Ren'Py Fantasy Manager [v0.9.3] [Horologist]

[eyvgbhunijmwk]

Anyone tried this on joiplay since this error shows up after you selected your name View attachment 5633531

game does not work on android at all. Dev stated this

 

[U'm$@UPj]

What does the save file actually save? the start of the day?
Because when I reload freshly recruited workers/servants are gone, but some states are saved like the game remembers that I recruited a worker that day.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

What does the save file actually save? the start of the day?
Because when I reload freshly recruited workers/servants are gone, but some states are saved like the game remembers that I recruited a worker that day.

For most of my testing, the save remembers everything but goes back to the tavern. I have had instances where it "forgets" things, it's one of the reasons I created the file saving, but in my later testings, saves have been working quite well. The best practice would be to save at the start of a day, right after next day, but as I said, in general, it remembers values, but returns to tavern. If you want me to take another look tell me what you experienced exactly, and I'll search the code for mistakes.

I have recently improved the save menu due to another user's request, so I might be experiencing a "better" save feature.

In any case, thanks for trying it out, and thanks for the feedback.

 

[lnomsim]

clockwork_horologist, may I request for a bigger font for the menus?
I can read the font on the right panel just right, but in the journal, or in workers panels, etc... it's so small, not only I have a really hard time reading it, my screen can't even display some of it correctly.

 

[kookieman0341]

Love these types of games.. chapeau dev, goodluck!

 

[bansdebar]

Wish you all the best, this is absolutely my cup a tea. Seems you are also willing to integrate gay/bi stuff which I think is very rare in this genre.

I am absolutely rooting for you and if you need some advice or whatever I would be willing to lend you an ear.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

clockwork_horologist, may I request for a bigger font for the menus?
I can read the font on the right panel just right, but in the journal, or in workers panels, etc... it's so small, not only I have a really hard time reading it, my screen can't even display some of it correctly.

Very interesting feedback, I had not thought about that issue. I will see how to solve the issue without hurting the aesthetics too much, or go for "just a bit larger". Hopefully I can make it better

Thank you for the feedback

 

[clockwork_horologist]

Wish you all the best, this is absolutely my cup a tea. Seems you are also willing to integrate gay/bi stuff which I think is very rare in this genre.

I am absolutely rooting for you and if you need some advice or whatever I would be willing to lend you an ear.

Any help is welcome, this always aimed to be a community effort, it should be free and crowd sourced as whoremaster was Come to discord, we can chat.

My girlfriend gave me the idea to include that content and I will keep adding it or she will stop playing, lol, hope that the images are pleasing for whomever has those tastes, I made an effort and feel proud about it

 

[Evilfish82]

Very nice game. Love the art especially. The UI is a bit annoying when you get too many servants, but all in all, very good game. Looking forward to it. One thing I'd like is to see a gay toggle for those of us who aren't into that.

Also how do you get the goblin girl? I saw a picture of her here.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

Very nice game. Love the art especially. The UI is a bit annoying when you get too many servants, but all in all, very good game. Looking forward to it. One thing I'd like is to see a gay toggle for those of us who aren't into that.

Also how do you get the goblin girl? I saw a picture of her here.

Thank you very much for the feedback.

You won't get any gay art as long as you don't put a male worker in a prostitute job. So the toggle is immersively weaved into the game. If you think you might misclick, you can delete the images from the folders, but I do not think that is necessary. The game has many SFW professions who might put those non-nude males to use. Or you can leave them at the market

Goblin girl must be captured through the monster taming profession in the Adventurer's guild. It's an example of how future monster workers will be obtained

 

[Evilfish82]

Actually I like the art with the dude serving female clients. So I wanna keep him a manwhore, but it's fine. It's not a big deal.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

Actually I like the art with the dude serving female clients. So I wanna keep him a manwhore, but it's fine. It's not a big deal.

I get your point now... I'll see if there is something quick I can do and maybe include it in future updates!

 

[senaris]

It’s hard to assign the best workers/servants to the most suitable jobs in each building. You have to click each worker individually just to check their energy level, and the same goes for assigning them. You need to click through everyone one by one to figure out who fits best.

It has some Brothel King inspiration. But even though the version number is v0.9.2.3, which might make you think it’s close to release (v1 would be the actual release), it still feels like a prototype for now.

