Dev Diary #63

When I haven't made a DD for many days I don't know how to start them... so I'm going to start it by saying goodbye to Lisapi... dressed in her pyjamas. Spring is coming so soon it's time for her to change her outfit.

Now seriously... I'm doing the diary now because I think I'm letting too much time go by without updating anything. The problem is that all I've been doing these days is the boring part of the updates: coding and more coding... so I don't really have anything to show you. That's why I'm delaying the DDs.

Although it's something usual in all updates when I'm at this point, I'll always remind you for whoever worries about me for seeing some absence here and also so you don't think I'm a lazy dev who doesn't want to do a diary.

I'll try to be brief because it's quite late and I don't want to delay much more my bedtime. I'm trying to make my schedule a bit stricter since about Friday as this past week has been mentally crazy until the inevitable mental block came due to several factors including lack of rest.

Luckily, after a weekend of "rest" I have been improving although this time the block didn't completely disappear until yesterday, it took longer than usual.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a block where the "muse" disappears or something similar and I run out of ideas. It's complicated to explain, honestly. After all the mess in my head, I've finally been putting things in order and now I see everything more clearly again.

Because of all this, different things are going to happen in the next version:

- The "easy mode" will be implemented. - 

I will give more details when I have it finished (it is currently 90% finished) but it boils down to a concept we all know: Playing LA in easy mode will mean playing "VN style". You know I don't like to compare LA with other games but in this case, I think it's appropriate to give you a quick understanding of how it will work... Has anyone played HH or MM? LA in easy mode will work similarly to those games: 

• Spending time with any girl will automatically raise the level of that particular stat (trust, love, etc). 
• Almost everything related to materials will be disabled and replaced by gold, there will be no perks (panel), nor specialization (panel).
• The backpack will disappear and will be minimally redesigned to be only functional with favorite girls, the crafting panels will be changed by menus... 

In short, what is the concept of VN for the audience that enjoys a dynamic adventure without worrying about "farming or grind". The gold price will be quite reduced plus several things I'm going to rebalance within that mode.

- Quantity revision -

For the rework of the hard mode, I want to make an in-depth revision of all the materials needed for any kind of crafting. The purpose? To balance it so that the """""""grind""""""" can be transferred to the new hard mode.

- The hard mode will have a "shop". -

One of the big features in hard mode apart from the mood and punishments will be the "bravery shop" and the implementation of "bravery tokens" (names not definitive).

What has now unlocked automatically on hard mode, will have to be unlocked through the new shop using the tokens you will acquire by spending time with the main girls.

Obviously, I wasn't just going to leave the things that are now automatically unlocked like Yuna posing in her pyjamas when you ask her to in your room among other things, but I will add new stuff mainly related to Lisapi.

I hope to get into the hard mode shop soon because I have a few ideas about the design and what to implement.

Oh yeah, the mood system is 90% finished although there is still a lot of work to be done on punishments.

The hard mode ironically is really hard for me because I always have to think about a balance between the two modes so that the extra content is really small mostly because I follow the logic of some people I met in the early days of LA: "I don't want to play the same game twice to see extra content, put it in both modes". That's why pussygrind was born but to be honest, I'd rather it didn't exist to maintain that exclusivity and I would add a lot of extra stuff on hard mode but without going overboard on exclusivity either as I like to keep a fair balance.

Obviously, all this will always be related to extra content following the current line: Things you see at least once during the quests/tasks become repeatable or things related to Lisapi (don't worry, nobody is going to be able to fuck Lisapi and do sexual stuff with her even if you play in nightmare mode, the world would explode and you know it...).

Anyway, this will change over time because I'm also going to add the ability to change difficulty (only once per save and you won't be able to go back to the previous difficulty). This way you can see all the extra content without having to start a new game. 

Although it may not seem like it, this will still benefit those who play on hard mode from scratch.

See you soon, I hope in the next DD I'll be able to show you some visual progress.