Esoteric Update #237 - Maps Of The Mind

Alright, let's start with some lore:

Lore: The Self-correcting Error

And now for the update... There are a few things I'd like to talk about and a bunch that I'd like to leave for later, when they are closer to being finished. Unfortunately, one of the things that I want to bring up today isn't great. After initially having issues with false positive AV detections on the engine executable and then all that calming down, the false positives are back in full force. I've spent some time analysing the situation using Virus Total, and it appears that it's related to heuristic, AI-driven detection methods. This means that if you currently DL one of our executables (like the 236.4 test version), there is some chance that your AV may detect it as a virus and quarantine it. For what it's worth, I'm confident this is actually a false positive, and hopefully, this will resolve over time when whatever neural network (I assume) is causing this gets a better grip on things.

Secondly, we're doing a slight rebranding; the name of the game is getting a small change, but this has no bearing on our intent in terms of content. The change is done purely for PR reasons, you might say.

Thirdly, the big thing I'd like to talk about today is our mind map implementation. We've been discussing thoughts as a gameplay mechanic since the beginning of the game's development. This mind map view is something that lets us present these mechanics in what we hope is a compelling and aesthetic manner. Below, we'll show off a working mock-up of one such mind map concerning the most general level of "thinking" the player character can perform. Please remember this is a mock-up, but it presents the layout, including mechanics we've been working on for some time but have yet to implement fully.

But what are these mechanics? Well, thought experiments are already in the game, and you can test a few out with our last preview release. Mysteria are a similar mechanic but for training magical instead of mental abilities. Deductions are related to "quests" and the inference mechanics we talked about loooooong ago. Thinking back on what happened refers to daily memories. These are low-importance traces left by various happenings in the game; you can think about them to turn them over for minor resource benefits. Lastly, events and characters are things you might need to form opinions on to interact with them further/on a deeper level. These opinions might be related to relationships for characters, while for events, they might have more to do with the game's overall story.

(This is a bit of a look into the more behind-the-scenes development since we tend to only talk about things we're actively working on and not much about the background design work that dictates the direction of our work.)

This whole mind map display is composed of several smaller projects, the notable one being the draggable pane, which lets you scroll around the map at higher degrees of zoom. This is something I've wanted to have in a while, and it will definitely find more uses eventually. The whole map is dynamically generated and will adapt to its content, too. We don't just plan to have one mind map; this is merely the first place where we'll be using one.

Now, here are a few more minor points. Wearing high heels now negatively impacts your travel speed when walking through the city; it's a 20% penalty. Over the last week, we got feedback on the 236.2 release, resulting in two patches, 236.3 and 236.4. Thank you for the feedback. We've also made provisions for bindable keyboard shortcuts. By that, I mean they are fully rebindable now, but you have to manually edit the settings file in Notepad (interface coming eventually).

Hopefully, next week, I'll be able to talk about our newest tutorial and also a bit about implementing the mind map in the game, as it is a rather interesting issue from a technical standpoint. Plus, some more info on writing and maybe some new thought experiments; we'll see how things pan out. I'm back at work, so finding time might be hard until I get through the overdue paperwork on my desk.