Course of Temptation Dev Diary #18 (Patreon)

Hello friends! Dev diary time again, and I have been working hard on 0.4!

The end begins to be in sight for the sports practice and game mechanics and storylines, and I've been planning in greater detail the professor interactions that I also want to bring in with this update.

Games!

While I didn't want to go too deep into actually simulating each type of game/match/meet (that's a bit outside the scope of what we need), I did want to have some structure to how things play out and sensible outcomes. The events you see during a game are a sort of highlight reel, and their outcomes help to decide what the final result will be.

You can attend a game just to spectate, but of course you can also join the team. If you're involved in a play, passing the skillchecks will really help your team. Building muscle is also pretty helpful for the football and swimming checks.

Each game type is now scripted out with its own unique mechanics.

During football, you'll see a few individual plays, including tackles, touchdowns, and field goals. Text highlights will tell you whether the outcome was good or bad for your team, so you don't have to try to keep track of who everybody is. But it's cool when you do see somebody you know.

Being a cheerleader will definitely be fun for more exhibitionist characters. Show off your flexibility, among other things, and embolden the team! Cheerleaders also see a lot of football events, so you'll be following the action.

At swim meets, you're competing as an individual but also trying to win points for your team. You only have so much stamina, depending on your level of athleticism and how well-rested and well-fed you are, so you generally can't go all-out all the time. Impress your coach to get more events at the meet!

In esports, the game of choice is EverNexus, where each team pits its heroes against each other, alternately trying to get a payload to the end of the map or trying to push it back as the other team attempts to escort it. (If that sounds familiar, it's definitely just a coincidence.) While you're playing for your team to win, you also have your own kill/death ratio to worry about.

As I said, each game type is now fully scripted, and through these events it'll determine a final result. It's complete, but likely something I'm going to iterate on. I'd like to spice things up generally and add in a few more decision points.

But not immediately. My goal for next week is to turn my attention back to the storylines and get them all leading into sexy events and encounters. Once that's done, I'll have knocked out a huge chunk of the 0.4 plan.

Teacher, teacher

I've also begun thinking more about professor interactions and starting to outline those in detail. My general plan is:

1) A baseline of after class or office hour type events where you can ask for help or assist your professor in some way, depending on how well you're doing. Some of these events will be mundane, but this is also a way you can potentially seduce your professor or be seduced by them, depending on personality type.

2) Special projects. I haven't yet decided whether these will be extra credit if you're doing poorly, a reward for doing well, or both but in different contexts with different decision points. My ideas so far are pretty specific to certain majors or classes. But what if you're not in that major/class? I'm thinking I'll make these things just generally available—"Help my colleagues and I'll bump your grade up," that sort of thing. That frees me up to delve deeper into specific storylines since everybody can do them instead of trying to brainstorm a bunch of ideas and split my efforts.

3) Designating certain professors as certain character types. Right now each professor is one of about three general purpose archetypes, but in order to create these storylines, it'll be better if at least some of them are more distinct, individualized characters. Like the coaches are! These will probably be your Block A and Block B professors, since those are the classes associated with your major.

I've got several specific storylines in mind, but I won't spoil them, at least not until I can show you some preview events. It'd be overly optimistic to say I'll be getting into this professor stuff next week (there's still a lot of sports storyline stuff to write), but the moment is approaching!

Next week

Writing sports storylines! These are all pretty well started, but I needed the actual game mechanics in place before I could continue them. Now those are done, so writing it is!

As always, I'll check in again next week and let you know my progress. Thank you for your support, and I'll see you then!