Quote from: Goldo on Apr 22, 2024, 03:22 PMYou need to fiddle with the 'Say' screen in screens.rpy, looking around these lines:

Thank you, Goldo. I looked in to that but can only change the side image not the area around it so I ended up with changing the dialogue box margin instead (options.rpy -> style.window.left_margin). Not the best workaround but the game is playable.

It turned out 2048 is not even enough so I went with 3072 . Surprisingly just changing xres yres function and the base resolution the game adjusted its size really well. I'd say like 80% of the original stuff is zoomed correctly. Hopefully there'll be a resolution selector in the next version.

I don't think the maid thing is that related. The cost of +1 cleaning is pretty low, gold-wise, so that isn't that much savings. And you get the cleaning spell relatively early in the game (as a wizzy), so the maid never really gets a chance to pay out. Overall, for early benefit, I'd rather get The Player, for Party Girl, which is great early and late.

As to Obedience, I'm sure that can be helpful for a newer player, but it is a very short term benefit, and one with alternate solutions. You can send the girl to the farm for a bit. You can invest the points from an early level into obedience. You can buy an item or two with +obedience on it and put it on the newest girl for a tad. Once you start training a girl, you gain a lot of obedience. Sometimes, one skill will be an issue, if the girl dislike it, but you can usually swap to a different skill, train that, and by time you return, no problem, or, once you do succeed once, you're usually fine.

That said, I do like the -15% upkeep reduction, if the girl in question has expensive on her. But, again, that 2 point initial cost to invest in a tree is painful, so unless the girl has expensive and a maid unlocking trait...

QuoteThat sounds like a bug, if you mean girls are set to work in rooms that do not exist. Are you talking about 0.2 or 0.3 test? I distinctly remember fixing that, or at least I thought it was fixed.

This is in 0.3. I had all 4 working rooms when I went on to chapter 2, and after that, only had 1. The girls all kept the jobs they were set to, but, of course, by switching to the new brothel, I no longer had all four rooms. So they couldn't work those jobs, but were still set to them.

QuoteI will make the clean-up costs increase gradually, although at the beginning one or two cleaners should be enough to keep a single-girl brothel clean so you shouldn't need it.

It isn't the cost per cleaner that's a problem. Daily maintenance is fine. It's the cost of cleaning up a bad event, when suddenly your bar goes from clean to a bunch of dirt. So naturally you want to call in the outside cleaners to get rid of 100%/%50% of that. That's the cost that feels too high for me early on, that makes it painful to recover from events like a fire.

QuoteDo you have some ideas about how much they should cost to be more balanced?

Hmm... hard question. You really need user metrics to answer it. Cost-wise, they could probably be reduced to a third or by half? But then add a modifier in the difficulty setting to the brothel upgrade costs, so that by Brothel King setting, it is back to where it is now?

One exception to that: the upgrade cost of the girl's rooms. That's one that I think is just too expensive, overall. Part of that is because you might go from 4 to 8 rooms before you upgrade them, which doubles the cost. Part of that is because you probably aren't making enough from whoring in chapter 2 to make the upgrade cost effective. I think this particular upgrade could benefit from a reduced cost compared to everything else, as well as having a "bulk purchase" discount... a cost of X + (num_rooms * Y) rather than straight up (num_rooms * Y).

But I think net income is probably a bigger factor. Even with reduced upgrade costs, if you are struggling to break even, for an extended period of time, then you can't afford stuff. And this ties into other things as well... no profits means you set security lower, so more events, which hurts your money. Go bankrupt, get bank loan, now you have to pay that back with interest.

And there, upkeep is probably the single biggest factor. Perhaps adjusting that a tad for rank 2 might be the best way to go about it. But that might not be necessary, because, by default, we pay too much as is. Automatic is a bit wasteful at the default level. Just some quick testing with how it currently works, for neutral mood mods (at least as shown in the UI):
1) New slave with 11 default cost. Can drop down to 7 while still keeping mood mod neutral.
2) I sold one of my best slaves in one of my games, bought her back...73 initial value, 64 is the bottom of white.
3) One of the other girls can go from 42 down to 25.
4) Looking at my wizzy game, which is further along, it is still a 15% savings when I drop the allowing from the base amount to the lowest amount that is still white.
Note that #2 and #3 are both maids with -15% upkeep reduction (trying a game with all girls as maids), while #2 has the Expensive trait.

Just tweaking automatic to default to the lowest amount for a given mood modifier would seem like something that would greatly help address the issue, especially as this cost gap seems to impact lower level girls more.

You could potentially overhaul this system a bit, to focus on mood modifier rather than gold cost. Have it show the mood modifier and gold cost. Lose the "A" as automatic won't matter anymore. Have - and + jump to the next tier of mood modifier, and you always pay the lowest cost that mood mod takes.

QuoteThis will be a NG+ option, but I think I like the balance I found with 500g at the beginning and don't want to break too many things

The starting gold is fine. I'm talking about how much gold the player has going into chapter 2. Like if completing chapter one required the player to stockpile a bit more gold, thereby giving them a bit more buffer in chapter 2. Alternately, the reimbursement rate could be cranked up for selling that first brothel.

That transition from chapter 1 to 2 is the main thing I'm focusing on, just because, in my experience, it is the hardest and most grindy time in the game by a considerable margin. Just strikes me as something that could be a major drop off point in player retention.

Quote from: ElPresidenete on Apr 23, 2024, 10:57 AMIf I want to add more images to GenericSex, do I have to put them in the bas folder, or can I put them in a mod (with the same folder name/structure) and the game will load both image sets?

I've tried that before as well, and I couldn't get it working - so I just added them to the base folder instead.  Of course, I only tried for like 30 seconds before saying "Eh, not worth the effort".

If I want to add more images to GenericSex, do I have to put them in the bas folder, or can I put them in a mod (with the same folder name/structure) and the game will load both image sets?

Quote from: ⚧ Squark on Apr 23, 2024, 01:32 AMSlight error in the Sleep Gas item event.
If you select "Vaginal", it records it as Anal even though the image is correct.
Also spelling and grammar errors are plentiful.

I decided to get off my ass and attempt to fix it later today. Along with folder paths/names where I can.

Sleeping gas should be in RandomFixes IIRC.

Quote from: ⚧ Squark on Apr 23, 2024, 01:32 AMSlight error in the Sleep Gas item event.
If you select "Vaginal", it records it as Anal even though the image is correct.
Also spelling and grammar errors are plentiful.

Where is that file from?  It's not in any of the downloads I have seen so far.  Either that or my computer has lost it somewhere...

No problem, we all start somewhere.  I've been learning by going through mods and figuring out what goes where and why by example, then looking at some of the older/outdated mods and seeing what - if anything - I can do on my end to update them.  As I learn, I go back and clean up what I've done - or what was originally in the file.

Slight error in the Sleep Gas item event.
If you select "Vaginal", it records it as Anal even though the image is correct.
Also spelling and grammar errors are plentiful.

Got it to work now, just running into two problems. But I should hopefully be able to figure it out. Thanks