Course of Temptation Dev Diary #7 (Patreon)

Hello friends!

The streaming career

Development continues on the streaming update. Having worked on the visuals and other necessary building blocks of the system last week, this week was about coding the underlying systems and hooking it into the main game loop.

"Hooking it in" basically means that, previously, I was getting into the streaming system through a dev-only test link, but I needed to make a way for the player to access it, write an event about setting up their account, and so on.

Part of the underlying system was also working on the equipment you need to stream, what should exist, its cost, its effect on stream quality, and then making a store for it.

And much more! Even your wall decor plays a role.

Much more difficult to screenshot is the load of new code and widgets that have gone into making the business sim side of it function. There are algorithms to determine how many viewers you should be getting, how interesting your stream is, how much people should tip, and then the meta-progression of your popularity growing as you do subsequent streams and upgrade your equipment. Getting something that both "feels right" and is balanced is always a challenge.

But it's rewarding seeing it starting to come together. I'm now writing events for the system (usually the final stage of a new addition, but often a lengthy one) and seeing the interplay between chat and events that happen during your stream is pretty cool.

This is my character's first stream and it's already kinda toxic! Luckily that last remark means I can finally just ban that cheesesteak guy. Or do what he wants, but that would be crazy, right?

Which is nice for an immediate flood of tips and very high interest, but it'll have consequences. Like immediately catching a one week ban from streaming. Whoops.

Anyway, if I want to keep to a one major content update per month plan then I have about two weeks to get this done. I may be on course for that, but there's still a lot to do, so we'll see. Having the update be good and complete is more important than hitting a self-imposed deadline.

Spreading the effort around

The game has a lot of low-hanging fruit: minor plots or side characters that would benefit from just one or two more events, little quality-of-life changes, and so on. It would be all too easy to fall into a trap of constantly working on the next big update and never coming back around to revisit things already in the game, and it's a trap I'd rather avoid.

I'm experimenting with a pattern of working on the next major update on weekdays and reserving the weekend for just working on these little things. I tried it last weekend and it seemed to work out, with a nice little content update dropping on Monday. So I'll keep going with that and see how it goes.

This is in addition to Polish Week, as in whenever this big update drops, I'll spend the following week (at least) just focused on little things before I start thinking about the next big thing.

Anyway, I have rambled enough for one week. Until next time!