Course of Temptation Dev Diary #68 (Patreon)

Greetings, friends, and happy Friday to all who celebrate. It is time for... another dev diary!

This week continues the work on encounters with a couple of notable extensions and some UI revising.

Encounter progression

First of all, we have what I'm calling the encounter progression system, the basis of which is contributed by duretoeter. This is a system whereby not everything may be on the table in your first encounter with an NPC — it may take successive encounters to progress from hand stuff to oral sex to "going all the way" and more.

Of course, this depends heavily on many factors. Someone you already have a good relationship with will progress less reluctantly, NPCs with inclinations like Oral Fixation will not be shy about skipping right to matching activities, and of course many NPCs are very casual about sex all around.

This progression comes in the form of encounter "ideas" as seen above, the most general building blocks that encounters are made of. Previously, all ideas were generally on the table, but now there may be certain things that an NPC just isn't ready to do yet. The odds that an NPC will agree are indicated by the button's color.

Once you progress to a certain "level" of activities with an NPC, then those and similar activities will remain on the table henceforth, and the next level of activities becomes more likely. Your history and relationship with an NPC factor into how far they'll go with you.

This is intended to draw some distinctions between different NPCs and make encounters a bit less samey — when you're with someone new who's a bit shy about sex versus with a significant other or somebody who takes sex very casually, you'll certainly feel the difference.

On the other hand, if you prefer encounters the way they are now and don't like this new progression system, then you can turn it off under content options.

Encounter preferences and feedback

Up until now, an NPC's kinks and preferences didn't really register during an encounter. These things did affect which ideas and acts they chose when they directed the encounter, but if the player was taking the lead, then they would usually just go along with it with nary a complaint.

But now NPCs can evaluate an encounter and pick out things they liked and didn't like about it.

Dillon, as you can see, is a pretty simple man. But he's weighing individual ideas used during the encounter and coming up with a favorite, and though this player character doesn't have a romantic relationship with him, he's fine with casual sex. If he had a favorite position that was used, had to bottom when he'd prefer to top, or came several times, then those would factor in too, along with a bunch of other things.

If you can consistently show an NPC a great time, then you'll find positive attitudes increasing swiftly. Or if you ignore their preferences and do a lot of things they don't really like, then your relationship with them will suffer.

Again, the intention here is to make encounters with different NPCs really feel different. The way you please a bottom who likes oral sex should look much different than how you please a dirty-talking top who likes doggy style!

Encounter UI

So, as you might have noticed, the encounter UI has acquired a lot of buttons. The addition of furniture brought several versions of many positions, we added idea requests, you can wear more clothes which means more clothing displacement buttons, and we've gradually added more sex acts. All of this leads to a page of blocks of buttons.

Encounter UI may need a fundamental reimagining sooner or later, but in the meantime I've put some effort into sorting buttons into subcategories and hiding some button groups behind expand buttons, and, generally, trying to make the screen look a little less like a spaceship control panel.

I'm going to have to see how it feels and get some feedback, but I think it's probably a bit less confusing. Putting clothing displacement behind two buttons might be annoying? We'll see. Eventually, it probably just needs a fancier interface of some kind, maybe with tabs and some kind of action-bar-looking thing. Luckily it's all designed in such a way that messing with the UI doesn't really interfere with anything else.

Onward!

There are two big items remaining on my list for this month: condoms and birth control stuff, and some revisions/additions to the River Rat career. One or both of those will be my focus in the next week. When those are done, there are plenty of items still on my update shortlist. I'm in absolutely no danger of running out of things to do anytime soon!

Beyond that, it's nearly time to figure out what the next major update focus will be. Which roadmap item shall we check off? I'll give it some thought, with input from you all as well, and I'll aim to get a poll out to narrow it down by the end of the month or so.

But that's all for now! It's back to coding for the rest of the day for me, and I'll be back next week with another progress report. In the meantime, thank you so much for your support! It truly means a lot and I'm very grateful to all of you. Have a good weekend!