Hey, all! Here’s a quick update on what I’ve been working on:
I’ve been chipping away at some things I consider to be important “quality of life” improvements, with the idea being that we’ll have less scenes determined by RNG and more by player choice.
I mentioned before that I’ve been trying to put together more first-time meeting scenes for important characters so that you don’t need to be working the same job type in order to meet them for the first time. My hope is that, if a story line needs you to already know someone before it can begin, this will keep it from being delayed for far too long. There’s nothing too exciting here, as they’re just variations of meeting NPCs at work while the PC has free time, or meeting NPCs who are enjoying their free time while the PC is working.
A major change I started with the rebuild, and I’ve been trying to continue, is a partial restructuring of free-time activities. You’ve seen a bit of it with the added ability to look for someone you know at the bar, beach, or poolside areas. The next part I’m working on adding is to separate the bar events from the other free-time scenes.
The general idea is that, when you arrive at the location, you’ll have an opportunity to choose if you want to visit the bar to get a drink. Much like how the previous addition let you find a particular person to talk to, this would allow you to choose to interact with the bartenders of each location (Gabby, Desire, and Laila). I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but it was just too difficult with how things were structured before.
Another addition I’d like to add to this section is to allow the player to select an activity to (attempt to) do while out and about. So, for the beach and pool areas, that’ll be things like sunbathing or swimming. The existing game already has the unlockable option of trying to hook up with someone at that club, and I thought this menu area would be a good place to relocate that.
Of course, there have been plenty of snags with the things I’ve been working on. I thought I could do a quick little update to the phone system, but it ended up causing a bit of a mess (mostly for you, the players…as it ended up breaking old saves in a way I’ve been unable to fix). Oops!
Meetups arranged via the phone still have the problem of bypassing all of the rest of the extra events I’ve added to the bar, beach, and pool. That’ll probably be a fix for another time.
On the plus side, I think I’ve made it so that you can now call Cyn to request a haircut even if you’re not having her help you in the mornings. The extra clothing items look like they might be a bit trickier, however, as I need to make sure that doesn’t accidentally derail a storyline somewhere.
Anyway, that’s about it for now. I’m afraid I haven’t thought of anything particularly interesting to do for a behind-the-scenes peek (“this is what it looks like when I’m writing scenes, or fighting code” doesn’t strike me as all that interesting, and I don’t think I have anything graphics-wise that I haven’t already shown better examples of). I’m open to suggestions.
I do have a partial Tatum wallpaper set that’s been gradually moving forward, so fingers crossed that I’ll get that out before too long.
Usagitriplesix 
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