courseoftemptation
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Course of Temptation Dev Diary #70
🕑 Added 2025-02-14 20:43:29 +0000 UTC
Hello friends, and happy Friday to all, even those for whom it is already Saturday.
The latest update as of this post is v0.6.2h. I spent the first bit of this week addressing some lingering issues with encounters, mostly regarding birth control and the surprisingly complex logic surrounding negotiating its usage. Birth control implants have been implemented too, not really in a fully realistic manner, but in a way that I think suits game balance. I think all of that is sorted out for now. Pregnancy itself will still be coming in a future update.
SunsetDreams spent some time improving performance regarding the meters (the ones you see for your needs, NPC attitudes, and so on). This involved refactoring a bunch of things, and while the performance improvements seem to be successful, some of it ended up not working as before — notably, the option to always see meter percentages hasn't been working. That too should be fixed in today's update.
All in all, we're probably done with bugfix updates until the next monthly content update. Which also needs to be worked on pretty soon! Between the extra effort involved in the February update and February just being a short month, the window for working on the roadmap update is pretty small.
But it is underway! So let's talk about that.
So, last week when I said I had a feeling I knew which option would win, I was actually thinking of strip clubs. But, CoT community, you have shocked the nation. It turns out the next roadmap item checked off will be... Greek houses! (And a big thanks to everyone who took the time to pick their favorite option.)
Greek houses are kind of the college movie trope, and it's important to get them feeling right. As always, the first part of brainstorming an entirely new system like this is to ask yourself which stories you want to tell. What experiences should the player be able to have?
The classic story is a popular successful house vs. an underdog house. The player should be able to experience that, not just as an underdog protagonist but also, if they like, as a member of the more successful house — this may especially benefit players pursuing a dominant path. Players should be able to affect a house's reputation, for better or worse, and have an effect on determining exactly what benefits it provides. There should be conflicts and pranking but also alliances between houses. Fraternity-sorority interactions are definitely a thing. There's rush week: pledging, trying to prove yourself to the members, hazing. There are parties and other activities hosted by the houses.
One of the first items to settle was exactly how many houses to have and what they should be like. As you probably know, while CoT has a lot of NPCs, it doesn't have the population of a real campus — that would be asking a lot of a Twine game, and it'd be a lot for the player to manage too. So, having too many houses would spread NPCs too thin, and we wouldn't be able to fill them.
My thought has been to group the game's current archetypes into a few broader cliques. Again, if we're leaning on college tropes, the classic dynamic here is "jocks vs. nerds." We also have archetypes that don't fit under either umbrella who should be accommodated too. I considered three coed houses, or six or more fraternities and sororities, but coed houses aren't common in the real world and six houses seemed like too many for our population.
After a bunch of brainstorming with the contributors, I've landed on this: four houses covering a popular-underdog and fraternity-sorority matrix. We'll have a classic jock fraternity, a popular girl sorority, a nerd fraternity, and a sort of counterculture sorority. Any archetype of any gender has a home in at least one of them. Nonbinary students will be welcome at any of them.
Another key decision was to make the fraternity/sorority thing optional. While that will be the default experience, there will also be a worldgen option to turn all houses coed. This will also happen automatically if you've made gender distribution very one-sided to the point where it has trouble filling a house. It'll mean some extra work to accommodate this option, but I think it's worth doing.
So, I've spent the majority of this week working these things out as well as making the game's Greek house database and writing algorithms to fill them with students. As always, there's some underlying code to write to make this system work, but it shouldn't be nearly as complicated as something like the River Rat. I'm also working on defining them as locations so the player can move around in them. Just basic stuff! But soon it'll be time to work on events, and that's where the bulk of the effort will go for this update.
I want these four houses to have some individual character in their appearance, the NPCs you find there, the activities they host, and so on. For pledge week, I'm thinking the house will have a list of challenges that the player can choose from, the nature of which will also reflect the character of the house. While some house activities may be exclusive, I also want them to have an impact for players who don't join — I think they should host some activities open to all students, and offer some more stuff to do around campus.
Anyway, that's about all I have for now! These early planning stages don't provide much fodder for screenshots and teasers (sorry about that) but pretty soon I'll have some events and things written. For now, I'll post this and get back to it. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your support, I really appreciate it!
Comments
Dunan Rayne
It would be really entertaining to see a scene where the panicked PC desperately tries to explain herself to her boyfriend. After all, she would want to hide the fact that she cheated on him. In this ridiculous yet hopeless situation, I have no idea what kind of excuse she could possibly come up with... Maybe she could say that she was watching porn alone in her room, and that stupid parrot just happened to hear it and copy the sounds? LOL. But of course, that still wouldn’t explain why the parrot is moaning in the PC’s own voice while calling out another man’s name—or why it’s mimicking a male voice saying her name while throwing around filthy words.
Dunan Rayne
Since a past update, the PC has been able to keep a pet parrot in her dorm room. As we know, Parrots can remember and mimic human sounds, right? What if the PC’s pet parrot could remember the sounds made during sex when she has an encounter with an NPC in her room? The parrot could mimic her moaning, panting, and calling out the NPC’s name. It could also imitate the NPC’s voice using degrading language toward her or even recreate the wet, rhythmic sounds of sex. Then, at random moments, the parrot could start repeating these noises, putting the PC in an embarrassing and awkward situation. Taking it a step further, what if the PC secretly cheated on her boyfriend with another NPC and had sex in her room? The parrot could remember everything it heard. Later, when the PC invites her boyfriend over, the clueless parrot could suddenly start mimicking the sounds from her previous affair. The parrot could imitate the PC’s voice moaning and gasping another man’s name. It could also mimic the NPC’s voice calling the PC a cheating slut, a town bicycle bitch, or a easy fuck toy. On top of that, it could even recreate the sounds of bodies slapping together intensely—turning the situation into an incredibly humiliating and dramatic moment for the PC.
