November 20th, 2018: Progress Report

Hello everyone! First a quick announcement, the temporary name of the second project has now been changed to Karryn's Prison, and the protagonist's name has also been changed to Karryn.

Now with that out of the way, let's continue on from last week. Today, I'll be talking about the Prison's various stats, as well as Edicts.

The four most apparent stats related to the Prison are: Date, Order, Corruption and Funding. -Date is basically the amount of ingame days that has passed since the start of your current playthrough. It's mostly for score keeping purposes as there are no plans for having time limits for certain events or endings.
-Order is the stat that represents how much control Karryn currently has within the prison. This number has a maximum of 100, and a minimum of 0; and when Order hits 0, that's an immediate game over for your current playthrough. Order automatically drops by a certain amount every day based on the current status of the prison. Order can be mostly raised by defeating enemies, stopping Riots and defeating a boss. Riots will be discussed in a future Progress Report.
-Corruption is the stat that represents how much of a corrupted warden Karryn is. This stat is mainly raised from enacting certain Edicts and is used for determining the ending you will see, whether it is a bad ending from hitting 0 Order or a good ending from beating the final boss.
-Funding is essentially the player's gold or money or whatever. This is not Karryn's money, but the money for the prison that Karryn has been entrusted with as the warden of the prison. Funding changes every day depending on Income, Expense, and Stipend. Stipend is essentially income since it is always positive, and the amount of stipend Karryn gets per day is based on the current Order of the prison. High Order means Karryn is doing a good job so she gets a full stipend. Low Order however will greatly reduce the stipend she receives.

You might be confused on exactly what Corruption and Funding is, but bear with me for a moment because I am going to move right onto explaining what the Edicts system is. Last week, I talked at length about the Passive system. This is a form of character advancement that is mainly outside the direct control of the player. Today, I am going to talk about the Edicts system, which is the other form of character advancement in this game but is directly controlled by the player.

The setting of this game is that Karryn, our protagonist, is the warden of the prison and the prison will undergo a complete outbreak in the opening prologue. So at the start of the game, the prison will be in a state of disarray and Karryn's job is to defeat the final boss while maintaining Order within the deteriorating prison. To help accomplish this huge task in front of her, Karryn has the ability to enact a certain number of Edicts per day. Pretty much all Edicts require Funding to enact, and they have a wide range of effects.

There are two types of Edicts: Personal and Prison. I am going to provide examples of the Prison related ones first:

• Edicts that repair certain parts of the prison, which will have effects ranging from simple increase in Order, to opening new map functions.
  For example: Replacing broken security cameras which will provide a boost to Order.
  For example: Repairing a broken bar which will then open up new Edicts such as:
  -Make an agreement with a supplier of alcohol; which will increase expense, and maybe some other hidden effects...
  -Hire outside help to staff the bar; which will increase expense but also income since now the bar is open for business.
  -Fire the outside help and instead use prisoners to staff the bar; which will decrease expense, but instead increase corruption and maybe some other hidden effects...
  And of course, once the bar is repaired and open for business, maybe Karryn can drop by in person and help out as a part-time waitress to earn some extra money to pay for the many, many Edicts......
• Edicts that will enhance the prison's infirmary.
  For example: Purchasing a better supply of medicine; which increases expense but also increases Order per day.
  For example: Agree to a shady contract with suppliers of experimental drugs; which will increase income because they are paying Karryn to be able to test their new drugs on inmates, but of course this will also raise Corruption and some other hidden effects...
  For example: Supply the infirmary with condoms; Which raises expense and Order but has some hidden effects also...
• Edicts that repair and enhance the prison's kitchen and food supply
  For example: The first set of edicts is to just repair the kitchen and mess hall; Which will greatly increase the Order within the prison. And then once it's repaired, new Edicts may become available such as:
  -Ordering higher quality ingredients; Which will increase expense and Order.
  -Staff the kitchen with inmates; Which will decrease expense but also increase Corruption as well as some other hidden effects...
  -Have inmates clean the dishes; Which is basically the same effects as the above edict.
  -Put steroids and other enhancements into the guards's food; Which will increase expense, Corruption, and Order per day. But there might also be other hidden effects...
  -Put aphrodisiac into the inmate's food; Which increases expense and Corruption, and has some other hidden effects...
  

Those are some examples of the Prison related edicts. As for the Personal type edicts, these are Edicts that directly affect Karryn. The first type are Self Training edicts. These edicts where Karryn uses the prison funding to improve her own physical and mentally conditioning. Since she is the warden and currently needs to be able to put the riots around the prison, this is a justifiable use of prison funding.

However, the remaining types of Personal edicts are not. Such as using prison funding to order new accessories, jewelries or furniture for herself. While these all increase the Corruption stat, they are also have beneficial effects. Again, Corruption only matters for determining what ending the player will see. There are three pickable difficulty modes in this game for each playthrough and they are essentially: Easy, Normal and Hard. And within these difficulties, anyone trying to beat the game while keeping Karryn sexually AND morally pure, will find themselves in an extra challenging situation. 

I'm going to leave the end of this Progress Report with two things: First, a screenshot of work in progress Edicts screen. Second, a personal report.

Yes, it's essentially the Skills Tree system from Pina being repurposed. It's functionally the same so there was no reason to reuse it. Right now I finished the coding for all the Training Edicts for the near future. I am probably going to do just a little bit of Personal, Shopping, Prison and Level 1-2 Edicts, and that will be all the Edicts that will be available for the first demo of the game. Just like the skill trees in Pina, these stuff really take forever to implement.

For the next Progress Report, I hope to be able to code the Riots system. Which now leads me into a segue to the final part of today's Progress Report: the personal stuff. Wow you guys, it's already almost Thanksgiving!! Time has been mercilessly fast especially since development for Karryn's Prison has started. I will be honest, I have been kind of neglecting my health related duties lately. Long time readers might remember that I'm supposed to get checkups every six months. Well, my last checkups is about to hit seven months now. So with the final week of November, I'm thinking of taking it easy. There's the family stuff with Thanksgiving (an American holiday) plus my medical checkups. There's also a bunch of new eroges coming out at the end of this month. Originally I was really looking forward to Guildmasters by Astronaut, but it got delayed till February. So maybe I'll buy the new Lune sequel, or the Eushully eroge if it gets really good reviews. Or maybe I'll catch up on my huge backlog since I haven't properly played any game or eroge since Rance X back in February.

So there might or might not be one more Progress Report at the end of November. Either way, whether you're American or not, I hope everyone will enjoy the rest of November!