I have been working the whole day on the game today.
The pre-release will include the college structure. You can choose each day from Monday - Friday to go to college at 9am. You can then choose to go to a lecture (I added 3 subjects for now: math, science and language (should represent English but some players might not have English as their native language so I thought language might represent that a little better).
The second option you have is to take an exam. The game predicts approximately the difficulty of the exam. If you complete an exam or not depends on how many lectures you visited, how much you studied at home (will be added in future) and on your daily mood (there is a small chance to fail even if you studied enough, but there is also a chance to complete even though you did not study enough).
Taking an exam the first time is free, for every time you want to retake it you pay $50, $100, $150, …
For now I thought after 12 exams your college education should be finished. I might change that later.
I added a fitness studio where you can go and work out (if you have a pass for the fitness studio). Your durability in workouts increases over time. Also I added a bus ticket, which speeds up when you go to the town for clothes shopping, buying a new house (not yet done), going to the job office (where you can get the only job, which is available for now: office assistant) and the fitness studio. Going by bus also burns less calories.
The office job structure is done and there are plenty of free donuts every day
Generally speaking the basic structure of college and office job are done but there are no random events yet (which makes both a little boring). Also I decided to change all of the main character sprites after the pre-release.
Today I was working almost the whole day on rendering sprites and backgrounds. On Patreon I posted a small spoiler of the main character so I thought I will post how the office (of the office assistant job the only job you will be able to have in the pre-version) looks like here:
dying i to much of a penalty i think ^^.
and random illnesses is ok (as long it’s not that much of a probleme to play with and all the time like a in " piece of cake " where it’s was just a vicious circle (on my side at least))
PS: i’m so excited to play your game!!!
I do not want a game over at some point of the game, but health plays a big factor in the game: e.g. sleeping too less (I didn’t add it to the upper list) will result in health lost. This forces the player to go to bed every day, which makes the game more realistic (I mean it just makes sense going to sleep every evening).
Ren’py does produce Mac builds. I’ve done this with my own game. Like you, I don’t own a Mac, so can’t test it, but plenty of Mac users have confirmed that the builds work.
It wouldn’t be a huge issue to implement some changes depending on the game mode, but I think most people will just play the standard mode (because the game is made for being played in standard mode). It’s all about opportunity cost: If I create difficulties I have less time for something else, e.g. extending the actual game. I will think about it.
That’s some very valuable information, thanks a lot for that info. To be honest I haven’t done any builds yet, I just used the standard “Launch Project” for testing
By the way, because of my patrons I could finance most of the missing assets to create the pictures for the game, the pre-version will be almost full in color
For my part, I would probably advise against the random illnesses if they could have fatal consequences. That just seems like a recipe for frustration, to be honest.
for a realistic approach some minor inconveniences for doing something you know would hurt you in the real world adds a bit of life to it so you can’t just spam something to get to the end really quickly and forces you to branch out and take your time
Alright I just uploaded the first test-version for Silver and Gold patrons! Right after the version has been tested for like a week I will publish it here as well for everyone.
I made two versions: Windows and MacOS, whereas I did not test the MacOS version - so I hope it works
Is it weird that I think it should be harmful to eat too little, but also harmful to eat too much at an extreme? It feels stupid to say both but, I mean, a person shouldn’t reasonably be able to eat an entire cow without a consequence. Drinking too much also seems like it should obviously go wrong.
I also think getting too unhealthy coming with physical restrictions makes a lot of sense, but other serious medical things, even just a hospital visit, seem a little dark to me for a fantasy weight game type of thing. Maybe I’m just sensitive.
The game makes it impossible to eat an entire cow, because when you eat you get fuller in the game. You can only reach a certain fullness. Depending on what you eat/drink this fullness will stay: For example a coke expires after an hour, while noodles maybe take more hours. So depending on what you eat you are fuller for a longer/shorter term (should simulate real life. When you eat a burger you will not be full for a long time, if you understand. Whereas when eating something like black bread or milk it will make you feel full for a longer time)
I was asking if you often eat to the maximum (the maximum starts increasing in the game when overeating frequently - you have more space for food) like 7 times a day, if that should be unhealthy. Eating/Drinking to less will not directly result in health loss, but being thirsty/hungry a lot makes your health decrease.
I mean in the game it isn’t an option to eat an entire cow, I was talking about if there was an option to eat a cow, you couldn’t because of that fullness-system.
In the local store, there are 3 categories: “Food”, “Drinks” and “Other”. In “Other” you can find some very useful things, which unlock new products at the local store (Fridge for frozen food) or gives you the ability to weigh yourself (Scale). I am planning to extend this category a little, not yet sure with what. You can test these features already as a patron.
Ooooo, I am salivating at the thought of playing this game in the future. The aspect of being able to use magic, and especially Aliens, experimentation, and being a dictator DEFINITELY got my curiosity. The ideas of setting a law that makes it mandatory for people to gain weight, makes me twirl my invisible villainous moustache.
I will be keeping an eye on this with great interest.
I just uploaded the first test-version for Silver and Gold 