Alpha 1.3 of This Grand Life has been released. This version features an improved education system as discussed in the last post, and also a new scenario! Here’s a video summarising the changes:

The scenario is called “Sue Goes To University” and is about Sue Doku, a nerdy young adult about to start her Science degree at Stanford University. Speaking of which, Stanford is a new town you can play from the custom game menu. It’s similar to Tutorialville in that the town doesn’t contain all the locations that a proper city contains. The focus of the Stanford map is on the University itself.

The scenario also works as an extended tutorial for the education system. It goes through more features that you might not be aware of. There are also some special events that are only triggered when you play the scenario, like going Elf Spotting or attending CatCon.

Another change is the addition of preset goals on the custom game menu. You can click on the Preset Goals button and see a list of goals sorted by length of time taken. The shortest settings are a ‘Walk To The Bathroom’ while the longest ones are ‘Cross-Planetary Marathon’.

Of course you can still manually adjust your goals to whatever you like, although they will now default to ‘An Acceptable Life’ when you first start up the game.

Here is a full list of the changes in Alpha 1.3:

New Features

• Added Sue Doku scenario
• Added Stanford town map
• Added Libarian and Library Assistant occupations
• Added Library location
• Added fluff Education courses (Elf Spotting 101, etc)
• Added some more location background chats
• Added custom resolution setting
• Added low hygiene event
• Added Bachelor Of Philosophy
• Added preset ambitions to custom game setup
• Added default goals to preset profiles
• Added edge scroll and WASD scroll speeds to options page

Gameplay Changes

• Added Fun increase when eating out at Fast Food/Restaurant
• Changed working part-time wage penalty from 25% to 20%
• Removed knowledge gain from town hall courses
• Added Eat From Canteen to Trade School and University
• Implemented partial knowledge gain towards goal for partially completed education
• Major reduction in price of diplomas and degrees

Fixes/Improvements

• LOTS of internal changes to allow more versatile scenarios
• Added checks to prevent crashing when invalid xml
• Internal changes to scenario triggers to allow branching storylines
• Internal cleanup of start menu pages
• Fixed end of week crash randomly happening
• Changed Bartender avatar
• Added some missing sound effects
• Fixed wearing clothes from possessions panel removes table headings
• Reformatted Apply For Job and Quit Job windows
• Added more details to knowledge goal breakdown in weekly summary
• Current studying now displays as a progress bar

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Alpha 1.2 of This Grand Life has been released. There are two new major features. The first is Collectibles, which was shown in the previous video. The second is Subscription Services, which is demonstrated in the following video:

Subscriptions provide useful information and services that help you achieve your life goals. For example, the Lively Livin’ sub gives you a weekly tip on how to play the game. On the other end of the scale is the Grand Groceries sub, which delivers fresh groceries to your door every 4 weeks. It’s more expensive than buying from the Shopping Mall, but it means you won’t have to travel there every month to buy your own. There are currently 5 subscriptions in total and I’m still working on a few more.

Each subscription costs money, and the price increases with inflation. So you have to think about whether keeping a subscription is worth it. The Collector’s Corner subscription is useless if you’re not interested in buying collectibles, or have completed all your collections.

I’ve also updated the weekly summary panel, and now you can click on each goal to see a breakdown of your progress towards achieving that goal.

The latest version is available from Itch.io. Here’s the full list of changes:

New Features

• Implemented auction house at Town Hall
• Added 5 different collectibles
• Added Social Services Manager occupation to Town Hall
• Added second gameplay track and implemented song switching
• Added 50% off clothing coupon
• Added Subscriptions to Weekly Summary
• Added Lively Livin’, Grand Groceries, Collector’s Corner, Ester’s Estates, TV PlusPlus subscriptions

Gameplay Changes

• Auction now only starts once player submits starting bid
• Real estate prices now change with economic growth, rent prices change with inflation
• Reduced Groundskeeper hygiene decay by half
• Removed spending time required to go to real estate auction
• Increased health recovery from exercising
• Increased fun from watching sports game
• Significantly increased base time taken for education courses
• Major readjustment of experience requirements for some jobs
• Lots of rebalanced health and hygiene actions
• Becoming tutor now requires a bachelor of science

