Esoteric Update #231 - Smorgasbord

Update time, and this time we'll be skipping lore again. I mean, I know it's not really important to anyone, but I'll try to post something extra maybe next week. I'm tired due to a lack of sleep right now.

So as the title implies, the update today will be a bit of a smorgasbord, but as random as it might seem, it actually stems from polishing out some content, and we just ended up doing all of this in response to going over that content. So this is a bunch of mechanics and UI-related changes.

Taking a big breath here and...

There's a small variety of new options to customise the game's mechanics available in the Configure Game menu.

Mechanics related to magic use got their explanations in the Index.

The character sheet was split in two. The icon on the right represents the player character's "Mind" and currently contains the old Emotions panel and a new Karmic Ties panel representing characters you have some link with. This new panel is used in some mechanics already, but it will be used for more later on. There will be other panels added here. Simply said, the Character view was growing too large, and this was a way of breaking it up to make looking for specific information easier. The current Character panel now represents something more akin to a traditional character sheet. In terms of the existing mechanics, it will visualise the consequences mentioned for the use of Oculomancy to manipulate people forming connections between you and your targets.

Speaking of, the Character, Mind and Index are now available at all times during events. Or at least it should be after we update everything; there are still some elements currently in the game that, in particular, use the v1 conversation systems, which are incompatible with this. We might make other panels visible here as we finish them off. In particular, the calendar might show up here in the future.

The usage of magic now has success/failure UI vignettes. Some of them are just informative, and some present clarifications about the outcome of the attempt (like in the case of Aura Reading here). The options allow you to limit them to just clarifications if you prefer.

Speaking of options, you can also enable a marker for all words with glossary explanations if you prefer them to be visible.

This is among many other things we've done, but I don't think they are worth iterating over in detail. Bug fixes, UI adjustments, code extensions, writing, changes to the existing events to incorporate all of the above changes, more writing, more lore, more Knowledge and Glossary entries... Some of them will definitely get some elaborations later on.

Finally, I'd like to point out that this week is my birthday; I'm not feeling great about it, though. I'm not mentioning this because I want anything from people, like well wishes, for example, as much as just to point out I might not be in much of a mood to work on the game as much over the next few days. I'll also be spending some time at the hospital for some tests, and I'm already quite tired without being deprived of more blood.