Whore Master Cathexis

[graodeareia]

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.

[Xela]

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...

[graodeareia]

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.

[graodeareia]

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.

[Xela]

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.

[graodeareia]

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.

[Xela]

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.

[graodeareia]

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.

[graodeareia]

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.

[Xela]

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

[akab]

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.

[graodeareia]

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.

[Xela]

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

[graodeareia]

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
     }
}
 

[ptb_666777]

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