Incubus Update #17

Sup bitches. It's almost the ides of March (beware!) and I haven't released my monthly newsletter thing. I ten to go overlong with these so let me give brevity a shot this time around.

GOALS

1) Release a new html for II probably with a zip that includes new images for the content.

2) Make some kind of dent in the job system. Some of it relies on how my changer experiment goes but I think I can get the skeleton of it going - finding jobs, doing shifts, getting paid, minor mini-events to spice things up. Nothing huge but some necessary groundwork. 3) Some bugfixes for IC. Atributz has been diligently cataloguing my various coding fuckups as he translates the game to Russian so I got no excuse not to fix 'em. 

Release a new html for II 

Got this done as you've seen.

Make some kind of dent in the job system.

When you're doing jobs an image like this relevant
to said job will display in the background. I ought
to come up with little references to put in these. 
This one is for tutoring.

I have it set up and running ok and have created two jobs. It's currently very simple but it features simple promotions, a payscale based on rank and stats (subequently I will have it also involve skill levels and provide skill boosts). Each job tracks your advancement (basically job XP for promotions), corruption (the level at which you've compromised the staff or clientele of a profession, which might be used in determining which events trigger), suspicion (represents how close you are to being fired). 

I've also created a means of launching job-specific events the same way I would do location-specific events (by tagging them job-jobname-event (eg. job-bartender-event)). Eventually I will have these events have other criteria as well, like level of corruption, rank, etc.

All jobs are run from the 'Job' passage and pull data from job.json passage to inform how they work (ie how much a job pays, how much rank / skill / stats affect payout, pay rate, things your boss says to you under certain circumstances, etc)

The bartender job you get at the dive bar after involving yourself with the local denizens sufficiently that the bartender recognizes you. The bartender job is the only one that has its own event a 'changer event' (ie an event that can have all its details be altered each time you play it so it tells a different story using the same structure), though it's a very simple event I got needlessly complicated with (I will probably gut and recycle the template for some recurring event more suitable for the amount of coding I did for it).

The tutor job you get at the college, Utara U, currently with no prerequisites. Working at this job might provide you with school credit and perhaps access to other facilities - but also, if you get fired from it in a particularly egregious way, you'll probably get banned from college grounds. (That's what to expect, but at the moment its very barebones.)

Here's some code:

To hire the player for a job, I would use this code:

<<hired bouncer >>

Obviously a fired version of this will exist, but I want being fired to include some fanfare which I'm not ready to get into yet. (I also want being fired from a job not necessarily being a minus, like maybe the only way to get one job is to get fired from another certain job and then brag about it to someone.)

The jobs are defined like this:

<<set setup.JOBS.bartender = {
name: "bartender",
description: "Serve customers drinks and mop floors.",
skill: "",
stat: "C",

pay_base: 50, 
pay_stat: 0.1,
pay_skill: 0.1,
pay_rank: 0.1, 

time_start: 9,
time_end: 23.5,
shiftlength: 8,

boss_name: "Boss",
boss_stand: "man-strong",

boss_quips_firstday: "...",
boss_quips_goodjob: "...",
boss_quips_badjob: "...",
boss_quips_prattle: "...",
} >>

You can somewhat infer what most of these do. The quips at the bottom I remove for the sake of brevity - they will be |-divided strings like used elsewhere in the game from which the game picks random quotes.

Obv a lot of work to do here, like each shift needs some sort of randomly-generated flavor text for example. But it's there and it works.

I will have this for upload sometime soon, for some reason I cannot upload at the moment. 

Some bugfixes for IC

I've done a few but I'd like to do more before I release it; and actually it might be a full release rather than a html patch. I will explain:

1) I'm also going to be releasing replacement images for the missing daughter subfolders. I don't know if I officially explained that, but the porn production company that did those images was found to be of a level of scumminess so severe that they'd fit right in in the IC universe, and I thought it was better to take them out. 

2) I'll be incorporating some of Crimson Samurai's Enhanced Edition content into the main game. Crimson Samurai is working on a new game btw, I will shill it when I publish the new re-incorporated edition of IC.

Probably in a few days I'll decide one way or the other; if it's just a patch then the full-release with the below stuff will come out in a week or two.

OTHER STUFF

This is the map exploration
interface I toyed with. Probably
will never appear as such in-game.

I've also done a bit of writing and coding for content that isn't going to be in the game for a few months. I know I said I wouldn't do that but sometimes I get an idea, am not sure if it'll work, and in my process of experimenting basically get it to the point where I feel foolish if I don't push it past a certain milestone. I don't do this often, the process is usually have idea > try to find a photoset that it fits with > come up with a new idea based on photoset that may or may not resemble my original concept > write down a few notes, some prose and maybe some quotes to use in it > leave it at that until I decide I need to add that kind of content. 

Anyway I've written and somewhat coded extensions for one of the existing storylines - which will tie this game's story into the previous's in a way that might not be immediately obvious. 

I tweaked the beach photography feature and added some content. It's probably not clear what this feature is for at present but photography will be a skill you will be able to make money with both as an artistic endeavour and as a journalistic/espionage one, so practice will be useful.

I also experimented a bit with the map system. I'm a bit torn on how to do it - I want a system where you go north/south/east/west to find places but once they are found you can fast travel to them (with the time elapsed and stamina lost proportionate to the distance) but part of me says this is a dumb idea so idk for now. 

NEXT GOALS

Only a half-month left so I'll make some modest goals:

1) Experiment with the job system and make it more robust. Add a storyline for the bartender one and some of the changer event I mean to do for the tutor one. 

2) The IC bugfix and possibly adding Crimson Samurai's stuff into the base game. See section above.

I think the month after I'll take a step back and figure out what the best thing to focus on for the game will be.