UsagiTripleSix
patreon
Update
🕑 Added 2020-05-08 16:03:46 +0000 UTCJust a quick update of things.
COVID-19
With businesses starting to reopen, it looks like I may be back to full-time employment next week. While I’m happy I’ll be able to pay my bills, there’s a part of me that’s disappointed, since being part-time was a nice opportunity to really dig into Interns without as many interruptions.
v0.250 and v0.251
v0.250 is out to backers on Patreon and SubscribeStar, and I have 0.251 well in hand with bug fixes and some additional improvements that weren’t ready last week (such as the revisions for the saved game updater).
For me, part of these builds were changes to address some big issues with the core of the game that’ve been making development a headache. There’s plenty more to do, but with the organization and documentation work I’ve done so far, I’m already having an easier time navigating parts of the game that haven’t been touched since the very beginning.
For players, the biggest changes are some overdue quality-of-life improvements: Not needing to navigate the perfume and sunscreen menus every day; being able to change your swimwear choice at any point; the beginning of optional menus to move item access (such as the “magic wand”) out of a nested menu, and the new phone option which will allow you to plan meet-ups with NPCs.
(I don’t think I mentioned that I also reworked all of the swimwear to create graphics off-duty versions…)
UI and Future QOL
I think the optional menus show a lot of promise for streamlining the game without taking away choices. It seems way better to allow you to make a decision once, and not constantly ask you each time it comes up, instead, allowing you to tell the game when you want to change it.
The next obvious spot I see for one of these is work attitude at the beginning of your shifts. Right now, there’s a menu at the start of each work shift; I thought it might be better to make this an optional menu.
I’d love input on this. My current thought is to represent it with a little drawing of a girl holding a tray of drinks, with plus and minus buttons. Hit plus, and her smile gets bigger and she holds the tray higher. Hit minus, and her expression moves to neutral and eventually angry, with the final version depicting her dumping the tray.
Perhaps, when you hover over the icon, there will be a tooltip that actually says “Work Attitude” so that it’s obvious what it represents?
One of the challenges I see with this one is that it should only be available for a limited time at the start of work, so it may be easy to miss if the player is clicking through too quickly.
Another related item I’ve been considering are status icons. I’ve really tried to keep things immersive by minimizing game-like visuals as much as I can, but it isn’t like I’ve avoided it completely (the Lust and Energy bars have been around for a long time now).
Stats like Perception aren’t terribly obvious to the player. It’s hard to convey that when the PC is drunk or tired or otherwise distracted, they’re not as keenly aware of their surroundings. I was wondering if an icon should display in the corner of the screen at these times to help indicate this.
Thoughts? Let me know what you think.
