Hello folks!

It’s been a busy week, but I was able to implement the first pass of the needs system for Boss Golf!

As it is, the golfer’s needs will decrease over time based on their own attributes, as well as the place they are in. It works more or less like this:

• Energy: Decreases by walking around the course for long distances, walking on difficult terrain (paths are important!), hitting the ball, falling in the water. Increases by drinking energy drinks, sitting down on benches, standing around talking with friends. Later on, when I have a weather system implemented, high temperatures will make the golfers tire faster too!
• Food: Decreases a specific amount based on the golfer’s physical attributes. Some golfers don’t need to eat as much as others. It’ll be good to place vending machines in key areas, and later on you’ll be able to better diagnose where the golfers are getting hungry, and adjust accordingly!
• Drink: Keeping hydrated is important, and drinking needs will decrease faster than Food. Again, vending machines come in handy, or even simple water fountains.
• Environment: This one is more interesting! It doesn’t decrease/increase by a set amount: instead, it’s base value depends on the environment that the golfer is in, according to their preferences. If a golfer likes the Links, with wide open areas and no trees, his environment meter will be higher in those areas; if the golfer likes woodlands, then trees will make him happy. As well as keeping everything in a good condition!
• Social: This will decrease and increase according to the interactions of the golfer on the course (with other golfers, with staff, with you), and also dependent on the golfer’s personality. Some golfers will seek out contact constantly, which can be a hassle to the more quieter golfers. You may even need to ban some people!

Not only needy, the golfers now have their own thoughts!

The basic system for thoughts has been implemented, and golfers will come up with their thoughts based on the action that they did, and their current state of mind at that time. If he hits a nice shot, he’ll likely have a happy thought; unless his confidence is low, then he may shrug it off to luck!

For now the thoughts are a bit limited, but I’ll expand them prior to 0.5, as well as over the course of development. The current panel looks like this:

It adds a nice bit of flavor to the game too. Specially after I saw one golfer miss an easy putt and immediately think “I hate my life”. Got quite the giggle out of me!

And here you can see an animation of how the current character info panel looks like. A long way since the previous iteration:

The confidence system is also in, but needs a lot of tweaks, as is the case for most of the game.

Next up, I’m gonna tackle how the AI goes about the holes. Right now, the logic is very simple and they pretty much just aim straight down the hole, and hit as close as they can. Which is viable in some cases but if you place a strip of sand in there, they’ll just hit in the sand!

Stay tuned for more updates!