Alpha 1.3 Released and New Scenario

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