Esoteric Update #188 - Jewellery And A Break

Early update? Yeah, I guess. I'd like to announce something, and I might as well start with that.

My health has not been the best lately, and my quality of life is pretty low. As such, I've decided to take a week off and push myself through some medical procedures that might help with what I'm going through. This simply means there will be no update next week. The next update will be in 2 weeks and contain whatever I manage to get done by then. Which might be a lot or almost nothing at all, I don't know.

The only thing I know is that I had a horrible lapse in pain management yesterday and that I don't have the strength or energy to continue with it right now.

Anyway, have some lore:

Lore: Eternally Drowning

For the update, I had a bit of an epiphany about a specific issue that had been bothering me for a while - jewellery. So that's what I spent the last few days implementing. It's hard to quickly quantify the exact mechanics implemented, but I'll try to do my best.

The jewellery system currently covers three main types of items: rings, piercings and necklaces. There might be an extension of this eventually, but it won't be right now. You can wear freeform combinations of these items, with the limit that you may not have more than ten equipped at once in total. All jewellery affects your appearance status; though they don't work like clothing, they directly affect your body's appearance statistics, the same way cosmetics do. However, unlike cosmetics, they can be enchanted. That's the commonalities between all jewellery. The details change a bit when you examine the specific substyles.

For example:

• You are limited to only 3 necklaces in total;
• You can only wear one large ring on each hand;
• Piercings depend on a bodymod flag to exist before you can equip it, and most slots are limited to 1 piercing only.

We'll definitely need to provide information about this in-game to clarify things. Of course, most limitations are based on common sense, but a few might be hard to spot at first glance. Fortunately, I've already prepared a whole system of messages that will guide you on the fly, though we still need to finish up the writing for those.

As an additional note, this also introduces an item transformation feature. This isn't actually about items that somehow transform, but items that can be re-contextualised in how they are used. For example, ribbons can be used to tie around your neck or into your hair, piercings change position, and rings switch from hand to hand. This is not an action that takes time; it's just an interface implementation for your intention towards a specific item.

Ultimately, though I didn't plan to add this right now, I decided to strike while the iron was hot, so to say, and have it available. Piercings, in particular, are an essential part of BDSM, and that's still a critical element of the game.