whoremaster mod design plan

[notoriouslylazyindividual]

Things I want to do.  I am intensely grateful to the current modders for providing their revised source.  But.  Scripting's a bit rusty.  No promises.  I'm posting this here in case someone else finds value in it. 

Overview:
The existing game is a great idea.  The work on per user modularity is brilliant.  The major issue I've had is that the play is too bounded.  I feel the game needs to emphasize scale at the micro level with individual girls, and at the macro level with the player's empire.  It also needs some additional UI development.  Lastly, and related to the previous point, that modularity is difficult to manage at present.  A menu tool to manage imported items, girls, etc would be helpful.  I've consequently broken this document into sections related to each of those topics.  This is occurring with the barest glimpse of the existing code, so additional issues or opportunities may present themselves should I ever update this document.

++Micro
Maxing individual girls is easy and largely meaningless.  Gear is generally meaningless.  I intend to impose stricter limitations on them.  Enough to make each girl theoretically unique, but without severely disrupting play or limiting the player's control.

• GIRLS
• • Initial limit on all stats and skills, including Health, Confidence, Obedience, Spirit etc is 60.
  • • Limit increased by Traits and level (1 point in each stat per girl level, possibly capped below 40 to up-value Traits).
    • Gear ignores limit up to 100.
  • Possible limitations on positive Traits.
  • • More Trait conflicts?
    • More/more common negative Traits?
    • Much rare Trait gain for lower-level girls?
    • All Traits carry penalties?
  • Partial rework of scripted items (misc items which affect end-of-turn results).
  • • Girls will choose one training or relaxation item to use per shift per week.
    • Items that add health, add happiness, or reduce fatigue will be prioritized the lower these stats are, regardless of other effects.
    • Items that increase other stats will be chosen at random.
    • Unconsumed consumable items are also included.
    • Have to be honest, I've yet to look at the existing functionality here.  Based on play experience only.
  • Slight improvements for girls' personalities (likes/dislikes).
  • • Personality affects fatigue cost as well as happiness.
    • Obedience works against penalty (obedient girls accept their orders).
    • Task happiness cost and fatigue cost determine refusal rates more obviously.
    • Even low-obedience girls will more rarely refuse orders (below 0 rebelliousness) but may suffer heavy penalties to happiness and fatigue, making them less useful for these things.
  • Eventual plan is to include option for male slaves/employees as well.
• GANGS
• • Gangs will require housing.  Membership is limited by house size.
  • Total gang number is limited by number of owned territories (SEE MACRO).
  • Gangs may be stocked with re-usable and consumable items via their houses.
  • Girls may also be assigned to gang houses for various purposes, but count against house size.
  • Gangs will be assigned an upkeep cost that affords them 80% of their maximum effectiveness in each area.
  • • Consequently most will be capped at 80 in each stat.
    • Increasing pay increases effectiveness, but on diminishing returns.
  • Gang items will increase effectiveness until exhausted, and may have other benefits.
  • Possible Champion or Captain units (so long as this doesn't lead into a need to extensively micro-manage these units).

++MACRO

• Map re-designed as territory grid.
• Gangs can be assigned to acquire easiest territory or specific territories.
• Gangs can be assigned to defend square blocks of up to a certain size.
• Only one gang can attack a territory per week (controls rate of change).
• Rather than or in addition to acquiring certain numbers of territories to open new buildings for purchase, their territories must be acquired.  Most buildings occupy more than one grid square.
• • A general note here.  The temptation is to allow the player to construct buildings as they wish, or to otherwise give each territory square a function they can choose.  I strongly feel this will overwhelm the fun of the game with micromanagement.  If I do anything along these lines, it will be for new generic Brothel construction and Gang House construction only.  I will also look into decentralizing the Street Whore job and allowing it to be assigned to a square or block of squares.
• Each building will have the Security role, rather than just Brothels.  Security will help protect all squares the building occupies and all adjacent squares.
• Increasing building capacity will be more expensive for non-Brothels, and more expensive progressively.
• Buildings will have other upgrades besides Capacity.
• • These upgrades will reduce Capacity instead.
  • Upgrades will also have an upkeep cost, which is increased per other upgrade.
  • Upgrades will allow new roles for the building or will provide a benefit to all girls inside each turn.
  • Either improving or stealing the work of others to improve the politics/bribing/conflict/legal system of the city.  Large thing to tackle.

