Developer Diary 36 - Code, Code, Code (Patreon)

I took a break from the game work. I had to. Things were piled up over my head and this thing was giving me nothing but stress. A few days ago I returned to it, with fresh eyes, and was able to make some nice progress.

I realized the ‘checkout’ idea I implemented wasn’t working out. It was confusing, and not really user friendly. I still like the idea of adding things to a cart and then paying for it all at the checkout, but it required me to code stuff I simply cannot do. I decided to stick with the classic “buy what you are looking at” logic.

This seemed to work, but I also ran into many, many bugs that had been created. You could cheat out money, buy stuff for free… it was a lot. I spent the last three days doing three things:

• Deleting bugs and cleaning up
• Making things easier (commenting!) and prepping for the future
• Finishing up a lot of loose ends in the project

At this stage, 3 stores are fully ‘done’. The Hair salon, the Tanning salon and the Makeup Salon. All three required quite a bit of reworking to make the buying experience adequate for release. On top of that, I’ve designed the code so that it shouldn’t take too much time to implement more stores. Next up is the clinic, followed by the Tattoo/Piercing parlor. Finally I will tackle the clothing stores, which will need a lot of work to properly implement, due to the amount of items I need to take care of.

Right now there is still no save system, so there isn’t really a point in making the game remember if you own more than 1 thing. Currently you cannot re-buy what you already have, but you can’t own everything, either. I would really like release 3 to have some kind of save feature, although the money earning aspect of the game is so bare, I still consider spawning the player with a big pool of money, so they can try stuff out.

I know the gap between now and the last build is too big. I also know that I wanted to achieve too much in one go. I wanted to shove the full game in, which just isn’t going to happen. So now I have downsized for the next release. I might disable some stuff, like certain events or locations, if they are not ready. At least you’ll be able to see the progress I’ve made. After that, I want releases to come more frequently but be smaller in scope, so things are less stressful for me, and more rewarding for you.

As always, thank you so much for your support!

Albatross