Mood and Low Self-Esteem

I hope everybody had a good holiday season.

Out of the three main stats that need to be maintained, mood is probably the most difficult to recover from. Mood represents your general happiness and self-esteem. As a general rule, if it affects your life, it'll affect your mood. 

There are, however, many other things that can cause it to plummet. The easiest way to lose mood is to be deceived, overpowered, abused, or otherwise taken advantage of. Fresh characters might also take mood penalties from their first few anal encounters. After suffering too much abuse, a character starts wondering if they're truly worthless, or if they have any redeeming qualities. This is most easily reflected in how much money you make, as a character with no self-esteem is willing to sell herself for lower prices. Low mood also causes characters to accept bad things thrown their way as well-deserved, and are less likely to resist. This is what makes it hard to get out of a downward mood spiral.

Less solid progress done today due to Christmas, and a re-write of how advantages (perks) work, with more on that at a later date. Next update will talk about dangerous encounters, as I've almost completed them.

Today's progress:

• Mood now fully implemented.
• More encounter text added.

Settlement Framework

Choosing which settlements to flee to isn't just about taking the cheapest or safest travel options. At the base level, each settlement has different cuisines and fashions, which aren't all that important. You'll also find different types of people - a farming settlement has quite a few farmers, and a military settlement has a lot of bored soldiers. The important differences between settlements, however, are the opportunities presented. A character with acceptable body stat can make a few extra coin moving cargo at a harbor, or maybe learn a thing or two about defending themselves at a military settlement. As of right now, there are six different base settlement types:

• Port city
• Farming town
• Major city
• Religious city
• Academy
• Fortress

Settlements are also generated with traits that can change the way you look at them, and with dominant races, which can change your encounters.

Today's Progress:

• Added framework for settlement types, including basic equipment, cuisine, and the ability to travel between settlements.
• Redesigned rules screen so that each option you select explains in greater detail what it means.
• Safety option added to rules screen. Low standards means selling yourself to more people at greater chances of danger, and high standards reduces the number of potential clients while also reducing danger.
• Life, mood, and hygiene are now color coded to red, yellow, or white. The changes in color occur when you begin taking penalties for having low values.

Making RNG Visible

Bounty has a lot of random elements to ensure that each time you load a new game, something different happens. But random elements can really be a buzzkill when things start happening and you have no idea why. That's why every time a dice roll happens in Bounty, the results are listed at the bottom of the window. Mousing over any dice roll will tell you what the dice roll was for.

In the case here, mousing over the "one" result at the bottom displays "Hygiene", letting you know that the messy load you just took wasn't all as messy as it could have been.

RNG will always be a part of Bounty, due to the nature of the game. One encounter could be very pleasant, but the next could be your last.

Today's progress:

• Virginity is now tracked. It can (and will) be sold from your very first encounter for extra coin, but goes up in value the more impressive you become. A beautiful courtesan's virginity is worth more than a street rat.
• Life implemented. Life rises when resting (while not starving) and falls when handled too roughly or when attacked.
• Food implemented. Each of the settlement types has their own cuisine, and three tiers of food: scarce, reasonable, and abundant. Scarce saves money but is bad for your health and mood, reasonable maintains your current status, and abundant aids in recovery of both health and mood. Small races like the halfling and goblin have increased effects of food.
• High elf, wild elf, and deep elf all begin with the Elf trait, which increases the likelihood of orcs being rough, and greatly increases the likelihood of orcs slipping on their pullout game. "Innocent" elves will want to avoid traveling through orc settlements.