Others The Ultimate Stripper Club [v1.0.4] [everglow]

[everglow]

On a completely separate note (and I hate to post completely contrary to what is clearly an intentional design decision, but in this case I am going to anyway), I think the game would be better if the girls' data was less specific.

[...]

The concept of noobs and pre-trained both existing in the world is okay. But I do feel like this should not be hard-coded into each person. My personal preference would be for the girlpack to supply the images/videos but if there are going to be noobs and pros then the game randomly generates those stats and assigns them to the girls so a new game has me hiring a different set early.

Just a clarification: it is not hard-coded.

TUSC 1.0 does quite a lot of things over VC girlpacks, where the only think that effectively works as "hard-coded" is the salary. Why is that? because there was no 1:1 translation with VC, where the girls price is paid once, while TUSC need salaries. So to compute salaries from VC girls popularity is used. But it's one of the few things hard-coded in the girlpack (and you actually can even change it editing a line in the JSON).

The character of the girls is computed per game. So every time you start a new game TUSC will:

- *randomise* work proficiency
- *randomise* favorabilities
- *randomise* experience
- unlocks certain performances based on the previous points

Then the upper ones will be used by the schedulers to distribute girls in the city and the club locations.
The scheduler also takes into account the salary of the girl, so everything put together it should balance everything. If not, we'll improve it.

But there's no salary:experience correlation in TUSC.

 

[redle]

Yes, as I said in several posts I'm considering making one [starter pack]

Believe me, I understand. I do not really have any problem with what is currently required for download and install to run the game. My primary greviance (it is minor, but was still a frustration) is that I felt mislead. I see a game thread; it catches enough interest that I decide to look at it; I glance over the summary/description/topics of the game; if I'm still potentially interested I check the file size of what I need to download; then I decide if my interest exceeds the download. If we get to this point I download and try it (I'll admit at this point I was incredibly shocked to see how small the download file actually was for a real-porn tagged game).

Doing the above and then getting a greyed out button to actually begin the game is very frustrating. Then to find out that the couple-hundred MB download was masking a multi-GB download requirement just to try it added more frustration.

The information is there. I could have dug deeper. It is certainly at least partially my fault. But the OP could be presented differently such that the bits that frustrated me would have been more obvious sooner. If I knew it was a multi-GB download to begin with and that I needed to do quite a few downloads rather than just one right from the start I may or may not have decided to try the game, but I would not have ever been frustrated.

I understand your point. The issue with this approach is that it might be quite complicated predicting the actual value of the reserve. As Disgruntler well explained about how girls pay-off work:



so the way to implement a reserve, would be for me to decide regardless of the player strategy, upgrades, girls and dispositions which girls should be working next night and how many of them.
Which is feasible, sure, but at the same time it create a risk to compromise game play for some players.

So let's say that I consider this, but I need to find a super clean way to implement it, if any.

Don't know how some of the code is implemented. For me in my play basically every girl worked every night (unless they became mentally unwilling). I would have wanted a reserve simply set at the 'sum(girls.salary)', but even something super generic like 4k reserve no matter when/where one is in the game would be an improvement. And if you are considering the "expert" players you can add edits to the UI such that a player can disable the reserve entirely or adjust the dollar amount to something of their choosing. It is something enabled by default and a safety measure.

But as I said, the alternative is simply to have no reserve, and do not pay early. Delete the code that verifies a player has enough cash and decides who can work. Anyone can work no matter how much cash the player has. But if at the end of the night a worker can not be paid it is game over.

Currently the game-over never actually tells the player that they just lost/game just ended. They are allowed to keep playing, but essentially are locked out of the business permanently without any indication. This is a problem. Also, the game-over happens by them hitting "buy x". They are allowed to buy the item and instantly they have lost. This too is problematic. If buying an item is going to end their game, they should not be allowed to press that button.

Yeah, VC has (or had?) some fillers, but I really dislike the concept, and here is why.
The main theme about a filler is that it should be totally generic, so for example shouldn't contain faces, otherwise you get a video of another girl when supposed to get the one you're playing with.
But there's more: what about body parts? Maybe you have a tiny girl with small-sized tits and I put big ones in my filler. Maybe the girl is black or asian, and my filler is made with a caucasian girl. That's a very poor experience under my point of view.

