Shady Deals v0.2.0: Dynamic Crimewave

Download links for public release.

Link to patron's download page: Link;

The changelog is mostly copy-paste from the preliminary changelog plus new additions. You can check out screenshots of the new UI in the sneak peek.

Changelog:

v0.2.0 is primarily focused on cleaning up after the initial release, balancing gameplay, improving the UI, and introducing more dynamics to the game, such as adding some randomness and scaling.

One of the highlights of the 0.2 update is Gig.gles.

Gig.gles is a site that you can access from your PC (though I’m not exactly proud of the PC UI - it really needs an update asap), and it’s... basically radiant quests. It updates every three in-game days, shuffling 4 useless notices and 2 gigs. Though, I’m planning to add some functionality to the “useless” ones as easter eggs once there are enough of them.

So, there's 5 types of gig:

• Find an item - nuff said. It can be any loot or material item;

• Find a weapon - nuff said x2. Both of these can be completed directly on the site;

• Steal a car - sounds easy enough, right? You'll need to use a special link that appears when you get this gig;

• Beat someone - the difficulty of the fight scales randomly, not by your reputation. I thought it would be too easy to ignore this gig if you could see that the fight would be really tough;

• Frame someone - there are a few ways to do this: either by using your cunning skills or your charm. You can guess by yourself. The guy can have two different character types - bold or shy. An observant MC can easily figure this out and can also tell if they can persuade the guy. The requirement for persuasion rolls with every failed attempt.

All gigs rewards are scaling with your reputation. Amount of items and weapons needed for "find a" gigs scales too.

There are also 14 “useless” notices that mainly serve as fluff

Next highlight: Random Strangers

Originally, I wanted to give players a way to control how "horny" their game would be through the style system. Right now, you can stack stylishness and sluttiness by dressing accordingly. If you stack enough sluttiness, the game will now react to it. (No alternative stranger content for stylishness just yet, though.).

Currently, there are four stranger encounters:

• An “aspiring” adult film producer in the Harbor;

• A rich guy cruising around the Center in a limo – adds another combat encounter on top;

• Two chill guys in the Suburbs – you can teach them why inviting strangers home might be a bad idea. Or not;

• Two not-so-chill guys in Downtown – they’ll try to teach you why accepting invites from random strangers might be a bad idea. Or not.

All strangers have random cooldowns after you complete their story, but they will eventually appear again. The cooldown ranges from 4 to 10 days, except for the limo. All of them, except the "film producing" stranger, are designed to be played more than one time, duh. Also, you always can just ignore them.

No strangers for outskirts. And later I'll add alternatives for MC's with more stylishness points. And yeah, you'll be able to stack enough points for attention of both types of strangers.

Other implementations: 

Your chauffeur now actually appears at locations and has a small chance to say something. He'll always comment if you've found yourself in a naughty situation while he's following you. You can disable this feature, though;

Heister's perk - nuff said. Increases your cunning;

Manager's perk - you can gain experience for this perk if your brothel and/or nightclub have more than 70 popularity. Increases your charm;

Hustler's perk - gain experience through gigs. Increases your combat skills and health points;

The ability to order an article about yourself from the writer NPC. You can read it on forums with a few variations, and it will boost your reputation accordingly;

Orgy for the crew (yo), using the brothel’s workforce - if you own the brothel. It lasts a full in-game day, putting the brothel’s usual operations on pause and has cooldown of 14 days. Of course, you’re welcome to peek inside and check on how things are going.

The ability to skip all naughty interactions with the girls;

Three new band events:

• Slick Trick might show up to challenge you, with a increased amount of media for his event.;

• One of your gang members might bring a potential recruit;

• One of your gang members might introduce a girl in need to you.

UI

New buttons for "Wait", "Inventory", and "Stats";

A new "Log" menu that shows your notification history;

I also tried to add icons to all regular links (not linkappends or linkreplaces) throughout the game. A bunch of location transition links were missing their icons before, especially in events pages - now they’re all fixed up. I hope so atleast;

The "Lock" feature has been removed from fast travel – it’s now always locked when open.

