V0.2.0 Sneak Peek

v0.2.0 is mainly focused on cleaning things up after the initial release, balancing, improving the UI, and adding more dynamics to the game i.e. introducing some randomness.

Here are some screenshots before proceeding with the preliminary changelog:

Preliminary Changelog:

What is done already:

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

Gig.gles is a site 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 gigs you can complete right 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.

Besides, there's 14 useless notices that are serving mainly as a fluff.

Next highlight is random strangers:

Initially, I wanted to give players the option to control how "horny" their game would be through a style system. Right now, you can stack stylishness and sluttiness by dressing accordingly, right? So, if you stack enough sluttiness, the game will react now. No alternative strangers for stylishness yet, though. The wardrobe system will let you know if your style is going to attract attention.

There's 4 strangers encounters at the moment:

• An "aspiring" adult films producer in Harbor - no real choices here;

• A rich guy cruising around the Center in a limo - you can end up brawling with his guard or even rob him outright if your combat skill is high enough.;

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

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

All strangers has random cooldowns after you completed their story. But they will appear again, eventually. All, except "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.

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.

• Removed the "lock" feature from fast travel—now it’s always locked when open.

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

• Notification that your sabotage is active on the Whiteboard.

The UI overall looks... 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 smoother gameplay. 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 - you’ll see why.)

• 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 get started.

Misc

• 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.

• Minor formatting of NPC's windows.

• 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. It increases your charm.

• Hustler's perk - gain experience through gigs. It increases your combat skills and health points.

• Ability to buy an article about yourself by asking the writer NPC. You can actually read it on forums with a few variations of it. It will boost your reputation accordingly.

• Replaced "salesman" NPC from Center's pool with writer.

• Moved the summary bonus from your style to the wardrobe. Idk why I put it only in the "Traits" submenu.

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 were tied to reputation, not to the actual T2 clothes unlock.

In the pipe:

Okay, that's all in "completed" section. Now I'm going to write what's left until the 0.2 release:

• Some quick balancing of sabotage actions (I'll focus fully on gang-stuff slightly later);

• UI for sidebar during cunning events;

• Quick """action""" with the girls (right now, you need to click through the whole naughty event sequence with them if you want to max out the relationship quickly);

• Ability to quickly boost your band morale;

• Meter of reputation maybe? Still considering;

• Make interface of warehouse same as PC's, i.e. no window stacking;

• A few more useless notices for Gig.Gles;

• A few more videos for everything that lacks them, and, well, it'll provide more motivation to replay the game.

• One more band event. I'm still considering what to add, but there's really not enough of them;

• Hints about style system to Mall;

• Specific backgrounds for combat pages;

And that's it, I think.

Also, I came up with an idea on how to motivate players to pursue various naughty events, because right now those events are mostly fail states or just random outcomes. It’ll also let me add some immersive hints. But... I'll focus on that in the 0.3.0 version. We'll talk about it at the v0.2.0 release.

Patrons can expect the update around Tuesday/Wednesday. I hope that's enough time to figure out "something I'm still considering how to do," duh