I understand all of this. Random images of a person can be off-putting. But take the massage for example... I was not able to do it since none of my people can, so I am just guessing. My assumption is that calling a girl to the massage area and giving her a massage is a way for the player to increase her mood so that she can work for the night. Saying, you can not increase this person's mood and therefore she can not work because she has no video of being massaged is game-breaking. Even if the filler is like the gym training where it shows no video at all, but just shows the girl's body portrait, this would be perfectly acceptable. The idea though is that the functionality and features of the game should work regardless of how well or poorly put together the 3rd-party image packs are.

 

[dooka58]

The idea for filler content, even if it's just still images for now, might be a good idea, as an optional feature to enable all gameplay content regardless of missing videos. However, given that the game doesn't give much direction, some new players might assume the generic videos are all the game has to offer and mistake it for its intended implementation, which is very different. I think this is an easily misunderstood key feature: the ability for players to put whoever you want into the game ourselves. If someone has the link to the TUSC girlpack torrent mentioned, that might be helpful, but depending on how large it is, it might be more off-putting than only including the base game. In any case, Redle does have a good point about it limiting the gameplay significantly.

I do agree that the issue of 'game over' scenarios should be more explicit. As it stands now, I don't think the game even tells you if you're in a unwinnable state, so a simple message would work. A few more messages about the budget as you approach below the lowest wage needed would alleviate some issues as well.

In fact, I think the info for the stats and training could be explained better as well. For example, the relationship between Lewdness, Boldness, and Obedience and the training options, nor which level is unlocked is clear. There seems to be some progression, but we don't know its path or impact. I'm guessing Favorability is involved, but I don't know. A few more messages indicating what changes are accomplished by each potential training and also providing the results after each session would be helpful.

Like I was saying earlier, the hiring process is more opaque and I'm not sure of the level of stats, so it seems more random and less strategic. Since the price is only tied to Popularity, we can end up with very expensive employees who refuse to work most jobs or are very inexperienced, and there doesn't seem to be enough info given so players can make informed choices. Some of this can be helped by just adding more explanations of each stat to their tooltip info box.

As for disabling VC girlpack compatibility, this is a terrible idea. The only reason I played this game is because there's a wide selection of packs already available from when I played VC. The huge selection is one of the key features, imo, providing for endless user content and customization. Pack creators are only likely to make one or the other and not duplicates for both, so the interoperability is a great feature, imo. However, yes, it could be stated more clearly the pack differences when someone is looking to use them.

 

[redle]

Just a clarification: it is not hard-coded.

TUSC 1.0 does quite a lot of things over VC girlpacks, where the only think that effectively works as "hard-coded" is the salary. Why is that? because there was no 1:1 translation with VC, where the girls price is paid once, while TUSC need salaries. So to compute salaries from VC girls popularity is used. But it's one of the few things hard-coded in the girlpack (and you actually can even change it editing a line in the JSON).

The character of the girls is computed per game. So every time you start a new game TUSC will:

- *randomise* work proficiency
- *randomise* favorabilities
- *randomise* experience
- unlocks certain performances based on the previous points

Then the upper ones will be used by the schedulers to distribute girls in the city and the club locations.
The scheduler also takes into account the salary of the girl, so everything put together it should balance everything. If not, we'll improve it.

But there's no salary:experience correlation in TUSC.

Okay, so how much training a girl does or does not need is random per game. That's nice.

That said, the salary is the primary issue. Granted I have played very little and not done much testing. But my little experience leads me to believe that the entire key to the game is "hire people for 100g." Anything else is folly. The result of which is, hire only girl packs whose salary is hard-coded at the minimum level. If one has enough 100g people and is making enough profit, only then can some expensive people be added. The popularity value in the pack therefore predetermines which girls' I can hire early and therefore whom I'm going to see more often.

The skills determine how much a player must interact with a girl if one is to fully upgrade them (although from what I've seen, upgrading or not seems irrelevant to success).

