QSP Jack-o-Nine-Tails [v2.3] [ImperatorAugustusTertius / qwertyu12359]

[jkysler]

Is there a walkthrough or guide someone can link me? I've just started playing this game and it intrigues me a great deal. I've done about 2 guild slave contracts (D rank) and found some useful information in the release notes, like finding Isabella, and a general guide on how to get slaves to listen. I however, have not had any luck on finding out how to effectively stop despair/sanity from breaking some slaves. I save scum a bit, but it's a bit tedious to figure out how to train a slave without her sanity sinking too harshly. Can someone help?

 

[qwertyu12359]

Good analogy.

Right now, your reputation increases based on the buyer. Each buyer has a demand, which I'm guessing is meant to represent his/her difficulty, and your reputation exp ("brand_rate") is increased by the buyer's demand / 2

One thing though, this way of doing it kind of calls for another modifier to balance this one out. One that increases with each successful sale that would in turn boost your reputation gains if you keep having successful sales. The positive modifier would increase slower, since trust is harder to earn then it is to lose.

Yaay, let's do that. It sounds realistic

The way I thought of it was like a relational tree. The big house presidents may have a small circle of friends but all of them are more influential then the average Joe, so it's not really that they talk to more people, but they talk to the people that matter. If one of them were to go the guild and say "Jack did an awful job" it would mean a lot more then if one of the residents said it since they have more money. Also, it would be way easier for the information to go to something like a newspaper. It's all about connections.

Also, I don't really see a way for any resident to spread info, except talking, so shops would be like a focal point where every time a resident goes it's very likely that the shop keeper would bring this into discussion if it's hot news, or especially if it's something that's bothering him since people like to rant.

At some point, after enough people know about it, yeah, the residents are more likely to spread it but until then, I think connections have a greater role then the amount of people that one average Joe knows because, even if Joe tells all his friends that Jack fucked up, most of them either don't care, cause they can't buy, and the ones that care, can only spread it around so much until enough people don't care and then it gets lost.

We'd have to seek for socio-psychological studies on Google Scholar to be sure ^^ From experience, I've seen a lot of rumors and myths come from the bottom rather than from the top. Since your experience is opposite, until one of us is motivated to go seek for the scientific data on reputation tarnishment, balancing it out evenly might still be the solution. As an exemple that might work, Electronic Arts's reputation of being a soulless and evil corporation. It comes from 1) average users spamming it everywhere on Youtube and Reddit. 2) Some influencers and critics denouncing the practice. 3) As well as some few governments, like Belgium, banning their microtransactions in reponse to their business model.

Is there a walkthrough or guide someone can link me? I've just started playing this game and it intrigues me a great deal. I've done about 2 guild slave contracts (D rank) and found some useful information in the release notes, like finding Isabella, and a general guide on how to get slaves to listen. I however, have not had any luck on finding out how to effectively stop despair/sanity from breaking some slaves. I save scum a bit, but it's a bit tedious to figure out how to train a slave without her sanity sinking too harshly. Can someone help?

I've updated the wiki main page this years with some recent guides the user posted:

You must be registered to see the links

Most of the other and older information on the wiki should still be accurate. Do not hesitate to come back here if you have any other questions despite reading all of this data.

 

[jkysler]

I've updated the wiki main page this years with some recent guides the user posted:

You must be registered to see the links

Most of the other and older information on the wiki should still be accurate. Do not hesitate to come back here if you have any other questions despite reading all of this data.

Thanks a bunch! I appreciate the help!

 

[Lokplart]

We'd have to seek for socio-psychological studies on Google Scholar to be sure ^^ From experience, I've seen a lot of rumors and myths come from the bottom rather than from the top. Since your experience is opposite, until one of us is motivated to go seek for the scientific data on reputation tarnishment, balancing it out evenly might still be the solution. As an exemple that might work, Electronic Arts's reputation of being a soulless and evil corporation. It comes from 1) average users spamming it everywhere on Youtube and Reddit. 2) Some influencers and critics denouncing the practice. 3) As well as some few governments, like Belgium, banning their microtransactions in reponse to their business model.

You are perfectly right, in our society, rumors and myths come from the small guy, but that is because technology allows you to do so and governments (for the most part) have stopped practicing censorship, so everyone can post about their problem right away, it doesn't have to wait until someone with enough influence cares to spread the news. If we take into account the fact that there is no internet, the only way information can spread is by mouth and by newspaper(?). Sure, the Serpentines might have a better method of communication but overall, those would be the main ways of spreading info in the city.

