Ren'Py Brothel King [v0.3] [Goldo]

[phupdup]

I'm still figuring things out on my playthrough and am only slowly going through the code to see whether I can do for BK what I did for SoC.

While I know that there's those folk out there who love to micromanage and grind, I'm not one of them. If you are going to force people to grind, at least have a lot of content during the process. Hold up your hand if your are tired of seeing the same passages time and again on the random encounters, training events and nightly performances. That's a sign that there should be more focus on adding stories and/or speeding up the progression of the story arcs and girl development.

One solution is to have more NPC's that are something other than random characters. I can see two classes that can be introduced here to address the shortfalls with RNG in the shop and class system. The first is to stop forcing us to sell off assets when moving chapters. I liked the way Pytfall allows MC to head on down to the realtors to buy up and expand new buildings as they built up their empire. Free Cities has a Head Girl who can help train the girls and a bodyguard for protection. Why can't BK just let us keep running what we have by appointing people like this who can run the show? It already kind of does this with the farm as it is.

The other class might include people we meet along the way or even a family/war buddies/guild associates type system where we can bring in people we know or are related with to take over some of the management. Hell we could even have some of those randoms in the street that we can meet and interact with and then become buddies enough to hire in. All of these NPCs can have talents to work as trainers, gophers and brothel management. Then we could bring in a body builder, tea ceremony wonk and makeover expert to train up those attributes that are sorely lacking. On a related note, why are the bankers in this thing basically just glorified loan sharks and not real bankers? Why are we forced to pay ever increasing extortion to lower the security threat when we could have a real banking system?

 

[Ego Orb]

Got this error, I think it was caused by one of the girl's stats being lowered by an event:

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[Jman9]

If you are going to force people to grind, at least have a lot of content during the process. Hold up your hand if your are tired of seeing the same passages time and again on the random encounters, training events and nightly performances.

There's actually a considerable amount of text, covering a multitude of occasions and outcomes. If you think there's not enough variety, write your own additions and submit the result to Goldo. AFAIK, he's tried to get additional writers on board several times, and the only one who met him partway was Kite80.

As someone who once wrote ponygirl/catgirl/bunnygirl flavour blurbs, I can tell you it's not a lot of fun. And the few people in the community who like this are focused on the community dialogue project. We just don't have the manpower for this.

But even the deepest well will run dry if you always use the same girls in the same roles. So some of it is on you as a player, for not trying out other options.

That's a sign that there should be more focus on adding stories and/or speeding up the progression of the story arcs and girl development.

Goldo is adding new events and new story now with 0.2, after a long dry spell of playing around with game mechanics during 0.15. Again, if you think it's too slow, lend a hand. Honestly, that's probably going to end up more useful/impactful than any refactoring of the game's classes you might do.

I also disagree about girl advancement. I'm your exact opposite and love micromanagement and grinding. And a simbro game is ultimately a grinding game, no matter what embellishments you tack onto it. If I think that the vanilla game has ridiculously fast girl development (at least on normal difficulty) and you think the opposite, the conclusion is that the game is roughly balanced between play styles.

You can also play on a custom difficulty and speed up all stat gains and whatever else by up to five times. If that's not enough, then you're not really interested in a simbro game, and your opinion about these mechanics is irrelevant. There are enough slice-of-life games already.

The first is to stop forcing us to sell off assets when moving chapters.

That way lies the madness of Whore Master and 200-girl brothels. It was a conscious design decision to avoid multiple brothels. We got a long feedback post just yesterday, saying that there are too many bedrooms available right now. Which isn't really wrong.

Pytfall ... new buildings

The BK equivalent is furniture.

Free Cities has a Head Girl who can help train the girls and a bodyguard for protection. Why can't BK just let us keep running what we have by appointing people like this who can run the show?

BK also has a Head Girl type position, your trainer. I wouldn't mind some more advanced functionality added to this.

But... People have mused about adding more trainers or automating some part of training for a long while. The closest we got was one guy creating a rather empty framework for training and some kind of underground activities for his own planned mod. He then disappeared. I myself wrote master bedroom automation, which ended up a lot of work and a lot of bugginess, and I don't even know if anyone found it truly useful.

So what I'm going to say is that I'll believe it when I see it. Produce a proof-of-concept trainer mod and if people absolutely love it, I'm sure Goldo will consider adding it to the game. In the meanwhile, I want Goldo to do chapters 3 and 4, the Headhunter and more rivalry with Kosmo. And that's already a lot.

On a related note, why are the bankers in this thing basically just glorified loan sharks and not real bankers?

