Weekly Report (Apr. 15th)

Hello, fellow kids.

I've had a busy week, so, while I technically achieved what I wanted, I didn't do it to the full extent. As such, I wanted to populate Zondok's trade list with finished items, but I have only managed to create base files for said items. These items are recognised by the program, they have icons and IDs, but they lack supplementary strings (names and descriptions), item info (weight, cost, attack and defence rate modifiers), and weapons don't have combat moves attached to them. In other words, it will take me another couple of days to finish them.

The list of changes is as follows:

- Revised Zondok-related dialogues - now I’m more or less satisfied with them;

- Decided to revert stopping dialogue skipping in case the player pushed a button, but a UI window didn't open due to restrictions - it just didn’t sit well with me that if a window opened, the skipping was simply halted until the window closed, but when the window didn’t open, and a notification appeared, the skipping simply stopped and needed to be kicked into motion again;

- Updated the add and remove functions (for money/items) to automatically invoke notifications when required - the money posed no problem at all, though the items did require some work throughout the code;

- Was basically forced to permit the player to open the inventory window during the dialogue mode - otherwise, it was simply impossible to implement the item equipment tutorial. I mean, sure, I could introduce a one-time exception, but I sat on it, and decided that it might become irritating for some players to be unable to prepare for a battle when the dialogue has already started (see wolves/bear encounters in the test forest level) - once the dialogue started, it was impossible to open the inventory. Maybe I'll change my mind again later and implement a one-time exception for this specific moment;

- Made a couple minor changes to the dialogue controller - I simply made the controller wait for the background sprite to appear completely before the actor sprites appeared. Without these changes, both the background and the actors appeared at the same time, which didn’t look good in my opinion;

- Started working on the trading mode improvements, but I haven’t managed to achieve much yet - basically, I’m trying to implement randomisation and fixed item count for traders. As of right now, every time you start trading with Zondok, you are given a random list of items taken from a bigger list of items I assigned to him. The problem is that I generate a new list every time, so the changes to the bigger list are not registered (only the minor list changes), so the items you sell to the trader are basically lost the moment you close the trade window, and the trader doesn't run out of the items, either. Will work on it later;

- Started getting a strange coroutine-related bug that happens specifically when I exit the game while trading with Zondok after buying a potion. Basically, when I exit the game during the potion-buying trading moment, the errors don’t appear, but in the same scenario when I try to exit during the second or further trading moment, they do. Will have to troubleshoot the cause.

So, yeah. I'll wrap things up this week regarding the new items (and there are plenty) and continue working on the trading mode changes. Apart from that, I want to actually limit the number of consumables the protagonist can equip depending on the belt they're wearing. Also, I want to introduce a personal weight-limitation to things the protagonist can wear. Basically, depending on the protagonist's personal carry weight, they will only be able to equip things if the limit is not reached - like, if the character equips a heavy sword, they won't be able to equip a heavy armour at the same time. I'm on the fence regarding one-handed/two-handed weapons. I'm leaning towards making two-handed weapons so heavy that no regular character can wield two of them at the same time. Or I could simply introduce another property to weapons. We shall see.

With that, I'm signing off.