Shady Deals v0.9 Progress Report

I'm going to change how i do progress reports, since i always end up tweaking the "preliminary" changelogs in sneak peeks anyway. I'd rather switch to shorter, easier-to-read posts about upcoming updates.

v0.9 will focus entirely on the new "phone" feature and NPC interactions (again). Also, I finally figured out a workable design for the "NPC filtering" system i’ve been wanting to add for ages after someone suggested one on the forums. Cuz, you know, searching for NPCs is a huge part of the gameplay loop - and it could definitely be much smoother.

So, about the phone:

The phone will act as your daily newsletter. It’ll include plenty of totally useless text (my beloved) and news updates about crypto. Each cryptocurrency will have one possible positive and one possible negative event in the news that can affect its price.

The second feature of the phone is the ability to receive calls from NPCs who aren’t on your ignore list. And yes - you’ll be able to manage your contacts and decide who to ignore by just setting a check in the contact list.

There are a few rules for calls: you can only receive up to 4 calls per day, and you won’t get calls from NPCs you’ve already talked to that same day. Also, new calls only come in during the evening.

Answering a call will launch an event with that NPC. I’m still working on these events, so things might shift around a bit, but at the basic level, there’ll be at least 3 events involving male NPCs (in the bar, nightclub, and park) and 2 events with female NPCs (in the bar and nightclub).

Each event will have several variations depending on the NPC’s depravity, and you’ll be able to influence that depravity during the events.

Aside from these set events, any NPC with low wealth and high depravity might call you to ask for money or a dose. You’ll also have opportunities to persuade them to go further.

Also-also, I’m not sure how the phone feature will actually look on mobile devices. I’ll test it once i’m done with the planned features. Depending on how it goes, I might add an option to move everything into the sidebar. Maybe.

And that’s all for now about the phone. This addition should help diversify the core gameplay loop around finding new crew members and workers.

The next big feature is the filtering system:

Well, nothing to say here, you can see everything on the screenshots.

I’m still not sure if those green/red highlights look good visually, but you can always turn them off by setting all filters to zero.

This small-ish addition ended up costing me quite a decent refactor of the NPC creation and meeting code. I hope i haven’t broken anything, still testing it.

In the pipe

• I’m finishing up the writing - that’s mostly what’s left for this update.

• If there’s enough time right before the “deadline,” i’d also like to squeeze in a few more “bad” interactions with NPCs, like the ability to rob their homes (by seducing them) or just straight-up extort them.

• I might add triggers all over the game to push contextual news to the phone. I just haven’t given it much thought yet.

• I’m also working on code optimization. I’m not gonna bore you with line-by-line details, but my goal is to make the late-game EndDay passage run faster and load more smoothly. That’s more of a long-term plan, though.

There are also a few fixes and minor changes that aren’t really that important, but yeah.

That’s it for now. I’m aiming to release everything by 05/07.