Why ... real banking system?

Two reasons.

Crunch: game balance. We already have the player earning too much gold as it is.

Fluff: BK is set in a pseudo-Renaissance setting. This was a time when bankers charged you for a deposit and letters of credit, not the other way around.

The unreleased last version of my mod (before I stopped developing it) has the Banker offer you a deposit where you can keep your cash safe from thieves and other mishaps, thus lowering brothel threat. She charges a fee, though.

 

[docclox]

So, out of curiosity ... anyone know why recruiting girls from the city turned to signing a "temporary slave contract". I know it's old news by now, but I kind of liked it when I was manipulating them into giving away their freedom. This temporary business isn't nearly as much fun.

 

[Gutsandguts]

So, out of curiosity ... anyone know why recruiting girls from the city turned to signing a "temporary slave contract". I know it's old news by now, but I kind of liked it when I was manipulating them into giving away their freedom. This temporary business isn't nearly as much fun.

Wait, it's meant to be temporary? I thought that was just trickery?

I've got at least three girls that way and none have decided to leave or anything. I can dismiss them rather than sell them though, do they just leave if they get angry at you or something?

I feel like that's pretty fair considering the insane profits you could make from all that free real estate out there. Oh hey, yeah girl this is just "temporary" just a few months until you're trained up and on your feet...oh the shackles are just for show don't worry about it...

 

[docclox]

I've got at least three girls that way and none have decided to leave or anything. I can dismiss them rather than sell them though, do they just leave if they get angry at you or something?

I think it's just that you can't sell them on.

 

[__neronero]

So, out of curiosity ... anyone know why recruiting girls from the city turned to signing a "temporary slave contract". I know it's old news by now, but I kind of liked it when I was manipulating them into giving away their freedom. This temporary business isn't nearly as much fun.

It is indeed just that you can't sell them on for profit, you can only dismiss them. At some point the free-girl screen changed allowing you to get a peek at each girl's stats while talking to them.

This allowed you to search out only the high-ranked girls in order to recruit them and instantly sell them for profit. That was deemed to be too OP. (Not sure if I fully agree, it sounds like a fun path for the player to take to me, but it is what it is)

Long term the idea is that seducing free girls will not be the only option, but evil players may also choose to kidnap them. That alternate path would allow you to sell the girls after some time.

 

[Leortha]

I think it's just that you can't sell them on.

That is it exactly. It was decided (by the main dev Goldo and some others on the BK forum) that the idea of enslaving the free girls and then selling them was a bit too much. Mostly because it was a but unbalanced to get girls for free and then be able to immediately sell them if I remember right. So it was changed to the "temporary" contract, with the primary aspect of it being temporary is that the girl is only a slave as long as the MC want her to be his slave. If the MC ever wants to get rid of her he has to give her back her freedom. He cannot sell her off to another slaver.

 

[Jman9]

This allowed you to search out only the high-ranked girls in order to recruit them and instantly sell them for profit. That was deemed to be too OP. (Not sure if I fully agree, it sounds like a fun path for the player to take to me, but it is what it is)

You can still largely do that, since the clue that shows original girls is still there, and these are the best girls anyway.

I suppose the biggest argument in favour of indenture was still that free girls are, well, completely free, you know?

I also disagreed with this decision, but since Goldo was not swayed by my arguments, well, you know the drill...

...kidnap them.

I don't know about kidnapping. Strec's mod was pretty much a cheat as far as I recall, and my own attempt at kidnapping went through a lot of fiddling and when I once offered to try to make a mod of it, no one took an interest.

 

[Kite80]

I just started a new game at insane level, I'm still in chapter 1 and got 2 slaves, plus MC already has sex with a free girl. Every day I manage to earn a few coins, a lot less than on normal level but it's not impossible to avoid a game over. At least so far...

 

[Paitryn]

I think it's just that you can't sell them on.

before I would romance girls train them on the farm and sell them for profit. Now the farm is just extra storage.

 

[phlore101]

I'm playing on insane and am using the trait_king mod so that probably makes a big difference. While I have save scummed an awful lot at different stages, mostly with regards to security events, I generally haven't for the slave market and have just made do with whoever shows up. I got lucky early with one girl who had the genius trait so I managed to get past the old guys 75 stat request just fine.

