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.
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.