Another picture of the wip work window. I will make a new blog post in the next 24 hours and tell you more about what to expect from this new system . It should be finished and released in early december, if everything goes well.
Another picture of the wip work window. I will make a new blog post in the next 24 hours and tell you more about what to expect from this new system . It should be finished and released in early december, if everything goes well.
Small update. Work is progressing well. I have only two things left on my list.
I'm working on a system that will enhance the scheduling a bit.
I will be adding simple cutscenes that will play after you accept your schedule. These cutscenes will show up once in a while and will depend on the activities you scheduled.
For example, you will get a cutscene on your first ever day of working as a farmer. This one will basicaly show how unskilled you are. You will get a next cutscene after you raise your farming skill a bit, showing how you improved.
These will have static backgrounds and be quite short, which will make them easy to make while still showing how you are progressing / getting better and how other NPCs react to that.
Next patch should come out this week. It will include some minor bugfixes, hangour option for all major NPCs (with exceptions like Mr. White and the Generals), and basis of the cutscene work system.
Cutscene system in this initial version will be barebones in presentation, but it will have all the functions I want it to have. I will be addind support for some kind of animation that will show you days of the week and count down untill you hit a day with a cutscene.
Only interactions with Billy will have cutscenes in this version.
The way they trigger is simple. The game will check your schedule and then look at a list of conditions for triggering a cutscene. All cutscenes will trigger only once per playthrough and you can get only one cutscene per week for now. All of them have around 5 lines of text, so adding a skip function like the proper cutscenes have is not necesary.
For example, if your farming level is lower than 10, you spend atleast one day working for Billy and you select farming related job, you will get a cutscene where Billy explains the very basics to you. Different cutscene will play if you select smithing related job from Billy.
The system I made is easy to work with and all cutscenes are supposed to be really short. Adding large number of them should be quick and easy while making your characters progression more interesting.
Favor window is now pretty much feature complete and all the obvious bugs and shortcomings were fixed.
One of the shortcomings of this system was the lack of dialogue. This system pretty much removes need for any of the dialogue you got from some NPC when you raised their relationship level and they gave you something.
Now you can just ask for those items directly from the favor window, which makes the NPCs feel less "real".
I adressed this in two ways. First are cutscenes, which are already in the game and work quite well.
Second, I added two lines of dialoge for every favor you can pick. When you pick any favors from the menu and return to game, you will get multiple lines of dialogue depending on what you picked.
Is I said in the recent blog post, tying both the favor and schedule systems together and replacing the old work system will take some time. Don't expect any bigger updates any time soon.
Work is progressing well. I decided to add an option for favors you can pick repeatedly. For example, olaf will give you free ammunition as many times as you want (If you have enough spare favor points).
This will make raising relationship with different NPCs more important for certain types of characters. Billy will give you seeds, suong will give you some food, Tadeas will give you potions and so on.
Also, here are all the things that I have to do before I release new version:
I'm working on the first four points together and all necesary systems are in place, but it's still going to take quite a bit of time to put everything in and double check everything. Week report screen will need complete rewrite, but that should be quite easy. Construction will be slightly more difficult.
Can't give you any estimates as of yet, but don't expect the update this month.
Small update. All character favor data and jobs should be in the game. I decided to delay the addition of construction so that I can release this update sooner. There is still quite a bit of work to be done and I will have to rework the entire tutorial to reflect these changes, but I should be able to finish the update in the first half of the month. Unless something unexpected happens.
And the schedule window will now let you leave without accepting the schedule.
The report screen is now practicaly finished.
Last thing to is is to overhaul the tutorial and test everything. If I don't encounter any serious crashes, then I will release the next beta version. I will be doing some more testing after that and fix any bugs I or you find. After that, I will add construction to the scheduling.
If everything goes smoothly, then next test version should be released towards the end of this week. There will be some minor things missing, like construction progress not showing in week report window, but everything else should work without problem.
Gathering option will have to wait, since this will require expanding the map and bunch of other stuff. Once construction is released, reported bugs are fixed and all the small missing things are added, I will start properly working on the faction system.
Next version is now in the final testing phase. All construction projects should be in and should work. Now I just have to test things to make sure there are no crashes or major bugs. You can expect next update this friday, if everything goes smoothly. Here is how the construction system works:
This system gives you more freedom with your schedule and it gives me more freedom to make construction projects more interesting. All projects in previous versions either took no time to build, one week or one month. Now they can take as much time as I want and you are not forced to put entire week into doing nothing but building. You can build a "7" days project in exactly one week, or you can work on it slowly by scheduling only one day for seven weeks.
Construction progress now shows up in the week report window. This means all the features I wanted in the version 0.38 are there.
