TH2's Future update talk #4

Hello everyone,

Here comes the last post before the next TH2 update. If everything goes well, the update will be released somewhere at the end of this week.

There are two elements that have been taking longer than originally planned : I added a full scene of 20 pics in one of the new quests (while none where originally planned :x), and the improvements of the brothel are still tricky to implement as we're still working on improving already existing stuff and not adding new features.

And this is exactly what I'm supposed to be talking about today.

What are the improved elements of the brothel?

First of all, there's now a global menu.

We have plans to tweak the graphics a bit but that's what you'll get for now.

For the moment, only the first four elements are available. "Build/Clear/Decorate" are what you had access to through the workbench in the past and "Open" is here to open the brothel, of course.

The encyclopedia will gather informations about different elements of the brothels (customers, girls, attributes etc...) and the recycle feature will be added at a later date so you can get some materials out of furniture you won't be using anymore.

The build feature is more or less the same than before.

You have the element, the required materials and cash and if you can craft it, pressing enter will create one.

I'll pass on the clearing feature because it's a bit tricky at the moment. Most rooms are locked to clearing because they're scenario related so it's not as free as it could be. It'll be better when the second floor will become available.

The decorate room, though has been improved. First of all, the choice of the floor.

Like everything else, keep in mind that the UI is meant to be improved but that's more or less the base idea. The whole brothel will be a menu from where you can directly select the room you want. When you click on an available room, you'll be brought to this menu.

It's a revamped version of the old one and it works much better. You first select the furniture category, then the furniture, then the place. And it'll appear on the bottom right map instantly to see if it's placed accordingly. For the moment, there's only the shaky bed because we've finally finished the blueprint mechanic (where you can start crafting an item when you find its blueprint somewhere in the game.) Depending on the time I have left before the end of the week (which will mainly be dictated by the length of the testion sessions), I may or may not add a couple more things for the player to build and place.

Now some of you might have seen that on the main screen there's a big sticker on the top right of the screen with the letter E inside. If you ever read the new tutorial for the brothel in v0.25 then you know there's a reputation system. Here it is.

The reputation system is pretty simple. As the brothel gains ranks, you'll be granted bonuses linked to said rank. For example, the price paid by each customer will be increased by 5% at every rank (higher standing, more expensive prices 8D). The leisure rooms (coming soon) will have more customer per night (so they will generate more money per night). The maximum rank of the girls will be increased too... And even in terms of scenario, some NPCs will react differently depending on the rank of the brothel.

And to increase this reputation you have three ways :

- Leveling up girls

- Building Leisure Rooms

- Decorating Rooms

The most straightforward element are the Leisure Rooms. Building them grants a fixed amount of reputation. Then there's the room decoration.

You can see in the decorate screenshot that there's a little "Rep+2" over the shaky bed. It means that the brothel gains +2 reputation if it's placed in a room. Of course, the most expensive elements are those who'll garner the more reputation points.

As for the girls themselves it's slightly trickier. You maybe saw the values "Look/Charisma/Profesionalism" in the girls' stats. Those are mainly intened for the soon-to-come leisure rooms BUT, they also provide side bonuses.

Every 20 points (ranging from 0 to 100), a girl will get the following bonuses.

Every 20 points of Look --> Bonus reputation

Every 20 points of Charisma --> Bonus money earned

Every 20 points of Professionalism --> Bonus XP earned.

Those values are fixed. At 100 Look (the max), a girl gives +200 reputation value for the brothel.

But the interesting thing lies in the fact that those three stats, while ALSO evolving with the girl's rank (differently depending on the girl), are mainly meant to evolve through those leisure room. Unlike the rest of the stats, those 3 stats are not rank-locked. So you'll be able, in the future to farm those stats up to 100 if you feel like it even if the girl is still rank E (not that I recommand it, but it'll be possible.)

I should've shown you a screen of the night result page where a special line meant for the reputation has been added but it's currently buggy so I'll refrain from doing so. Basically it shows you the current reputation value of the brothel (and how much you need to reach the next rank) as well as the few extra conditions to fulfill if you want to unlock said rank.

As you can see it's evolving pretty well, but the amount of extra work to fit everything in what's already existing is quite a problem. The whole workbench thing being scenario related, I can't remove it, so for a moment, in the game, there will be two different elements that can open the brothel menu (the book or the workbench).

I also had to create a specific event for anyone with a recent save to adapt some values to avoid having to ask the player to start a new game. I'm sure it will lead to bugs at some point -_- So yeah, we still have many things to tweak before releasing the game for the end of the week.

Hopefull, things will work well.

I'll see you for the release. See ya o/