++MACRO 2 (Longer term)

• Ownership of city becomes optionally achievable.
• At this stage, buildings are generally managed entirely by their Matrons (but the player can still choose to interact with them).
• Player can become head of state and initiate conflicts against other cities/states, gathering large numbers of slaves and resources.
• May appoint higher-ranked Matrons (Secretaries?) to oversee cities, who will attempt to move units within each city to build up overall effectiveness.
• Goal of this stage is capturing the other heads of state and subduing them, and starting the player's own lineage.
• Player may also control whether their empire controls sex or encourages it (leading to a repressed population or a depraved one), and whether it promotes equality or subjugation (leading to a hippie population or a bdsm one).
• Girls may be used as emissaries to corrupt or infiltrate opponents.
• Advancing a turn at this level advances a season (3 months) rather than a week.
• Player acquires powerful abilities from each conquest.  Some relate to army v army conflict, but others allow powerful, rapid changes in slave girls at will.
• Final control over the world allows ability to conquer other planes -- angelic, demonic, and fae/bestial, and capture their rulers as slaves.

++UI

• Persistent building selection bar (like the one in the Dungeon) for easier navigation.
• Ability to mark individual girls (a field entry that allows 1 character, so girls can be sorted by Group -- for example, all combat-focused girls could be marked C).
• Better highlighting of danger/warning states.
• Turn results menu improved to be more easily navigable, and to present critical warning states (like diseases) at the top.

• Immediate summary of all acquisitions/losses for the turn.
• Level Up as its own heading rather than Good News blanket.

• Keyboard progression within scroll menus (up and down arrow progresses selection).
• Import/exclude menu to allow items/girls/events on a per-game basis.
• So much.  So very much.

[crazy]

I had a nice long reply to this and a crash made me lose it so I may redo it may not..  Just going hit the key points for now.

Brothel upgrades are a great ideal i have always wanted in game what all upgrades do you have planed?

www.pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=215.0 is a nice read that one of the original devs was going do to make buildings better.  I always wanted this but I dont have the skill to code it so I have skipped it you might like.

Gang housing and assign girls to gangs is a great ideal.  Maybe champions could be things like goku or Guts from bresker as Ive always wanted them as my bodyguards.

Once I get time I will edit this and make it like it was before the crash but for now this is a few of the basic points I wanted to bring up.

[notoriouslylazyindividual]

i'm pretty far behind you, since i cannot even compile the project currently.  what are you using to do so -- cl/Visual Studio 6?


the brothel upgrades i wanted to add were simpler than what that post describes, but i rather like his system.  the most straightforward upgrades would be ones that do a per-round benefit (like healing all girls by 1 point per round).  i had also considered things like making the Security job possible in the Home, etc.


his system moves functionality entirely into the brothel rooms, so for example the Gambling Hall (and its associated jobs) would only be available once you'd built it.  i think the rooms he is describing are too extensive; i'd prefer a layer of abstraction between his proposal and my initial idea.


i will need to take apart the item/girl systems to learn more about the xml libs, but it seems entirely doable eventually.  although mine will be kludgier.

[aevojoey]

I use visual studio express 2013 to compile the game.
I have been trying out other editors/compilers but have not spent enough time with them to make a working exe.
If you load the "BrothelMaster-vse2013" set in VSE2013 you should be able to compile it without too much hassle.

• Partial rework of scripted items (misc items which affect end-of-turn results).

This is handled in cBrothel.cpp > do_daily_items.

• Map re-designed as territory grid.
• Gangs can be assigned to acquire easiest territory or specific territories.
• Gangs can be assigned to defend square blocks of up to a certain size.
• Rather than or in addition to acquiring certain numbers of territories to open new buildings for purchase, their territories must be acquired.  Most buildings occupy more than one grid square.

