Dev Diary #54

I can't think of any bad joke today so I'll get straight to the point.

Days ago I enabled the annual pledge and I had completely forgotten about it until today someone made an annual pledge. So anyone interested in doing a long-time pledge and saving 10%, you know that feature is available. Also, I have revised the tier descriptions and they should be much clearer now because honestly since the "Aspirant" tier exists I have always thought it can be confusing as it is right in the middle of the "Manor" tiers.

Just bit details, like the ones in this new update that I would qualify as the version that seemed very easy to make but then it was the opposite.

Me: "This is easy, a few buttons here, a few images there, a bit of code and I have the whole interface done in less than a week".

- A few moments later. -

Me: "Fuck this shit, it's more complex than I thought and I've only just started".

The most recent example is with the new zone (one of the two new zones), the forest, which will be available as soon as you meet Glenda so you can freely collect logs. Yes, logs are available from the beginning of the game... Cloth too. I'll show you that next week when I have everything finished (I hope) because I'm going to include basic crafting in different girls (at the moment it will be only Glenda, Mona, Maria, and Tali). We'll talk about this when I have everything 100% defined.

I was going to show you the passives first but since I'm talking about the forest...

Yes, I still have to make some adjustments to make everything perfect.

Here you have an example of one of the three areas of the forest. I would like to animate it by adding grass but to make a perfect loop I think it would be a +10sec (x3) animation and that's too much space. I also plan that in the future the girls can join you so I'll take advantage of their short loops to animate the zones.

As you can see, in the forest area you will be able to collect logs. You can collect logs in all 3 zones at any time of the day and no new wood will appear until the next time of the day, so I think it's a great incentive to get logs.  Also in this area, I plan to add flowers (Requirement: Tali lvl 2).

I do all this with the aim that at the beginning of the game you can have a little freedom to explore more places and collect materials. Why? Because this is where the rpg/sandbox aspect of the game comes in and will be related to crafting. Don't worry because this is something rather extra/optional and to give a bit more immersion to LA. The requirements in the main plot will always follow a line of asking for a small amount so that just spending time with the girls a few times will be enough when it comes to restoring anything. 

With these things plus the planned mini-games in the jobs, I will readjust the values of the materials + gold you get when working, again.

Speaking of jobs, the jobs tab and job points system is going to disappear completely. Instead, it will be replaced by passives. From now on you will be able to unlock a new job by simply meeting a few requirements (similar to the current system but much more visual and tidy).

And while we're on the subject of passives, I'll show you the passive system, but very briefly as it's not finished yet.

Why haven't you finished it, Keisi? Good question... I was working on it until I realized that I need to finish the forest and the mini-games to have all the final variables defined.

Anyway, as you can notice, there is one important change and that is the icons. It turns out that I'm running out of stock and I've decided to look for a library with more variety and better quality. It now has a similar style to the map. Will I change all the icons? It's something I'm debating because there are some really cool icons but maybe changing them all at once might be a good idea at 50%. I'll see if the contrast between the old icons and the new icons will match well or if it hurts the eyes. Of course, the icons of the materials and gold will change, I'll see what happens with the rest.

With all this explained, I would explain more things but in this update, I prefer to wait until I have things to show you. My plan this weekend is to finish the mini-games, the new interface for the results (jobs), and something that I want to do but until I start testing and experimenting I don't want to say much (related to the rpg aspect). With that, next week I can finish the passives both at interface and code level and hopefully next weekend I can work on the penultimate part of this update which will be the new zone and the new system.

Don't worry, I'm not forgetting about the H content in all the sandbox/rpg related stuff. It's a bit weird that Maria is going to have a crafting option, isn't it? Well, I won't say anything at the moment...

I forgot to mention that I plan to add the option to have sex with the inhabitants of Gold Valley during jobs but right now the problem is not only time but I think sporadic sex outside of the main/secondary girls doesn't really fit. I think that after the restoration of the beach and with the addition of nudism/exhibitionism, everything will flow more naturally. I also think this could be considered prostitution but I think with the atmosphere in Gold Valley, having a girl give you a nice extra tip for having sex with her while you measure her in Mona's store is a close and complete Gold Valley-style service. But it sounds weird, so I'm thinking about how to include it in the right way, don't worry.

It's time to say goodbye, DD is already quite long and it's late! See you on Monday!