Esoteric Update #233 - Responder Suspenders

Alright, update time. Let's kick it off with some lore:

Lore: The Machine Mind

And now for the update proper. I think we're now done with updating the intro. It now presents a lot more of the recently implemented mechanics during the two encounters you have, and additionally, we have a few extra interactions. While that might not sound like much, we've actually extended the narration accessible to the intro by several thousand words, just because of the way the new additions are not explicitly written for the opening, but instead, most of them (not all) are modular writing that's meant to be used across the whole game with some of the mechanics.

We also had a much more technical issue, which took me some time to clean up. It's a different way of sequencing together responders. The details are technical, and you probably don't care that much. I find it pretty exciting, though, as it offers some new options for building more intricate interactions. And, of course, it came up as an issue that we didn't have it yet, so even if not now, I'd need to get it done eventually.

The interactions that were added start here, with the aura reading option. Both are much more complicated than it might seem at first:

Also, various small UI improvements. They should make the game feel more smooth to navigate, and there were some edge cases where the UI would break that will now work correctly.

I was thinking of making a test version accessible, but there's something else I want to put into the game as it needs testing, too, so I think it will make more sense if we first get to that. That will involve something new, a test of what should eventually grow into a much bigger module over time.