Also the corruption that's present in the city makes it very probable for the guild to cover up most if not all of the complaints coming from small guys, preventing them to spread that much, something they couldn't do with someone like the big house presidents.

To be honest, your reputation should be calculated at the moment of the sale, based mostly on the district you're selling in. You would have a general reputation but that would be the sum of all your district based reputations +/- the importance and difficulty of that district. But that's taking it one step further then I think it's necessary rn.

So yeah.. for now it's probably better to just do this fix for the problem and we can research more and come up with a more complex and realistic system when the whole economy gets reworked.

 

[ordos]

I've updated the wiki main page this years with some recent guides the user posted:

You must be registered to see the links

Cool! Wiki is very important part of such complicated game!

 

[Belcher]

Is there a walkthrough or guide someone can link me? I save scum a bit, but it's a bit tedious to figure out how to train a slave without her sanity sinking too harshly. Can someone help?

There is a wiki.

You must be registered to see the links

Ill walk you through one of mine, but warning I dont go for efficiency, and always end up with a c+ or higher due to how long it takes. There are enough ways to get money now that as long as you have a dungeon or a gladiator assistant You dont need to worry about money.

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Basically dont go hard on them. You dont need to unless youre trying to assembly line them out. I can do that trash start fine without going hard, I just get a bit close. For that its all about picking someone whose weakened from the auction, their price is like a 1/4 of what it should be.

 

[qwertyu12359]

You are perfectly right, in our society, rumors and myths come from the small guy, but that is because technology allows you to do so and governments (for the most part) have stopped practicing censorship, so everyone can post about their problem right away, it doesn't have to wait until someone with enough influence cares to spread the news. If we take into account the fact that there is no internet, the only way information can spread is by mouth and by newspaper(?). Sure, the Serpentines might have a better method of communication but overall, those would be the main ways of spreading info in the city.

Also the corruption that's present in the city makes it very probable for the guild to cover up most if not all of the complaints coming from small guys, preventing them to spread that much, something they couldn't do with someone like the big house presidents.

I found this little article:

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Basically, communications would be done with: - Official speech
- Word of mouth between small people
- Messengers and networks
- Visual communication (like nowadays, wearing an earing on the right ear to make people understand that you're gay)

The article does not mention a hierarchy or a link of cause and effect between these 4. Instinctively, I think there is, but let's wait for a history/sociology major to come on this topic. Or, if you guys know one, please ask him what would be the ratio of influence for someone to tarnish a medieval merchant's reputation between a shop salesman, an important buyer, and an archbishop. Maybe don't mention "slave merchant" unless he's a close friend.

To be honest, your reputation should be calculated at the moment of the sale, based mostly on the district you're selling in. You would have a general reputation but that would be the sum of all your district based reputations +/- the importance and difficulty of that district. But that's taking it one step further then I think it's necessary rn.

I like the ideas that each neighborhoods are closed and rumors don't travel too far (albeit, where would people get the food if not from White Town?). Serpis and The Outcast reputation could go together, since they are connected friends. Same for Taurus+Necropolis.

So yeah.. for now it's probably better to just do this fix for the problem and we can research more and come up with a more complex and realistic system when the whole economy gets reworked.

I agree, the more complex and close to reality, the better.

 

[Pianocat]

I am able to dig up a copy of 1.7.3 from one of my older (2-year-old) portable hard drives.
And I've found an "avatar.psd" file in the "face" folder.

It looks like this in jpg format:
View attachment 486175

I wonder if this was what they used to make the characters' portraits? I know we could photoshop a girl's face onto this as background. For example:


View attachment 486176

and then make it "sepia" via "hue and saturation":

View attachment 486177

This is the best I could do lol

As for the "gray" version, we could just make it "black-and-white", and voila:

View attachment 486182

Nonetheless, it still doesn't look as refined as what the previous versions' portraits look.
For example, this:

View attachment 486179

As you can see... the "sepia" version of the original (the one they considered "better") actually retains the portrait's color while adding a "layer" of bronze-sepia "frame". This is something I don't understand how to do... I wonder if anyone here knows how to do it and, perhaps, teaches us how to do it.

So, five months later... I don't know where you are about it, kyoto_leon, but I was interesting too by updating the avatars of the 2.1, to give them the same flavor than in the original game I spoke with Qwertyu12359 about it, but the big issue was to obtain a nice render with an efficient process 'cause there is a LOT of pic.

