Girlfriend’s personality development

While working on the piano feature, I had some time to think more on how girlfriend’s personality should work in the game. Here are all my ideas thus far, something like “development roadmap” for building girlfriend’s personality in the future.

In addition to conversation topics, some aspects of girlfriend’s personality will be determined by parameters ranging from 0% to 100%, linked to conversation topics. Range from 0% to 100% will mean girl’s interest and/or skill in some particular area. If her interest is above 50%, it will also appear as a conversation topic in her dialogues. Depending on particular activity, % of interest/skill will directly affect that activity (uniquely for every activity).

Music parameter example: interest from 0% to 100% will affect how good your girl performs on piano. Every time you get good score from piano mini-game, her interest will grow by a few percent, until reaching 100%, when she will always play with 100% accuracy. On the other hand, if you fail at the piano mini-game, her interest will go down, possibly reaching 0%.

This can be used to gradually change personality of your girl throughout the game: if in the beginning you got a girl who doesn’t like music, but you want to get a music-loving girl, you can repeatedly use piano as a dating activity to increase her interest for music – and since she will be bad at it in the beginning, you’ll have to play the more difficult parts by yourself. Later in the game, when your girlfriend’s skill increases, you can use it to get top scores from piano dating by letting her play the more difficult parts.

Shopping + money parameter example: interest ranging from 0% to 100% will affect how often your girl demands new clothes, or expects you to give expensive gifts to her. If you do both, her interest will grow, resulting in her being more demanding. If you don’t buy her clothes and gifts often, her interest will decrease. Increased money interest could have some bonus, e.g., the girl helping you to catch squirrels, while decreased money interest could have some negative effect (e.g., no relationship points from receiving expensive gifts). Choosing to eat in cafe instead of cooking at home could also increase “money” interest (since your girl will think you are rich and like to spend money).

Cooking parameter example: if your girl has high cooking skills, she will help you to cook by saying what optional ingredients you need for unlocking full recipes (or maybe even cooking instead of you?) If you eat at cafes, her cooking skills will decrease, and if you cook at home, they will increase.

Additionally, increasing interest/skill for all these activities can be achieved by dating in specific places (e.g., dating in the Shinto location will increase her “Shinto” topic interest), or giving your girl specific gifts (e.g., giving her a basket ball will increase “sports” topic interest).

Some interests will be linked, so increasing one stat will also increase some other (e.g., “shopping” will affect “money”), or decrease it, if these interests are mutually exclusive (e.g., increasing “astrology” interest will decrease “astronomy”, and vice-versa).

There is no guarantee that everything will be implemented exactly as described, these are more like outlines for general direction of future development of girlfriend’s personality, the way I currently see it. If anybody has more ideas and suggestions, please post your comments.