Weekly Report (June 10th)

Henlo.

Browsing the site without a VPN is a bliss, thanks itch.

That week wasn't nearly as productive as the one before. I was aiming to adjust the perk system, add combat perks support, and implement a couple of combat perks, but in reality all I managed was just adjust the system. It didn't help that I was rather busy with IRL stuff, and had to spend almost ten hours in a car at some point. However, what took the most time and effort was me overhauling the character class, which broke, well, a lot. I had to fix over 600 function references and on top of it manually reassign characters in dialogues. While I think that I reassigned everything successfully, there can potentially be some small inconsistencies which I may have missed when testing.

Let's go through the changes introduced in this build:

- Committed (can't find a better word, lmao) a major character class rework - previously I had three subclasses for characters: protagonist class, party member class, and counterpart class. By design, I intended to use party member class for companions and counterpart class for any other NPC. I decided to get rid of the counterpart class. Now, a character can either be a protagonist or a party member. The classes are now much better structured. Previously, the base character class was an amalgam of functions and values, but now everything has been sorted nicely and moved to a separate internal class;

- Performed the perk system rework - just like I wanted, I divided the perk class into three different subclasses. However, I am yet to introduce combat perks support and program combat perk effects;

- Reworked queue portraits in combat mode - now the portraits are properly masked by the frame sprite. Also the character description will now be displayed if you hover the mouse pointer over the portrait (unless the character is a protagonist). I may permit to display a protagonist's description in case I permit players to modify their characters' descriptions. As things currently are, there is no point in showing the generic 'protagonist of the story' description;

- Made some small dialogue changes - from changing the wording to implementing other features. Won't go in details, those changes really are rather small, and some may even go unnoticed (like the fact that Gaspar starts off without his vihuela and only equips it during the dialogue - I doubt many players will purposefully check the bard's doll prior to him equipping the instrument and then after it to notice the change);

- Found and fixed a Zondok dialogue bug - due to how I scripted the sequence logic, if the player were to open/close the trade window for the second time (to browse the merchant's wares), the active dialogue branch got mixed with the one preceding trade window opening;

- Added more options for the combat encounter script in regard to health/stamina replenishment of the parties - now it's possible to either fully replenish health/stamina of the party members on combat end, replenish some health/stamina if those got depleted, or leave the values at zero, which may be handy for 'game over' scenarios;

- Made the game run in background if played in window/borderless screen mode - the game won't run in background in full-screen mode, though. At some point later, I'll add a tick box for it in the settings. The appropriate time would be when I add the setting screen to the actual game. Right now, settings can only be changed from the main menu.

Next week, I'll still be busy IRL. However, I should still be able to finally fully implement combat perks. That's the plan, anyway.

See you next Monday.