Also removed the version number from the StorySubtitle, since the new UI needed a bit more breathing room;

The notification about status of your sabotage action on Whiteboard;

The notification for a new trait is now an image too;

Notifications for all your sales in the nightclub, strip club, bar, park, and gym (making it easier to track results through the log);

Slight changes to the clothing store and warehouse interfaces: they are now much more responsive, and you can no longer stack multiple windows;

Background image for sidebar during cunning events;

The UI overall looks now... kinda overloaded? I think I’ll shuffle things around and move some buttons in the future, once I get to working on the UI of other sections. But for now, it looks more presentable at least;

Balance

All reputation changes are now randomized, with a few exceptions (everything related to shipments and trading remains static). On average, you’ll gain or lose about 30% more rep from any outcome;

Added reputation changes to places I had previously forgotten. All naughty events with "plebs" (which make up like 90% of them) will now result in a pretty significant reputation loss if you doesn't have a very specific type of leadership in your gang;

Loot from burglaries now scales with your reputation. Also, there are more locations to loot during those break-ins;

Safes became 20% harder to pick;

Lockpicks now cost $150 each. Yeah, I initially wanted to keep it somewhat realistic - I mean, how much could a piece of metal really cost? But I’m ready to trade a bit of realism for some smoother ingame economics. I'll write some joke about it somewhere in the game later;

All rewards for combat encounters now scale with your combat stat. With all combat perks, you can earn up to 7–9k per fight (The limo guard is an exception);

Combat overall is about 20% tougher now except attack in Downtown. All enemy stats have been increased accordingly;

Strip club and casino now require 1 less charm to start working there;

Car prices now depend on player's cunning. And yeah, you’re getting paid in dirty cash now;

Rewards and prices for band events now scale with reputation;

Rebalanced sabotage actions: essentially, actions with minimal cost now have much less impact. You can still spam them, but they’ll be far less effective. This is a quick fix, and I'll focus more on gang wars in the 0.4/0.5 update;

Misc

Replaced "salesman" NPC from Center's pool with writer;

The summary bonus of player's style has been moved to the wardrobe. Idk why I put it only in the "Traits" submenu;

Expanded media coverage for themes that were a bit too sparse;

Reworded the hint about style in "Strange Note #2";

Clarification that you need people with the "Thug" and "Thief" traits on the pre-band whiteboard;

Cooldown of band events was increased by 1 day, I think it feels more smoother;

Passive reputation increase if player's brothel and night club has higher than 70 popularity;

A reputation meter has been added to the character's menu, showing how much more rep you need to reach the next tier;

Fixes

Fixed the broken income for your girls working on the oldest profession. It now gets added to the total income on EndDay. Previously you needed to click the spoiler to collect the money. Well, you can just spam it and get an infinite amount of cash without this fix - yikes!

Some broken icons for links, nothing special;

Changing nickname of your right hand now actually changes his nickname during events;

Disabled brightness changes for PC and Whiteboard. It was weird with it;

T2 revealing clothes appearance in the shop was tied to reputation, not to the actual T2 clothes unlock;

Apparently, you needed 15 style points for the second charm point in a single category. It was supposed to be 14 - so, kinda fixed?

Money lost due to enemy sabotage was not counted in the money loss stat;

Also, a word about pre-0.2 saves. Your old saves will be updated and everything will initialize properly, but clothes will be broken because I made a stupid spelling error and didn’t catch it before the release. And it was triggering me. But hey, the new version is a good excuse to break something in saves, so your entire wardrobe will be reset. Tee-hee.

In the pipe:

I'm working on the web version because making people download hotfixes every few days after a major release is kinda wacky. I bought a domain, and now I'm deciding which VPS I should rent. I thought it would take much less time, but apparently, there are some problems with hosts. I'll deploy it as soon as it's ready for patrons, and then when v0.2 goes public, the patron link will also become public. The same process will apply to future versions - v0.3 will be available on the web for patrons first, and once it goes public, the patron link will become public as well. And so on, following this cycle.

I'm a bit worried tho, that people who check out the game on the web might be put off by the wall of text in the prologue. Maybe I should rewrite it before launching the public web version during the hotfix phase.

I haven't prepared the to-do list for v0.3.0 yet, but it'll mostly focus on another recurring game mechanic that'll be used throughout the entire game. I'll also gonna finish the strangers content as part of the patch. After that, I'll move fully on to the gang stuff and new businesses for the player, each with its own gimmicks. I'll share more in a sneak peek once there's something to show. Also, I'll continue working on the UI.