I will now start slowly working on the faction system. I will wait about 2 weeks before releasing the final 0.38 version in case some bug reports show up or if I find any my self. If nothing crops up, then I will release the full 0.38 version.
So if you find any bugs or have some suggestions related to the schedule system, don't be afraid to post them.
Once the 0.38 version is fully released, I will start fully focusing on the faction system, starting with the church. I will talk more about this system once I have something to show.
Small QoL feature I've been working on today.
I wasn't happy with the limited amount of save slots on offer, but I also kinda liked the limitation in some way. To make save management more forgiving and pleasant, I implemented "save profiles". Every character you make will have its own save folder with separate save slots. Each character still has only five save slots, but the amount of characters you can have is pretty much unlimited.
This system will detect and move your previous save files into "-OLD-" folder. Here you can load your old characters. Saving the game while playing those old files will create new folders depending on your characters name.
Faction overview screen will show you all factions you encountered, your rank, standing points and it will also give you short description of your relationship and short faction description. Pretty much every NPC will belong to a faction.
Next update will have several small improvements. For example, most locations will have new battle backgrounds. I also added a simple system that picks a random battle music before every battle.
I redesigned the main menu a bit to make it fit more with the ingame UI. I also added one new feature that was not requested, but will surely make everyone happy. Pressing the "Continue" option will now automaticaly load the latest save you made, so you don't have to choose your profile and then search for the latest save manualy.
I didn't post any progress reports for quite some time, so I decided to show you atleast a little part of what I'm currently working on.
Among other things, my main focus right now is adding a proper intro to the game. This will show you the events between your arrival and Billy making your hideout.
This intro will mainly serve as a story / lore introduction. The gameplay tutorial begins right after it ends, like it does in the current version. Intro sequence will be mostly on rails and focus heavily on cutscenes and dialogue options, where you can ask Billy about the island, different factions, recent events and so on.
You will be able to skip the intro at any time, since it will be pretty much one long cutscene, so you won't have to sit through it if you find it boring or if you are on your second playthrough.
There are some small systems that I will have to add to make this all work, but nothing major. Together with the intro sequence, I will also be expanding existing dialogue topics to other NPCs. No eta. for the next update yet, but I hope I can finish it before christmas.
First of all, I want to thank all who participated in the poll. If you still didn't vote, you can do so here:
It is completely anonymous and it will help me progress with updates the way you want.
Voting will end 1st of February, so keep that in mind.
As for the sneak peek, I decided to make life for keyboard users (most likely the 99% of you) slightly easier by speeding up menu navigation. Can you guess how?
To not go insane from writing all that dialogue, I'm slowly working on the next faction update.
Last patch added some faction exclusive weapons, next patch will add two basic helmets.
Helmets go into the "Face" slot for now. Putting on any helmet will switch your hairstyle to the basic one automaticaly.
I'm also trying to make the helmets work properly by giving them separate equipment slot, so you can wear them together with items like glasses.
The entire equipment system barely holds together and there are still some issues, so this separate slot system might not make it into the next patch, but I will still be adding it at a later date.
I might re-organise the equipment slots at some later date. As I said, the entire thing barely holds together so I don't want to poke in it too much. Getting the new slot to work took me almost an entire day as is.
As for the mutations, they poke through for now, but it doesn't look that bad (or good). I will wait for some feedback once the version is out and I might just make them invisible if you are wearing a helmet. We will see.
Hi! I have an idea regarding the helmet and headgear mechanics, which might be interesting to implement in the game (if it's technically feasible, of course).
Since the game already features various mutations that alter our character's appearance (such as horns or other unusual growths), I suggest adding limitations on wearing standard helmets based on certain mutations. For example, if the character grows horns, it would become impossible to wear a regular helmet; however, she could still use hoods or special headgear specifically adapted for these mutations.
Besides, it makes sense that it would be uncomfortable or even impossible for the character to wear a helmet when she has horns on her head.
I realize that this mechanic might be technically challenging and could require extra effort in terms of development and adapting items to different mutations. I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether this is feasible and worthwhile to implement
This crossed my mind at one point.
It's not a bad idea, ubt I would like to deepen it a bit.
My initial thought was what you said. Some mutations would make you unable to wear certain headwear. But I would also like to add something similiar to outfits. Wearing plate armor with back spines and wings would be inpossible for example. To counter that, I would also like to add some mutat exclusive armor. Helmets that actualy require you to have horns, armor that can only be worn if you have tail and so on.
On top of that, you will be able to get rid of mutations by surgery and gene editing in the future, but I would also like to add a simple, less sophisticated way of removing them. Cutting your horns and filing them down, amputating your tail and so on. There would be disadvantages to this, but it makes sence to be able to do this.
All of this will require quite a bit of time though. I will probably implement only small part of what I want first and add the rest later. We will see.
