Hi. Today's devlog is about "Life with the Tribe".It may seem a bit strange that I want to write about this game, since I should be more focused on "Demonette's Playtime", but I can't help myself. I've been overdoing it with animations a bit and recently switched to "Life with a Tribe" to relax.
And what can be interesting about a project that has already been released? This is an expansion of the project through DLC! But there is a problem here - it is a rework of the base game. Why is this necessary? Well ... have you ever heard of the term "technical debt"?In short, technical debt is a concept in programming/project development that reflects the additional work that appears due to the easy and quick implementation of mechanics without thinking about expanding the project in the future. The larger the project becomes, the harder it is to create something new and add new features. Unfortunately, I encountered this and even when I was finishing "Life with the Tribe" I had a lot of problems with adding content.I touched on this topic in previous devlogs, so today I will bring some clarity. This is a necessary measure, since for the DLC there is a plan to expand almost all the existing systems that are in the game, which in essence affects the entire game as a whole. You may think that "Life with the Tribe" is a fairly easy game in terms of mechanics, and this will be true if you look at it from the prism of separately selected things. But if you combine all the little things in the game, you will understand that there are a lot of problems here.Let me take the quest system that exists in this game as an example. Yes, you read that correctly, in this game there are quests that were not shown in your UI:
These quests were the driving force of the story, but their execution through the code was as simple as possible. I simply created a list of events that are checked directly from each player action:
And although it worked, all my tasks were as simple as possible, here is a diagram of all the tasks in the game (although it is in Ukrainian, but this diagram was created for development, so I did not think to translate it):
Don't be afraid, in fact, this is all a simple reflection of only one system in the game. I created this diagram when I started reworking the project to understand why it was so difficult for me to add new obstacles. And looking at this diagram, I realized that all the actions for completing quests can be broken down into only a few global actions: conversation, mini-game, sex. But what if new actions are needed? This is where the technical debt arose, which greatly hindered the addition of new types of tasks and actions for completing tasks.And this technical debt, unfortunately, is present in almost all parts of the game. And so a vicious circle arose:
I try to add something new
To add something new, I need to rewrite the old
The old is rewritten, but it breaks what worked before
Tests and repeat point 3 until there are no errors
Finish adding something new, and return to point 1.
This problem arose because I did not think ahead when developing the project. This is entirely my fault as a developer. That is why I am now rewriting this project. Will it be better for the planned expansion through DLC? Yes. Will there be technical debt again? It is unknown, sometimes mechanics are invented that may seem simple, but in fact can be very difficult to add.But what kind of DLC is this that I am talking about? Well, there are a lot of things that I have written in the plan, and some of them are so degenerative that they cannot be described in a post (something about increasing the population of the tribe). If you are interested, I can talk about it in more detail in the Discord channel.Of course, there are some points that are basic (and some will be made for the base version as well):
Game versions: West, Asia, Full (opened with a patch that will only be on SubscribeStar)
Release on different platforms: Android, Linux, macOS.
Expansion of mini-game content: fishing, gathering, world exploration, expansion of the settlement.
More NPCs: new women from the tribe, new monster girls.
DLC content goal in terms of time 2-4 hours to complete.
These are global goals that are facing DLC and the porting of the base game. Right now, I have ported about 40% of the game with system updates. As soon as the base porting of the game is completed, I will update the product on all platforms. Also, after the porting of the game, some additional animations and a newer interface will be added to the game. Next will be the development of DLC which will be a separate pack to the base game. Of course this plan is only about this game. Demonette's Playtime is still a priority, although I got a little burned out drawing all those animations. Apparently I overdid it a bit...