Happy Friday to all! It's time for a dev diary.
There's been one more bugfix update since last week, taking our current version to v0.7.2h. This is probably where it will stand until the November monthly update.
Work this week has been spent on building the NPC simulation system into something much closer to its final form. There are really three main goals with this whole thing:
Give NPCs dynamic, changing relationships, so that they have romances, friends, and rivals instead of static relationships throughout the game.
Allow their skills and inclinations to change as they experience things, just like what happens to the PC.
Allow the player to steer the simulation to some degree: encourage them to interact with others in certain ways, influence them to add certain inclinations.
Which all has the overarching goal of making the game feel more alive, creating more context for erotic scenes, and letting the player affect or mold NPCs organically in a way they couldn't before.
I've completed #1, I'm most of the way through #2, and once that's done, #3 will build on that system.
NPCs form new relationships basically through some instigating actions. NPCs will have a friendly chat, or flirt, or argue with each other, which could be the catalyst for establishing how they relate to that NPC on an ongoing basis. NPCs who flirt may go on to date and later become official partners, or they may decide on a more friends-with-benefits type situation, depending on their inclinations.
These things mostly play out in the background, but if you're in the right place at the right time, you'll witness some of it yourself.
Given the parameters of the simulation, at least one of the NPCs in these events won't be a stranger but will be somebody you tend to interact with frequently or have some sort of established relationship with. As I've written before, we don't want to do a lot of processing of NPCs the player doesn't know — if the player doesn't care about the NPCs involved, then it's just noise and unnecessary overhead.
Up until now, events in the game have played out only as they're presented to the player, with everything else mostly abstracted. Simulation events, on the other hand, basically take the form of events that play out whether the player is there to witness them or not.
This has some interesting possibilities beyond just NPC-to-NPC interactions. As one example, it's a common suggestion (including in the comments on last week's diary) to have NPCs sometimes visit the player's dorm. This could play out as a normal random event, but it'd also be cool to do as a simulated event, as something just on that NPC's schedule to do that day — if you're there when they show up, great, you have an interaction. If you're not there at that time, you can find a note slid under the door later, because the event still happened even though you didn't see it at the time. That's the sort of thing I'll go back to play with once I get the three main tasks outlined above completed.
NPC sexual relationships are tracked as well, and proceed in stages similar to the "encounter progression" mechanic where, depending on their inclinations, they're likely to start small and build up to "going all the way." Through sexual encounters, they also gain experience. NPCs who have a lot of sex will end up pretty good at sex!
They will also gain experience through encounters with the player, and you'll notice your frequent partners getting better at sex over time. Inclinations are where I've left off here — I plan to allow them to be added over time through a similar mechanic, and granting the player some influence over this. This will be my project for today.
After this week, once those three main goals are accomplished, I'll aim to move on to some of the other things I hope to scope into this update. I should be able to accomplish some year advancement tasks by leveraging the simulation system to handle advancing NPCs into new courses, graduating seniors, and adding new freshmen. Also, now that the simulation system handles event sequences, it's well-suited to handling NPC pregnancies, and I hope to work on that for 0.8 as well.
Next week, though, it'll be time to set 0.8 aside for the moment and focus on the November monthly update! I've had an idea for this one that I'm excited about — a particular seasonal event that would fit the game well and could go in a lot of different directions. Working on 0.8 has had me mostly working on pure coding, which I like just fine, but it's been a while since I've written big erotic scenes and I'm looking forward to doing some of that. Can you guess which seasonal event I have in mind?!
Probably somebody will, but either way... I'll talk about it next week! That's all for now. As always, I truly appreciate your support, and this project could not exist without you. So thank you, and I hope you have a good weekend!