystem first.
Since I don't really know what I'm doing in term of programming language and technology, I chose a set of features that would use all or most of the technology involved in the project. So I'm going to use C++/Qt on the backend, and QML for content creation (eg the Traits, Items and Char Files) and interface as well as a database for game saves. So after this release I suspect that I will have all the base infrastucture layed out for the rest of the project. So that choice was made with the goal of familiarizing myself with the laguages and tools and setting a  basic arquitecture for the project.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: wahn130 on August 18, 2012, 02:22:05 AM
How's it going? Eagerly awaiting another shot at brothel building.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Jasuke on August 31, 2012, 08:42:01 PM
 :)
So i see another fun future release is on the horizon :D
anyways when can I expect to see like a pre-alpha version to try out?


btw I may not be good at programming but have dabbed in it before so if you mention the language ur making this in I could study up and be of help since just mooching off of other peoples work may be fine but I wish to help make more stuff
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on September 03, 2012, 06:10:47 AM
Hopefully graodeareia (Seriously, a shorter nick is needed) is simply having a good time on summer vacation, his last online time was like 4 days ago so I we'll see new stuff when he has some free time I expect.
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Greine on September 08, 2012, 08:20:28 PM
Hopefully graodeareia (Seriously, a shorter nick is needed) is simply having a good time on summer vacation, his last online time was like 4 days ago so I we'll see new stuff when he has some free time I expect.

For a nickname, I'd suggest something like "vowely". ;)
Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: darkviper on November 24, 2012, 12:35:56 PM
so is some one still working on this

Title: Re: Whore Master Cathexis
Post by: Xela on November 24, 2012, 04:44:22 PM
Doubtful... Two month was the last time dev has checked in. Projects like this take insane amount of effort and he wanted to make a fairly complex game as well :(