Hello everyone, it’s great to see you again. I hope you’ve all had a good week.
First, I have some slightly disappointing news to share. The August update has been delayed a little, and we are now planning to release it in early September. I’m sorry that we couldn’t bring it to you sooner. I’ll keep running as hard as I can to deliver it to all of you.
For this update, rather than adding new content, we’ve been focusing on making the fundamental aspects of everyday life and behavior in inZOI feel more natural. While this won’t be a particularly large update, a lot of development work has gone into strengthening the foundations of our life simulation systems for the future.
Today, I’d like to introduce one of those systems and hear what you think about it.
Previously, when a Zoi visited somewhere like a burger restaurant, they would remain there for a set amount of time. However, instead of ordering and eating during that time, they might talk to other Zois, look at nearby objects, or perform other actions unrelated to the reason they visited in the first place.
To improve this, we’ve developed two new systems (for these, please refer to the video on the top comment).
The first is a system that allows us to define actions that Zois should prioritize when they enter a particular location.
The second is an interaction permission system that allows us to specify who can use each object.
For example, at a burger restaurant, we can have a Zoi order from a kiosk, wait in a customer seat, receive and eat their food, and then naturally return home once their visit is complete. Employees will no longer sit in seats intended for customers.
However, if you have previously customized regions or spaces yourself, you may need to register some of this newly added information again. The amount of data itself is not large, but if you have customized many different areas, it could mean a little additional work. We are also preparing a way to apply the new system correctly through a reset.
I wanted to share this with you before applying the system to the development build so that we can hear your thoughts first.
If you are against this change, we are prepared to stop and reconsider it.
I believe that putting these small but fundamental systems in place one by one is essential if we want Zois to feel less like characters who simply spend time at a location, and more like people who act and live according to their own purposes.
Lastly, when I look up at the sky on my way home from work these days, the stars seem especially bright. The evenings are starting to bring a little cooler breeze as well, and it makes me feel that summer really is beginning to pass.
The long, hot summer is gradually coming to an end.
Thank you for spending another week with inZOI. Since the update is arriving a little later than planned, we’ll work hard to make sure we can show you something even better when it arrives.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you again next week.
Kjun
※ For the video, please check it on Discord or the forum.
🔗 Discord: Link
🔗 Forum: Link
Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments
Hello everyone.
Today, I’d like to talk about Active Mode.
This is the feature we showed back in June, where you could use a frying pan to affect another Zoi. Active Mode isn’t intended to be a feature focused simply on violence. It is content we’ve been preparing to offer experiences that you normally wouldn’t expect from the traditional life simulation genre.
One of the things we thought about most was whether this kind of action really belongs in inZOI. What we generally expect from this genre is to watch Zois live their lives like real people, behaving according to their temperament and traits. Because of that, we were concerned that interactions like these might disrupt the overall atmosphere of the game.
At the same time, some members of the development team felt that giving players a wider range of actions would allow for more diverse stories and greater freedom to express the situations they want to create. So we’ve decided to introduce it cautiously.
We’ve also taken steps to prevent it from disrupting the game’s atmosphere too much or escalating excessively into violence. There is still a lot of work to be done, including conditions for ending fights and connections with the police system, and we plan to continue improving these areas.
We haven’t been able to polish every aspect perfectly this time either, but rather than keeping it from you until everything is complete, we’d like to cautiously introduce it as an Experimental Feature. We hope you’ll try it yourselves first, share your feedback with us, and help us improve it from there.
Next, I’d like to talk about restaurants.
While preparing the business content, we wanted to include a wider variety of businesses, but managing Zois through a specific sequence of actions proved extremely difficult. Initially, we planned businesses around activities that took longer to complete, but there were more challenges to solve than we expected.
Cooking was particularly difficult because each individual interaction takes quite a long time. We wanted running a business to feel lively, with many customers coming and going, but achieving that was not easy.
After documenting these issues one by one and working through them over time, we’re finally ready to show you what we’ve been preparing.
In the new restaurant system, you’ll be able to see groups of customers visit and dine together. Customers will take available seats and place their orders with a waiter, while the chef quickly prepares the requested dishes. Cooking time has been streamlined compared with the existing cooking system so that it works better when preparing meals for groups.
Once the food is ready, the waiter serves it at the customers’ table. The customers enjoy their meal, pay the bill, and then leave.
We also plan to renovate the existing restaurants that have been sitting unused around the cities so that they can make use of this new functionality. I hope you’ll be able to enjoy wonderful moments at restaurants together with your family, partner, and friends.
The main focus of this update is city travel, resorts, and restaurants. Of course, we’ve also spent a great deal of time fixing existing bugs and addressing awkward or unnatural behavior.
There are still many areas where we have more work to do.
Even so, I hope you’ll have fun with everything we’ve prepared.
Things are extremely hectic right now as we prepare the update, so I’ll stop here for today and get back to wrapping everything up.
Thank you.
Kjun