Overall, I like management/simulator games, and the premise of this one is good, but in my opinion it’s still far from playable due to how confusing and frustrating it is.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

It’s hard to assign the best workers/servants to the most suitable jobs in each building. You have to click each worker individually just to check their energy level, and the same goes for assigning them. You need to click through everyone one by one to figure out who fits best.

It has some Brothel King inspiration. But even though the version number is v0.9.2.3, which might make you think it’s close to release (v1 would be the actual release), it still feels like a prototype for now.

Overall, I like management/simulator games, and the premise of this one is good, but in my opinion it’s still far from playable due to how confusing and frustrating it is.

Thank you for trying it out.
I do not feel like this is a prototype, and hopefully I can help clarify some things:

You can watch the current energy status of all workers in a building in the manage buildings screen.
You can see the average skill the worker has for the profession in the profession selection menu.
The inspiration is Whoremaster, and I have tried to improve that UI, and clarify it.

If you have any feedback on how to make things clearer, or design ideas, feel free to share them!

 

[senaris]

Thank you for trying it out.
I do not feel like this is a prototype, and hopefully I can help clarify some things:

You can watch the current energy status of all workers in a building in the manage buildings screen.
You can see the average skill the worker has for the profession in the profession selection menu.
The inspiration is Whoremaster, and I have tried to improve that UI, and clarify it.

If you have any feedback on how to make things clearer, or design ideas, feel free to share them!

That's correct., but only because you told me to look here.



It will be more user-friendly if you actually had the energy stats directly in the workers panel





"You can see the worker’s average skill for a profession in the profession selection menu."

Yes, as I said initially: “You have to click each worker individually just to check their energy level, and the same goes for assigning them.” The profession part is still a UI problem. I still need to click each worker individually to see who is the best fit for Bartender, for example.

So if I have Worker 1 and Worker 2, and Worker 1 has an average skill of 43/100 while Worker 2 has 50/100, I will obviously prefer Worker 2. But to figure that out, I have to browse through the entire worker list manually to find the best fit.

That’s not a big issue when you only have two workers, but the hard limit for bartenders is 99, and for entertainers it’s 3. Imagine managing that, especially when you also have multiple buildings.
TL;DR: at a macro level (late game / endgame), managing this will become a nightmare.

I mentioned Brothel King because I’ve wasted a few hours on it, and it uses the same game engine. Its UI helps you quickly understand which worker is the best fit for each profession. But Brothel King is a pure “brothel manager” and that’s it. Your game is more like a tavern/restaurant/brothel/casino/guild manager, and each worker has traits and different stats that make them better for different roles.

I highly suggest making the management side more intuitive first, and focusing on the NSFW content later. I know this is an NSFW website and the main theme is adult content, but games like these must be solid on the mechanics part first. While other game genres which are more "mainstream" focus on right-handed control first.

Games which i can suggest you to explore in getting more inspiration about what i'm saying: Brothel King (what lady can use what kind of "service" for guys), Porn Empire (what lady can do the best job, photoshooting, nightclub etc.), Shady Deals (a html game which if you ignore the porn part it's a gang management where you can understand which punk can do it's best job where)

 

[lnomsim]

Very interesting feedback, I had not thought about that issue. I will see how to solve the issue without hurting the aesthetics too much, or go for "just a bit larger". Hopefully I can make it better

Thank you for the feedback

Yeah, I think a bit larger should be anough, if the menus font could be the around the same size as the dialogue font, it would be perfect.
Outside of the shop, I don't think it would hurt the aesthetic too much, there is plenty of space to fit all the text.

Speaking of the shop, black font on black/grey background, doesn't help with the reading.

Finally, feedbacks:
-I don't know if it's because I'm still recruiting workers, but the end of the day doesn't give a ledger with expenditures (salary, upkeep, etc...)
-Some interactions require certain player skill, how do we know if we have those?
-Could we have an option to recruit male/female only? (preventing the game to generate the other gender)
-Energy and inventory management:
I reached the step where I need to buy and use energy potion. Currently it's very tiedous:
-Worker=>inventory=>click potion once=>click transfer to right=>close window=>choose another worker=>rinse and repeat
-We can't see the emplyee energy on the inventory screen, or we can't give them the potion on the employee management screen
-Suggestions: put a next/previous employee button on the inventory management screen, put a "use energy potion" on the employee management screen

I just noticed we can't see the employee energy unless we are on the employee or the building card. Making the energy apparent on the employee management menu would be nice too. If it takes 5minutes to manage the enrgy of only 3 employees, I can't even begin to imagine the nightmare it will become later on.
This will save a lot of clicks and navigating through menus.