For certain I can manually edit any of the data myself. I can change values to anything of my own creation. Or I could create or run scripts to randomize or edit them in any way. I don't believe I should need to do this however. I believe it should exist within the game proper. (This doesn't mean my opinion is what others want. It is my opinion and others are free to agree or disagree. I just dislike the idea that the same image packs are hard to reach and rarely viewed in every playthrough.)

 

[redle]

everglow sorry for the flood of posts. A lot of my rambling is food-for-thought. By no means think you need to reply to and address every comment and point I make. If you want to respond to something specific or discuss an idea, by all means feel free.

A lot of it is personal opinion. Build what you feel you want to build and don't feel the need to justify or explain your choices. Once again, happy to discuss if there's a value in it, but I'm fully aware of "that's already on my list for the future," "thanks for the idea, I'll ponder it," or "no, I prefer something else," or "that's too much effort for the value." I get it. I don't need coddling

Use if it is useful. Ask if you have questions. Ignore if it is not what you want.

 

[grahegri]

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[Disgruntler]

Regarding randomized popularity generator:

I've kitbashed something together in Java, and I'm testing it now.

 

[dooka58]

Okay, so how much training a girl does or does not need is random per game. That's nice.

This sounds like a good idea to increase replayability, but depending on how it's implemented, you can see how the difference in price and revenue, if they are not carefully matched, can lead to issues. Having objectively better or worse randomized hiring choices isn't an problem in of itself, but we should be given clear indication of important stats and how to make informed choices when hiring.

The popularity value in the pack therefore predetermines which girls' I can hire early and therefore whom I'm going to see more often.
For certain I can manually edit any of the data myself. I can change values to anything of my own creation. Or I could create or run scripts to randomize or edit them in any way. I don't believe I should need to do this however.

If you don't have many packs, you can use the VC girlpack editor and lower the Popularity. I have over 60 packs and only a few of them were "hard-coded" to be too high (which was the choice of the original pack creators); it took me no time at all to "fix" them with this editing tool.

Personally, I don't see an issue with fixed initial stats since the randomized ones are what's causing me issues. That said, I can understand your issue with some prices always being higher than others in the beginning. It goes back to the issue of how price is calculated based only on Popularity. Popularity brings more customers, but I don't think it's a strong indication of how well they perform. In my opinion, this more of an issue of lack of information, leading to uninformed choices.

Regarding randomized popularity generator:
I've kitbashed something together in Java, and I'm testing it now.

I'm not sure if this is actually better than girlpacks with preconfigured (hard-coded) stats, some of which were completely off, but that was rare. Most of the time, they were fine for VC's skills mechanics. Then, we only had to edit the few that were abnormal.

Let me put it this way: Even with Popularity normalized to a default of 0, so the base price for everyone is 200, they'll have wildly varying skills, so certain hires are objectively better than others since you can only train them so much in the beginning before expenses stack up. But if we implement a random base price to USC, it would exacerbate the issue of price vs. revenue, which I think would make the "game over" scenarios even more likely. However, if you want to make it more difficult, then that's your choice cool.

 

[Disgruntler]

Let me put it this way: Even with Popularity normalized to a default of 0, so the base price for everyone is 200, they'll have wildly varying skills, so certain hires are objectively better than others since you can only train them so much in the beginning before expenses stack up. But if we implement a random base price to USC, it would exacerbate the issue of price vs. revenue, which I think would make the "game over" scenarios even more likely. However, if you want to make it more difficult, then that's your choice cool.

Bear in mind that

1) popularity is a value that determines a girl's draw and therefore profitability. Higher pop = more money provided your club has a means to make use of it.

2) the randomization script I'm working on also includes functionality so that a girl's training stats are higher the more popular she is (so she's easier to train), and her proficiencies (I'm uncertain how they affect the game).

The script I have so far guarantees a minimum number of 5 popularity girls, then fills out the rest with varying popularities ranging from 10 to 100. This should create a bit more variation in girls hired in each game.

The only downside is that I don't have it able to parse the JSON yet for age and height data, but that'll come, testing it so far it works perfectly.
Disregard that--it now actually populates age and height properly from the JSON if present.

 

[dooka58]

1) popularity is a value that determines a girl's draw and therefore profitability. Higher pop = more money provided your club has a means to make use of it.

