Questing, Balance, Encumbrance & Interacting


Hi everyone. Apologies for the delay! I am still alive and pushing development along. Today I have a new update for you.


This update introduces the branching dialog framework, which has been applied to our new guild secretary, and the lost adventurer in the aptly named “Lost Adventurer” quest. The secretary has a simple dialog tree allowing them to share some useful tips pertaining to questing and your location. A few have mentioned how they would like to smooch the bunny-eared secretary, and to that I say, I would like to explore this as NPC interactions become more refined. She would be a wonderful vehicle for testing certain interactions.
The new dialog framework has also been applied to items in the environment to make them interactable. Certain objects may greet you with an INSPECT or READ prompt as you approach them. This gives the set pieces some more lore and substance. There are now signs posted outside what is developing into a little guild outpost. These changes should make it harder for newcomers to miss.
Playing around with this “inspect system” myself, I recognize we need some kind of indicator to hover over these set pieces you’re able to interact with. Otherwise, it can be a little hard to know what you’re interacting with in high-clutter environments.
 
Quests
As I’ve been building up across the last few updates, we now have a quest system. Most bases are covered. We have quest tracking, progression, one-time and repeatable quests, quest rewards and deductions (for quests requesting items), and so on. The system is over-engineered on the backend, as I’m accounting for all possible cases to ensure we scale better over time. However, this approach does come with the downside of the current system being slightly temperamental. If you run into any errors for the existing quests, please let me know.
Future additions to the quest system include the ability to select a quest to track and have its objectives pinned to the HUD, objective completion (and uncompletion) notifications, and timed quests.
The current selection of quests are really a means of testing the flexibility of the system, so if they seem a little goofy or short, that is why. Our current roster includes the following:
  • A request for a lot of bread.
  • A request for rare jelly.
  • A slime kill quest.
  • A series of scout quests, which simply involve reaching certain dungeon floors.
  • The lost adventurer quest.
The lost adventurer quest is probably the most interesting one for me personally, as it allowed me to play with writing dialog. I would like to build on this quest more in the future. I think it would be a wonderful testbed for archetypes and dialog stat checks.

Encumbrance & Item Stats
What a horrible day it is to be a loot goblin. Encumbrance has now been turned on. Item costs and weights have now been rebalanced. You can view your current carry capacity by hovering over the displayed weight in your inventory. The player carry capacity is currently sitting at a fixed amount of 200 units. I think I’ve been quite generous, and the default won’t be that high forever. Carry capacity is expected to be based on strength stats long-term.
A couple more notes on items and their values: Gold piles were rebalanced to be somewhat more reasonable in value, and selling key items is no longer allowed.

Final Notes
  • Change: Reduced amount items new characters start with in their inventory.
  • Change: Minor corrections to several items food stats. 
  • Added: Debug pregnancy item to shop, which I am using to test morphs and the progression, but you can mess with it yourself. This build only includes nude morphs.
  • Added: Additional orifice options for Eggyokel.
  • Fixed: Issue where Eggyokel would not appear in the list of selected traits during play.
  • Fixed: Minor corrections to arka crystal naming conventions.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make significant progress on the enemy front, but I will continue to push forward, and try to have less of gap between now and the next build. Things for me have been a little stressful as of late, but we keep on keeping on.

Please let me know what you think about everything we’ve covered today! Do you like the quest interface? Does dialog work well for you? Is there anything you don’t like? Please let me know. I’d love to hear your feedback.