I finished implementing Cameron's encounter today, and began testing it. It involved a couple new items, both encounter-specific ones (like the window and console in the cryo facility) and inventory items. Therefore, some new art was required, and new data entries.
It also required a new condition. This condition is more complex than cholera, so it'll require some additional testing. It was tempting to start going down the path of more feature development, in terms of wound and wound treatment.
I finished testing and bug fixing the encounter I've been working on, and started implementing a new one. This next one is Cameron's first, and uses some interesting probability distributions in the outcome. Should be interesting to see how it works out in practice.
I also managed to finish the artwork for his encounter. This one was one of the fastest yet, particularly given the subject matter. It only took me a couple of hours.
I started testing the encounter I finished adding yesterday. I've already done some bug fixing for flow issues and text. Upon finishing one possible branch, it became apparent that the item rewards might get lost or ignored. So I started looking into ways to make items more obvious when given as a reward.
One feature I'm currently adding to solve this is to add item movement in take/drop mode. Whenever an item is transferred to a new place, I now make it smoothly fly over to its destination.
I finished implementing the encounter I showed in Friday's news. There was a minor hang-up when I realized one section where the player can trade one of several items required separate outcome nodes for each traded item, to ensure the right item was subtracted from the player. That was annoying, but not worth writing a new system for yet, so I just had to suck it up and deal with the tedious task. The rest of the encounter work went smoothly, though.
No build today (I avoid Friday builds as a rule, just because mistakes usually mean I'm stuck working Saturday morning fixing bugs :).
I spent the majority of the day working on plot stuff again. I've nearly finished implementing the encounter I've been working on, and I thought I'd share a snapshot of it in the editor:
This encounter brought to you by Chef Boyardee
It's the upper left one, and you can see some interesting flow patterns.
I spent the early part of today working on some refinements for the chase features I recently added. After I had a bunch ready to go, I rolled them into a new beta build: 0.940b.
Here's an overview of the changes:
Creatures now have individual tracking thresholds for following scents.
Dogmen now have moderate tracking (slightly worse than before).
Back to plot work today. More revisions to encounters we've been working on, and I started wiring up one of the plot encounters in the editor. It's a pretty long and winding series of choices, and I had to make some tweaks to the editor to support overlapping outcomes.
In some cases, multiple user choices result in the same outcome (e.g. using the various optics in the game to recon an area), so I had to make it easier to edit such cases.
Cameron also had a chance to give the new hiding/running/spying features a try, and had some great feedback.
I think I've finished the bulk of the encounter today. At over 4200 words, this one's a monster. We'll have to see how it fits with the game system, as I haven't tested it against the encounter screens for length yet. It might need some slicing and dicing to fit.
Still, I'm hoping this one will be a fun one to try a few times. There are a couple different approaches, and they yield different outcomes, so I'm hoping the effort will be worth it.
In other news, one system enhancement Cameron and I have been tossing around is starting to sound like a good idea.
Well, another day down, and still not done with this encounter. It's almost at 2800 words now, so I guess I'm getting close. The good news is that I managed to work out a couple of logical gaps that were bothering me, and found a new personality I like for the character involved. I realized I was starting to retread the cool/aloof Hatter style character, and that'd be no fun. So I turned him around and made him a bit more batty, and I'm really liking the change. It actually inspired me to write more.
