Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #90

Hi, hi!

How is everybody doing today?

With the chaos of the alpha build settling down and having taken enough time to recuperate, we're finally back to our regularly scheduled devlogging! Ahhh, how fun~

To start with, I'd like to reiterate on the plans I laid out at the beginning of this month--with that being to challenge myself to launch alpha 0.9 this month as well, to try and catch up with things and not feel as if I'm letting everyone down. To facilitate this goal, I'll be working on the following this month:

- Two new h-scenes (possibly three if the other two go smoothly enough) each featuring a familiar character from Chapter One! A lot of groundwork is already laid out between them, including fully finished voice lines. It's just a matter of plugging the gaps in the narration and bridging the events that lead up each of these moments.

- Adding in voice lines for all the current h-scenes that don't have them as of yet. I have all of the voice files at hand for every scene implemented thus far, it's just a matter of finding the time to cut down the lines and insert them into the script.

- Fleshing out the functionality of Claire's shop to accommodate the needs of one of the h-scenes listed above (as one character requests this specific item. Any guesses as to who~?)

And so for today's dev log I want to talk about Claire's shop; what my aims are for it, and how it functions--since it's a little more involved than your standard rpg shop!

First of all, even just opening the shop is a darn ordeal! As those of you who played the demo may have seen--Claire's shop was closed and she wasn't to be seen at all! Typical! Without spoiling too much, a quest is tied to finding cluzty Claire and reopening her shop before you can start utilizing its features. I decided to set it this way so that you weren't too overwhelmed with options when first starting in the city--and so that new option would begin to gradually open the more you completed tasks and events in a more natural fashion.

So, once the shop is finally reopened for business--beyond talking to Claire and casually chatting, you'll be able to both:

- Buy items

- Sell items

Revolutionary, I know! A shop where you can both BUY and SELL things! What will FrostWorks think of next?! Okay, but really--while these two options are what you might expect, there's a little more nuisance to it than that.

For example, when buying items, Matt won't be able to just spend his gold needlessly and buy up all the items on a whim. He'll only think to ask to buy an item when it becomes appropriate on a context based situation: for example, if he finds something is impossible to achieve without the aid of an item, or someone asks him if he can buy it for them.

So the options you see when you click 'buy' will vary from situation to situation--and there might not always be things available to buy in the store at all depending on where you are in the game.

Selling is a little more straightforward, whereby you'll be able to sell excess items from your inventory. Maybe you received them via a quest, or it was an item you bought FOR a quest, but it turned out to be hopeless after all. You'll be able to offload this junk at Claire's store for a small fraction of what it might have originally cost you. Not ideal--but it's better than not getting any gold back at all, right?

This leads me to the next big function of the shop regarding its prices, both on what you pay and what you receive when you sell items--namely, the prices aren't set in stone, and will instead scale depending on how Claire feels about you. Effectively, the more she likes you, the higher the discount you'll get, and the more money she'll give you per item sold.

The formula isn't set in stone, but this is what I've drafted up with some initial messing around of the system:

store_price = store_price - (store_price * (affinity_claire / 8.0))

This essentially means that the price of the item is equal to the discount/bonus modifier being deducted/added to the total price. And that the discount modifier is decided by taking the base price of the item, and multiplying it by Claire's current affection divided by a hard rate of 8.0. This is an easily adjustable rate that I've experimented with on different values, but felt 8.0 seemed to scale the best with Claire's affection levels.

For example, if we have an item and its base price is 500 gold, if we apply Claire's discount, assuming her affection is at 1, this will be a discount of 62.5 (I use a function to round this down to avoid any unsightly .x numbers affixed to the end of the total!) and so 500 - 62 will result in a new lower base price of 438. A small discount in the grand scheme of things, but I'm sure you'll be able to see how it might scale to more significant discounts depending on Claire's affection! As time goes on I'm sure I'll be adjusting this formula and making sure everything feels fair without giving/taking too much gold! Maths isn't my strong suit, so I had to muster up all my powers from college to try and remember how best to tackle this, haha. Gosh, nobody told me I would need maths when writing erotic games!

So, this discount/bonus gives you a degree of planning: do you wait and see if you can raise Claire's affection before selling a rare item, or do you sell it right away depending on if you need more gold right away? I don't think Matt will ever end up TOO strapped for cash if you play smart, but hey--for some of those more expensive events, you might need to plan ahead a little more!

How do you personally feel about gold in Quest Failed: Chapter Two? Are you happy for there to be an extra element you need to account for when playing, or do you feel having to micromanage gold might be frustrating when you just want to get to the core of the game without having to juggle a bunch of resources? Let me know how you feel! Since depending on how I tweak things along the way, the gold can either be a big component, or more of a side thing to the main event.

Also how do you feel about the UI regarding item icons? When you buy something this tile will slide in showing a neat icon of your item before sliding back away. It builds on the parchment based UI featured in other areas of Chapter Two's UI, but I might tweak it somewhere depending on feedback!

Anyways--that about wraps up today's ramble! I promise the next dev log will be something a little more light hearted and cute, possibly showing off the final chibi in the batch that I have yet to show people. Fun times~

Until next time~