Also, when clicking storage on the building menu, it only opens interaction with the first employee.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

Based on your feedback, I've been working...



v.0.9.3

--- Increased the amount of save slots
--- Increased save robustness (hopefully)
--- Improved the behavior to ensure transitions can be skipped
--- Fixed a bug that blocked quest progression by "locking" the Obsidian blade.
--- Added a higher chance for the Obsidian blade on Boss battle.
--- Added a display of your name / gender in the money & date menu
--- Fixed a bug where managers would neutralize important / quest events
--- Changed skill progression to be faster
--- Changed starting money to 8000
--- Edited Prostitute job to use "Extreme" in some instances
--- Reworked Monster Tamer job to use both Combat and Extreme
--- Increased general font size for smaller fonts
--- Added a toggle to increase Font Size (it is not perfect, sorry)
--- Fixed interactions with no cost not working with negative money
--- Fixed players unable to open shops from the map after they were unlocked
--- Modified the UI to display more information in Manage workers
--- Added a filter for jobs in Manage workers
--- Modified the UI to display level, average & best skill in Manage Buildings
--- Added a filter for jobs in daily report
--- Added data on the skill value of the worker in daily report & report details
--- Corrected the maximum amount of Bartenders from 99 to 8 in line with other jobs

You can download it at

You must be registered to see the links

, I will also ask for this thread's update.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

Yeah, I think a bit larger should be anough, if the menus font could be the around the same size as the dialogue font, it would be perfect.
Outside of the shop, I don't think it would hurt the aesthetic too much, there is plenty of space to fit all the text.

Speaking of the shop, black font on black/grey background, doesn't help with the reading.

Finally, feedbacks:
-I don't know if it's because I'm still recruiting workers, but the end of the day doesn't give a ledger with expenditures (salary, upkeep, etc...)
-Some interactions require certain player skill, how do we know if we have those?
-Could we have an option to recruit male/female only? (preventing the game to generate the other gender)
-Energy and inventory management:
I reached the step where I need to buy and use energy potion. Currently it's very tiedous:
-Worker=>inventory=>click potion once=>click transfer to right=>close window=>choose another worker=>rinse and repeat
-We can't see the emplyee energy on the inventory screen, or we can't give them the potion on the employee management screen
-Suggestions: put a next/previous employee button on the inventory management screen, put a "use energy potion" on the employee management screen

I just noticed we can't see the employee energy unless we are on the employee or the building card. Making the energy apparent on the employee management menu would be nice too. If it takes 5minutes to manage the enrgy of only 3 employees, I can't even begin to imagine the nightmare it will become later on.
This will save a lot of clicks and navigating through menus.

Also, when clicking storage on the building menu, it only opens interaction with the first employee.

I have read your post after publishing the update, but I will take it into account for the next one.
I'm not sure which interactions your refer to, but the player has no skills at the moment. Let me know in discord or dm if you want to investigate further.

The option exists, you can very easily edit out the male workers from the json text files. I will probably add some options in the future, but is not a priority. I did make a special mod for someone who only wanted to see lesbian sex, make requests in discord, but it's more about "mods" than official options for now. If you let me know what you want and come to discord, I'll make something for your taste as a thank you for testing.

You should never give energy potions to all your workers like that. A manager will put all workers to rest so they recover, and they will go back to work automatically after that. If you want to micro-manage to squeeze potential, you might end up finding a lot of clicking, but it's really not necessary.

The energy is now visible on the employee management menu. But again, managing energy is pretty automatic with 1 manager

I have to make this more visible, but if you click on the name of the worker, it will open a list where you can select other workers. I will improve this.

Thanks for playing, and thanks for the feedback!

