Esoteric Update #117 - An Exchange of Nods

Alright, two weeks have passed once more, and I'm happy to report I am, health-wise, in a much better place than I was a month ago. So, I managed to get a few things done too, it wasn't as much as I hoped, but things (even apart from my health) kept getting in the way.

First, let's start out with some lore. Usually, I post older lore (first 50 entries on the list), but this time, we're going for the 3rd chunk, entries 101-150. That's one of the things that are turning out right now, there are 146 separate lore entries catalogued in my lists now. Just 10 more and the game will have more documents than the Baldur's Gate series, something I've always considered a bit of a milestone in terms of writing.

Lore: Arkham Institute

Lore: Beyond the Gates of Horn and Ivory

Apart from pushing everything I could to the archive, every text that was finished that is, I also took a look at the erotica. There are already half a dozen different things moved in-game to experience at your leisure. But there's also still about a dozen texts that I need to go over. Next week I might just release a preview version with the new erotica.

And now let's move to the more traditional work.

I've expanded the API a bit, mostly because some things turned out with the machines where I really needed specific functionality that was missing. That's fixed now. And the machines are doing a lot better too. I've not added any new ones but instead expanded the existing ones immensely, adding new modes of operation and new features to help with constructing AI.

Speaking of which, those two schematics I posted last time are live in-game. Expanded and corrected from that form after some testing. They are working great, and the stuff we're implementing for Cornelius will be making use of both of them. I've also started basing some semantic conditionals on them, for easy usage, but there's still a bit to be done there.

Apart from that, I went back to the nonverbals, but taking the module from a slightly different angle. I was working on something else (ok, I might be writing a handholding module) and realised I needed smile texts for the PC. Well, it seemed like the natural course of action to make the nonverbals work with both the PC and the NPC, it took some writing and reverse engineering things, but right now the module does indeed handle both sides, like so:

There's also some other, smaller things. Dolly is still helping me bring the apartment up to snuff and Desert is helping configure Cornelius' personality.

In any case, for the moment we're back to weekly updates for the foreseeable future.