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[Java] SimBrothel C

Started by Ch12, Dec 28, 2024, 08:59 AM

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Ch12Topic starter



Introduction:

SimBrothel C is a re-implementation of the original SimBrothel by Pooolka. It tries to stay close to the original, while adding new features like:

  • Dynamic Image / Video Viewer with Zoom Capability
  • Enhanced gameplay (Rebalancing, more events, new mechanics)
  • Easily plugin new characters (with BrothelKing girlpack support)
  • Highly customizable
  • Secure Sandbox for Customizations

Requirements:

Windows 10 or higher (64bit)
1 GB of free RAM (3 GB recommended)
700 MB on your harddrive (for the standard installation with ~50 image packs)

Current Version: 1.0.0 - Download Link (for Windows)


Shoutout to Pooolka for creating the original SimBrothel, and to Goldo for creating BrothelKing.
Finally, the game uses artwork from many artists and pack creators. I hope it will at least serve as advertising for their amazing work.
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Ch12Topic starter

#1
Here's the current Todo-List:

High Prio
  • Finish Kasumi (active)
  • Auto-Adjust Price (active)

Normal Prio
  • Options for linebreaks/colors for stat change text
  • Replace image filename
  • Quit-dialogue
  • More info on Avatar selection screen
  • Try to implement dark-mode without full GUI refactoring
  • Customize Lyndis (on hold)

Low Prio / Long-running
  • More stories, also without upgrades (active)
  • Customize Zelda
  • GUI refactoring (CSS, etc.)
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Ch12Topic starter

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Ch12Topic starter

I'm releasing the first version of my game "SimBrothel C", a game heavily inspired by the original SimBrothel. There are a lot of improvements and new mechanics, while also trying to stay true to the spirit of the original.

It also reuses the tagging format of BrothelKing, which means there are a lot of image packs available for download to extend the game to your liking.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please give it a try! :) For this first version, my main goal is to make sure that the game runs without problems on Windows 10 and higher. I personally do not have Windows 11 yet, so I would be especially interested in getting feedback if it runs without problems on Windows 11.

I put a lot of time into getting rid of bugs, so it be quite stable. If you do encounter any problems, please attach a copy of the "log.txt" file, to help locating the root cause.
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SometimesIsNotEnough

This is really impressive, especially the customization aspect of the GPs.

Some feedback after having played around a little:
* While it's nice that the game tries to not load multiple GPs of the same girl I would like some control over which version it uses. I have several characters with multiple GPs and some are higher quality than others.

Ch12Topic starter

#5
Quote from: SometimesIsNotEnough on Dec 28, 2024, 01:23 PMThis is really impressive, especially the customization aspect of the GPs.

Some feedback after having played around a little:
* While it's nice that the game tries to not load multiple GPs of the same girl I would like some control over which version it uses. I have several characters with multiple GPs and some are higher quality than others.

Thanks for the positive feedback!

To be honest, I never considered this until now, since I usually merged the girlpacks in such cases.
If I understand correctly, you want to avoid lower quality girlpacks bringing down the overall quality during gameplay? The only feasible way I see is by telling the game to skip an entire pack.
(Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding - SBC usually tries to unify multiple packs into one archetype, unless the names do not match.)

I see one possible way to fix it on your side even now, but maybe this restructuring messes with how you maintain your girlpacks too much:
The game supports the folder structure of BrothelKing, so you could create a top-level folders in your girls directory, e.g. called "# SBC", and put all girlpacks you want to use into that folder. Afterwards, you point SBC to that folder instead.
The end result is that BK still finds all your girlpacks (some of which now reside in the "# SBC" subfolder), while SBC sees only the chosen subset of girlpacks. Or, if you already have a structure useful for your purpose in place, you could point multiple -addPaths at the subfolders of your liking. (And remove the path to the main folder)


Another approach might be to introduce a flag to _BK.ini, which allows specifically telling the game to skip a pack. It would not be much effort to implement such functionality, however I'm not sure if maintaining this is actually easier than simply arranging your packs into folders. Not all packs have a BK.ini file, so you would have to create it yourself in such cases... Also, to check which girlpacks get ignored and which do not, you could only tell by opening the individual files.


One more thought, if you want something that focuses more on the individual images instead, you could tag them with "freq_low" and increase the weight for normal images in the preferences of SBC to the maximum. This would make low quality images appear only very rarely.


