January Update

Hi everyone.

A month passed since the last update, so it seems  like it's time to post the new one. I wish I could wait until I have  more features ready for this release, but I understand that doing stable  updates is also important. As always, the update can be found on my itch.io page. The link is on the title page.

Here is a list of features I'm working on currently:

• Trading  ✓
• Fast travel ✓
• Innkeeper's H scene ✓
• Dungeon map X
• New mobs X
• The Minotaur's quest.  X
• Rewatching of H scenes
• Rock-scissors-paper type minigame for generic encounters

Features  with check marks have made it into the new update. The rest is in process and will get into the next update. I hope <:'3

Instead of rushing  the new dungeon stage, I decided to add a little preview without any  mobs. 

The entrance can be found on the second forest stage, next to NPC  Minotaur Guard. Just jump inside the pit. The stage is just a simple showcase of tile sets and sort of a preview of design theme I'll be using for most of my dungeons in the current chapter , nothing fancy.

There is also a working trading now.

I didn't have time to setup the game balance yet, so most of items are useless and the drop rate was set to high for testing purposes. That will change over time. Also, shops and Inventory both share the same UI module, so the inventory menu now looks a bit different too.

Tired of walking? I finished fast travel. 

Find hooded statues to add their positions to the list of places Amber can be teleported to by the priestess.

Finally, the image set from the month ago was converted into a proper H scene.

This scene was probably the main reason why I didn't have time for more features. For dialogues and scenes I use Ink. A purely text-based command interpreter. It's powerful, but hard to debug when you need something outside of its scope. To control characters on a screen, play animation, write flags to register, add items, open doors, focus cameras, etc, all of this functional and more has been written by me over a long period of time. And it's all text based. Currently, I'm writing an alternative. A separate trigger system that got very powerful. So during January I spent quite a lot to declutter the dialogue manager from legacy code, in favor of the new Trigger system. I also optimized the existing dialogue scripts to make them easier to read and edit. All of this has naturally brought a mountain of new bugs, so if any of you'll notice that something stopped working, please write me a message describing the problem.

One more thing, the Save data format is still under development, so I can't guarantee that saves are always going to persist between updates.

Recent changes and updates:

• Travel (new): multiways. Doors and passages support multiple destinations.
• Travel (new): fast travel. Find different statues of goddess to unlock new destinations, then speak to priestess
• NPCs (bugfix): the chief will no longer be missing after you go into the woods to finish the intro chapter.
• NPCs (bugfix): goblin merchant's caption was corrected.
• Dialogues (new): added more diverts for Minotaur NPC's dialogue in the village.
• Dialogues  (bugfix): after interrupting of jumping or shaking animation, character  sprite now reset its position instead of staying in the air
• Dialogue System (update): got rid of some legacy code
• Inventory System (new): shop mechanics, now it's possible to buy stuff
• Inventory System (new): Goblin merchant now has a
• shop Inventory System (new): Witch now has a shop
• Inventory System (update): inventory UI was rebuilt and updated with new cosmetic features for better clarity
• Data  Manager (new): it now performs a compatibility check during  loading of  saves. If the version of Data manager and version of saves  don't  match, the manager won't load them. Without a warning currently.
• H Scenes: completed the Innkeeper's H scene.

Known issues:

• Mob  Contact Minigame: Keeping pressing [HOLD] button after you completely  filled the progress bar, allows to refill the progress bar while Amber's  animation is stuck at idle.
• Diary: when you chose to skip the intro, diary doesn't filled with necessary entries.
• Items Drop: the drop rate is too generous

That's everything I want to say about the January update. 

Huge thanks for supporting me! See you next time! ♥