Unity Venus's Club [v9.5.0.1] [Disgruntler]

[Disgruntler]

Just some early feedback for this build:

Brokers feel a lot better now. Not sure exactly what backend work was done but with a reasonable amount of girls I'm likely to have at least a 3 star and sometimes a 4. Even got a 5 yesterday. Still think they need a couple more rewards for variety but I can't think of any.

Rather than generate random traits based on the list, it selects two random girls in your entire girlpacks folder and mixes their traits together to get your match.

This might be -too- good though, and I'm keeping an eye on it. I've balanced things around 3-stars being often but not common, and it seems 4+ stars are happening in that slot.

More reward types means less resource rewards, which can be a way to solve this, but I'd want a compelling, scalable, repeatable reward. Tough problem to solve, honestly.

Is Attention Whore working? The openness jumps are clearly there but all the zooming in the world doesn't seem to do anything to her popularity.

I'll look into it.

UPDATE: Found the problem. The system was correctly checking an internal variable to see if the girl in the booth corresponding to that internal variable matched the girl with the trait. However, I'd forgotten to include changing the zoom to change the internal variable. Woops.

Further, I'd forgotten to filter for the situation where you'd never changed the zoom at all but somehow still had the zoom window open, which might have possibly caused outlier errors that were unforseen.

Some girls are still not spawning with specialties in Normal.

Damn it Normal Mode!

*gets the sander*

UPDATE: Now, every time you're done work, it checks every girl without a trait (working or not), and just hands her one. The game is tired of fucking around with these girls.

I need some clarification. Hot Teacher/Life Coach and other 'offwork' traits are only supposed to work in standby correct? Not in back stage positions? Life Coach only gains openness when on standby and I think the other girls only get trained if that's the case. Like, once they're a secretary all their training benefits are lost in favor of the backstage positions benefits? At least until they're removed and put back on standby. Is this correct?

Offwork traits should be working in the Backstage slot. But I thank you for calling my attention to this. I had made the alteration to Hot Teacher, but I'd forgotten to do so for Life Coach. That has been fixed and it should now do the intended behavior.

Theme nights don't feel strong as an investor ultimate but are a fun gameplay mechanic. Maybe just have them every 7-10 days as a regular thing instead? Maybe have Gespote nights, and Connection Nights, and Coaching nights as well? (Obviously more rarely). I only saw hair color ones but my testing wasn't deep.

1) It should be available every three days because two days is too often, and anything more than three days and it'll take me hours to cycle through if I'm in testing/changing mode (because I run a day, stop, code, run a day, stop, code). Three days feels like you can work around it and get your roster ready because--

2) There is absolutely no randomness to the Theme Night. What it does is it looks at each girl and does a comparison of that girl. If the first girl has the same bustType as 3 other girls, it sets the tentative value at 3 and assigns her bustType as the theme. Then it checks hair and body. It then goes to the next girl, and compares her to the remaining girls (but not the first, that'd be redundant), and if she has one of those traits that beats the first girl, the theme and value change to her. And so on.

So, there's no randomness, it just means the first girl in the internal list has hair and nothing else can beat her. If you remove her from the list and put her back it can change the theme. This is one of the reasons I added a button to go directly to the staff list, so these traits can be checked.

Happiness, of course, ends up being integral to cash, reputation, and influence generation anyways. Connection generation isn't affected but outside of Crown Jewel mode, it's already good enough.

Overall, good stuff here. Some nice clean improvements and fixes. It's becoming hard to imagine any more large scale gameplay improvements--dare I say it but the game is starting to feel complete. Disgruntler, of course, may have other ideas.

So far, mechanics have been mostly added with respect to the question "What does the game need?" angle, with a few "Oh this would be cool" things in there as well.

However, I'm finding it harder and harder to find 'needs' that a new mechanic will fill. Most 'needs' now are in quality of life. So now, any 'cool' mechanic I think of has to go through a filter of 'does the game need this?' and most of the time... it does not.

I'm actually somewhat surprised at how much work Investors and Girl Traits have done (from a design standpoint) because now if I want to implement a new mechanic, I can just ask myself if it should be an Ultimate or a Trait. Some mechanics are best as a 'sometimes' mechanic.

Not all ideas I've had have been hits, either.

Classes, for example, don't 'feel good' for me. In Normal Mode, it seems they're used to get Traits, and that's it. I'll probably be making a change here--streamlining. Sometimes a mechanic just doesn't work out.

