Course of Temptation Dev Diary #13 (Patreon)

Hello friends! This week of polishing up and extending existing content has gone more or less to plan and a new update should be out over the weekend.

There isn't one big single area of new content, it's more that I've touched a lot of different areas of the game. Just about every major event set has at least one new event, there are some new mechanics in that I've been meaning to add for a while, and some rough edges have been smoothed out.

The reason for all this is... well, first of all, we're between major content updates and it's a good time for it. But secondly, since 0.3, there's been a big influx of new players, and with them has come a new flood of questions and suggestions. I wanted to improve the new player experience and extend the game in certain areas before I moved on to 0.4.

So, welcome and thank you to everyone who has begun playing the game and been offering their suggestions, and an especially huge thanks to those who have generously pledged their support to the game. I see you and appreciate you!

Even those just coming by the Discord to get help with the game are helping me in turn. If you're a game dev, pay attention to what questions your players are asking and how often they're getting asked. Because those are your friction points, and anything you can do to smooth things out or make the answer more accessible within the game is going to be to your project's benefit.

What's in the update?

I haven't written release notes yet, but just as a preview: walking around while messy now garners some reactions from other people, clothes can become dirty (not just through normal wear, that would be too tedious, but through specific "incidents") and need to be washed, there are more ways to proposition people and be propositioned, and there are a bunch of new events, including a new set that can fire as you leave class.

There are a couple other things I want to try to squeeze in, but only as long as adding them won't delay the update past the weekend, so I won't promise anything yet. Anyway, don't get overhyped. While there is some new stuff, it's really just a polish update.

Next week

After this update is out, it'll finally be time to focus entirely on 0.4 and get some serious work in on that. I'll be taking the list of tropes I came up with in last week's dev diary and breaking them down into specific storylines, characters, and events, which will give me a better idea of how much work they actually represent.

As you might be aware, sports (which, besides the obvious, also includes things like esports and cheerleading) are the focus, along with more interactions with professors. Seasonal events (homecoming, halloween, some equivalent to Christmas, etc.) also got some attention in the poll, and I might begin outlining that too, but it will probably not make it into 0.4. I want major content updates to take weeks, not months, so I have to limit what goes into each one. But seasonal events are still on the big roadmap, so they will come sooner or later.

0.3, the streaming update, was a lot of code and lot of event writing both. 0.4 will be almost entirely event writing, but a lot more events with a lot more variety. It'll be a different type of challenge. In any case, by next week I'll have some concrete ideas of exactly which activities are going to make it in.

Until then!