HELLGAME

okay so update up.

the plan moving forward is to have more frequent, smaller updates, so ideally with each release taking less than a month. so the poll winner was "events (quests, plotlines, story stuff, giving you ways of getting items and nodes for real)", and this uh contains some barebones fulfillment of that. half of the dev time was spent just getting the event code into shape so that i could actually store event flags.

specific changes:

• there's an actual intro now!
• there are some items scattered around the map you can pick up
• the dryad and the flame demon encounters have a chance of being shops where you can buy node parts
• a new 'farm' location, with a very barebones quest (+ sex scene) attached
• a new 'gate of hell' location, that is mostly a huge exposition dump.

bonus tweaks:

• i made some extremely filler 'character portraits', just because the broken image was kinda getting annoying
• most of the encounters have actual talk options now, and most of the talk options include talking about other encounters you've met so far
• hamar-tabal and dyrad encounters have a different intro on revisiting them
• at least one of every event should generate now, unless you get really unlucky and end up with one of those maps where the factory is like nine tiles large.

that being said, the demo shop is still in there b/c there aren't any meaningfully-repeatable events that get you items

this is pretty minimal, but basically the current state of the map code constrains what i can do -- the goal is to section the map up into distinct subareas with chokepoints between them and intelligently place various kinds of encounters as blocks, and i totally can't do that yet, so until 'mess with map code' wins a poll probably all the game content is gonna be aimless wandering-around-an-open-area stuff like this.

though that brings me to the next subject, which is "what is this game even going to be like". i haven't really talked about what my goals are, and now the game's starting to come together i should probably... do that. so here's something of a projected gameplan for hell game plot/gameplay content.

(uh spoilers for the update, i guess)

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there's not really going to be a "main quest" as such; mostly what is going to happen is you're going to stumble across and embroil yourself in other people's drama already occurring. i'm drawing a lot of inspiration from the PSX game "legend of mana" here, a game where (effectively) you play as a dumb lackey/bodyguard who just happens to be tagging along while other people do important quests and resolve dramatic plotlines.

so a lot of quest stuff -- a lot of the game period -- is going to basically be... well, like that farmer/dryad interaction, only a lot moreso, and with mechanical bits and level ups etc in between.

some repeatable generic quests like: random errands of the dryad/farmer form that branch into two or three variations depending on the traits of the various actors; tasks that play out differently if you've done a different kind of task for somebody else; etc. imagine farms potentially having one of three different requests and also some other encounter involving you asking a farm for help and their response changing on what request they had and whether it's filled. stuff like that. IDEALLY with a bunch of variation within events, and a bunch of distinct events, and easy enough advancement that nobody has to repeat the same interactions over and over for grinding.

one-time plot-advancement quests: sometimes placed in the world ar locations a la the gate to hell, but most would probably be 'unlocked' by interacting with generic encounters enough -- one of the things i'm really gonna be aiming for is giving the generic encounters a "introduce yrself" option that will generate a unique name for them, and then effectively treat them as 'named characters' from then on (e.g., have them potentially show up in other interactions when relevant, or let the PC invite along an NPC (one at a time) and have them involved in various interactions, including sex scenes).

plotwise, i have some stuff sketched out involving 'factory boss' characters, who would each be unique characters, and some actual interactions with cerberus and the feral hellhounds. ideally this would evolve to include actual new locations opening up on the map, but like i said the map system as it currently exists definitely can't support that, so i'd have to make do with something simpler for a while at least.

some stuff upcoming, eventually: smuggling operations at the factory; 'sidequest' stuff involving the sobek sheuts and the as-of-yet-to-be-written big gross muscular zombies; stuff involving shadow mages and animate shadows, to go with the flame demons; the actual unicorns that are mentioned in dialog a few times but are not yet in game... basically a lot of the "plot" can't really be done yet b/c the stage is still very much being set. hence, uh, all the clumsy exposition in the few scenes currently written.

but yeah hey that's the plan!