I decided to work on student schedules; I programmed NPCs to have a predetermined daily routine. To facilitate this, I built a simple school environment so that students could have various destinations and demonstrate path-finding. I started decorating the school for fun, and I think I went a bit overboard:
It might look better in motion, so here’s a webm:
The school grounds and the interior of the school are very bare-bones for now, but I actually think it’s kind of fun to run around in this environment.
Student Schedules
I created a female NPC and gave her a schedule. She walks from the entrance of the school to her locker, then walks to class, then loiters near the entrance to the rooftop, then returns to her locker, then goes home:
The system I’ve built makes it very easy to designate student schedules by simply dragging-and-dropping a destination marker, and typing in a time that the student should begin traveling to that marker. It should be pretty painless to pre-define (or randomize) schedules for dozens of students with this system!
Behavior Near Senpai
Being able to run up to Senpai and stab him in the face would defeat the purpose of the game, so I came up with a gameplay mechanics that prevents players from doing this:
Being near Senpai causes Yandere-chan’s kokoro to go doki-doki. Near Senpai, the screen gets pink and blurry, a heartbeat sound effect plays, Yandere-chan’s animations change, and she loses the ability to run. This prevents Yandere-chan from directly interacting with Senpai. It’s a stealth game, after all! You’re not supposed to let Senpai notice you.
Passing Time
Depending on how fast the game’s clock is, players may have to wait a long time for a student to reach a certain moment in their schedule. To prevent players from getting bored of waiting, I’ve implemented the ability for players to speed up time until a specific point in the day.
There is a button that makes Yandere-chan take out her cell phone and hold it up to her face, which stops time and gives a bunch of options to the player; this is basically the game’s pause screen. One of the options on the phone menu is “Pass Time”.
Telling Yandere-chan to “Pass Time” until a specific minute will cause her to take out a picture of Senpai and gaze at it lovingly. The clock will speed up exponentially until exactly the minute that the player specified, so you can make hours pass by in mere seconds.
Classroom Trail
Getting to class on time is not mandatory, but truancy can have a negative effect on your reputation, and missing too many classes can get you expelled from school. I wouldn’t want players to miss class because they got lost and couldn’t find their classroom, so I added a feature that makes things easier. At the tap of a button, you can spawn a trail that will direct you to your next class.
I’m proud of this feature, since I always considered it a feature for triple-A games and not a feature for indie games. It was actually super easy to implement, but I’m still proud of it anyway!
Myth Tree
This is something that won’t matter to anyone who doesn’t care about lore / backstory, but there’s a certain tree in Yandere-chan’s school that has a myth attached to it. According to legend, if a girl confesses her love to another student underneath that tree on a Friday at 6:00 PM, the student will accept her confession. Every one of Yandere-chan’s love rivals plans to confess to Senpai under that tree, which is the reason for the Friday 6:00 PM deadline.
Yandere-chan herself won’t confess to Senpai under the tree until she has eliminated every girl who has a crush on Senpai.
Update on Story
Speaking of story, I don’t have a new cut-scene this week. The extremely negative reception of the previous cut-scene has caused me to re-think the story and the characters. I was planning on remaking the cut-scene between Yandere-chan and Info-chan, but then I started thinking about the weeks of work that go into a cut-scene, and everything else I could be getting done in that time. I’m considering ditching the idea of fully-animated 3D cut-scenes, and just displaying some still images accompanied by music and text, so changing the story is a much easier process in the future.
Patreon
As of the time of this writing, it looks like my Patreon hasn’t been very successful…but I still wanted to express my gratitude to everyone who has shown their support so far! Thank you!
Yandere Simulator Development Blog 
