First Dev Log on the New Page

Still alive. I know it's been a while, but as said before, I've been struggling with health issues on top of the day job and other things. Despite that, I've been hard at work, though I haven't been spending much time/resources on the visual side of things. I may begin streaming some dev sessions to YouTube, to maintain momentum and to hopefully keep interest alive.

A pretty big change, which I've been mentioning on Twitter for a while now, is that I've decided that I'm just going to release this as an ecchi game and omit the 18+ content altogether (hence why it now has its own page). In general, I'm planning to gravitate away from explicitly pornographic games, and focus on games with cute and sexy girls instead. You'll see more content released under the name "Happy Harpy" for that reason.

I'd originally planned to release this as SFW and then do a NSFW patch, but I've decided it's not worth the effort. I'm tired of the constant battle with platforms over 18+ content. I've also gotten regular feedback that the pornographic content in the adult games often isn't enough (my influence comes from a lot of JP games, which are ultimately pretty H-lite in their content). I'd always wanted to do more "porn-with-plot" games, and that's what I've focused on releasing, but unfortunately that's not a very popular sentiment in the west, and I do have to sell copies to earn back my budget. I don't really want to beat a dead horse, and I've met a handful of really cool people doing NSFW dev (they're probably reading this post) but I'm just tired of all the headache around NSFW work.

Having said that, on to the updates to this project (mechanically, the game remains the same):

General Changes:

• New buttons--too many to list
• Simplified dialog player--cleaner logic, more flexible, easier to attach new animations and sub-elements
• Added transition screen at the beginning of a day to remind the player when payments are due/how much is owed
• Revamped worker Traits logic--info stored in a dictionary instead of a custom resource
• Reworked Setup screen at the beginning of the game and fixed bugs--can no longer break the screen by by clicking while Sylvie is talking
• Remodeled scheduling screen that shows up every week

Work Shift Changes

• Separated work screen into Prep/Work Phase
• Each phase screen has separate logic-- cleaning/item use takes place during Prep Phase, assigning/skipping/beginning shift during Work Phase.
• Finished CanvasLayer scenes that display both screens, respectively.
• New room info panel--view one room at a time
• Scaled down rooms unlockable from 8 to 4
• Massive work shift logic clean-up (code reduced roughly 30-40%)
• Rooms can be auto-cleaned with a single click, or the player can be more tactical and choose how much they want to clean it with which supplies.
• Simplified match-up logic--game consults a "score" generated before doing the math, each trait that shares a customer preference bumps that base score + 5.
• Score system scales up EXP earned/GP earned/room Cleanliness depleted slightly by weighted tiers. High score -> Bigger multipliers
• General logic functions moved to WorkScreen, detached from the functionality of Work/Prep Phase screens (latter two are layered on top of it, blocking input)
• Predicted comfort/GP earned/synergy levels on player matchups. Player can see the predicted results of each customer(no specific numbers, just how much stress damage they'll take/GP earned/synergy with customer.
• New mechanical tweak--when rooms drop below a certain level of "cleanliness," synergy bonuses are blocked and trait matches do not benefit the internal Score calculated.
• Implemented in-between work shift events--a worker may injure themselves, have a good day, etc. and result in small changes to shift results. A small cutscene will play, then the phase is resumed. Small player interactions during this scenes is possible.
• Abilities have a trigger_ability() function that's checked during Prep Phase for activation
• Abilities, themselves, are more complex resources instead of just a dictionary
• Abilities and traits can be taught by Skill Manuals and Technical Manuals
• WorkManager now has an array that holds Effect resources imbued by abilities, Buff Items and Work Events
• Added helper functions to set these up from Inventory and the WorkScreen, itself.
• Customer-picking logic changed--as the business levels up, the WorkManager approaches a weighted customer table differently (80% chance of picking a level 1 customer at Business Level 1, 60% at Business Level 2, etc.)
• Cleaned up can_use_item logic and moved it into its own separate class. Needs refining.
• New logic checks to end the work shift early (no usable works/no clean rooms + no items to clean them with)
• Added five "work events" that may randomly trigger--add various conditions/complications to the shift

Other Systems

• Inventory can now be sorted by Item type, and the player can read about item specifics. This is still a big WIP, will probably vary a lot from the final product.
• Smoother/revamped Manage Workers screen. View levels, EXP, traits, and abilities for all hired workers.
• Bonding scenes result in rewards for the player/more character background (optional)
• New/cleaner Recruitment Screen (with weekly cutscene)
• Revamped Upgrades --upgrades may now incrementally increase GP/EXP earned or decrease room cleanliness reduction at the cost of more GP per week. Some have other effects like reduced worker fatigue, etc.  Some upgrades can only be bought once (one worker trait allows workers to learn new traits as they level up, one boosts EXP earned 10%, etc.). All of these are modified prior to calculations.

Misc:

• Added eight new Worker resources (unsure if we'll have the funds to create art for each one--we'll see)
• Replaced personality types with new ones (Cool/Smart/Classy) and created relevant icons for each
• Added "teaching skill/trait" item and relevant use logic--customers can be taught any ability, and any trait (if it's learnable).
• Added "employee lounge" screen--read unlocked info about work here, give them gifts, trigger bonding scenes if the right conditions are met.

To be fair, there's a thousand other small changes, but these are the ones most interesting on a surface level.

Be sure to join the YouTube channel and new Twitter account to stay up to date on the game.

Back to the code mines, with me.