 

[sappho]

I haven't tried the very latest version much yet or experimented with combat so bearing that in mind:

The management system is good, well fleshed out, not overly complex or convoluted so the basic gameplay loop is solid so far. But there are a few things:

It isn't a dealbreaker but as a previous posters mentioned it does feel a little unnecessarily convoluted to give workers items.
My last save under the previous version somehow didnt track progress, the time was right but i had gone from objective nine (I think, the governor quest) back to objective three.
I currently have one worker and two servants using the same art set which is not ideal
In the previous version I did run out of servants to buy

Some things I'd like to see:
Give the PC more involvement with the gameplay loop, either by taking jobs her/himself or having special events for the PC only
Individual worker events as well as brothel wide events to add more variety. Giving the option to earn a little extra gold or skill up at the cost of losing health or energy with perhaps a failure state making the consequences worse.
More random events while walking around town, add relationship bonuses to the current events where you encounter your workers (if this is already implemented i haven't seen any notification of such as it happens).
I don't know the tone you want to maintain for the game but adding more tension with the governor thing by having girls or the PC potentially attacked when they are out or attacks on buildings at night. Raise the stakes a bit
Town NPCs that offer their own quests, perhaps some that gatekeep optional upgrades to certain buildings to give the town itself some more relevance to the gameplay loop beyond being the place that has the buildings etc.

I have no idea how plausible any of these are to add.

The only downside so far, and I have read the statement on AI use so I am NOT making this as a complaint is the AI art. The gameplay is fun but the reward is mediocre AI art that just doesn't have any appeal to me personally. With better at this game would already be absolutely outstanding in my opinion, as it is for me it is just excellent. Which is not bad, obviously. If I have time I might even make a worker with a 3D art package myself.

tldr: Excellent start, excited to see how it develops.

 

[clockwork_horologist]

I haven't tried the very latest version much yet or experimented with combat so bearing that in mind:

The management system is good, well fleshed out, not overly complex or convoluted so the basic gameplay loop is solid so far. But there are a few things:

It isn't a dealbreaker but as a previous posters mentioned it does feel a little unnecessarily convoluted to give workers items.
My last save under the previous version somehow didnt track progress, the time was right but i had gone from objective nine (I think, the governor quest) back to objective three.
I currently have one worker and two servants using the same art set which is not ideal
In the previous version I did run out of servants to buy

Some things I'd like to see:
Give the PC more involvement with the gameplay loop, either by taking jobs her/himself or having special events for the PC only
Individual worker events as well as brothel wide events to add more variety. Giving the option to earn a little extra gold or skill up at the cost of losing health or energy with perhaps a failure state making the consequences worse.
More random events while walking around town, add relationship bonuses to the current events where you encounter your workers (if this is already implemented i haven't seen any notification of such as it happens).
I don't know the tone you want to maintain for the game but adding more tension with the governor thing by having girls or the PC potentially attacked when they are out or attacks on buildings at night. Raise the stakes a bit
Town NPCs that offer their own quests, perhaps some that gatekeep optional upgrades to certain buildings to give the town itself some more relevance to the gameplay loop beyond being the place that has the buildings etc.

I have no idea how plausible any of these are to add.

The only downside so far, and I have read the statement on AI use so I am NOT making this as a complaint is the AI art. The gameplay is fun but the reward is mediocre AI art that just doesn't have any appeal to me personally. With better at this game would already be absolutely outstanding in my opinion, as it is for me it is just excellent. Which is not bad, obviously. If I have time I might even make a worker with a 3D art package myself.

tldr: Excellent start, excited to see how it develops.

Thanks a lot for the feedback and the ideas.
I have two ideas to improve item management, let's see how they work.
When you run out of servants to buy, the game will create new one, the game is hard-coded to create procedural workers.
I tested that part yesterday and it worked... I will check again if more reports on that come up.

I like a lot your ideas on the story, random events, etc
The take a walk action does increase your relationship / obedience... stat with a worker. I will add more events to the map.
Random event variety is bound to increase, I will do more events, but hopefully people will take a look at the devkit and create their own...

Adding more tension with the governor is a great idea, I was going to "stretch" the quest, but I think it would be interesting to make something like being attacked... I don't know how possible it is, but we'll find out.

As much effort as I put in the AI images, those are placeholders. For my own playthroughs, I use collected fanart packs from artists that I keep since WM, so I completely get you, and making your own images for your own taste is at least... half my fun. I do see how more variety to avoid repetition would be great, but the priority is the "system being able to receive community contributions".

Thanks a lot again