Devlog #12 - News, the good kind!

Hey! 

So, TT had (elective, non-emergency) surgery this month. Recovery and his other jobs took a big chunk out of his Joker’s Trip work, hence why it’s been pretty quiet around here. He's doing better now and has been trucking along on Meredith’s update, and just has one more CG to write and illustrate before he can move on to dialog review and playtesting.

...But what about me? Couldn't I have kept my half of things moving? Well, something came up…a brand new full time job! After 10 months and 860+ job applications, I finally, finally have a full time job again. Obviously this will slow down the dev part of the game dev process as the game's only programmer, but this is where the good news starts!

Starting September 5th, we'll be restructuring our tiers. The new tiers are as follows:

$3 Supporter: Devlogs, news, and voting on promo images.

$5 Build: Devlogs, news, voting on promo images, and build access.

$7 High Roller: Devlogs, news, voting on promo images, build access, and character and feature polls.

We’re doing this to make the builds more accessible, while also adjusting for the fact that updates will come a bit slower with this new job. The game was never meant to have monthly updates like we were delivering in the early summer, that’s just what happens when you’re unemployed... Feel free to hop between tiers when the new $5 tier is active! 

Anyway, time for the dev part of this log!

Meredith is coming along nicely! I've implemented all her new programming in the game, written a ton of dialog, and am gonna start hooking up her scenes once TT gets that last one turned in. But this isn't about her.

It's about stripping.

You see, the way stripping was calculated was a little complex. Every piece of clothing was assigned a monetary value, and the first to come off would be the cheapest clothes. The reason clothing had a money value to begin with was that, in early development, the gamblers would earn back money when they bet their clothes, meaning they could bet with cash again despite being down to their underwear. This turned out to be a Total Slog in playtesting, and I cut it right before the first real public release. (This is why a lot of them still act like they’re earning money when betting clothes, we’re long overdue a dialog audit to trim those out...)

Anyway, stripping.

The code went through each piece of clothing that was left over, and bet the cheapest out of the bunch. This also meant that there was no randomness. Things always happened in the order they were placed. So if you had two pieces of clothing at the same value, the code would always bet the first one it ran into. 

That's actually why Rosalie would bet her panties before her bra. That wasn't intentional, but players (and us) found it funny so it became a character trait! But wouldn't it be better if we could do that on purpose?

Introducing: strip playlists! At the start of every match, each gambler will randomly choose an order to strip in. As shown in the above example, Syd could be left in just her jacket. Noriko could bet her shoes before her ribbon. Rosalie could bet her sandals before her bracelet. The possibilities are endless.

And on top of that, I added some new features to the dialog system. Lines that are meant to be said in certain circumstances can now trigger. For example in the STRIP_COAT dialogs for Syd, we can actually add a tag that says "don't say this UNLESS the bra's gone," so that it's rightly horny.

It seems like a very simple thing, but the strip logic was a tangled mess of code. I'm hoping that this will lead to dialog that feels more fitting, and more dynamic! Thank you all again for your patience, we’ll be delivering another great update to you soon!

-LG