I have been trying to update the graphics system to SDL2.0 but real life has kept me away too much to get anything done with that.
Once that is done, I hope that will make adding something like a grid map easier.

Would a hex grid or a square grid be better?

How about if a gang is assigned to a map square, they can guard the squares around it at -10% per square distance.
You can buy/build a gang base for a price and a per turn upkeep.
If the gang base is taken by a rival, they could keep it and use it against you or sell it for money.

If you fight for control of a building, there is a chance you will do damage to the building requiring repairs once you fully control it.
The better way would be to gain control of the surrounding grid then attack the building from multiple directions.
If you create a thin line of control for a territory, there is a chance your rivals will swoop in and cut your supply lines.
You will loose some percent of control each turn as your gangs can not get enough support.

Tactical ground combat and control would be nice but would require extensive coding.

• Persistent building selection bar (like the one in the Dungeon) for easier navigation.

A constant navigation menu at the top or bottom of the screen with the common buttons that all buildings have.
Instead of each building having its own xml layout, a single global building xml that is the same for every building.

• Ability to mark individual girls (a field entry that allows 1 character, so girls can be sorted by Group -- for example, all combat-focused girls could be marked C).

Check boxes for what types of things you want to assign the girls to do.
Individual sex restrictions for each girl.

• Better highlighting of danger/warning states.
• Turn results menu improved to be more easily navigable, and to present critical warning states (like diseases) at the top.
• Immediate summary of all acquisitions/losses for the turn.
• Level Up as its own heading rather than Good News blanket.

Instead of just the list of the girls names on the turn summary page, a full table of what she did.

The turn summary does really need a lot more work.

[Jacko]

"Initial limit on all stats and skills, including Health, Confidence, Obedience, Spirit etc is 60."


I agree with you overall points about making the girls more unique on a micro level, but I think this suggestion is at cross purposes with that.  With this method, every girl you meet will be the same; their potential will be different, but certainly some girls can be beautiful, obedient, healthy, charismatic, etc., without ever having worked for you. I see how this adds more "game" to the game, but with the way I have my girl packs set up, there is already "game" there. Some girls are beautiful (90+), but willful (spirit 70+), or disobedient (Obed = 0). I think thoughtfully made girls is the best way to add uniqueness (and challenge) in this regard.


The "Fame" stat is one of my biggest problems with the game. After a while, every single girl in my brothel is 100% famous, and that just makes the stat pointless. I don't think fame should be a independent stat, but rather based on a amalgamation of several stats, like the "looks" stat. Fame could perhaps involve some kind of representative equation, like: (Looks + Normal Sex + Oral Sex)/3 = Fame Maximum.


Fame would add value to the stats and skills included in the equation, as a girl having high Fame has the direct benefit of adding more customers to the brothel, which equals more money.


Fame currently is more indicative of a girls overall worth than the "level" stat, which really has no purpose and should probably be removed from the game, or at least turned into a description or a title such as:


Level 0 = "This is girl is brand new." "Street girl"
Level 1 = "She has had only a little experience working in a brothel "Stripper"
etc.


Or have the title based on her top skill:


Normal Sex = "Whore"
BDSM = "Sex Slave"
Strip = "Stripper"
Service = "Waitress"
etc.


Probably better would just have "level" replaced with a "Years in Service" stat, which would currently fulfill the same function as the the level stat. The stat could also be used in scripting, for whatever purpose.


"More Trait conflicts?"


Absolutely. If girl a has "Nervous" it should cap her charisma. If Nervous gives -10 charisma (or whatever) her max charisma should be (100) - (10) = 90. But the option should be present to have girls lose neg traits over time, as the game currently functions. You should also not be able to be "Charasmatic" and "Nervous", or "Aggressive" and "Meek". Negative traits should also be able to be acquired through gameplay, outside of the dungeon and torture. There are times when your girl is abused by customers. Maybe a chance to lose more than happiness, or a small chance to gain a neg trait (small scars, dependant, etc.).


