House of Hellish Harlots - Update 1st Nov '19

End of the week, also the start of a new month.  It's time for another update.

Most of this week was spent working on The Elegant Woman.  She's the "Gossip" NPC.  Her role is to impart hints and information on all the harlots (for a price).  While getting sexily Bad Ended by a gorgeous succubus is a fun part of the game, I didn't want it to be too unfair and just trial and error.  The Elegant Woman is there to give a few pointers for players that would like to walk out of the room afterwards with their life and soul intact.

I've also been having a lot of fun writing her segments (she's deliciously bitchy), so I hope people will enjoy interacting with her.

As with the Madam, I found her surprisingly awkward to implement.  Both the NPCs have given me a few unexpected troubles.  I think it's because I want to try and make their dialogue a little less NPC robotic.  This means keeping track of what's been said and what hasn't, and also keeping track of costs (either in money or actions).  It's very easy for the code to get messy if you're not careful.  The Elegant Woman also added a little extra complexity as she's available in both the pre-choice (where she only talks about the three harlots available that round) and post-room (where she offers hints on every harlot presented to the player so far) action slots.

Many bugs were squished and her implementation now seems to be in and working fine.  There are some other dialogue options I need to add for her, but that's gossip on other NPCs and that will be added as they are created.

I also added the socialise-with-harlot option to the Madam.  The other way to find out information beforehand is to take the girl into the bar and buy her a drink (this may also trigger other things).  That's now in and working as it should.

And, also on the occasions where I was pulling my hair out over code not working, I managed to find time to type up harlot #3 and harlot #4's scenarios.  So, they are now ready to be implemented.

I've also started writing harlot #5's scenario.  I need to get a move on there, as the other segments are getting close to being done.

So, the current overall progress looks like this:

- Additional Player Attributes: Put back
- Setting Player Mindset: Done
- NPC Madam Mulligan functionality: Done
- NPC Madam Socializing functionality: Done
- NPC Gossip: Done
- Harlot #2: Done
- Harlot #3: Typed Up
- Harlot #4: Typed Up
- Harlot #5: Writing in progress
- Harlot #6: To do
- Harlot #7: To do

Ideally, I'd like to get something out around the end of next week, so I'm going to make that 7th harlot flexible.  If she's not finished, I'll hold her back for the next demo release.

As always, thanks for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the next demo when it comes out.

- manyeyedhydra