Esoteric Update #240 - Cha-ching

I'm sorry for skipping out on a few things with this update; it's sweltering here, and I am desiccating.

Okay, so what have we accomplished today? There are three main things, and they all revolve around the new content we're preparing and the new wealth system. I got quite a few minor things done, too, particularly items adjacent to the fragment responders, navigation vs. interrupt responders, and the wealth system. I also did some work on presentation/UI, but I don't think it's anything worth a detailed description. Now, the three big things are very much worth some explanation.

Firstly, there's now a website for your bank. You can go there and log in to manage your assets. This allows you to reroute money to your debit card, but we plan on making some investment options in the future. We have the investment system designed, but it requires stock market modelling, and while I have some idea how to do that, I need to run some tests to verify it in practice.

Secondly, I've started re-writing the shopping code. It's only partially done for the moment, but it's a more modular approach that lets me assemble different types of shops. And the material that's there already supports most functionality for vending machines and vendors that we wanted.

Thirdly, the above has now been put to use by having a coffee vending machine.

The operation of the machine is very tactile (for however much that counts in a text game) despite a higher degree of complexity compared with what you might typically expect in a text game. But then, that's what we're going for.

There are still a few more things I need to flesh out with the system, and a bit more writing needs to go into it, but things are progressing slowly in that direction, too. Overall, steady progress.