I used the .psd file you uploaded and which is in the 1.7.5. With this it's possible to obtain the same render than in the original game (I had to fiddle with it, because there was something wrong with this .psd...).
Also, I find a way to automate the process, making it veeeeeeery quick to update a whole bunch of pics, using the marvelous ImageMagick.

There is a drawback using ImageMagick : some layers can't be included into the process. So the rendered pics are a bit below the original ones. I think it's a little price to pay, giving it will be something like 100x faster to upgrade the avatars this way. Here are the original pic, and the new one:



So, if people here are happy with this render (don't hesitate to give suggestions !), I could quickly create the new avatars. About the Sepia and B&W versions, it will need a small adjustement, but it should be quite easy to update the pics with the same process.

The question is about the .json files: we will have to update them to. It can be done en masse with notepad++, but Qwertyu told me that you are currently working on them, Lokplart : can I modify them, or are you currently editing them ? If yes, I can just edit the colored avatars, and keep the other versions for later

 

[Lokplart]

So, if people here are happy with this render (don't hesitate to give suggestions !), I could quickly create the new avatars. About the Sepia and B&W versions, it will need a small adjustement, but it should be quite easy to update the pics with the same process.

The question is about the .json files: we will have to update them to. It can be done en masse with notepad++, but Qwertyu told me that you are currently working on them, Lokplart : can I modify them, or are you currently editing them ? If yes, I can just edit the colored avatars, and keep the other versions for later

I'm not editing the slave template .json files. So feel free to to town on those.

In fact, if it's not much to ask, since you know how to edit them all at once, could you please do me a favor and just delete everything related to scenes and positions? (So from "seed_world" down) They won't be needed anymore after the next update. If you do, just make sure the last element (which should be "seed_world") doesn't have a comma at the end of the line.
Shoot me a pm if you decide to do it.

Also, those look pretty good, I think they will fit in well with the U.I. Great job!

 

[Pianocat]

Oh, okay ! So I will make my modification and delete all these lines in the same time: I will pm you with an exemple to be sure of what you want.

And thanks ! The portraits are so good in themselves, its nice to add this little touch^^ Btw, here are the normal, B&W and the Sepia versions:





Do not hesitate to tell me if you want something different, as you will see those portraits quite a lot^^'

 

[Lokplart]

Oh, okay ! So I will make my modification and delete all these lines in the same time: I will pm you with an exemple to be sure of what you want.

And thanks ! The portraits are so good in themselves, its nice to add this little touch^^ Btw, here are the normal, B&W and the Sepia versions:

View attachment 657755
View attachment 657777
View attachment 657754

Do not hesitate to tell me if you want something different, as you will see those portraits quite a lot^^'

They all look great, I have just one question though: There are three categories of avatars in the .json file (normal, grey and clear) in which one of these does the sepia one go?

Also, thanks a lot for taking care of the positions and scenes!

 

[ordos]

I just found out, that my big post from page 17 about Fugitive-Red`s Mod 1.8 was deleted.
Here is quotation on my post - the only left evidence it was existed:
https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...mmunity-developpment.390/page-18#post-1602999

Does anyone knows the story? What was wrong with that post?

 

[qwertyu12359]

Oh, okay ! So I will make my modification and delete all these lines in the same time: I will pm you with an exemple to be sure of what you want.

And thanks ! The portraits are so good in themselves, its nice to add this little touch^^ Btw, here are the normal, B&W and the Sepia versions:

View attachment 657755
View attachment 657777
View attachment 657754

Do not hesitate to tell me if you want something different, as you will see those portraits quite a lot^^'

- Normal looks perfect

- Sepia is oversaturated like crazy, and it's like the whites are almost clipping too (checked on two different screens, IPS and OLED, both with perfect calibration). I made an alternative to serve you as a reference; I just turned the original image Sepia with PaintDotNet and put the saturation to 115. I've also only selected the portrait part and left the frame out of the edit:

For B&W, it's better. There's sort of a grey veil on the bottom right that kinda bothers me, but I can't do it better (my black and whites attempts don't convey an: "okay, she's dead" feeling). About the frame, I don't know if it's better in B&W or with colors... I also don't remember how it looked back in 1.7.5. So I made an attempt, out of caution. What do you guys think?

They all look great, I have just one question though: There are three categories of avatars in the .json file (normal, grey and clear) in which one of these does the sepia one go?

