Developer Diary 37 - Tan lines are back! (Patreon)

Since last week I’ve been hard at work to clean up even more code. The clinic, and piercing/tattoo location have been fully implemented using the new UI system. Slowly everything is starting to come together and I’m feeling a little bit more confident about myself again. There are still many big and small things to do, but at least now things are looking a little clearer.

A while ago I implemented a new system that could handle skin tones better and give us a deeper range of tanning. This sadly broke how I had implemented tan lines. This week I sat down and made sure tan lines were working again. Using a new method, I now draw the original skin tone over the darker skin, to give the illusion of tan lines. It’s not very easy to set up, but the result is pretty much perfect. Currently it’s not working when your arms are raised, but I just need to create the correct sprites and then it will work.

One other major issue is the energy system. It still doesn’t make much sense and feels confusing to say the least, but I need to restrict the players actions somehow. It’s not clear when energy is taken away, and this is frustrating. It needs to be very clear what the player can and cannot do without losing energy, or it will just become frustrating. Currently I want the player to only do 3 actions per day/night. But what exactly defines an “action” is a bit harder to figure out. Random encounters taking energy away feels a bit cheap, since the player didn’t choose to get this encounter. If you buy something and want to quickly change one thing, did you spend 1 or 2 energy? It’s a complicated situation, but I don’t want it to be too complex. I want you to play the game without feeling restricted or annoyed by these kinds of features. There are other ways to solve this problem, which I will be looking at next week.

Night time is still bare, as I’ve not had the chance to implement some more work locations. But night time is missing one major feature still: the porn. That’s right, this game is meant to be sexual! Still trying to wrap my head around how to approach it, but this will be for a later release.

Other than that it has been a lot of bug fixing and cleaning up code. Next up I have to implement the clothing stores, but at this point it doesn’t look so scary anymore.

Here is a look at the new tan lines!

As always, thank you for the support!

Albatross