Esoteric Update #247 - A Smaller Asset Grind

Right from the start, I'll need to apologise for the somewhat sketchy progress this update presents. I've been going through several medical procedures over this last week, which left me feeling very tired. I've done what I could do during the few moments where I could power through the exhaustion.

Let's start with a rather important bug fix. My initial implementation of container opening caused lock information to be lost after opening the container. We've opted to change this so that the locks retain this information; while we're not interested in pushing for all locks to be re-lockable, we'll see what we actually end up doing with this over time. We know that we have some uses for it in terms of doors. In the process, we've also opted to remove the mechanic where forcefully opening a container caused damage to items inside. It just felt the mechanic was very niche, not very fun, and somewhat narratively questionable.

Additionally, we've implemented the particle.js mini-library. This allowed us to animate the Bokeh pattern in mind maps. Those circles over here:

Next, we've done some work on documents. Firstly, all of the documents currently have the new formatting. I've also taken this opportunity to fix some minor formatting issues that were impossible to address in the previous file format. Secondly, we've implemented some of our work on images into documents. PoIs are now on the menu for anything that falls under the document system. Excuse me for not having prepared a dedicated example. Here's just a PoI file I had around applied to the clay tablet:

The PoI files also interact excellently with the document scripting system, which was to begin with built to allow arbitrary interactions with documents. And this is what PoIs serve to illustrate.

Next up, I looked into a module for documents that has been... somewhat problematic before on an implementation level. I ended up cleaning up the code, extending it with some additional functionality and dealing with a very particular and peculiar problem:

After it was all done, the module now works with both HTML pages and SVG constructs, which is what we can see here in some examples:

The fingerprint is a particularly interesting case; it is made using a small extension that allows for the precise positioning of stains and splatters on a page. Overall, to support these options, we've gathered a good number of various assets.

We've also worked on fixing more bugs, doing some writing and generating some more art, but if you'd excuse me, I would like to rest now. There's still something I'd like to discuss, but I'll leave it for next week.