Course of Temptation Dev Diary #87 (Patreon)

Hello friends! Join me... here in the midst of Greek house update crunch... for another Friday dev diary!

So, I had done a lot of work on pledge tasks, parties, party activities, and the houses themselves, but there was still a lot to do to connect these systems! The houses have to be introduced, the player has to be granted the opportunity to pledge, the game has to detect and fire off another event when the pledge tasks are complete, and finally the player can join their chosen house.

One thing this implies but that I hadn't given any specific thought to is... the initiation ceremony! These are super important to Greek houses, but even today, the exact details are often shrouded in secrecy. But in any case, I want to avoid evoking any particular actual house and it's a game anyway, so we can have a little fun with it.

I did a fair amount of writing here, coming up with two different ceremonies (one for the more traditional houses, one for the less traditional), each with two ways they can go depending on content settings. As with everything else, this is something I still want to come back to and iterate on later — ideally each house should get a very individualized ceremony.

I also wasn't quite sure how specifically detailed to get. In real life, these ceremonies can involve specific acts, oaths, passwords, and so on, but for obvious reasons, these are the most difficult aspects to find details about. For now, I'm leaving these bits fairly abstracted. At some point, I'll come back around and invent some more lore for each house. I think that would be fun to write, and more importantly, fun to experience.

The important thing for now is that the work of stitching all this stuff together into a complete system is done. You can learn about the houses, pledge, complete your tasks, and be initiated as a full member. That just leaves further iteration — as discussed last week, I want to work on the pledge tasks more, then go back to party activities and add to those, and, sooner or later, expand on these initiations as well. The upshot is, while I want to keep building onto this update as much as I can, we're still very much on track to get this into early access this month.

On another subject, the game has recently (as in, within the last couple of days) gained a new volunteer contributor, HeartsDmise, whose focus is graphic design! Most of the game's current graphic assets are stock art I've bought and kludged together or stuff created via app, which is about the limit of my own graphic design abilities (though I also can't forget to call out Penny's sports team logos or Rotem, who designed the splash screen and the original Addie).

We're still working out exactly what to prioritize, but this should be a big help in improving the game's presentation. Already she's produced a range of new time and weather assets.

These are reminiscent of the current art but they build in a lot more information — season, time of day, and current weather, and we'll also integrate the temperature display. This will consolidate the recently added weather/temperature assets and allow us to regain that space on the sidebar, and it'll look a lot better besides!

Okay, that's where I'll leave it for now, as there's still a lot I want to get done! I'll be back next week with another progress report. Very close now! And, as always, I want to thank you for your generous support, I really couldn't do it without you!