Devlog #53 - Logical Arguments
January felt really long but also really short. Have I been saying that a lot recently? Sorry. Currently, there feels like there’s an insurmountable pile of work in front of us, but at the same time, we’re getting close to being able to concentrate on asset creation and game balance/tweaking.
A lot of the work done in January fits that trend of trying to tie up loose ends and complete content. The first of which are…
💭 Dialogue Resolvers
So, with the NPC dialogue written and converted to spaghetti trees, what else is left? In Snacko, we have dialogue resolvers for each NPC to determine what they talk about. If they’re working, if you’re giving them a gift, etc.
So, we’ve had some leftover dialogues to implement: quests, events, and gifting special items for confession and proposal. We’re not 100% done yet, but we’re extremely close!
Above, this would be the general dialogue tree you’d see for a villager. When you hold an item and speak to a villager, they ask if this is a gift for them. Assuming you haven’t already gifted them something that day, it’ll get judged for a reaction: Love, Like, Neutral, or Hate. The only outlier is on their birthdays, even hated gifts will not lose you friendship points. After all, you did make an effort to get them…something. However, getting your favorite villager a loved gift on their special day will give you extra brownie points!
📝 Quests
Another thing we’ve decided to do is to give each villager a “story” quest which usually tells you something about them. Accept these quests when they pop up on the quest board to get to know the villagers better! Luckily, the Snacko quest system written by recursive is flexible and easy to use, so it was only about 3 days worth of work to implement them for all 26 NPCs.
There are also reoccurring quests, both villagers and generic, that will randomly propagate. It’s an easy way to make an extra Cocoa Bean or two.
📦 Taking Inventory
We also spent some time this month combing through what’s left in Snacko’s core to implement so we have a better idea of what we need to do. Currently, we’re just cramming tons of stuff into the game without regard to bug fixing, so wish us luck 🪦
In doing so, I realized we were missing some item data so I had to go back and write up those item descriptions. I hope you’ll enjoy my jokes.
Last bit was combing through all the villager’s houses and maps to add little bits of flavor text. These are usually just one liners that I’ve added to give the world a little more coziness. I’ve enjoyed these little lines “without purpose” in games since I was a kid, so I wanted to make sure Snacko had the same thing.
…And that’s pretty much it? These days, we’re just going to have a lot of this kinda stuff. The “there’s nothing new to see but there’s actually a ton of stuff being added but it’s invisible”. We’ll just keep our heads up and keep working! AHH, THERE’S STUFF TO DOOOOOOOOOOOoo
Extra thank you to our Patrons and Ko-fi supporters! Without you, Snacko development would look very different. We appreciate every one of you 🐾
