Weekly Report (June 3rd)

Hola.

G, it only took about an hour to upload the measly 118 mb to the site using a crappy VPN. I'd hoped that itch would fix the problem for Russian users (at the moment, Russian IPs are prevented from accessing the site) after a week, but alas, the problem stands. I hope the problem really is technical and not political.

Anyway, to the news less grim: the previous week was pleasantly productive. I was busy updating the combat mode, and oh boy, update it I did. The combat mode is now much better compared to what it used to be, not just code-wise, but also QoL-features-wise. I transferred the dialogue mode functionality to the combat mode, making it possible to scroll through turns with the click of the mouse or Space buttons, added the skip button, etc.

Here's the brief overview of the changes made:

- Graphical glitch where the text was flickering during the combat mode should now be fixed – I also applied the same solution to the dialogue mode. Though I rarely got any glitches of the kind during the dialogue mode, this should nullify the probability of them ever happening;

- Changed the combat mode logic from clicking an action button to further combat to clicking a mouse/Space buttons, just like in the dialogue mode – now I’m sitting on the fence whether to add the skip button as well;

- Implemented escaping – both the player and NPCs can attempt to escape if they have the relevant combat action (both can fail or succeed); however, I’m not sure whether giving NPCs the ability to escape is a good idea, because if the NPC flees, the combat encounter simply finishes, without a prompt to open a loot container, which may be frustrating for some players. Imagine defeating two enemies only for the third one to trigger the escape action, and then no reword is given for the defeated enemies;

- After sitting on the fence some more, decided to add both the skip button and ‘please press the button to continue’ indicator to the combat mode – this required a pretty major rework for both things. On the bright side, the code, and the indicator’s logic, are now much more robust;

- A number of minor changes to the combat mode, like disabling certain action buttons in case the protagonist lacks combat actions of that type;

- Generally improved the combat mode code;

- Made a big internal change to the dialogue mode – now the string management happens from the dialogue controller rather than from the dialogue branch script, as it should, honestly. Imaging having a dialogue controller that only assigns sprites and displays strings, but doesn't let you request to show the next dialogue nod in the active dialogue branch. That was my dialogue controller prior to this change;

- Slightly modified the craft mode – now all three inventories are scanned for the required items, and even if the protagonist has the item equipped or stored in their belt slots, it will be possible to craft using it (the item will automatically be removed from the equipment/belt);

- Improved the functions that add/remove various things, such as scenes, recipies, money, items, etc – this includes better handling of notifications;

- Greatly expanded the function that adds items to the protagonist – now it is possible to choose the inventory you want to add the item to and, depending on various factors, the item will either replace another item in that inventory (equipment/consumable), fill an empty slot, or add the item to the general inventory if replacement/equipping is not possible;

- There was an oversight with the saving/loading logic - in short, saving sometimes happened when it wasn't meant to happen, which could lead to unexpected (or rather, undesirable) behaviour;

- Also, there was a rare (yet annoying) bug that forced the dialogue branch to skip a few nods because the skipping bool didn't update in a timely manner.

Next on the agenda is combat perks. For this, I'll have to rework the perks once more. At the moment, there's only one class for perks. I want to branch it into three types of perks, the persistent perks (like 'Leader'), the timed perks (like 'Satiated'), and combat perks (the perks that last for a certain number of turns in combat). Once that it's done, I'll program some combat perks, and then will begin trying to make the combat less of an RNG-fest. Maybe I'll have to return to my previous idea of combat roles for NPCs. Or maybe I'll come up with a better solution.

Anyway, see you next time. Hopefully, without the need to use a VPN.