Ian Kinnell
I hope later on it becomes more than four
Ian Kinnell
I'm enjoying the game having frats & sororities will be great but I'd like to see the potential (if not already included) to model clothes, underwear, or nudes even maybe to start in a porno or two plus a strip club/night club which also doubles as a gambling area for poker, sports betting, roulette etc
Anarchothaumaturgist
They'll always be around, but like sport teams or careers, you can opt out by just ignoring them. What I meant was that by default they'll be fraternities and sororities, but there will be a worldgen option to make them all coed houses instead.
Tenra
"Another key decision was to make the fraternity/sorority thing optional. While that will be the default experience" Does it mean, with default options those societies/ factions will be turned off or you don't have to join the fraternity/sorority for gameplay progress? It sound so awesome with the greek houses in general
Lady Malfoy
Hi Anthaum. Thank you very much for the whole explanation! I fully understood now. 😄🙏🏻😇
Dunan Rayne
I'm still hoping that NPCs with very low Friendship or Romance parameters can still become the PC's boyfriend/girlfriend. I'd like to see NPCs who approach the PC with the intention of using them as a trophy or for sexual purposes. Currently, NPCs with Bully or Sadist traits tend to become overly docile once they enter a romantic relationship with the protagonist. I'd love to see portrayals of "bad" boyfriends or girlfriends, without necessarily resorting to themes like BDSM. Finally, I was thrilled to notice that NPCs now attempt to leave hickeys during sex scenes! It would be fantastic if these hickeys were visually represented on the protagonist's body(neck, upper chset, buttocks, thigh). It would be even more immersive if other NPCs could react to these marks, adding another layer of realism to the game's social interactions.
Dunan Rayne
I'm so excited to finally see you creating content related to factions. I have high expectations for this. Is four factions all we're getting? Or are you planning to add more factions? Personally, I'd love to see the protagonist get bullied or become the target of jealousy and ostracization by same-sex NPCs. For example, if the PC is female, she might be bullied by same-sex NPCs for being too beautiful or too promiscuous. On the other hand, she would be very popular with opposite-sex NPCs, although their intentions towards her would be purely sexual. So, the PC wants to make friends with other women, but no female NPCs want to associate with her. On the other hand, male NPCs constantly approach her with sexual intentions, even if she doesn't do anything to encourage them. And the female NPCs watch her from a distance, surrounded by these men, looking at her with disdain and gossiping about her among themselves. What do you think?
Anarchothaumaturgist
Most of them (160 if I remember right, or maybe it was 180) are in the PC's own year, and the rest are upperclassmen. The population is a bit abstracted anyway, so a relative few upperclassmen are meant to represent them all. I've been cautious with exactly how many NPCs I add since they can quickly balloon save size.
Laplace
@Anthaum, would you mind me asking how are those 240 students split between years/classes? Is it an equal split or somewhat randomized in numbers?
Anarchothaumaturgist
Hey there. In the Save dialog, if you click Save To File it will export the save to a file. Then from a different instance of the game, you can click Load From File and load the same save data. This works across platforms and devices, as long as you're able to transfer the file. Note this is only the CURRENT save. If you need to move multiple saves, you'll have to load and then export them each individually. Even if you don't want to move devices, I recommend exporting occasionally as a backup because the saves are normally just in browser storage, which can be volatile.
Lady Malfoy
Hello there, I'd like to consult something. I've played your game ( "Course of Temptation" ) on Chrome site. My story progress has been going further and I don't want to lose it if I download the latest app. What should I do if I want to try downloading and installing the game app (with its recent update)? I desperately wanna try the pregnancy feature, especially with Prof. Cohen Chambers (I'd filled all the bars -- friendship, lust, and romance -- to the maximum level ). Please guide me, my fellow developers. Thank you! 😁🙏🏻❤️
Anarchothaumaturgist
There are 240 students (10 of those end up being unique) and 241 non-unique townies. Actually a bit of a coincidence that they're almost the same number. The final total, including uniques and faculty and so on, is 593 NPCs.
MisoSquared
What's the current NPC count that the game populates with, not including unique characters and what's the ratio of students to town adults?
Azure
4 sounds perfect.
Anarchothaumaturgist
Sure, a bit of light hazing, for fun
GothamRose
Hazing?
Anarchothaumaturgist
There's definitely going to be some overlap with Alpha house and the football team, and there will probably be some cheerleaders in the popular sorority, but I'm not planning to have them exactly correlate. In any case, in the future we'll definitely have more than four sports!
Zoe Carwithen-Crichton
4 houses and 4 teams? Will they correlate with each other?
Anarchothaumaturgist
No, at least not presently
Nessa Bright
Are there “male” birth control implants implemented?
Benjamen EightySix
I'm looking forward to it. It will be nice to have the college campus more filled out and lived in. Also an alternative place to live will be fun!
