Course of Temptation Dev Diary #27 (Patreon)

Hello friends! It's time, once again, for the weekly dev diary. In this one, I'll lay out the general plan for the next major update.

But first, an update to early access! We're now on v0.4.15, which you can update from the early access itch.io page. We've fixed some bugs, most importantly that one that could sometimes prevent you from importing an exported save. The saves themselves were fine, so this update will allow you to use them.

We'll let this roll over the weekend and see if there are any more bugs to fix, and it should be good to release on Monday for the public. That'll give you a week of early access, which I think will just be the plan from now on with these monthly updates.

So, what's 0.5?

The next major update will be all about relationships! Of all the items on the roadmap, this one is most suggested by far, and given that it'll involve some deep changes with NPCs and how you interact with them, it's best to knock it out sooner rather than later.

So, what will this look like? So far, attitudes (the friendship, lust, and romance meters) have been more of a measure of how many interactions you've had with a person than anything really actually important. There are some thresholds in there that will shift an NPC's attitude, but mostly it's just a matter of grinding to those levels, and then it no longer matters very much.

By introducing relationships, we want to change some of that.

We would like relationships to be based more around events — the first date, the third date, the first kiss, agreeing to date exclusively — you know, the kinds of things that actually define a relationship. Shifting attitudes will still be important, but now there will be events, inflection points, along the way.

Also, currently the game doesn't always give you a lot of choice about what sort of relationship you have with a person. If somebody dislikes you, you don't get to clear the air and make friendship a possibility. Or if somebody does like you, then after enough interactions with them (whether you've ever sought them out or not) they'll eventually decide they're your friend. By having inflection points along the paths to different types of relationships, the player will get the opportunity to decide what they want an NPC to be to them.

Basically, we want to take some of the grindiness out of advancing relationships with NPC and add some distinct events along the way. We want to bring their personalities into it a bit more — perhaps have them prefer different types of gifts, or dates in certain locations — and certainly preferring different types of relationships.

Ideally, we'd like player characters to end up with a circle of friends and partners that players actually feel like they know, rather than a phone crammed full of half-remembered contacts.

The poll so far

I've been running a poll about what people would most like to see from this update, and here are the results so far aggregated from both platforms:

The top most wanted item is the ability to officially date somebody (no surprise there) followed by similar progressions in other types of relationships, as in friendships, rivalries, and non-romantic sexual relationships. I wasn't sure how much people would want that, so that's good to know!

People also really want dom/sub type relationships. This would probably have been a low priority "if we have time" type item, but given that it's polling so highly, I'll bump it up in priority.

The next most requested item (in terms of relationship mechanics) is cheating! This means consequences for the PC cheating, as well as the ability to get NPCs to cheat on their partners.

Advancing existing character storylines is also a popular option. People want particular attention paid to the BFF as well as the roommate and their partner, so I'll be sure to write some events just for them.

New dating locations have not been especially popular in the polls so far, but gym/workout dates and library/study dates are there in the middle of the pack, with formal restaurant dates just behind. The rest, along with items like gift-giving, haven't gotten much attention in the poll, so they'll likely only be prioritized after everything else.

Of course, contributors are always the wildcard. If one of them feels like making a special project out of giving gifts, I'm not going to stop them!

I'll watch the poll for another few days in case anything shifts significantly and reprioritize the bits and pieces of 0.5 accordingly.

Next week

I've already got the outline for 0.5 set out in broad strokes, prioritized more or less in line with the poll results. I'll probably start next week by tinkering with data, defining possible relationships and attitude/inclination combinations that will lead to them.

I'll also tinker with NPC relationships a little. The "NPCs in established relationships" option hasn't polled very highly so far, so it may not end up being a huge thing right away, but some mechanics for it do need to exist for some storyline characters at least.

I'll also start outlining the mechanics for shifting relationships in more detail — those "inflection points" — and laying out some possible events to go along with those.

There's also the February update to think about! Monthly updates will be developed in parallel  to roadmap updates and include things like extending existing locations and event sets and minor new mechanics. I've got a couple of events I want to write that didn't quite make it into the January update (a classroom event for high exhibitionism reputation, and some new bus events to fill the set out), and I'll probably knock those out early on. But most of my February update work will probably happen more toward the end of the month.

Then there are the contributors! They're working hard on getting some new things going, so expect to see a lot of their work in the February update too.

Okay, I've rambled enough! Thanks so much for all your support. You're the reason I'm able to do this! I'll be back next Friday with another progress report.