Fixes/Improvements

• Removed Fine Jewellery from Shopping Mall
• Added sound effects for auction
• Added experience provided by each occupation to tooltip
• Changed tutorial Shopping Mall to MallWart
• Updated logo
• Fixed missing Security Uniform from Clothing Store
• Hide extra space on business panel when tip not being shown
• Clicking on profile buttons while window already open now closes it
• Reworked weekly summary to include breakdown of each goal
• Updated second tutorial with new weekly summary details
• Doubled speed of location text
• Trait needs now editable from xml
• Fixed graduating from shopaholic and alcoholic courses not removing needs effect
• Fixed life goal sticking when going to start scenario and then going to start custom game straight after
• Added short description for cities on city select screen
• Made InfoNet searching case-insensitive
• Cleaned up InfoNet navigation
• Added Education courses provided by locations to InfoNet and search
• Fixed missing Diploma Of Security Mgmt from Trade School
• Decreased main menu/resuming loading time by ~66%
• Fixed study action not disappearing straight away when completing education
• Fixed property taxes amount charged in cents
• Removed jobs with no openings from Apply For Job page
• Added button to location panel to view all possible jobs

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This Grand Life is entering alpha development. I’ve created a Let’s Play style video to demonstrate how to get started with a custom game:

Purchasing the game will give you access to all future versions up to release, as well as a Steam key if we get on Steam. You can do so from Itch.io:

If you want to try it out, there is a demo which includes the current tutorials you can download from Itch.io
or IndieDB.

And finally, remember to vote on Steam Greenlight to help get the game onto Steam.

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Special events can occur each week depending on city locations, possessions you own and the scenario/custom game you are playing.

One special event is the Celebrity Concert, which has a small chance of happening at the Stadium each week. When a Celebrity Concert is happening, you can pay extortionate amounts of money to go see your favourite pop star. The benefit is that you get a massive increase in your Fun and Happiness needs.

One of a PC gamer’s most popular events is Valve’s Steam Sales – now you can participate in them virtually! If you own a PC computer, there is a chance each week of a Steam Sale occurring. Similar to the celebrity concert, you can greatly increase your Fun and Happiness needs by buying games at ridiculously low prices. However, one drawback is your Health will suffer slightly.

There are ‘negative’ events too, like your Aunt coming to visit and using up part of your weekly time before you’ve done anything useful. These things happen sometimes and you can’t control them, just like in real life.

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In this article I will talk about the research that went into creating a realistic job market for This Grand Life.

Just as in real life, there are different careers and occupations you can pursue. Some are harder to enter than others. As an example, to become a University Professor you need a PHD and years of experience, while a Janitor requires no experience. Of course, this difference in requirements is reflected in their respective salaries.

The first step – work out the career path from the entry level position all the way to the highest and most presitigious occupations. This was pretty straight forward, just visit careers websites and read some of their advice. For example, the education career path in the game goes something like this: Tutor -> Lecturer -> Research Scholar -> Professor. The next step was looking for the relative real life salaries of each occupation. I used websites like SalaryExpert which provide a nice overview of salaries in the US.

Based on these salaries, I could tweak the requirements and opportunities of each job to balance gameplay. For example, did you know a Janitor gets paid slightly more than a Kitchen Hand? I could bump up the experience requirements for a Janitor slightly to reflect this, or make the Kitchen Hand -> Chef career path more rewarding. I came across some pretty obscure sounding occupations during my research, like the Digestor Operator:

Some jobs even have multiple career paths. In the banking career path you can get an entry level position as a Credit Analyst with a Finance Degree. Or you could start as a Loan Officer if you don’t have a degree yet, but have lots of sales experience. Eventually you will need to get that qualification to progress to higher tier occupations, but in the meantime you could start off earning a higher wage while studying at the same time.

To further make things more interesting, your Fun need decreases at a faster rate the more stressful and higher paying your position. So if you still have a crappy TV but work as an Investment Banker, expect to spend a lot of time each week satisfying the Fun need. Consider buying an expensive VR headset to satisfy that Fun need, or go watch Sports Games at the Stadium more often. It’s OK, you can afford it!

You can download the free prototype from Itch.io, IndieDB or MediaFire and give it a try.

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