Alpha Devlog 6: Progress Report

Being so early in development, progress tends to move in all directions at once. So instead of tackling a theme, I'll just run you through the most important progress of the last two weeks.

Upgrades:

I've played quite some "Factorio: Space Age" recently. An interesting game mechanic there is a quality system.  The base game has Manufactory I, Manufactory II, and Manufactory III. Each faster than the other and requiring extra materials to make. However, expanding that system to other buildings quickly leads to bloat. To remedy this, the game allows buildings to have a rarity. With a specific research and a specific module, you can have a chance of crafting uncommon/rare/epic/legendary versions of buildings, which are faster.  The result is the same, a building that's faster and more expensive, but without the bloat. So how can we apply this knowledge to Ero Hunters?

A clear example are the tokens, instead of block_minus, block, block_plus, you now get Block, Block (Uncommon), Block (Rare), Block (Epic), Block (Legendary) [the silly rarity names are not final]. The same helps debloating moves. In Ero Dungeons every class needed ~12 decently balanced moves, with the rarity system we can quintuple the amount of moves while keeping bloat in check and without requiring as much balance. For example, at level 7 your warrior gets Fabric Cutter which at level 17 upgrades to Fabric Cutter (Uncommon) doing more damage and removing more enemy clothing.

I've written some code that allows every token/dot/move/goal/perk to have 4 upgraded variants. Each of these variants is the exact same as the base by default, but any aspect can be changed for the upgrades. While I'm not very creative here, upgraded tokens could have longer durations, secondary effects or even drawbacks.

Token/Dot Changes:

You may already see it above, but tokens now last the entirety of combat, they are also no longer consumed. The goal is to allow for other strategies than to just burst down all enemies. Tokens also stack differently. When stacked, a token upgrades to a higher rarity, though moves limit the maximum rarity they can buff to. It's kinda similar to Pokemon, where stat changes persist during combat and their effects cumulate up to a certain level (-6/+6). I hope they haven't patented that.

Dots work the same way. Of course tokens/dots can still be removed by specific cleanup moves.

Animations:

I've added animations for a bunch of different moves (throwing, punching, slashing, casting), and also made some upgrades to the animation creation system. One part is that animations can now hide weapons (or other slots). Obviously a person with a bow can still punch, but they should put it away first. 

Additionally, I've also reworked several move effects to be more generally applicable while cleaning up the MoveViewer (where I edit the visuals of moves. Here's a video of the move in the MoveViewer: https://x.com/madodev18/status/1857028831225294903

Move Requirement Changes

In Ero Dungeons, your weapon type was defined by your class. This was necessary to ensure that animations worked correctly. On the other hand, it was quite limiting. In Ero Hunters, moves have a weapon requirement. A move that shoots arrows requires a bow, while stuff like punching just requires free hands, and some moves don't require anything at all. This decouples moves/animations fully from classes. 

This is also helped by the improved animation choice system, mentioned in an early devlog. Now idle/damage/death animations depend on conditionals instead of specific classes. I've also desynced the idle animations.

Console:

Console commands have been reworked to accept any active script instead of a preset list of commands. Additionally it now has syntax highlighting, turning light gold if the command is valid and dark gold if the command and variable is valid.

UI Stuff

I've added the enemy info panels back in, as well as a combat conclusion panel. Both have more useful information, and the latter neatly separates combat from dungeons (since combat can now occur in the overworld map as well). Her perks being duplicates with different rarity is a bug.

Combat Timeline:

This is an older change, but I don't think I've mentioned it in a devlog yet. Move order no longer depends on a speed stat. Instead every move has a duration that puts you back on the timeline, with some moves being faster than others.

Goals:

Goals are back, but instead of being randomly assigned, each role/race has specific lists of goals. The idea is that you can get your first levels rather easily by just fighting stuff. For later levels you need to think a bit, and for the final levels you need to do some work. Goals have also been reworked under the hood, their trigger and conditions now use the same system as scripts. The conditionals are used to prevent stalling, stall heavy goals can have a turn requirement now. Note that "turns" now means ticks on the timeline, so the 50 below is around turn 5. The +10 indicates the experience gained every time the goal is triggered.

As mentioned above, goals also have upgraded variants for later levels, having stricter requirements but offering more experience.

Classes/Roles:

Classes are now renamed to Roles, since class is a keyword in every single programming language and can't be used as a variable. The concept is the same however, as you gain experience, you gain levels. Each level gives some health (depending on the class), and may offer another perk (mostly allowing or upgrading moves). Once you've reached certain levels, you can reclass, returning to level 1 in the new class but retaining some of the perks of the old one.

Building Changes:

I've made changes to the overworld building placement and requirements logic. The whole overworld part is still in a heavy prototyping phase, so I'll elaborate more on it once it's more stable.

Tooling:

I've spent some time refactoring the verification system in the game's data editor. It's mostly renaming stuff so that the Parser (which unifies three different Parsers from Ero Dungeons) that writes out the scripts (and subtooltips) works more smoothly.

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