Here's an exemple of how it used to be:

"seed_ava": "content/pic/girls/face/044_sepia",
"seed_ava_gray": "content/pic/girls/face/044_gray",
"seed_ava_clear": "content/pic/girls/face/044",

I just found out, that my big post from page 17 about Fugitive-Red`s Mod 1.8 was deleted.
Here is quotation on my post - the only left evidence it was existed:
https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...mmunity-developpment.390/page-18#post-1602999

Does anyone knows the story? What was wrong with that post?

Remember, the mods went into full "loli cleaning" mode, and they cleaned false positives. For exemple, 1.8 patch download links, even though there was no loli content in it.
--------------------------------

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[Pianocat]

- Normal looks perfect

- Sepia is oversaturated like crazy, and it's like the whites are almost clipping too (checked on two different screens, IPS and OLED, both with perfect calibration). I made an alternative to serve you as a reference; I just turned the original image Sepia with PaintDotNet and put the saturation to 115. I've also only selected the portrait part and left the frame out of the edit: View attachment 658130

Indeed, oversatured it is ! I really need to stop making this work on a bad screen
Your sepia is absolutely perfect. The issue is that PaintdotNet don't allow to work with batch, I think...
I will try to includ a desaturation command line in ImageMagick, and I come back with (I hope) a better result.

For B&W, it's better. There's sort of a grey veil on the bottom right that kinda bothers me, but I can't do it better (my black and whites attempts don't convey an: "okay, she's dead" feeling). About the frame, I don't know if it's better in B&W or with colors... I also don't remember how it looked back in 1.7.5. So I made an attempt, out of caution. What do you guys think?

The "grey veil" is from a layer, I can delete it About the border... from an "art" point of view I agree with you, the pic is nicier like that. But from a gameplay pov, I think we feel more the "she's dead" thing with a black border... I will try with increasing the contrast on the border.

There are three categories of avatars in the .json file (normal, grey and clear) in which one of these does the sepia one go?

Like Qwertyu said, the sepia tone goes with the first line: weirdly enough, there is no line called "seed_ava_sepia" in the .json...

 

[qwertyu12359]

Indeed, oversatured it is ! I really need to stop making this work on a bad screen
Your sepia is absolutely perfect. The issue is that PaintdotNet don't allow to work with batch, I think...
I will try to includ a desaturation command line in ImageMagick, and I come back with (I hope) a better result.

The image lost too many details with the way the blacks and the whites were leveled (probably cranked up contrast); de-saturation wouldn't resolve the problem entirely. Here's how it looks de-saturated (-65%):

look at her hair on the bottom left, there were a lot details: .

But now it's pitch black. Can't ImageMagick make an image-accurate Sepia?

The "grey veil" is from a layer, I can delete it

Can you keep it but increase the diameter, so it doesn't veil her earring but still conveys the "dead" mood.

About the border... from an "art" point of view I agree with you, the pic is nicier like that. But from a gameplay pov, I think we feel more the "she's dead" thing with a black border...

I agree

I will try with increasing the contrast on the border.

Please be careful with that ^^

Like Qwertyu said, the sepia tone goes with the first line: weirdly enough, there is no line called "seed_ava_sepia" in the .json...

We could totally change that by the way. It just needs a change of all occurence of the term in the qsp and json files. But I don't think it's necessary.
--------------
By the way, it's been long since we haven't seen you here i107760. I remember you were worried about your dad's health, is everything okay?

 

[Pianocat]

So, about the sepia, the contrast was to high mainly because I was applying the effect on the final pic. If I apply the filter, then "mounting" the picture with background and frame/effects, I gain more details in the darker areas (hair strands are more visible):

It's not as good as yours, there is a bit more contrast here, but could it be a good middle ground ? (to answer your question the default sepia with Imagemagick is terrible^^') Tell me, I can still look to further improve it by trying to reduce the contrast, I think.

About the black and white, here are three new proposals, with more contrasted borders (I have been careful haha):
- this one with some color (background and a slightly blue veil, which is present on all the pics, but grey in the two others):


- this one all b&w with the bottom right veil still there:


- this one all b&w without the bottom right veil:

We could totally change that by the way. It just needs a change of all occurence of the term in the qsp and json files. But I don't think it's necessary.

