Esoteric Update #68 - Shopping In Progress

It would seem implementing the shopping had sent me straight into quite a rabbit hole. So first off, this isn't about shopping mechanics, not directly at least. Those have been done for a while. What I'm currently working on is integrating shopping into the game narratively. And there are a few things I wanted to do with it, partially related to what I did before but also pushing those things forward.

The first challenge came when I decided I want to move to stage 2 of my random conversation generator. In particular, I wanted a system that can generate and maintain characters on the fly and, more importantly, maintain a consistent, flowing narration involving those characters. And I think I got that, maybe. Time will show. There's still a lot of work to be done before it really enters testing, that is to say, the point where I can judge the output it produces. But that, in turn, made me consider something else...

Exchanging a few words with the cashier, that is. And that also went reasonably well, it turned out to be a more straightforward problem to solve, but at the same time, I wanted to turn to my phrase system for help and it... it turned out not to have the phrases I need, yet. So I'm implementing a few more phrases to be used here and there...

Overall this is a decent amount of work, but it will have a tangible impact on many other things in the game. I'm also slowly moving towards small talk as an element of interaction. Both with random NPCs and named characters.

Somewhere along the line there I managed to oddly invert the general control scheme a text game's logic and narration should have but oh well. Oh and also more semantic implementations for the consequences of the player's actions... but I need to work on that more.