Course of Temptation Dev Diary #89

Hello friends! The release of 0.7 is behind us, so we're back to regular dev diaries.

We're currently on v0.7.0m. I believe any major-to-moderate issues have been smoothed out by now, so if you've been holding off, it's a good time to jump back in. I've also included some new and updated art from HeartsDmise (check out the new app and internet icons) and a couple additional font choices.

Next, an apology to those who ended up stuck in a Greek house due to nudity! In retrospect, it's sort of a funny bug to have, but not very fun when you're just trying to play the game. It was very late in early access when I realized that being in a Greek house would allow you to remove your clothes and then just venture out onto campus with no consequences — and as you know if you've ever glitched yourself into this situation, being casually naked outside is not well-supported.

I fixed this by adapting some code from Chicory Hall, the player character's residence hall, that prevents the player from walking naked into places they shouldn't. Unfortunately, Chicory Hall has some key assumptions involved that aren't true for a Greek house: 1) You never lose clothes in the main room. 2) You live there and have access to your wardrobe. These things not necessarily being true led to some problems. This is quite obvious in hindsight but was less obvious when in crunch mode getting this update ready in time. Again, I apologize to anyone affected.

I believe I have finally eliminated all of the edge cases that got the player stuck this way (please correct me if I'm wrong). Longer term, as in hopefully in the next monthly update, I want to allow the player more freedom in Greek houses so that walking around them in various states of undress is allowed and has some content associated with it. I think, just for starters, allowing more general freedom in the Greek house helps to balance it against the work and extra dues required to live there.

Now that the bugfixing has slowed down, I'm working on the September update. My main goal is to extend the Greek experience with three main areas of focus:

• Making relationships between your house and allied and rival houses more visible, by surfacing individual characters involved and some of the prank war type stuff that goes on.

• Adding benefits to being a member of a Greek house as well as living there.

• Just generally extending the existing content.

I started by adding a bunch of Greek-related events that can occur around campus. In particular, rush week should be a lot more visible now as the houses recruit more aggressively, and you can expect recruiters from every house you're able to join to stop you and give you their pitch at some point during the week.

I'm currently working on a new event that will both be a pledge task and an aspect of the ongoing war between rival houses, and it's a classic trope: the underwear raid.

This will probably turn out to be the new single most complex event sequence. The player can choose their main responsibility, but they'll also be able to move around to different locations during the raid, attempt different actions, and have different things happen as a result of their choices.

During pledge season, it will mostly be your house mentor and your fellow pledges embarking on the raid, but I also want this new event to be a model for pledge tasks becoming repeatable after pledge season, as things that benefit your house or become part of the prank war. Boosting your house's stature can tie into the upgrade/benefit system I have in mind.

One thing I'm wary of is making living in the Greek house simply the objectively better choice. Ideally, it'd be a bit more of a sidegrade, I think, where certain playthroughs are better served by just living in the dorms. Currently I'm thinking of making it so that your residence hall is mechanically equivalent to maybe a half-upgraded Greek house, so that your Greek house has less immediate benefit but can be made to be better. I'm still pondering this, though, and it doesn't necessarily need to be addressed immediately.

The update isn't all Greek, however! The contributors have been cooperating on a major new addition: a game shop that will give nerd characters, video game fans, and otakus a place to hang out and pick up some new decor. I'll try to get some previews of this as it gets closer to completion. I also want to spend time on other areas of the game myself before the update goes out, presuming I do well on the priorities I listed above.

Okay, I have rambled enough for one week. Thanks for reading! I am, more than words can say, incredibly grateful for your support. I'll be back next Friday with another progress report. Until then, I hope you have a good week!