Yeah, I thought about it, but I'm not sure it really worth this work (even if it's not a big thing^^)

 

[qwertyu12359]

So, about the sepia, the contrast was to high mainly because I was applying the effect on the final pic. If I apply the filter, then "mounting" the picture with background and frame/effects, I gain more details in the darker areas (hair strands are more visible):
View attachment 658256

You know what? I'm going to do it manually. It'll require me a few weeks and a lot of patience ( ) but I feel like the game deserves lossless quality. I'll just need you to hand me over an archive with all of the faces in frames

About the B&W, I think they looked much more "natural" on your other post

 

[Pianocat]

Yep, it was more "bland", and just a b&w filter. The best is the enemy of the good so I will keep it this way

About the sepia it will really take you a lot of time... knowing you are very active on this project it's a shame that you "loss" your time on something which can be done automatically :/
But I will send you the pics as you request, and at the same time make some more test to try to achieve something similar to the "manual" result. One hour of testing can save days of laborious work...

 

[Xhak]

another really good game concept ruined by 3edgy5u developer who hates his players, plus huntsman has serious guro fetish. disgusting.

 

[qwertyu12359]

another really good game concept ruined by 3edgy5u developer who hates his players.

You have to be masochist to play this game. But this game puts you in the boots of a sadist.

But really, just git gud. The game is a niche concept making no compromise to deliver an experience that still gathered some passionate people around it 6 years later.

dark and edgy games appeals to people who idealize suffering, harder to relate to if you know actual suffering because game developers always getting little details wrong.

That interests me. I'd like to improve the game in order to make an ideal execution of Old Huntsman promising concept. Maybe work with us and give us your insight; I swear this is not rhetoric, I really would like it.

example is slaves dying from housework and cooking. even without electricity cooking on fire and beating laundry on rocks housework won't kill anyone who isn't already very sick.

Dunno, that seems counter intuitive. Dying from exhaustion always appeared to be a tangible concept:

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bad, horrible, stupid way to fake difficulty

I don't see artificial difficulty in this game. It's ridiculously easy to get obeyed. And ridiculously easy to get filthy rich, compared to real life or even a credible fantasy world. If anything, the difficulty should be "improved" as a result of making the gameplay more like a simulation, but certainly not lowered. Unless you have specific examples of bullshit difficulty (there has to be some, for sure).

game developer huge fetish for guro and cannibalism, stupid fetishes anyway, but stupider in game where pregnancy is impossible because church takes kids for "reasons".

You're not allowed to let your personal fetish tastes influence your critique and rating of your review (as per the rules of F95), because fetish tastes are subjective and arbitrary. We discussed of the pregnancy content in the last pages; the "fog" in the game make every fetus die, but the Vatican has a way to make them live (also for political reasons that piss of the Serpentine President, which he tells you personally). There's plan to add pregnancy content to the game, so you'll be happy.

humans grow slow, maybe 15-16 years to good eating size. enormous investment of resources, human brain takes 30% of metabolism. very inefficient. is resources so scarce, would not have them to feed so much. if resources abundant, no need for cannibalism. inconsistent writing, bad design!

You're not taking into account that there are no animals in Eternal Rome, only monsters. Even cheese is made of pregnant lady milk. That a newly created society with little eatable resources and that misses the taste of meat are ready to eat slave flesh so inconceivable?

once player figures out idiotic "formula" that actually works (but is 100% wrong psychology, physiology, and economics) game is pushover. bad in two ways at once, shameful!

"100% wrong psychology, physiology, and economics" -- Well, no one is a psychology/biology/economics major amongst people on that thread. We can still read papers on Google Scholar our inform ourselves on the current scientific concensus then apply it to Jack-o-nine-tails! If you'd kindly give us arguments with sources, we promise to eventually turn this "1 star worth game" into a "5 stars one".

in short, game is very good game trapped inside very bad game. maybe modders can fix, but needs to rethink basic world construction at least enough to make self consistent.

Well, we wouldn't be modders if we didn't think this game was awesome to begin with. But it has indeed many flaws (from the top of my head: places like the slums with no real usefulness, shitty combat system, unbalanced slave specializations, etc.).

Your critique is welcomed, but I think your rating is exaggerated and your arguments could be developed; we're planning to make the game objectively better, not adapt it to your taste. Removing cannibalism won't make the game objectively better, for example. Improving the psychology (I do think it's pretty good for now)/physiology (nothing wrong that caught my attention either)/economics (mediocre, if not terrible for now indeed) will make the game better for sure.

I invite you to remove your rating and put it in standby (and just write your critique on the thread, without penalizing the global rating) because it's a motivation bummer. A bad rating will discourage new people from trying, and working for a small niche is alright, but having at least a lot of people try our work is an incentive to put effort and time into the game. And again, I invite you to stay here and give us your insight.