Current progress

We haven't written many news lately, so I'll try to post them more often. As you probably know, we have a public project board on Trello. Unfortunately, the things we're working on now aren't easy to explain in half a sentence, so I've decided to write a post about our current work.

You might have noticed we spent a lot of time on sandbox elements in the last couple of updates. While 0.17 had some story events about Kate getting her access to committee initiatives, it was mostly about under the hood mechanics we can use as a foundation for future college rules.

Anyway, back to 0.18. When it was first added into the game (around 0.4-0.5), a lot of college-related NPC behavior was heavily scripted, especially around Kate. For example, the game always shows every student even they shouldn't be in the classroom. If Kate isn't at college, there's no check if other students are missing classes, done their homework, there's no consequences, etc. Even in 0.17, if Kate doesn't go to college, no one's going to be punished at 14:00 since all the checks trigger during class events so only when Kate is present.

We've decided to move away from this practice and make all these checks independent from Kate's behavior. Students will be going to college, have classes (including PE and swimming even if there's no graphics), have medical checkups on Mondays, uniform checkups with Karen, and be punished at 14:00 if they deserve it regardless if Kate goes to college that day or not. We'll also add cheerleading practice after classes at 15:00 once Angela lets Kate in the squad. 

Next we will work on medical checkups. This time we'll do everything right from the start and all events will start regardless if Kate is in college. By the way, other students already get punished regardless if Kate is present, but she still has to be present at the start of the day for students to earn punishments.

We also want to rework the process of students changing before PE and swimming. If we'll have enough time, you'll be able to see if some of the students don't wear their underwear. By the way, in the future (spoiler) changing rooms will become unisex.

We also have to rework after class cafe invites so the game checks if there's a medical exam or cheerleading practice before scheduling the date.

All of this is pretty important even if it will take some time. Either for the mechanic to work properly (cafe invites) or for the future when Max joins college (except cheerleading practice, he's not going to join the squad). Thankfully, we already have most of the graphics for 0.18 so we have some time to spare.

P.S. Today is August 23rd, one week since 0.17 release, which means release for our $20 Patrons. August 27th for $10 Patrons, August 30th for $5 Patrons. August 30th will also be the day we release offline 0.16.