"Even low-obedience girls will more rarely refuse orders"


I think the current way obedience works is fine. In my understanding Obedience is checked when a girl is assigned an action she doesn't want to do (based on her preferences). If she is "happy enough with stripping", she should be more likely to to strip in the club (maybe a bonus to her obedience check?). If she isn't okay with it, she should refuse. I believe PCLove, PCFear, and PCHate, also factor into her decision somehow.


"Spirit" is the one that confuses me. All I've seen it affect so far is the nature of her dialogue after you scold her (which is nice). Have any idea what it affects besides this? Runaway potential?


I have to disagree with you on your ++Macro points with the map, gangs, and grid. At its heart this game is a management sim, not a strategy game. The whole thing with gangs and territory should be kept amorphous and shouldn't take time away from dealing with your girls. I really don't have the desire to select which grid square my gang will defend/attack or worry about whether I have enough squares to support a certain building, etc. You aren't a drug kingpin, or a gangster, you're a whore master. To me this means your talents lie in creating whore houses of willing or unwilling women to service your customers. This involves managing the intricacies of your girls and their personalities and roles you want them to perform. You are essentially the matron for every whorehouse you operate, and perform matron duties when you don't have one. Helping the girls with their problems, taking them off of work when they are sick or tired, scolding them when they don't obey, and choosing in what capacity they work for you, all in the name of creating a pleasurable experience for your customers. The more gameplay that focuses on this goal, I think the more satisfying the experience will be. Right now it is so easy to get a profitable brothel with high fame and customer satisfaction (still don't know how this is calculated or how to affect it), that people are looking to other parts of the game for more gameplay, which is an indication that there isn't enough challenge or substance with the main part of the game. In Call of Duty (which has excellent gameplay, for what it is: an FPS), doesn't distract the player with the mundane details of war. You don't have to buy bullets after each round, or clean your weapons, or go to basic training. You don't have to lobby congress for more military funding, or clean the latrines on PT. Every customization decision made in the game relates back to core gameplay of your ability to 360 no-scope your opponent. It's good game design whether or not you enjoy it personally.

As a side note, I'd love to be able to decide not only how much to pay my girls (I start at 90%, which adds more difficulty), but how much they charge for their services. This game is in dire need of this as well as a proper ledger screen which include gang fees and other expenses. Right now I have no idea where my money is being spent. The start turn dialogue misrepresents your financial situation as it only reports brothel expenses. Many times it says I've made a profit when really I'm still in the red.


I think a cool idea would be to have to pick a specialty for each "brothel" building you purchase. Right now there is no difference between jobs "Brothel Whore", "Strip Club Whore", or any other sex job. You should have to choose if your building is a brothel, a strip club, a bar, or a gambling hall, and be limited to the jobs available within each of those categories. "Whore on the street" should be available for all buildings with it's inherent risks. You should also be able to renovate each building, for a considerable fee and maybe a few turns of no profit from the building, in order to change it's specialty. Because you only start with one brothel, this initial choice adds progression tiers and uniqueness to the gameplay experience. Buying a new brothel in the current game is almost pointless, because you can add rooms to your original brothel (which is fine), and because the only difference between brothels is the screen background.


Anyway, it's of course easy to just sit back and write a post about how the game should play, while others do the actual work of coding of the game, which is time consuming and often frustrating. I've just started writing scripts for this game (which I will begin posting as soon as I have a semi-presentable work), and I can tell you it sometimes takes hours to complete with the dialogue, testing, and debugging, for something as simple as a causal conversation between you and a girl. So as always, massive props to crazy and aveojoey(sp?) for modding/re-writing whoremaster into the pretty good Management/Dating Sim game it is today. The last thing we want as fans of the game is to have these guys feel like their work is going unnoticed or worse, not appreciated. (I'm sure nobody feels like that, but it's always nice to let them know.)