Classes were originally going to be the start of a whole Mall mechanic where you'd have a place to sequester girls, and have them do various tasks which give them assorted bonuses over time. Brokers, as you can probably tell, were a part of that larger system as well. There was also going to be items the girls got through Shopping, which would confer abilities. This was going to be a very large scale thing.

So what happened?

Traits and Investments happened.

Traits were originally intended to work as a part of Scramble Mode. Scramble Mode was always the big picture goal when I started--it was the thing I wanted to build for myself, and it was the reason I took the project on to start with. But, as you probably remember, Scramble Mode had some problems in development I had not anticipated (though I learned a lot from them). The Traits system, however, was already in place. So I needed a way to make them available in Normal Mode. Classes needed a bit of something to make them 'feel good' and so I hung Traits onto them.

Traits, however, were now doing 'work' that the items were intended to do. Which, was fine. I like Traits. I love Traits. It's something I'm very proud of, and any time I get an idea for a new Trait and code it in, it feels great to do. I like playing around them.

But if I have Traits, why do I need Items?

And if I have Investments, Items will feel too 'small scale'. Changes on individual girls don't matter as much as the broad picture. The 'random variation' that I wanted Items to do was now being done by Traits and by Investments.

So Shopping never got any dev work done, and it never will. Maybe in an alternate universe, you'd have enjoyed sending your girls off with their hard earned cash and having them come back with some cool new bonus.

But it would not fit in VCHH. It'd be 'too much'.

But that takes me back to Classes. It's a mechanic that was supposed to be the foundation for a whole other thing... and it doesn't feel good. In fact, after Scramble Mode, going back to Normal Mode, and dealing with Classes to get Traits just doesn't feel... right. To the point where I just don't enjoy testing Normal Mode. And I've come to realize it's all because of Classes w.r.t. Traits.

It's not something I'm proud of, to be honest. So I'll be looking at changing this. Sometimes streamlining and removing 'depth' is the right call, and in this specific case, it's the right call.

And the game is at a point where sanding the rough edges is now the correct course of action, rather than building on new shelves/rooms/I dunno metaphors are hard.

phlore101 : Found the mute button problem cause, fixed it.

UPDATE: Regarding client wants disappearing when a new client appears:

This originally started because of a starting behavior I was unhappy with. All the booths would start saying 'Waiting' but I didn't like that, because this wouldn't be consistantly done throughout the booth game. Only the booth that is next to be populated should show up. So I'd set it up that under certain conditions it should remove 'Waiting' except for the next booth--by turning the field off.

The problem is how the code sets that text field. There's three different scripts that change that field, each changing the text field whenever conditions specific to that field change. It doesn't take into account the bigger picture of all the booths, each piece of script only sees what's local to the script.

Now what this means is that if one piece of script changes, the others don't know about it and the text doesn't update according to intention, as well as inconsistancy in presentation.

So in the dev build, I'm adding a bit of code that dynamically updates and checks what the field should be and sets it there, every frame. There's a lot of cases where I've done this in the code, so this is nothing new for me. This should make the behavior consistant, at all times, and so things should look better over all.

UPDATE: For the streamlined Classes system:

1) They still exist. There will always be an option to suck up 100 energy over 5 days to get your girl stats. I don't want to take away the option for girls who need stat boosts to catch up. The new goal for this is going to be as a catchup mechanic for girls that are behind (which is a common thing in Scramble Mode, so this solves two problems for me)

2) While the bonus for training will be reduced to 1 points in stats per day, there will be a proc-chance based on your Backstage Trainer's skill (it's 50/50 at 100% proficiency) for an additional point. A perfect trainer will guarantee the proc. In addition, your Backstage Leader will introduce a proc that can boost Openness for training girls. Again--catch up mechanic (something the Lounge is not the best at, if I'm being honest.) This threshhold, by the way, is set at 0 for your first level club--this is not going to be useful in getting you past the 20 openness Nicole Mission. It's only to get them up to the tier of Openness you need for the current level club's sex act tier (without accounting, of course, for Enthusiasts, Over Achievers, or Investment bonuses)

3) This will only occur under a specific threshhold, because while it's intended to be a catchup mechanic, I do not want this to be something that hits your higher end girls. This threshold scales with your Club Level, and hopefully will make taking on new girls feel less bad.

