Course of Temptation Dev Diary #138 (Patreon)

Hello friends! Happy Friday to all.

As of just a little while ago, our most current version is 0.8.4g. This in particular fixes some issues with the new roommate mini-storyline, so be sure to grab it!

Earlier this week, I finished up (for now) the systems for living with an NPC primary tenant. As I wrote last week, this inverses many of the dynamics added in last month's update, in that an NPC can invite you to live in their unit and your character will owe that NPC a share of the rent.

These dynamics mostly rely on the Anger hidden attitude as a means for the NPC to make decisions regarding your tenancy. Being late with the rent or not having it at all will of course increase your roommate's anger rather drastically, though depending on the circumstances, you may well be able to "work something out." Don't rely on this too much, though — the NPC does need actual money sooner or later, particularly if they're not doing very well financially themselves.

In addition, the mechanics behind the rent reduction deals can now be reversed, and if one of them has sufficient appeal to an NPC, they'll suggest it:

Agreeing to a rule but then failing to adhere to it will also increase the primary tenant's anger. However, if they see you're going along with the rules, this is another path to appeasing them.

Should anger grow too high, a discussion will ensue where the NPC essentially warns you you're on thin ice. You'll get some time to try to patch things up, but if the NPC remains angry, you can be kicked out. Since the anger attitude is also used for some other mechanics, going down this path can, realistically enough, put some strain on a friendship or romantic relationship as well.

After finishing these things up, as promised I turned my attention to other items. Last week, I asked for what you'd like to see from the pregnancy system, and fortunately, the most common response was also what I wanted to do. Spot the new addition:

I wanted to model this fairly realistically, as I'm wont to do, so it works basically like this: during pregnancy, a character will enter into a phase charmingly called lactogenesis I (there are two sequels) where the body begins producing colostrum. This may pass unnoticed, but it can also potentially be expressed or leak randomly (we'll use inclinations to set the range of possibilities for your character).

Milk doesn't properly come in until a few days after birth, whereupon production goes into high gear. This is where your character will need to express the milk or will grow uncomfortable.

Simplifying a bit, maintenance mode ensues from here, where your character will produce milk for a further month or so. Then production begins tapering off, and it will be entirely gone after a further two weeks. (In reality, supply will often last for as long as milk is still being removed, and I'll likely swap to a more realistic model sooner or later.)

I've gotten as far as writing the underlying code for this, and as you can see above, I've got it working in encounters. My further plans, which I'll start on today, are events related to all this and a couple of possibilities for things to do with your milk. For the latter, there are two main realistic options: donating to a milk bank, which we'll take as an act of kindness for a Composure boost, or selling it online, which is a little sketchy but has the obvious reward of cash.

Which brings me to right now! Time to post this and dive back into it. It shouldn't be a problem to finish this up within the next week, at which point I'll start on the next thing. I'll be back in one week for another progress report.

As always, thank you for your comments, suggestions, and of course, your very generous support. It really does mean a lot. Have a good weekend!