Hey, hey, hey! I wanted to give an update on the bar update where I update a bar into the game. After the last one I took a minute to rest, but now I'm back in full force to tackle the bar that I Still Need To Name (Joker's Pit, Joker's Sip, Joker's, Etc (Leaning into Joker's Pit since it's like Joker's Trip where the name is Joker + S word))
So I thought it'd be a good idea to lay out what to expect with some good ol' prototyping!
First thing's first, the abilities menu would be replaced by the bar, with an indicator for new conversations.
Once you click it, you'll be taken to the bar, where 3 of the gamblers you’ve met will be randomly chosen and presented to you. You can click on the bar itself to change your ability, or watch a conversation you've seen before—but first, there's 3 Placeholder Babes waiting to be clicked.
Clicking someone that doesn't have a new convo alert will trigger what we in the industry call a 'bark,' which is what an NPC says cause you pressed A on them. Let's do that with Syd.
That's nice, Syd. Now that we clicked Syd and can't click her again, let's get to the meat of it and click Prill, who has a big ol' alert icon. This'll take us straight to a convo!
Now you’ll get to learn more about Prill and her whole Thing. What we have planned is that everyone has an "introductory" conversation that you always unlock when you first play a game with them, and then a shotgun of what we like to call "Seinfeld conversations" that'll unlock from various scenarios in game.
And also convos about the sex they had I guess.
Anyway, once the convo is finished you’re sent back to the start menu and the Bar option is now greyed out. Don't worry though, just play another game of blackjack and it'll be available again :)
My goal with this update is to get the bar running.
As you can see, I still gotta model and texture and etc–what's that? Isn't it already modelled? Ahah, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh nah that's like literally the second model I ever made for Joker's Trip. Like I did it before the first demo even came out. The issue with it is that the topology is turbo fucked. But it's Fine. The staff room took me like, two days with my head down, so I'm hoping to get through it in a similar way. It turns out it's significantly easier when you have a list of objects you gotta make so I think it'll go smoothly.
Anyway, I hope to add onto this a bit more, I already wrote a few of these convos so I have an idea of how long they'll be! And I'm writing them at a pretty good clip. The plan as it is now is to get the environment, writing, VN (and other parts of the game game that I wanted to sneak in) done before doing the new abilities, real deal progression, and the bar 'minigame'.
Oh yeah, progression. That's a devlog in itself lol. With the bar update we'll be marking dialog to appear before and after certain bar dialogs are seen. Which is the part of the bar that I find the most interesting, personally. I have to write these intros like I haven't been writing these characters for over a year, and like you, the player, haven't seen them get dicked down 4 different ways. It'll be a challenge, but worth it.
-LG
PS: If you haven't already, we'd really appreciate giving your thoughts on the last update while we work on this one! We got back some pretty interesting stuff!