Common Life Report 2

Last time I said I'd talk more about the game's mechanics so here we are.

- Stats -

Confidence - Indicates how fearless the player character is. A high confidence stat will allow the PC to do bold actions like grope someone in public or stand up to a character. This will build up mostly by successfully accomplishing various tasks, like getting a good grade on a test, answering a question in class correctly, completing a physical challenge, and other stuff like that.

Fitness - Signifies how in shape the PC is. This will make certain actions cost less stamina and increase your success at physical events - sports, helping to move something heavy, unjamming a stuck object, stuff like that. You'll increase it in the typical ways: going to the gym, working out in your room, competing in sports events, and putting in effort during gym class.

Intelligence - Measures how smart the main character is. With a high intellect you can tutor other characters, easily pass tests, and get homework and projects done more quickly. You'll increase this by studying, getting tutored yourself, paying attention in class, reading books, and watching educational TV programs.

Charisma - Designates how charming the MC is. A high charisma stat will make the MC more attractive and allow him to be more of a smooth talker. You can increase it by reading certain books, spending time with certain characters, and taking online lessons.

I've also been considering minor sub-stats, like cooking, for example. The problems here, though, are stat bloat and feature creep -- I wouldn't want to bog down players with too many numbers and the more features added to the game the less attention some of them will get, likely falling to the wayside at some point. 

- Other Mechanics -

Stamina - You'll have a pool of 100 points for this. That will never increase but the cost of actions will decrease as you build up your stats. For example, completing your homework might take 30 points at first but with a maxed out intelligence stat it might only take 5 points (I'm horrible at math, so those numbers are far from final). Only the life sim stuff will require stamina (i.e. stat building), helping another character with their homework won't require or reduce stamina but you will have to pass the stat check to successfully do it.

Schedule - Right now the idea is something like:
- Morning / before school
- First half of school
- Lunch break
- Second half of school
- Afternoon
- Evening
- Night
The classes you'd have would change depending on the day of the week. 

Next month I'll probably talk about stuff I have planned for the dating sim part of the game. For now, though, I'll introduce a new character.

The Player Character

As you probably figured out, the guy up top is the main character. Right now I'm leaning more towards letting the player choose his name but having a predetermined name would allow me to come up with nicknames and the like, so I'll probably hold a poll for it at some point.

He'll start off fairly shy and average, not really sticking out too much or being any one special or important. The only characters at school who will hold any real opinion of him at first will be his sister and cousin.

Right now the idea for his dialogue is that, like in most adventure games and visual novels, he'll largely have his own personality but when appropriate it's  the player will be given a list of choices. For those choices I'm planning for something like your typical Western RPG, with some choices having tags. For example something like:

1) blarigly blah
2) [Intelligence] blah blah
3) [Charisma] bleh bleh

The first option there would be choosable by any player whereas the other two would only be pickable if you meet the stat requirements.

Lastly, as for his appearance I'm going for a good looking, youthful, teenage look (yes, the complete opposite of Calvin) which I think I got down well. I'll likely continue to tweak it as I work on the game so if anyone has any suggestions or comments about it I'm all ears.

Well, that's it for this post. I originally was going to post a profile for one of the girls but I'm not completely satisfied with how any of them look right now, so I went with the player character instead.