Let me know if some of these suggestion already resolves your problem. Or if not, if you like the BK.ini idea, or maybe have a better approach in mind.
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SometimesIsNotEnough

#6
Quote from: Ch12 on Dec 28, 2024, 02:43 PMIf I understand correctly, you want to avoid lower quality girlpacks bringing down the overall quality during gameplay?
My issue was this:
I have multiple versions of some GPs and i wanted SBC to use specific ones if I like one pack more than the other.
From the "(using)" and "(ignored)" annotations in the log i thought that SBC only used one GP per girl, but maybe I misunderstood what they meant.
(SBC using pictures from both packs solves this issue however.)

Regarding '-addPath', does it allow for specifying a GP directly? If so I could probably extract my in-game mix from BK and pass that to SBC.

I have a question about Employees.
While i was playing around it didn't look like the lists of Employees/slaves I could hire/buy was updating over time. Are they static or do they change at some point?

Edit: Ignore this.

Ch12Topic starter

#7
Ah, now I get what you mean.

In general, SBC always tries to unify multiple sources for the same character under one umbrella. This is usually done based on the directory name.

There is one case where there are different directory names, but the BK.ini files actually suggest they are the same person.
I think this is probably "your problem". If so, you can resolve it by renaming one of these directories so that they both have the same name.
e.g. if you have "Rin Kaenbyou" vs. "Kaenbyou Rin", rename the latter to "Rin Kaenbyou" as well.

There's also a similar case with multiple customizations.
There should be more details as well as some kind of recommendation posted with the warning in the log.txt (search for warning). Or you should see it easily in the console window if your run the game via the "warningsOnly.bat"


Regarding -addPath, the target has to be a root path, not just a single girlpack. You could in principle put only a single girlpack there, achieving a similar result.
But I think if you check the log, you can probably resolve the problem in a better way.

If this is all a bit confusing and/or did not help, please post the message from the log.txt, and I should be able to figure it out.
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Albatross

#8
Oh that is a classic I was definitely not expecting a revival. Gonna give it a shot today.

EDIT: I played it for a few weeks, and honestly I think the lack of a player character really hurts the game. Not only in the sense of having your first whore be your avatar breaks the immersion a bit, but the lack of options for a player character to train the girls makes the start of the game not very interactive.

I played on normal difficulty and no changed settings, starting with 100 gold. All nights my initial girl made 27 gold and costed 18 for a profit of 9 (The lack of randomness here also takes a bit of the fun) and by the end of the week I hired the cheapest girl to be my second whore and got a new room for her. The issue however is that she often refused the job making me lose money, and without having a player character to train her, it really takes away much of the player agency. Unless I missed something all I could do is keep skipping the day until she gets used to it and her stats fixed itself or I make enough money to buy an item to raise it, which would take a long time.

Overall I think the UI, tagging and girl packing is definitely a huge step up from the original, but it needs some of the missing content the original had like places, quests etc to make it more alive.

In BK or even in the older versions of SimBro I played, your character could go out visit the town and do things, so even if there is nothing much to do with the girls at the start the game still feels more active instead of just skipping days. The lack of separate saves (Again unless I missed it) also really hurts, because if I knew how things would play out I would have focused on improving my first girl instead of hiring a second one, and I assume keeping this "honor mode" style save mandatory will also really hurt in the long run especially for newer players.

Ch12Topic starter

#9
Hi Albatross,

Thank you for the constructive feedback. In response to the description of the first game you played, I think that is actually the experience I (and also Pooolka in the original SB) was going for. Basically, exploring the game and learning from your experiences.

I don't want to give too many tips to destroy that experience, but it's intentional that there are decisions that can potentially even send you into a downward spiral. Ultimately, the game is a business simulation. I encourage you to try out different approaches. Finding a good balance between  number of girls and number of brothels is one skill you will get better at. Also, if you do end up with too many girls, remember that you can always sell them again. On lower difficulties, you only make a very minor loss.
Also, you can trade major jokers for a Market-quality girl, which have better stats. With cheap girls, especially high character can be quite detrimental, since a refusal to work means a net loss, since you will still pay upkeep.


Regarding interactivity, the training you are missing is available through the schools, under the Job tab. Dance School and XXX School in particular help if you are not making enough money. Other than that, you can also try to overcharge your customers, but that is usually only useful for girls who cannot have many customers, anyway. (Since it will make less customers visit)


If you really want to, you can make a copy of your savegame and then revert it manually. (Auto.dat in the game/save directory - you have to close the game though) Personally, I see it as a cheating a little bit, but sometimes it does make sense. Still, from a design perspective, I specifically want savescumming to not be something you (have to) do a lot. I even use seeded randoms to avoid make that unattractive.


