Esoteric Update #297 - Provisional Update - Eso Still In Hospital

This is Bear. I'm taking over for Eso again today as she has been held up at the hospital for longer than expected. In fact, she is likely to remain in the hospital until the end of next week. We'll see what we can do, but because her state is not good (she will say as much on the matter as she wants once she can do her things normally again), there might be another delay for the upcoming update until the 27th.

Unfortunately, as I do not have access to Eso's laptop, there are some things I can show off.

1) UI improvements

Eso has made several minor UI improvements over the last weeks. The engine now has rudimentary support for custom cursors, though the game does not use this functionality at the moment. It's something for the future or for people who wish to develop their own projects with the engine. The zoom functionality has also been improved, to remove various visual glitches present before, and to make the zoom levels in the options menu more dynamic (the zoom levels now change instantly, not only when you confirm the options changes). Collapsible elements (such as in some of the wizard menus) now animate smoothly when collapsing and expanding. There are images for tarot cards, something that was mentioned before, which also use 3D-style animations for flipping. As the game's mechanics have for a while now featured effects that trigger on mouse-over, we've implemented two strategies to help the player avoid accidentally triggering something as the interface spawns underneath the mouse. You can either have the game move your mouse to the side or have the choice box lock temporarily to give you time to safely move to a location which will not cause any unintentional triggering. If neither option works for you, there is also the option to forgo either.

2) JavaScript

We have recently discovered some issues with data interoperability between JavaScript and C# (which would then cause problems with scripting interoperability with Eso's scripting language). These issues have been resolved; though the solution might not be final, it is something to examine in the future to identify the exact problem. We've explored code generation in JS, which appears to be a necessary step for some features we're developing for the test adventure, which have to do with one of the antagonists (see further down). Additionally, we've confirmed that the three.js library can operate within the engine, which might be utilised later for certain puzzles.

(Note: the Lament Configuration is purely used for testing as an in-joke. The game most definitely does not contain a legally distinct Lament Configuration, and we assure you that it has no sights to show you.)

3) Adventure antagonist

Eso has begun implementing the first antagonist for the test adventure, which required some unusual coding to work. As the themes of this antagonist revolve around mental manipulation, one of the features needed for its implementation in the game was subverting cursor control from the player. The game now has a fully featured interface with the mouse cursor. We've made sure the implementation is safe (the game may only control the cursor when it is in focus and the cursor is over the game window - while this might conflict with some mechanics, it was a priority for the game not to be able to manipulate elements outside of the window accidentally). In practice, this is used to form areas of gravity that push and pull on the mouse cursor, which can be applied to things like menus or books, or at least, for the time being, that is how it is used for the adventure.

4) Clutter, items and conversations

We're currently processing another 100 new NPC conversations, and we're also working through implementing a large number of clutter items into the game. Unfortunately, both require a bit more work than it might seem at first glance, as conversations have various dynamic elements that need to be added to the text, while items have many properties which are then referenced throughout many systems in the game, including systems that describe groupings of items (like when looking into a container). Additionally, a system that partially obscures item names so that they must be discovered is under consideration/testing and will very likely make it into the game for the test adventure. This system partially obfuscates the names of items due to low visibility resulting from clutter and low light conditions. It also has interplay with some other features of the game, such as the often-mentioned spider generator. Eso is also revising some details about the keys and locks (the specific items which are used to represent such) to balance pre-generated and dynamically-generated details.

I am afraid I might have missed something. Eso has a much clearer view of what is happening with specific aspects of the project, and I'm sure she'll post any clarifications that might be needed once she's back home.