courseoftemptation
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Course of Temptation Dev Diary #17
🕑 Added 2023-11-10 20:53:00 +0000 UTC
Hello friends! Work on sports for 0.4 continues! I don't have much to philosophize about this week, I've just been working hard on this update, so let's get right into it.
A much-requested feature
After completing the basic sports practice events last week, I took the weekend to work on something that wasn't strictly speaking on my 0.4 checklist, but, now that it's done, will definitely be used for some events in this update.
Encounters will now support sex with multiple partners.
I wasn't sure how easy it was going to be to get this working. I designed encounters from the very beginning to support any number of partners, but that's only part of the task. NPC AI needed to be extended to handle it too, and the positions available in the game weren't adequate to handle it either, so I had to do some extending there too. But I had a test case working within just an hour or two, which felt nice.
I had to either take an approach of 1) adding new positions just for multiple partners that defined where each partner specifically was, for example a "spitroast" position, or 2) adding "secondary" positions that would allow additional partners to fill in space around the primary coupling. I went with #2, because it's more flexible and just seems cooler. If you're lying on your back as in the above example, the second partner may choose to slip underneath you for DP, kneel by your head to take your mouth, or whatever they're inclined to do.
This flexibility also allows FFM, FFF, etc. combinations without a lot of extra work to specifically define them. I just need to make sure each primary position has a sensible variety of secondary positions for additional partners to take.
Let the games begin!
Moving on from sports practices, it was time to get games and meets working. Not gonna lie, this was a lot of work!
I came up with other fictional sports teams in FKU's immediate area, including a rival team, because college rivalries are definitely a whole thing, and I can base some events around that. I also did a year of scheduling for each sport so that there are regular games and meets... roughly every week for football and esports, and a bit less often for swimming. You can choose to attend games that happen on campus, but if you don't/can't, then the results are determined anyway and get notified to the player and recorded. I then wrote some code to seed playoffs and have those happen in the background as well, so that every year will have a somewhat different, realistic result. These aren't a super deep simulation, just a quick roll and comparison of each team's ability, but I think it's neat.
I've tried to balance it so that our Elks are a pretty good team, but will probably need the player to excel in order to be the best at any given sport.
Then I set up the event framework I attempted to describe last week, where if you choose to watch a game, you'll see some specific plays and stuff happening. The same sort of events will occur if you're actually playing in the game or cheerleading for it, just from a different perspective.
For example, everybody gets the "players take the field" event for a football game, and if you're a cheerleader you see this perspective:
I haven't gotten very far with actually writing the game events, having spent most of the week just creating the framework for all this, but that's what I'll be doing after posting this diary and over this weekend.
Next week
My plan for next week is finishing up all baseline game events for participants and watchers alike. After that, it'll be time to start finishing up events for each sport's little storyline. Next Friday I hope to be in a position to start talking more about professor interaction stuff, but it depends on how quick progress is.
In any case, see you then!
P.S. Just because I haven't said it for a while, a huge thanks to everyone who's pledged their support to this game! You're all making this possible and I appreciate you!
Comments
Anarchothaumaturgist
I built the game with Twine/SugarCube... I'm not sure how easy it is to non-destructively extend it but a project like this is pretty easy to decompile and modify. I even write comments in the code occasionally! ;) I think to support mods properly I'd have to extend SugarCube itself in some way? It's probably something I'll look into sooner or later.
VirtaArtieMitchell
Is there currently or are the plans for mod support?
Anarchothaumaturgist
One day, I hope! I'd like to do a paper doll type system, but I'm no artist myself, so I'd need to find somebody willing to draw, well... a lot of things. Just face portraits would be easier, but even then, there are still a lot of things to draw. Still though, it's definitely in the long term plans.
Will
Is there gonna be artwork to accommodate the customization options?
