Auto-Parts Shop Changes

Whilst the majority of the last week was spent finishing up the new debt tracking system and polishing up the Auto Dealer feature, time has been spent on calibrating the game to work better with the more impoverished player start.

Auto-Parts Shop Changes

Wadashima and Mizunuma now host a Batako auto-parts shop. Players will need to travel to Yamanashi to purchase stock Daizo parts. It's more likely that new players are going to be starting the game with a Batako-based truck, so having access to stock parts for that truck nearby made more sense. The Batako parts are all much cheaper than their Daizo counter-parts too, making the financial weight on the player lesser.

Fuel Considerations

Daizo trucks generate with two, 20ltr fuel tanks as standard. This is a lot of fuel storage, and rather than increase the fuel consumption of all the engines in the game, I've opted to include a new 6.5ltr fuel tank that is more commonly found than the 20ltr Daizo one.

This makes fuel more of a consideration early-game, without making Batako drivers suffer further. Later on in the game, when longer journeys and present with the introduction of newer prefectures, a larger fuel tank will feel much more necessary.

Unlike Daizo trucks, Batako trucks that generate without a GX390 engine will only generate with one of these fuel tanks.

Fail State

As discussed last week, there's now a fail state in the game when failing to repay your debts. Here are a few images of how this process looks (shout out to Ruta's tutorial ferret). Also, please do excuse the spelling mistakes (dept should be debt).

女の子写真家 - Girl Photography

The daily life of a 17-year-old high school student is full of danger. Radical days. Passing days. A sadly pitiful world. Why is love painful. ROCK IS MY LIFE. I’m scared that I’m getting closer to becoming an adult. I live, reflecting upon myself.

Hiromix is a photographer known for her candid style that helped define being a young woman during the mid-90s Japan. Her work gained traction during a time when most well-known photographers were men. Japanese photography critic Kotaro Iizawa coined the term "Girl Photography" to describe her and other women's work. This condescension appears to be an attempt to box-in a talented female, and reduce the worth of her work.

With this is mind, hopefully you can see the reasoning for why the letter from the bank is so condescending, and why the start of the game is receiving so many changes. More work is needed to get this right, but working as someone with a male perspective on life, and choosing to feature a female protagonist requires more time and care than simply adding Body Type A / Body Type B implementation at the start.

If this stuff has no interest to you, you can play as a sentient piece of Tofu. Just type "Tofu" as your name when creating your character.

Tasks Remaining for New Version

It's been a while since the demo has been updated, so I'm sure you're all wondering when you can get to try all these new changes out. There's still work to be done on the following before the game feels properly overhauled. With these systems in place - and after a fair bit of community testing and feedback - I'll be in a good position to start restricting content for the Next Fest demo on Steam.

• Vending Machine Late Game overhaul

• Paint purchasing

• Removal of Starting Garage stock (i.e. the oil, paint, tape, etc)

• Driver AI fixes

Next Fest should hopefully bring in some more Steam Wishlists and put us in an acceptable position to launch into Early Access. As usual, developing a non-genre specific game has been a marketing challenge. Hopefully we're alleviating this with the continued refinements and polish.

Cheers,
Greg