4) The use of a girl's funds to do this is an unnecessary complication. The funds stat is going to be altered to be a 'lifetime earnings' stat, which actually helps make that one annoying Investor quest a little easier to fulfill.

5) The Investment Ult that allows you to train under Brokers is changed slightly so now it just automatically trains all the girls for no energy. Because you no longer need to make a decision on if you want to take the energy cost or not on that girl, and there's no consequences for doing so, training will then be automatic and no longer require your input.

6) A trait can still be acquired through training, but to aid in early game's flow, in Normal Mode, working a single shift is sufficient to earn a girl a trait, if she doesn't have one set in her JSON file's "Power" field, which is a third option for getting a Normal Mode girl a trait.

 

[Disgruntler]

Other changes:

Hustle Queen's personal money gain no longer matters. Instead, will occasionally give a boost to client money gains (which also synergizes with her happiness gain feature), along with her other benefits. Seems a good 'ramp up' trait in the booths now. I've added Hustler onto the list of eligible starting-3 traits for Scramble Mode, as well as Attention Whore, and Advertiser.

Now, Investors will check for quest completion during the booth gain. If you get the influence, connection, or reputation to satisfy them before the day is over, they should pop up immediately, rather than start waiting for the next day.

 

[ChubberLang]

**A whole lot of stuff.**

This is all good stuff Disgruntler. And your are 100% correct about classes to get traits not feeling good. Girls feel incomplete without traits, but getting them early requires sidelining them for a significant part of the early game, which can be gotten around via nerfing their prices in their jsons but even then it's not great.

Your proposed changes feel like a good idea, especially adding some openness gain to the catch up mechanic and allowing the classes to re-up automatically with the ult.

Really well-thought out stuff. I wish I had your work ethic--I'd be at my 200th girlpack by now!

 

[Disgruntler]

Really well-thought out stuff. I wish I had your work ethic--I'd be at my 200th girlpack by now!

Bah, I have too much free time on my hands. This is just something I do as a hobby-that-happens-to-teach-me-a-valuable-skill.

Also currently including: Some graphic visual indicators in the booth game for certain aspects of booth status.


So you can see here, first, there's arrows to indicate which booth is going to fill next. On top of this, when the client is asking for drugs or something, a red border shows up to indicate that there is a demand they have. (Looking at it, I'll probably make it cover the entire booth iconry just to be more visually clear)

Similarly, there's a border around a booth's icon when it's waiting for a girl:



There's also one for the finishers/extend buttons as well.

As well, a couple minor changes to finishers as well:

First, mechanical change. Some finishers do not feel right to restrict to certain work types. For example, having titcumshots restricted to titsjobs and above means that a lot of actual titsshots are being set up as bodyshots instead, for the sake of game balance. There's no reason (other than policies) why a girl shouldn't be able to take a cumshot on her tits or face after a handy, after all. So, I've changed the logic. Now--provided you've unlocked the policy and the girl is open enough--you can get appropriate finishers to the actual act performed. Seeing as I'm going in there, I'm changing the Look but Don't Touch ulty so that you can have Dance/Pose girls take a cumshot on their body. This should improve its utility and make it less 'invisible'.

Secondly, visual change. A client's preferred finisher is just not communicated well to the player. So, as a result, if a client has a preferred finisher (and the act that you're performing and policies and girl's openness allows for that finisher), that button will appear green instead of blue. A minor change, but one that should make this mechanic a bit more clear to the player.

 

[DOaccolon]

I am not sure, if this is a bug or feature:
But the Auto-Pause-Function is not working for me.

At the first start of a new game, when I Zoom in no of the auto-functions of the zoom window on the left side are checked. That is fine.
But now I check "auto pause when zooming". Still the timer ticks the seconds away and if I press the space bar, the element "auto pause when zooming" is unchecked again. I have to press the button Pause Timer with the mouse.

When I zoom in another video at the same day, the element "auto pasue when zooming" ist set, but this will not pause the timer.

By the start of a next work day the element of auto-pausing is unchecked again and the behaviour repeats.
So that is why this feature is not working at all (for me),

But I don't wanna be the bad guy who is always complaining. Great additions to the game, Disgruntler!

 

[Disgruntler]

But now I check "auto pause when zooming". Still the timer ticks the seconds away and if I press the space bar, the element "auto pause when zooming" is unchecked again. I have to press the button Pause Timer with the mouse.

This is because of the behavior of the space bar in unity--it likes to click on the last thing you clicked on... sometimes. I'm going to change the pause hotkey to something else, to avoid this behavior.