2) the randomization script I'm working on also includes functionality so that a girl's training stats are higher the more popular she is (so she's easier to train), and her proficiencies (I'm uncertain how they affect the game).

Yes, thanks to your guide and our previous discussion, I know that Popularity does indirectly affect revenue, but it's not as strong an indicator as other stats that influence what jobs they are willing to perform and their skills proficiency.

But if you made the other stats and skills scale with popularity, then that is a great solution which directly addresses one of the issues I was talking about. It doesn't help the opaqueness of the stats, but if they are linked, then price should better reflect their skill, so I'm very interested in this script.

I still think a range of 10 to 100 would increase the average wage greatly, leading to more randomized terrible hiring choices, especially for the early-game. But again, this can be easily worked into the gameplay if there were more info text in the menus and some additional tooltips and messages regarding the effects of our options.

 

[redle]

If you don't have many packs, you can use the VC girlpack editor and lower the Popularity. I have over 60 packs and only a few of them were "hard-coded" to be too high (which was the choice of the original pack creators); it took me no time at all to "fix" them with this editing tool.

I mentioned in possibly a different post than the one you responded to. I realize I can edit girls to my hearts content and make it however I want. My point is that in my opinion the game would play better if it varied from game to game who were the expensive people (if the game is going to have cheap and expensive people). I do not want to need to edit files every time I play the game to set it up for a new play. Call me lazy if you want. But my opinion is that it would be a good bult-in feature.

Arguing that in your opinion you think this would be a bad feature is a perfectly valid argument. It could be implemented or not implemented. I am not looking for ways to make do. I'm just giving a suggestion for a future feature.

As for price, from what I can tell price simply makes me fail. A person that costs 10x as much does not bring in 10x the profit. Now from comments others have said, it sounds like a person's popularity increases general club attendance. So it is certainly possible that 1 expensive person causes other non-expensive people to also increase their profits. So maybe (not tested, just adlibbing based on comments I've read) 1 expensive hire for every 9 cheap hires maxes profit or some similar combination.

But from both play and comments it seems that cost and performance already have no link at all. Really though, based on the current gameplay hire cost is the only stat I care about. How skilled they are or are not doesn't seem to make much difference. In a fully fleshed-out game I'd prefer most people to have mostly zeroed-out skills. As I would expect the general game play idea is to train them. Hiring someone already trained means there's nothing much to do with them.

As for expenses ratcheting up, considering a person's cost never changes after they are hired... I hire someone cheap and then train them. I hire someone expensive already trained. Theoretically I now have 2 identical workers hired, but one demands 100g per shift and the other demands 1000g per shift simply because they came pre-trained. I have not seen any scenario so far (granted very limited play) where I earn less than 100g per individual. However most of what I have seen tells me until very late game I have zero chance of ever earning 1000g per individual (not to mention 4000g per individual if I do not know about or put in the work before hiring the person to get their cost down).

All the above said, I really have no idea whether or not popularity of a specific person actually changes at any time during game progression. Maybe that is the point of popularity is that it is a fixed value for all time. Hiring an expensive person is the only way to change the club's popularity. That could potentially legitimize why some people have a basic and continual higher cost than another (although I'd still want it to be different people for different play throughs).

 

[dooka58]

I mentioned in possibly a different post than the one you responded to. I realize I can edit girls to my hearts content and make it however I want. My point is that in my opinion the game would play better if it varied from game to game who were the expensive people (if the game is going to have cheap and expensive people)... But my opinion is that it would be a good bult-in feature.

I actually did respond to that post, but I just didn't quote this section because it's extremely trivial to lower the values. You don't even have to open them up one by one; it's fully in a table in that editing tool. I understand why you would want them randomized, which why I also responded to that section. Again, in my opinion, it's starting from a good idea of replayability, but based on how the game currently works, I'm afraid it'll will be worse than just start off with all low values.

As for price, from what I can tell price simply makes me fail. A person that costs 10x as much does not bring in 10x the profit. Now from comments others have said, it sounds like a person's popularity increases general club attendance.

But from both play and comments it seems that cost and performance already have no link at all. Really though, based on the current gameplay hire cost is the only stat I care about. How skilled they are or are not doesn't seem to make much difference. In a fully fleshed-out game I'd prefer most people to have mostly zeroed-out skills. As I would expect the general game play idea is to train them. Hiring someone already trained means there's nothing much to do with them.

