Course of Temptation Dev Diary #127 (Patreon)

Hello friends! It's dev diary time! A relatively short one this week, as what I've been doing is pretty much already in your hands... especially with today's update, bringing the early access version up to 0.8.1c! Let me just catch you up a bit.

First of all, late last week I started on some more thorough implementation of the Soft Dom and Brat inclinations added in 0.8. There was already some difference in what kind of rules they would give you, preferring self-care ones, but that doesn't really go far enough — soft doms still had many of the standard strict behaviors, whereas they should tend to be nurturing rather than punishing.

The first big step I took towards this was to invert the dynamic when it came to sub rules: instead of punishing you for breaking them, a more nurturing dom should reward you for obeying them.

This uses the Favor hidden attitude. Successful inspections increase Favor, and it can then be traded in for various rewards, including a break from the rules. Generally, having a soft dom looking after you will represent a more nurturing experience, and be a sort of passive Composure boost for your character.

Of course, a soft dom tries to give you what you really want, so if you have the Brat inclination, they'll understand that you enjoy punishment and give it to you.

New in today's update is the other side of that: the opportunity to reward your sub if you're a soft dom yourself.

While what an NPC dom offers you depends on their favor, as the player, you can decide for yourself how much goodwill they've earned. Whichever option you choose to offer, all the previous options are included as well, so your sub can pick what they like from that. And being a nurturing dom is also pretty good for your own Composure!

Also in 0.8.1 is a project CGeorge has been working on for a while: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie collects basically all the books and clothing in the game, making them easy to find — with the downside that they're more costly to order online, and since they'll be shipped to you, you won't have them immediately.

Along with this are new sorting options for name and price, and you can now filter books by which skills they increase. And pagination options, so you can decide how many items appear per page — helpful for slower devices, which can take a moment to load the sheer number of items this store will show you.

I'll probably spend most of the time remaining before public release continuing working on the Soft Dom / Brat type stuff. Specifically, it can be a bit hard to find NPCs with these inclinations, so my next task is integrating them into the simulation system and giving NPCs the opportunity to gain these inclinations based on player advice and interactions. A couple new events for this are in today's update, but I'd like there to be more, both for variety and so they can fire under more circumstances.

Also, while Soft Dom content is significantly better covered through this reward system, I'll have to brainstorm a little to come up with some Brat events. If you have any ideas for either of them, let me know!

Rfpnj is also cooking up some changes to the Prologue process and giving character creation a bit of a balance pass where it comes to skill points. This should result in better separation of relationship preferences (poly, demisexual, et al), dating experience, and sexual experience. And given the average skill levels you can end up with after the Prologue, it looks like we may boost the number of available skill points in Quickstart to 15. However, that's not in today's update, but it'll almost certainly land by the time of public release.

After the July update is public, it'll be time to start immediately on the August update and see how far I can get with the post-0.8 todo list, which you might recall from the 0.8.0 release notes:

An apartment that the player can rent in town in order to accommodate a post-college living situation

Actually graduating, which will lock off some locations and actions on campus and necessitate altering a lot of flavor text

More detail granted to NPCs' dorm rooms, homes, and so on, allowing you to visit them properly

An optional extended, more realistic timescale for players who want that (for example, freshmen would be required to live in dorms, and living in the Greek house or in an apartment would only be available starting year 2)

More naturalistic discovery of NPC info — for example, instead of traits just silently showing up once you've passed a Friendship threshold, they should come up in conversation or some other way

Extending cheating partner mechanics to the PC's partners

More simulation content and more things that NPCs can get up to

Additional pregnancy events and content

Discussing birth control with partners

Revamping the texting system and better integrating the old Elkbook post mechanics with the new Elkbook implementation, and letting NPCs reply more immersively to posts from the PC and other NPCs

Updating existing content to better account for soft doms and bratty subs

Generally polishing and revamping the UI

We can check a couple of these off now, but there's certainly a lot more to do! Of these items, which do you most want to see? Or is there something else you feel should be on the todo list? Let me know!

You'll hear from me again on Tuesday with the public release and the final changelog for the July update. So, until then, please have a good weekend! And thank you, as always, for your very generous support and making this project possible.