Esoteric Update #143 - We Have A Twitter Now

Another week, another update. And we'll start this one with a few announcements. Firstly, we welcome a new member of the team (officially) this week. He'll be taking care of our Twitter for a moment... and that also means that yes, we now have a Twitter. So feel free to do Twitter things with us.

Now let's move on to the regular. And first, we have some new lore posted for you. This is older lore, and I know the writing is a bit rough in places. So we'll revise it before it gets incorporated into the game.

Lore: Your Seder Hishtalshelus is Wrong
Lore: Primaeval Man

And now, finally, the proper update for the game. I've spent most of last week working on the AI, starting with further structuring for the whole system. A structure that I have now tested and am happy with. In total, it incorporates a lot of the code I've written, both recently and some time ago. More even than I expected at first. But it was necessary to what I'm trying to accomplish. I want to write more about this, but I want to have a working, simple scene using it ready to use as an example. Maybe next week? The point is, a lot of progress was made, but it's the awkward kind of progress where I have little to show that isn't just abstract code. So let's leave the rest for next time and touch upon some smaller developments.

First off, I changed the starting outfit to something that works better for travel, it's a very neutral, quite casual outfit, and I think a good started regardless of what character you want to work with. Initially, I was considering some kind of choice, but I decided that it's best not to throw that kind of customisation in instantly and leave it to the unpacking stage. Right now, unpacking allows for more in-depth customisation but also leaves it for later, letting you get to know the game a bit before deciding on getting more clothing.

I also did something that I've considered for a while and went back to how the game describes body parts. I updated the whole thing to ensure better distribution of different nouns and adjectives. It can still be improved and in the future definitely will, but for now, it's a huge step forward.

Now that I have a working, fully developed skeleton for the whole conversation/interaction system, I'd like to build on that, develop it into an example and work from there. So that's the task for next week. And also maybe an article explaining how it works because it's not what it might seem at first. Meaning it's no longer a tree-based system but a much different beast that allows for interactions impossible under a more rigid conversation tree.