Spent the last couple of days working on the save/load system and a basic card shop.

The save load system is fairly simple to implement and actually quite fun to work on, all things considered.

The shop system was a lot less fun, due to how I originally made the cards. The cards were originally intended to work solely in the game, and like a novice I included actions like showing or selecting the cards as part of the Card class itself. It would have made more sense to be more modular in the design, as had been preached by countless people who I steadfastly ignored in order to get a prototype out the door.

Then when I found I enjoyed working on the prototype, I didn't want to throw away those hours of work, or spend probably more hours chopping and changing and getting my head-bound architecture all muddled up. In the end, I took the simple route of giving the cards in the store a separate class just for that area, and used some cheap tricks to set it all up (run the original card scripts to fill in all the UI data, copy while in play mode, exit play mode, paste, remove the class).

The store is looking fairly ugly as it is, but I plan on reading an enormous amount on UI design, art, and UX, so hopefully I can bring it around if this is the project I keep working on. There will be another tab along the top for the store upgrades, and yet another for the biggest idea I'd like to implement.

The new big thing will be some form of narrative, that will affect how the days play out. Right now, it's a fairly mindless game, just make money, keep a clean store, feel uncomfortable when a customer's clothes match their skin colour and you think they're naked, repeat. Maybe you can buy some cards and do all of those things times ten. But then if every so often you have a mafia boss demanding protection money, or the city council declares a ban on caffeine due to over-productivity, and you get to choose how to respond? I think that will give the game not only more character in and of itself, but a more personal connection with the player.

A new mic has arrived, so I can begin recording sounds and so on and so forth and suchlike. I am especially looking to the moments just before recording a satisfying gulp of coffee, even if I never use them in the game.