But I don't wanna be the bad guy who is always complaining.

Far from it, you're one of the best at catching things that I miss or overlook or forget about. When you post, I know there is content I need to read, because the vast majority of the time, if it bothers you, it'll bother me when I get to noticing it.

In this case, it was bothering me already. This just gave me a bit of motivation to fix it faster.

Testing a change to resources Broker Reward--making Cash and Inf. gains provide less in early game, but scaling with Club Level to be better in late game, and changing Con gains so that it both scales with club level and is a buff even at level 1 club.

 

[DOaccolon]

In this case, it was bothering me already. This just gave me a bit of motivation to fix it faster.

You mean the bug with auto-zoom not working, even if this element is checked?

 

[Disgruntler]

You mean the bug with auto-zoom not working, even if this element is checked?

Yeah, the behavior has to do with how the space bar is not working for you. They're interrelated problems. I have it working in my dev build. Basically, you select the AutoZoom, and then you hit the spacebar to unpause it, but because the Autozoom button is the last thing you clicked, it clicks it again. Rinse/repeat.

If I change the hotkey to something else--z or p in this case, then the space bar stops trying to do multiple things at once. It still occasionally will 'hit the last thing you hit' but without a reason to hit it, you won't do it. That's my fault--the spacebar functionality in game is something unintended and I'm looking for how to shut off the 'last thing pressed' behavior.

UPDATE:

I've gone in and did a pass on the Correct Finisher mechanic itself. Now that I'd acheived greater visibility, I decided it was not doing enough work. So, going forward:

1) It boosts the client's happiness significantly, leading to more rewards per tick during the finisher.

2) Anything that would boost past the happiness cap will end up going directly into an instant windfall of money, which will be communicated to you directly.

3) You will not need to target the client portrait with your mouse to see if it's max happiness, there will be a bar that fills to show total happiness--this also has the side effect of showing just how good your gains are.

4) This should make the three finisher-related ultimates feel a lot more desirable.

I'm also going to add in a new ultimate.

 

[thenefariousprune]

are you guys experiencing crashes with the latest build? an autosave feature would would be really nice. Though i admit i have have almost 300 girl packs and my computer is a potato

 

[Disgruntler]

an autosave feature would would be really nice.

Check the far left side of the loading screen.

 

[atmosphere1980]

First, mechanical change. Some finishers do not feel right to restrict to certain work types. (snip) Now--provided you've unlocked the policy and the girl is open enough--you can get appropriate finishers to the actual act performed. Seeing as I'm going in there, I'm changing the Look but Don't Touch ulty so that you can have Dance/Pose girls take a cumshot on their body. This should improve its utility and make it less 'invisible'.

Secondly, visual change. if a client has a preferred finisher (and the act that you're performing and policies and girl's openness allows for that finisher), that button will appear green instead of blue.

These are definitely some nice improvements to the booth game. They make dance and pose more useful in the later game stages. And , and if a client has a preferred finisher, it will be possible to select it more frequently. And the visual indicator without having to click around will be nice.

I had an ideas on the theme nights. But I don't know if it would be practical to implement. Would a couple of age based themes be possible? Say, a cougar theme for age 35+, and college girl theme for ages 18-23? Modifying the JSON would be impractical but could you set a variable for that trait based on age ranges?

 

[Disgruntler]

These are definitely some nice improvements to the booth game. They make dance and pose more useful in the later game stages. And , and if a client has a preferred finisher, it will be possible to select it more frequently. And the visual indicator without having to click around will be nice.

I had an ideas on the theme nights. But I don't know if it would be practical to implement. Would a couple of age based themes be possible? Say, a cougar theme for age 35+, and college girl theme for ages 18-23? Modifying the JSON would be impractical but could you set a variable for that trait based on age ranges?

Doing so with age ranges is a lot more complicated than a comparison of hard traits, and would even require a bit of a rewrite of what's already there or some additional coding specific to this. It's not a bad idea from a play-feel angle, it's the implimentation that'd be rough. The reason it'd be more complicated has to do with how the segments would feel arbitrary, like, let's say you have one girl 23 and one girl 24. Logic would say they're in theme with each other, but that 24-year old isn't in theme with an 18-year old.

There's definately a way to do it, but right now, I'm leaning more towards 'pain in the ass' rather than 'gaining more awesome.' But I'm also a bit cranky and tired right now, and what is a pain in the ass now might not be a pain in the ass after a lot of coffee and a hot shower.