I think we're talking about the exact same thing now, which is why I suggest to lower the Popularity values just once (thereby lowering the hiring cost across the board to a lower level), and then we never have to worry about too drastic of difference in hiring cost again. Still, I think introducing higher random costs without a clear indicator of potential earnings is going to exacerbate the issue. This way, we start from a lower base price, and train up the employees like you want. If we start from a randomly high cost, it'll never make financial sense to hire some girls unless we're flowing with money.

As for expenses ratcheting up, considering a person's cost never changes after they are hired... I hire someone cheap and then train them. I hire someone expensive already trained. Theoretically I now have 2 identical workers hired, but one demands 100g per shift and the other demands 1000g per shift simply because they came pre-trained. I have not seen any scenario so far (granted very limited play) where I earn less than 100g per individual. However most of what I have seen tells me until very late game I have zero chance of ever earning 1000g per individual (not to mention 4000g per individual if I do not know about or put in the work before hiring the person to get their cost down).

See, this is the type of stuff that has us players easily confused. From my understanding, how much they are trained and skilled has no relation to the hiring price at all, which is based solely on Popularity alone. I trained up only 4 girls to mediocre stat levels, and they made over 20k with the bar level 3 upgrade and many product sales. I have no idea which stats affect each job either.

You're onto something about their wages not reflecting their training though time and character progression, which is why grinding relationship beforehand and getting a lower hiring price is so important, since the hiring price becomes the permanent salary/wage. Not knowing what we're getting through the haggling process is kinda frustrating.

All the above said, I really have no idea whether or not popularity of a specific person actually changes at any time during game progression. Maybe that is the point of popularity is that it is a fixed value for all time. Hiring an expensive person is the only way to change the club's popularity. That could potentially legitimize why some people have a basic and continual higher cost than another (although I'd still want it to be different people for different play throughs).

Regarding popularity, it does seem like this stat just disappears once you hired an employee. I think it ends up adding to the overall popularity of the club, like was said, so I'm probably limiting my playthrough by reducing the girlpacks' popularity values to all below 50, but it's working out much better for me so far than when they were more random.

 

[Feyschek]

dookie85
Are you by any chance using my video packages?

 

[dooka58]

dookie85
Are you by any chance using my video packages?

Nah, someone mentioned your torrent, which I meant to check out, but I haven't searched this thread for the link yet since it wasn't in that particular post. Like I explained, I'm currently using old VC packs, although a link would be appreciated.

 

[Feyschek]

Nah, someone mentioned your torrent, which I meant to check out, but I haven't searched this thread for the link yet since it wasn't in that particular post. Like I explained, I'm currently using old VC packs, although a link would be appreciated.

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[redle]

I suggest to lower the Popularity values just once (thereby lowering the hiring cost across the board to a lower level)

Agreed that simply lowering all starting salaries to the base range would make the game fully playable and the player have the best chance at success. I don't really understand the big price differences either. I was basically accepting that there was a big price difference and assuming it is there intentionally and served a needed purpose, so I tried to suggest something that kept it but still let me use everyone equally. I end up only hiring the cheap people, which amounts to the same thing (other than expensive people still appear, I just don't hire them... at late game I can then pick up the expensive ones if I want).

It would be nice if there was a cancel button on the hiring request. It does bother me when I click to hire someone; see a huge price tag; and then must make them an offer and offend them anyway even though I do not want to make them an offer at all. Granted a loss of 5 relationship points or whatever the penalty is is trivial to re-gain.

You are also right that a lot of the mechanics are hidden from the player.

 

[nononomaybe]

Hey Everglow, thanks for the game!

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what some of the stats accomplish and what changes them.

