Hello friends! It is once again dev diary time. Work on the River Rat continues, with another round of bartender events getting finished up.
I've also spent some time filling in some gaps, like ways to fulfill your needs while on the clock. The River Rat job differs from QuickieBurger in that, rather than working for one hour and getting one random event per action, you're on the clock continuously, picking your tasks until you decide to stop work. This means that you need ways to take care of your needs while at work, but since River Rat has a kitchen and a bathroom, this isn't difficult to conceptualize — it just needed a little work done.
In the process of this, I decided to introduce employee discounts. They don't apply to drinks, naturally, but your snacks will be a little cheaper. The QuickieBurger job also gets an employee discount.
I did some playtesting over the weekend. It's been a while since I started a regular character from day one and just played through normally, and as always, it's an illuminating perspective.
For example, one thing I found is that, when prompted to react to a new random NPC, I didn't really have much to go on. Would my character like them? I did select a bunch of turnons and turnoffs, so my character doesn't necessarily have a neutral opinion! I addressed this with a simple indicator:
Less simple is retroactively putting this everywhere it's needed, but it's just a widget and I'll be able to place it as I spot places where it's lacking. Already it appears in quite a few places, making it easier to decide things like who to sit with at lunch when you don't really know anybody still.
I've been fixing other small annoyances too, such as when I used the new random outfit roller to help sort out my new wardrobe, then found I'd just made a bunch of outfits that didn't include any storage.
All of these little tweaks will be included in 0.6 which, as it turns out, will indeed be our next update.
Moving into next week, I'll be writing some additional events that come with specific upgrades and maybe seeing if I can fit in some River Rat owner storyline type stuff I want to do (if not, it'll come in a followup). I'll also be continuing my playtesting, mostly to balance the River Rat jobs and test all the new events, but also to address whatever other miscellaneous issues I come across.
Sometime next week, probably Friday or Saturday, I should be ready to deliver the 0.6 update into early access. As with 0.5, we'll probably aim for a two week early access period — I want plenty of time to address any issues that are found, as well as wrap up any lingering tasks. But we'll see how it goes.
I also want to deliver a bit of seasonal content for December, which I'll work on either immediately after early access for 0.6, or even during, if I've wrapped up everything else. As always, there's a lot to do!
And I'm going to get back to it, so that's all for this week. As always, I want to give a huge thanks for your support, I really appreciate it! Until next time!