itch.io

TLDR; Popularity and exposing the breast area is the key. As far as I understand, the costume is completely irrelevant. Other that you have to wear one.

So, I was a very bad girl and have looked into the code and - as far as I understand -

==== SPOILERS ====

It depends on two factors. Your (or the other contestants') popularity and if you riled up the audience.

Enticing the audience means you have to expose your breast area. If you are female, this gives you 400 temp bonus points (_maxresponse). In case of a male it further depends on your build and can be 400 temp bonus points if your muscle >= 500 and your plumpness < 500 or else it's 200. Than the final bonus is randomly calculated between 400 (200) and 200 (100). So between the previously set temp bonus points and half of it. This is the formula:

set $costumepopbonus to setup.rir(_maxresponse / 2, _maxresponse)

Your popularity is the value of your reputation["popularity"]["student"]. You can examine this at runtime in the javascript console like this:

V.reputation["popularity"]["student"]

The other candidates are measured by their popularity and it's a pretty complicated formula which can yield a value between -1000 and 1000. The factors considered are wealth, charisma and inclinations. Look for the function

setup.people.npc_popularity

in the code for more details on this.

Then all contestants, including you, are put into an array which is sorted by the calculated values. That's how the winner and the other placements are determined.

The array used for the placement is _sorted and is a temp variable during the calculation event so just before the third place is announced.

This is the result of my analysis of the current (0.5.5f) code. I might as well have overlooked something and then my response could be completely wrong. I would have to test it but at the moment I have no char during the event.