Course of Temptation Dev Diary #32

The time has come... for another dev diary!

I spent the week, first, finishing up the "So, what are we?" conversation that happens as you progress a dating relationship with somebody. Generally this will result in your standard boyfriend/girlfriend/partner type arrangement, but depending on inclinations, you may also negotiate open and poly relationships.

After that, I moved on to implementing crushes! I decided a crush would be a "secondary" relationship... you may end up crushing on a friend, an enemy, or even occasionally a hot stranger.

(That's the Classroom Harasser in my game... inconvenient!)

Who you crush on shouldn't be completely random, so as discussed before, I also implemented player selection of turnons and turnoffs.

These are the same options that NPCs have had since 0.2 for determining how attracted they are to the PC, and it wasn't too much effort to implement them in reverse to arrive at a number representing how much the PC is attracted to an NPC.

I'm really curious to see what you all think of this feature once you can play with it! Setting your turnons and turnoffs gives the system some direction, but other than that, as in real life, you'll have little control over who you develop feelings for. I think that the game giving you a nudge like this, pointing you toward somebody you might otherwise not have noticed, might make for some interesting stories.

Of course, crushes don't last forever, and if you ignore yours, it'll go away on its own after a little while. There's no penalty for not pursuing them. The game will also acknowledge if you began dating your crush, formed a relationship with them, or just... quenched your lust in other ways.

Following crushes, I moved on to implementing events for ongoing rivalries. There are already people who will give you a hard time in the game, but I wanted it to feel a little different with an acknowledged enemy. I'd like it to feel a little more personal and competitive, and not just be all downside... there should be benefits, like Composure gains for getting one over on your enemy. Of course, a focus on making enemies also might imply that the player wants more negative interactions in their game, so... there are a lot of considerations!

I'd also like to make it interesting by implementing events that lead to enemy-to-lovers type storylines, because who doesn't love those? However, there are still more basic relationship transitions to write, so I'll save these more complicated ones for later.

More technically, if I handle all No Relationship => Relationship cases and all Relationship => No Relationship cases (enemy to acquaintance, then acquaintance to lover), then any relationship can ultimately transition into any other. Handling Relationship => Different Relationship cases (enemy to lover directly) would make for interesting events and storylines, but I want to make sure the basics are down before I focus on that.

In contributor news, drakon's assault on the game's UI has continued! Expect the People dialog and the left side panel to look more polished in the April update.

Next week

I need to do a lot of event writing! Going from acquaintance to dating to partners is mostly handled, and I've written a few events for gaining a friend too, but other types of relationships (enemy, bully, victim, FWB, and so on) need their own transition events.

And just gaining a relationship is, of course, only part of it. These relationships also need their own ongoing events, first to add to the story of your character, and second to give some benefit to these relationships, which will often take some effort to achieve.

I'm experimenting also with weighting the people picker heavily toward existing relationships (this is the thing that decides which NPC an event is about, generally based on their inclinations and attitudes). This will mean that acknowledging a relationship with an NPC (of any type) is also developing a circle of NPCs you actually care about, centering your story more around them. But other NPCs will still have to find their way into the mix, so there's a balance to be struck.

The week after next, my focus will be on contributing to the April monthly update. There are lots of things I can think of that could use attention (more reputation events, more sports events, more arcade events, sheer clothing, perhaps daytime streaking), so next week I'll likely put up a poll to help narrow it down.

In any case, I'll let you know about my progress next week as always! As ever I'm very grateful for your support and your help in making this project possible. Until next time!