 

[notoriouslylazyindividual]

ugh.  lost a post.


the big part of what i wanted to say is, i intend these ideas to form a fork -- this isn't a, "let's all go lazy's way nao" deal.  i want cross-pollination between two projects, since i'm starting at a huge advantage (being able to access everything that already exists).

some general gist stuff.  which was way better when it was specific replies to points, but.  laaaazzzyy.


although i want to add options i would like to keep an ease of interface for the player.  so i will probably not add too much complexity to combat.  i want it to be "queen's blade," not "attack on titan."  similarly i want players to feel rewarded for managing small areas (and to have matrons and other game systems allow them to do so without throwing the larger systems into the toilet), but not to have to if they choose otherwise.

so i want someone to be able to play as a "saint's row" style kingpin or an enslaver of queens, which means a bit more functionality for conflict and warfare.  but not so much to spend tons of time managing each fight (or overmuch time defending captured territory).


a square grid is marginally easier to manage (since it maps to coordinates so easily).  a hex grid looks marginally prettier.  *shrug*  i will probably go with a square one but... haven't worked out all the details there.


i respectfully disagree w/ jacko about challenge.  my girls are pretty much 90+ across the board except for farm skills within a double-fistful of turns.  i know i could make that more efficient by managing gear and training more, but i wouldn't want to.  i do think that making unique girls is a **totally** worthwhile thing, but i personally at least don't really even notice the difference between a girl that's mostly 40s and one that's mostly 70s.  i think the system i'm envisioning would help me, at least.  if i get it working you can judge for yourself.


but also since i intend to change a lot of under-the-hood stuff about job management (well, about trait management, mostly, but that reflects back into jobs a ton), i will also make girls that are global 60s perfectly competent to do most things.  they just won't be terribly effective matrons or be able to pull double shifts of the most demanding tasks.  just a little extra pizzazz for the player's favorites.

[notoriouslylazyindividual]

The "Fame" stat is one of my biggest problems with the game. After a while, every single girl in my brothel is 100% famous, and that just makes the stat pointless. I don't think fame should be a independent stat, but rather based on a amalgamation of several stats, like the "looks" stat. Fame could perhaps involve some kind of representative equation, like: (Looks + Normal Sex + Oral Sex)/3 = Fame Maximum.
Fame would add value to the stats and skills included in the equation, as a girl having high Fame has the direct benefit of adding more customers to the brothel, which equals more money.
Fame currently is more indicative of a girls overall worth than the "level" stat, which really has no purpose and should probably be removed from the game, or at least turned into a description or a title

so i wanted to reply to this with a bit more detail because it runs so parallel to what i was talking about with stat caps and traits and etc

the game doesn't know or care what each stat represents.  we could use the girl's level in place of hp if we wanted.  any stat can (and almost all of them do) affect some job or other.

but yeah i'd say right now the most important part of level is actually the process of levelling up, which theoretically (i think this might be broken) increases all of the girl's stats and does (know this works) give a chance for a positive trait gain every 5 levels.

whereas as you've noted fame directly affects her per-turn value.

well i've said that stat gain is pretty much borked imho right now since it's trivial to hit perfect in everything.  and the item library, along with the job trait gains, pretty much make trait gaining super easy as well, so that 1-per-5 is... meh.

which is a long way of saying that you're right about level.  as it stands right now.

the thing about making fame a composite stat is that i'm not sure that helps anything, since, once again, i can max the girl within a few rounds.  in fact the composite you proposed i am positive i could max on at least two girls per three rounds and with some planning and/or good item draw in the shop i could do a lot better. but absolutely, we can change fame to be different than it is.  and... well, yadda yadda.... the point i'm getting to is:

slave whores are easy.

well okay, it sounded better in the context in my head.

but look, that's what we want, right?  slave whores are easy.  it should be pretty easy for the player to have lots of slaves having lots of sex them lots of money.

the thing to add on top of that is something to make some of the easy slave whores really damn cool slave whores, something worth feeling accomplished over.  and ideally something exciting and sexy too.

i think i can do this by changing how level works.  you think this can be done by changing how fame works.  both are probably true.  flesh out your system a bit better and pitch it again to aevo and crazy.  if you'd like, i can tell you how fast i can break any particular incarnation of it, which should let you angle the difficulty to something of your liking.