The things you remember about going to Town, etc. are probably from SlaveMaker, another game of Pooolka, and not SimBrothel. The latter was always a business simulation, with less RPG elements and ultimately a different focus.

That being said, you can write new custom events for SBC and this is something I will keep working on in future updates. (and is really the whole point of the customization engine) Some of the characters have personal events already (e.g. Belldandy, Tohsaka), and I am working on a customization for Kasumi right now. This will bring more life and color to the game step by step.
I also hope that some people from to community will enrich the world with some of their own creations. I invested quite a lot of time into providing documentation and a manual to help people work on their own customizations. (available in the develop folder)


Anyway, I hope you will keep at it a bit longer, and that the game gets more interesting for you. The first few weeks are very straightforward, and that is also somewhat intentional, since SBC does not have a tutorial, or anything like that. As you earn more money, the number of options you can pick from quickly increases.
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Albatross

Yeah maybe selling the new girl is the way to go. I will keep going and see how it goes.

But I am quite sure I was talking about Sim brothel, though after some investigation to make sure I'm not insane, the version I played might have been modded too and not the original one?

It was actively developed in a site called futanaripalace (even though the game itself isn't futa focused at all) and it was abbreviated as Jasbro (Java Sim Brothel) which may be a different fork of the original game you played and I didn't know. Here is the link if you wanna check it out:

https://www.futanaripalace.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=132

---

That aside, about the classes, I did notice it, but I think it is quite unforgiving that the only resource you can use to increase the girl's stats is money (since if she isn't making any money she feels basically doomed), that's why most games of this type, like BK, SM, Jasbro etc, have an action point or a manual training option to give the player the option to use time as an resource instead of money to improve them.

But I understand your reasoning and the type of game you're aiming for, I will keep playing  and see if I can get the hang of it. Though even leaving the mechanics as is, I still feel like having a player character would improve the experience. Even if it is just a cosmetic avatar on the corner. It would be good for lore and would open much more options for custom events with the player being a separate character from the girls.



Netscape1964

ckecked it out on my laptop that's on Windows 11 and so far i didn't get any problems.

its nice of you to revive this little game as it was teh one that introduced me to brothel games. always nice to go back to it from time to time

doombot

well, would rather not use anything Java related but oh well

AVIF eh?  Nice.

I'll have to poke at it later.

Jman

Hmm, from a BK/SM/WM/JoNT/etc player perspective, this feels kinda stifling. OTOH, I can see the draw of having a tech demo for several interesting features, and a more focused economy game has its appeal, too.


Will try it some more later this week.



Also, no way to quit the game short of manually shutting down the program? :o What is this, a cheap Unity game? :P



Finally, I'm glad to see Chris more active again, and hope he didn't mind me sort of stealing the Job Mod. ;D
And with strange aeons even death may die...

Ch12Topic starter

@Netscape1964
I'm relieved to hear it works on Windows 11. That was the biggest unknown for me. SBC uses a few components using JNI, which I compiled for UCRT. (Basically, this avoids having to install some very specific C Runtime, which you might know for some other games.)
It was supposed to work with W11 as well, but you never know... So, thanks for the confirmation! :)


@Albatross
Regarding more presence for a player character, the whole avatar concept is how it was treated in the original SBC as well.
I was thinking a little about abolishing it in favor of a "true" player character, but honestly, I decided against it to avoid adding a whole new layer to the game. I also wanted to avoid adding too many RPG aspects, which I have seen become a two-edged sword in many games. (great for immersion, but can lead to fragmented gameplay and balancing problems)
I think BrothelKing did a good job getting everything balanced, but many others have failed or got sidetracked by it. You start with a brothel simulation, and suddenly end up with a dungeon crawler.
Even in BK, it did create some discussions and balancing problems (is it okay to sell materials you collect in town? Is class X too strong? Is it okay that traders can buy&resell at a profit? ...)

Anyway, I've been thinking about how to add a bit more interactivity without it demanding too much attention. I was thinking about creating an end-of-turn event that gives you some sort of choice for how you spend your free time during that day, with some options like "Talk to girl" or "Take a walk"
Thanks for providing the link to Jasbro. I'll give it a try and see if it can provide some inspiration.


@doombot
I hope I avoided the usual "Java" problems. Some developers make some kinda religion out of it, while I use it as a tool to get things done. On the other hand, this is a very focused game (on the business simulation part), so as has already been proven above, some players are missing the immersive aspects they've grown to expect from modern games.

Anyway, if the game is not to your liking, it is definitely unrelated to the underlying technology. I did not call it "Simbrothel J" for a reason. :D
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