• Girl Training: I haven't spotted the logic/pattern in the training conversations. I get three conversation options, how should I know which one is correct? Is it based on what the girl says? Her stats? I think I tried a conversation choice one night and it worked, and the next night the same choice failed.
• I increased a girl's training to ~30, but I didn't notice this influencing anything else. Not sure if this just is not high enough to unlock more sex positions or what training is supposed to accomplish.
• After I have sex with a girl, some of her stats change, but with all the different numbers it's hard remembering what her old stats were. It would be nice to see some sort of +1 indicator pop up or a Results splash to summarize changes. Something to give the player feedback without needing to remember that before sex her strength was 78 and afterwards it's 79.
• Similarly I'm not sure what the MC stats accomplish. Maybe when the MC is doing something that requires/checks a stat like Strength there could be a "15 Strength Required = Success!" or similar popup to let the player know what's being tested against what threshold.

Your work is appreciated, cheers!

 

[Feyschek]

Hey Everglow, thanks for the game!

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what some of the stats accomplish and what changes them.

• Girl Training: I haven't spotted the logic/pattern in the training conversations. I get three conversation options, how should I know which one is correct? Is it based on what the girl says? Her stats? I think I tried a conversation choice one night and it worked, and the next night the same choice failed.
• I increased a girl's training to ~30, but I didn't notice this influencing anything else. Not sure if this just is not high enough to unlock more sex positions or what training is supposed to accomplish.
• After I have sex with a girl, some of her stats change, but with all the different numbers it's hard remembering what her old stats were. It would be nice to see some sort of +1 indicator pop up or a Results splash to summarize changes. Something to give the player feedback without needing to remember that before sex her strength was 78 and afterwards it's 79.
• Similarly I'm not sure what the MC stats accomplish. Maybe when the MC is doing something that requires/checks a stat like Strength there could be a "15 Strength Required = Success!" or similar popup to let the player know what's being tested against what threshold.

Your work is appreciated, cheers!

Previously, the choice of dialogue influenced her characterization
If you chose the main dialogue based on its characteristics, you have a better chance of success.

 

[dooka58]

• Girl Training: I haven't spotted the logic/pattern in the training conversations. I get three conversation options, how should I know which one is correct? Is it based on what the girl says? Her stats? I think I tried a conversation choice one night and it worked, and the next night the same choice failed.

Check out Disgruntler's guide from a few pages ago. It tells us that training corresponds to Lewdness, Boldness and Obedience. If you chose the option from the employee's highest stat in these three categories, then you will have a higher chance of success.

• I increased a girl's training to ~30, but I didn't notice this influencing anything else. Not sure if this just is not high enough to unlock more sex positions or what training is supposed to accomplish.
• After I have sex with a girl, some of her stats change, but with all the different numbers it's hard remembering what her old stats were. It would be nice to see some sort of +1 indicator pop up or a Results splash to summarize changes. Something to give the player feedback without needing to remember that before sex her strength was 78 and afterwards it's 79.
• Similarly I'm not sure what the MC stats accomplish. Maybe when the MC is doing something that requires/checks a stat like Strength there could be a "15 Strength Required = Success!" or similar popup to let the player know what's being tested against what threshold.

See, this is exactly the issue I was describing earlier. In order to unlock sex positions and various jobs, you have to also upgrade the club's various rooms, such as the VIP, to higher levels. The training doesn't tell you what you've unlocked, or which stats increased, and it's hard to parse what skills/jobs each employee has available, and the same is true for the sex and gift actions, and MC stats as well.

I also noticed that the Spa and Bath jobs are never filled during the opened nights. Like previously discussed, this is likely due to certain packs not having these videos types sorted, but it would be nice to have filler portraits so we at least get the same gameplay even if we can't see that character's videos.

I'm checking out Feyschek's TUSC girlpack torrent, but it's harder to select which ones I want as opposed to the

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with its potraits and filters. IMO, downloading all 175gb is too much and big chunk of my monthly bandwidth, so I'm searching each actress's name one by one to see if I want the files in the torrent.

 

[Disgruntler]

The training doesn't tell you what you've unlocked

When you click on the girl, it shows you what she has available and what she has unlocked, as well as her likes and her proficiencies in each category. When you train her, it unlocks the first thing on that list, as well as spa/gym/baths stuff in the same vein if she has it.

Training doesn't train stats. It only unlocks acts for her. If a girl doesn't have good stats she doesn't have good stats. The only stat you can actively train that I am aware of is strength, in your gym, provided your strength is 10+ above hers.