edit: three more random thoughts inspired by this

• Give the girls' xml a way to handle a fixed level-up progression.  eg, at level 4, girl gains +3 CON, +3 combat, Tough.
• Give the girls' xml a way to handle per-girl scripted events (which i think would be a condition, like gaining a certain level, trait, or stat rating, followed by the location of a script file).
• Improve parsing of image file names to selectively ignore certain strings (eg, BDSM1.foo.jpg is parsed as BDSM1.jpg).
• Create ability for generated girls to use a particular consistent string subset for all images when available.
• • Example: Random girl type Peasant_Girl has images marked foo.redhead.jpg, foo.blonde.jpg, bar.redhead.jpg, and bar.blonde.jpg.  When an in-game Peasant_Girl is generated, the game will automagically (with an xml string?  something?) determine whether she is Blonde or Redhead and then consistently only use foo.redhead.jpg when image type foo is called for.

[crazy]

i'm pretty far behind you, since i cannot even compile the project currently.  what are you using to do so -- cl/Visual Studio 6?

I use VS2008 and I cant compile it either without a bunch of errors.. something do with me needing a newer compiler to handle some of the changes that have been made.  Thats why aevojoey handles doing all the release or the mod. 

[aevojoey]

While Level and Fame do not really do much yet, they are used for some things.

• Girl's Fame directly affects Brothel's Fame.
• Most of the Studio Crew jobs use Level and/or Fame for job performance as do Doctor and Nurse and several brothel jobs.
• As I go over the rest of the jobs, Level and Fame may be added to their job performance.
• When the farm gets more work done, Level will be used to check if a girl can brew higher levels of potions.
• If the Wizard Tower ever gets added, Level will be used to check if a girl can cast higher level spells.
• Many brothel jobs use Fame for different texts.

[Dr_Poke]

Wouldn't it be better if fame was more of a bell curve type? It would pretty much mean gutting the current system though.


To put it in more detailed terms:  Each girl starts off with a 0 fame value.  There's no reason a girl has a higher fame value unless she was directly stolen from another rival's brothel (Not implemented obviously).  The girl then gains fame through job performance and etc.  Each week this is evaluated against every other girl owned by the player and places her fame value as a ranking (Hoping this part wont slow down the game).  A girl with 100 ranking is pretty much a superstar and should be treated accordingly.  Conversely a girl with a 1 fame rating is basically a nobody/unwanted, and 50 is the median and where most girls would land around. 


Also possibly to prevent one girl from becoming the '100 in everything' issue, can we have natural limits and decay added into the game?  If I have a lolita/flat chested girl giving me a boob job, it's still not the same as a big breasted girls and etc. 

[0nymous]

Also possibly to prevent one girl from becoming the '100 in everything' issue, can we have natural limits and decay added into the game?  If I have a lolita/flat chested girl giving me a boob job, it's still not the same as a big breasted girls and etc. 

What if we want to have certain girls to be "100 in everything"?
Stat decay is a shifty concept. Lategame considered, when you have girls in the dozens, or even hundreds, I'd rather not keep track of all of them. Too much micromanagement.
You'd need to implement some kind of mechanism to prevent the decay I guess. Some lategame expensive items, I dunno.

As for the stat limits I've been preaching on about them since forever. Plank-chested girls shouldn't be able to have 100 titfuck.
This WAS implemented in some way actually, in the way that traits multiply the stat value. So the "Flat Chest" would multiply a value of 60 titfuck by 0.1 (or something like that I forgot the exact values) with the end result being 6 titfuck.
That's not what I thought would be best (traits applying stat limits that could also work both ways and go above 100) but it's a way more clever mechanic so I won't speak ill of it.


About Fame. That stat is the one making most sense decaying with time. Made that point somewhere where I suggested adding "Reputation" as a different stat as well.
Also, I think "Renown" sounds much more formal and suits the stat better than "Fame". "Fame" has a positive connotation to it. Due to the nature of WM some girls could be infamous rather than famous, but that doesn't mean they're not well known.

[Dr_Poke]

I know decay is just a micromanagement nightmare in itself, maybe add in decay once have a way to group girls and batch job them?  Don't add in things for the sake of realism if it detracts from the gameplay.