It was around there that the game got really hard. The tax lady and a bad month made it so I had to sell one of my girls just to get through the last few days of the month. I had to stash some girls with great traits at the farm as I didn't want to pass them by. After getting past that I'm doing fine now. I'm at the end game now with Rank X girls and the game is back to what it used to be I guess. Money is still a problem I suppose as I'm getting taxed 200k+ a month. I can't afford to buy the top end weapons and whatnot yet but I think it's just because I'm too fussy with the quality of my girls and don't have enough to service everyone.

Now it's just a case of speeding through the week trying to find diamonds and waiting for furniture to be built and the slave market to be reset. Maybe I'll look at trying to get a lot of the achievements. That is a nice addition to the game as you run out of other stuff to strive for. Maybe trying to max out one girl??

 

[Yukihirou]

Oh come on again ? Letting MC be evil is ok but allowing him to kidnap and sell girls is not ok and masked behind being too OP ? MC can come witness an execution of innocents? and side with Feira feeding and picking on the poor souls of the slums but selling dumb hoes that fall for his charm is still not ok ?

 

[Jman9]

before I would romance girls train them on the farm and sell them for profit. Now the farm is just extra storage.

You can still buy cheap slaves and do it with them, but it's not quite the same.

I'm playing on insane and am using the trait_king mod...

You didn't have trouble with all the bugs in the old Trait King? Like the one where getting new traits disables your night event display, a missing key for an improvable negative trait, probably more?

...selling dumb hoes that fall for his charm is still not ok ?

Come over to the dark side Bonanza... We have more ways to be evul.

 

[phlore101]

You can still buy cheap slaves and do it with them, but it's not quite the same.


You didn't have trouble with all the bugs in the old Trait King? Like the one where getting new traits disables your night event display, a missing key for an improvable negative trait, probably more?


Come over to the dark side Bonanza... We have more ways to be evul.

I haven't noticed anything yet. I have had a couple of outright crashes of the game with no traceback but it hasn't occurred often enough for me to worry about. I did play bonanza for quite a while during 0.15 but I'll probably just keep doing this current run for a little bit longer than go and play something else. Unless there are major changes there isn't really any point in me starting a new game. I really should go and play some of the games in my steam pile of shame that just keeps building and building.

 

[Jman9]

I haven't noticed anything yet.

Interesting. You didn't use 'Marked' girls much, then?

I did play bonanza for quite a while ... than go and play something else.
Unless there are major changes there isn't really any point in me starting a new game.

There are some changes, but they never got released. I want to say that if you liked Bonanza, try my other mod, but that one is also kind of in a coma ATM.

 

[phlore101]

Interesting. You didn't use 'Marked' girls much, then?


There are some changes, but they never got released. I want to say that if you liked Bonanza, try my other mod, but that one is also kind of in a coma ATM.

Don't think I have ever used a girl with Marked. Now that you mention it, there have been a few traits that were a little strange like Anal Slut which gives +0 to Customer Satisfaction. The positives outweigh the negatives though so I've just run with it.

Edit: Sorry, I did try reading and searching a bit as I'm pretty sure I read something about your other mod but I can't seem to find where I read about it. What is it and where can I try it out?

 

[Jman9]

Now that you mention it, there have been a few traits that were a little strange like Anal Slut which gives +0 to Customer Satisfaction.

That was probably because her potential reduced the effect (the flame/red blob thingy).

...about your other mod but I can't seem to find where I read about it. What is it and where can I try it out?

Click on my profile and look at my posting history. Most of my posts here are in that mod's thread.

 

[Ixiah]

Is there a torrent with a collection of Girls ?

 

[__neronero]

I don't know about kidnapping. Strec's mod was pretty much a cheat as far as I recall, and my own attempt at kidnapping went through a lot of fiddling and when I once offered to try to make a mod of it, no one took an interest.

In Goldo we trust! Although to me this feels like a "maybe 5 years from now" idea (the quote below is over 2 years old already)

Maybe retain the 'slaver' option for evil dudes? Their relative lack of distinct gameplay elements has been a topic at times. All who go down that path become evil fast, and suffer whatever fate you've decided on for them in the later chapters...

Yeah, that's the idea. In the long run, seducing free girl will be one way to get them (the soft one), but kidnapping them as an evil player should be an option too. Then you can actually take them as full-on slaves, but it'll cost something (gold/AP for breaking them). Not coming soon, though.

You didn't have trouble with all the bugs in the old Trait King? Like the one where getting new traits disables your night event display, a missing key for an improvable negative trait, probably more?

I think the user-made "fix" version of trait king currently in circulation is only the trait_king.rpy file without all the other rpy-files. I'm assuming the actual traits do work (apart from changing valuation) but most other features are stripped out, including their bugs probably.