Time to talk about our current progress. Sorry for not making too many posts lately, but every minute spent on one of these is a minute taken from the game development. Anyway, let's talk about what we've already done and what we're going to do before release.
First, we reworked and vastly improved NPC behavior in college. Most of it is kind of hidden in the game engine, but you'll be able to see some nice quality of life changes too. For example, now teachers come in the class couple of minutes before the lessons and stay for a bit before they leave. It should help talking to them in college, which was sometimes a problem in the past.
We also improved some event logic. In the past, certain events were planned early morning for the whole day: will someone come up to Kate to ask her for a date or homework, for example. Of course, if the player was busy for whatever reason, then NPCs had to take a hike and the events were lost. We couldn't get rid of this problem altogether, but from now on NPCs might try to talk with Kate several times if she's busy. This might also help with NPCs being a bit less predictable, especially later on when we add more random events in the future.
We had to rework how NPCs asked Kate on a date. In the past they always agreed to meet around 11:05, but the game kinda has PE and swimming lessons now, and those end around 12:20, after which students will need shower and change their clothes. On top of that, there might be a medical checkup, or someone might be punished (either Kate or her date). Because of all that, date will be pushed later in the day (around 13:00 if there's no medical checkups or punishments, around 14:00 if there's a medical checkup and after 15:00 if someone was being punished). If Kate has a date planned with someone, they will wait for Kate at the college entrance. If Kate leaves college early, the date will start automatically. Otherwise players would have to skip classes/punishments to go on dates, and we can't have that.
There are now medical checkups, in three stages. First students wear all their clothes, after the new rule students will have to be in their underwear, and lastly there's a rule so the students are naked during their medical checkups. Also, medical checkups might be separated (first girls, then guys or wise versa) or mixed (all students are in the medical office, waiting for their turn while Zoe and Kate are doing the checkup on one of the students). These events, like punishments, will be happening regardless if Kate is present. Kate can join in the middle of an event or miss it altogether. The world doesn't revolve around her anymore.
There are now swimming lessons. Well, kind of. Students don't really do anything besides waiting for the lessons to end (just like real life). Swimming images and events aren't ready yet.
We added girls' restroom and guys' locker room. For now players can't see the later, but the guys are showering, changing, and do all the other things girls do in their locker room. Girls' restroom is needed so Kate can put on and take off her panties in college, which may lead to interesting consequences during a uniform checkup. There's also a story event about it.
Kate's wardrobe UI had some changes. We removed underwear section (since we didn't need it), but added college uniform section, where you can see all college uniform: sportswear, swimsuit, cheerleading uniform, and regular uniform. The last one has an option to take off/put on panties. If Kate doesn't wear panties to college, then she won't be able to put them on later since she won't bring any.
We also reworked the NPC mapping functionality and settings. Yes, another rework. Don't worry, this one only took around one afternoon or so. We don't want to talk about it too much since right now the settings menu is the only place where you can actually see the new system, so we will tell you more about it later. Now that it's in the engine, we can start going over all the text in the game (and there is
a lot) and implementing it. All this work is going to happen in parallel with adding new content to the game so don't worry, no content creating developers were harmed during this rework. It's going to take some time, but we'll definitely tell you more about it around 0.19, where you'll be able to see it in the game itself.
Originally we were planning to release the game by now, but we still have a couple of tasks ahead of us:
- Punishments in the class in front of the students. For now it will only apply to Kate and maybe Sophie. The rules will have different clothing variations.
- Random events related to experimental side effects.
- The most important part — changing college rules on the college website, with them being implemented (or not) after the vote. For now you won't have to worry about most teachers, but you might have to work for Veronica's vote.
Hopefully, finishing 0.18 shouldn't take more than a couple of days, maybe a week.
