Course of Temptation Dev Diary #54 (Patreon)

Hello friends! The weekend is almost here! Or... already here, depending on where you live.

This week has involved even more writing! I got to where I wanted to be and then some, writing all of the events I had staged for this round of development.

The file for the server job is, I'm pretty sure, larger than all of the QuickieBurger files combined, mostly because the events are generally more involved. As a job, it can go in a few different directions and includes lots of skillraises for Dominance and Submission which, up until this update, haven't gotten nearly as many reliable raises as Disinhibition and Exhibitionism.

One of my major goals was to have River Rat be the place to go for players looking to get a start on their D/s skills, and it looks like that mission will be accomplished. With reliable skillraises at lower levels, that paves the way for future content that uses these skills at higher levels.

Having gotten done with these events, I moved onto some playtesting yesterday. Playtesting a brand new major system with a whole bunch of hot code is funny, because initially it will just absolutely not work at all, and the issue is usually just like a tiny typo inside some new method somewhere that's simply never been executed before. So for a while you're bashing into errors left and right, but they're all very low-hanging fruit, then it gets smoothed out and starts to work, and then gradually you're no longer getting errors but instead looking more at logic problems and eventually at balance.

Anyway, the server job is fully working now. Some specific events may still have issues, but those will be uncovered in further playtesting. I do still need to write the "get a coworker to do this for you" dom options for some of the events, and I'll try to knock those out this afternoon. But other than that, I'm about ready to move on to the final major chunk of this update, which will be the bartender and manager event sets.

It does also need a balance pass. Some things are too fast, like changing the character of the place through your actions — with a little deliberate effort, you can take it from basic sports bar to the Sex Cauldron in about three days. Progression should be a bit slower than that, to make sure you see all the events along the way if nothing else.

Other things are too slow... namely, earning money! Tips are pretty low unless you get into certain events that specifically give you big tips. This is partly by design, because you do want there to be a sense of progression: experience events with lower tips, use them to steer the bar in a more flirty or more professional direction, and by doing that, unlock events that involve higher tips. But it's a bit too low to start out with, and it should certainly pay better than QuickieBurger considering it's a higher effort job for the player. So that's something I'll be looking at.

Having events in a high flirtiness environment that lead to higher tips isn't so hard to imagine, but I do need to brainstorm some stuff that will lead to higher tips in a high professionalism environment. I do have some ideas... I didn't watch three seasons of The Bear for nothing, after all. Still, I imagine this will be the direction less taken for most players anyway.

In any case, some solid work on the River Rat has gotten done this month and it's really beginning to come together. For the rest of the month, I'll be focused on content for the October update. Switching from working on a very big roadmap update to checking off a whole bunch of small tasks in quick succession always feels refreshing.

I've got a lot of miscellaneous stuff on my list: more encounter work, some changes to cosmetics, possibly expanding description options, some miscellaneous events, all mostly based on player suggestions. But hopefully some surprises too! As always, I'll get to as much as I can and also roll in work from contributors that's come in this month.

I'll return with another progress report next week, but for now, I leave you to enjoy your weekend! As always, I'm very thankful for your support!