Course of Temptation Dev Diary #136 (Patreon)

Hello friends! It is once again dev diary time!

I spent the first part of this week writing and writing, and I got the roommate-with-benefits mini-storyline completed. This storyline can launch with any roommate you're mutually attracted to that you don't already have a romantic or sexual relationship with, and will build things up over time until you have a regular sexual relationship, if you so choose.

Beyond the very small preview I showed last week, I don't really want to spoil anything, so I'll let you discover this for yourself if you're interested!

Following that, I've been tackling the new mechanic of being able to negotiate the share of rent that your roommates pay. This plays into the system where a roommate might be short one month; if they're genuinely having trouble keeping up, reducing their share makes it more likely they can pay. Or you can extract other promises.

Here are the possible rules as it stands now:

This is essentially a trade interface, where you can agree that your roommate can owe a lesser share of the rent, but in return, they have certain obligations, some PG and some not so much. This is just a first pass on the possible set of rules, and sooner or later I'm sure they'll be expanded. But this contains several things people have been asking for, so I hope you like this initial selection! If you have any other ideas, let me know... I'll implement them, time allowing.

You can also fulfill your sugar daddy/momma dreams by just reducing your roommate's share of the rent and asking nothing in return, which will result in an attitude boost each month when rent comes due.

Something you don't really learn until you start actually making a game... is how much work just the UI is! What I've got could use a bit more work still, but even so... the UI is often the most finicky part of a new system and sometimes takes more time than writing the system's under-the-hood code. There's a bit of learning curve with budgeting the time not just for the new system, but for how the player will interface with the new system.

In any case, it's serviceable enough for now! I've got a little more code and events to write to make these rules actually function, but it shouldn't be a problem to get through those today. After that, I'll be looking to fill out the update with a few more events... perhaps more roommate stuff, or perhaps moving on to other top items in the development focus poll (notably pregnancy-related stuff). We'll see!

All in all, my aim is to continue working on this update for about another week. In the middle of that, of course, is early access next Wednesday, so the next time you hear from me, I'll have an initial changelog and an early access link.

That's all for now, as I've got to dive back into code! As always, I appreciate you reading and I'm very grateful for your support. Have a good weekend, and see you next Wednesday!