Course of Temptation Dev Diary #43 (Patreon)

Hello friends, welcome to this week's dev diary!

To start with, we're on v0.5.0k as of today, fixing some bugs and fiddly logic in the 0.5 update. If you're not up to date, you may want to redownload!

The most interesting bug fixed this week... an object reference mishap that resulted in extra credit tasks being issued for professors who don't exist in your current save, but instead in a different save entirely! This very rare bug has been occasionally mystifying me for months, but it's finally been tracked down.

Unfortunately most bugs aren't as interesting as transdimensional professors, but they still have to be handled, and that has occupied a good bit of time in this week following public release. All of you in early access are great at finding and reporting bugs and I seriously appreciate your efforts. Public release, of course, opens the game up to many more players and uncovers all the unlikely situations and edge cases that slipped by before, which tends to keep me pretty busy for a few days.

But overall the launch went quite smoothly, and aside from untangling some complicated relationship logic that perhaps isn't quite as it should be here and there, the game is in a pretty stable place at the moment.

Aside from fixing bugs, I've been working on fleshing out the in-person dialogue system a bit more and adding in more miscellaneous relationship events throughout the game.

One thing I've done is better integrate faculty NPCs with the new system. Professors are now handled in a way consistent with the after class and office hours talks if you happen to run into them, and in general faculty will now react to the PC's advances in a more sensible way, avoiding showing any signs of interest if you're not alone. Eventually I'd like to allow this to build into a sneaking-around sort of dating, something that allows the player to freely pursue relationships with faculty while acknowledging that it's a world where they really aren't supposed to be fraternizing with students.

After adding in-person dialogue, "just add more relationship events in general" was the big winner in the recent poll, so that's been my focus. Including wingmen at the quad party...

Long walks in the park...

Rivals being rivals...

Y'know, just trying to add everything I can think of so that gaining relationships (friendly and otherwise) changes your experience of the game, to help flesh out this system.

In addition, I've continued work on D/s relationships some. The Dominant and Submissive inclinations were not actually all that common, it turns out, so I've spread them through the game some more. This change is retroactive and will be applied in today's update. The in-person flirting options will help nudge D/s NPCs in a certain direction, and a new event where a dominant NPC can ask you for nudes will help them assert control over you and move the relationship along.

I intend to keep adding in things like this, and if you have ideas for more events along these lines, by all means let me know!

Next week, I'll be... on vacation! Yes, for the first time since last December, I'll be taking more than two days off in a row. :) If you've gotten to know me at all through these dev diaries or on discord then you might have realized I'm not really wired to "just relax" but I'll try my best! I will still keep an eye on DMs, discord, and so on, and I'll also stay on top of bug reports so they don't pile up, but that shouldn't take too much time. This also means there probably won't be a dev diary next week!

The week after that, I'll be back to work adding in new stuff, using the recent poll as a guide for which things to prioritize. This puts the roommate and their partner on my list, along with multi-friend/partner hangouts and D/s punishments. This new stuff will come with the July update, which for you will be at the end of June!

That's all for now! I'm working my usual hours today, but after that it's vacation time, so expect the next dev diary in two weeks. :) Thanks as always for your support, it really does mean a lot! I'm very grateful to be able to put as much time into this game as I do and it's all thanks to you!