So this isn't a hard 'No' but more of a 'Maybe, depending on if I get in the mood, but no promises.'

Won't be in the next patch though.

UPDATE: I have discovered that if all your girls are dispatched you cannot use keybinds to swap zoom windows. I have changed the keybind behavior around so that this should no longer be a problem. I've also discovered that hitting up, down, 1, or tab when you have only one girl in your list does not display her stats as it does for more than 1. I've included handling for this case as wel.

 

[ChubberLang]

Doing so with age ranges is a lot more complicated than a comparison of hard traits, and would even require a bit of a rewrite of what's already there or some additional coding specific to this. It's not a bad idea from a play-feel angle, it's the implimentation that'd be rough. The reason it'd be more complicated has to do with how the segments would feel arbitrary, like, let's say you have one girl 23 and one girl 24. Logic would say they're in theme with each other, but that 24-year old isn't in theme with an 18-year old.

There's definately a way to do it, but right now, I'm leaning more towards 'pain in the ass' rather than 'gaining more awesome.' But I'm also a bit cranky and tired right now, and what is a pain in the ass now might not be a pain in the ass after a lot of coffee and a hot shower.

So this isn't a hard 'No' but more of a 'Maybe, depending on if I get in the mood, but no promises.'

Won't be in the next patch though.

UPDATE: I have discovered that if all your girls are dispatched you cannot use keybinds to swap zoom windows. I have changed the keybind behavior around so that this should no longer be a problem. I've also discovered that hitting up, down, 1, or tab when you have only one girl in your list does not display her stats as it does for more than 1. I've included handling for this case as wel.

I mean, if we're just suggesting ideas for theme nights, why not have Criminal nights (only gespote), Connections night, Orgy Nights (all group--girls will participate regardless of openness), also sex nights, etc. Costume nights (all costume benefits doubled), Teaching Party (all girl openness and skill increases doubled). hmm... that's all I can think of right now.

Also, how difficult would it be for the Brokers to have a 'Select-a-Trait' reward? (along with maybe a specialty change and some skill increases or money depending on stars). I find I'm looking for a specific trait and the rng will often blank me out. I want a hustle queen and no dice but here's 3 Gespote cousins. As more traits get added this could be more of an issue going forward. Not that the game is insurmountable without them. Plus it'll be useful in the late game too as you seek out more Life Coaches and Hot Teachers.

Just some suggestions for you. Feel free to ignore them.

 

[RuseMcOoze]

Having an issue where I'm earning negative money each night. My costs aren't more than my profits, so not really sure what's happening

 

[Disgruntler]

Having an issue where I'm earning negative money each night. My costs aren't more than my profits, so not really sure what's happening

What's your club level, and what's the % rate of your accountant, if any?

 

[RuseMcOoze]

Dont recall the number of the level, but it was Oral tier. Didn't have an accountant.

 

[Disgruntler]

Dont recall the number of the level, but it was Oral tier. Didn't have an accountant.

The amount of money that you make without an accountant goes down every time you upgrade your club, and can eventually lead to loss.

An accountant can change those losses into gains, becoming another profit source.

Getting it turned around in tier 4/5 can be rough but not impossible. If you have a Hustle Queen, PHD, or Nicole, park them in that stat. The time they've spent working for you in the booths will give them a good bonus to their ability in that role, and it only requires a club familiarity of 17 to boost one of those three to 100%+. Once you have 100%+, you'll solve your moneyloss problem.

 

[R.O.]

*of course, if you set the girl to have the Crown Jewel trait in their JSON then they're going to automatically start as one of the 5 Crown Jewels, unless you have 6+ girls like that, in which case it'll randomly choose 5 and demote the rest to powerless.

Hi Disgruntler. What do you need to add to the JSON to start as a Crown Jewel?
Thank you.

 

[Disgruntler]

Hi Disgruntler. What do you need to add to the JSON to start as a Crown Jewel?
Thank you.

"Power" = 25,

This should shortlist them to be a CJ in CJ mode, but they will be corrected to trait-less in non-CJ play.

It will not permit you to recruit them through non-CJ means and retain the CJ trait.

 

[CaptC]

In the latest test version, you can get around the limit of one broker action per turn, by:

• Save your game.
• Exit the game.
• Restart the game, and load from the save.
• Bob's your uncle! The broker forgets that you already took an action with them this turn.