Vacation

Well, it is summer.

Next week I will be leaving on vacation, and will be gone for about a week or so. During this time there will be no updates. But! I will still be hard at work on the game, and will try to have a demo ready by the time I get back. There will certainly be another demo ready by July 10th.

Thanks for the support everybody, it really does mean a lot.

Combat Update

Few new changes:

-Removed the ability to "Concentrate" in combat. Concentration would increase chance to hit and damage, but would be lost if the character concentrating was hit. This slowed down combat however, and it didn't make sense for fish to be concentrating.
-Added Diving Suit. Wearing the Diving Suit will give the player an additional ten minutes of air, as well as a boost to defense. However, while in the Suit, the only weapon available to the player are its arms, which may be significantly worse than the player's other weapons. Items can still be interacted with as normal.
-Flooding system change. There was a workaround present that allowed a player to survive with no air indefinitely, by constantly moving between rooms. This has been removed.
-A few random announcements have been added.

P60 Special Update

So I assume you all remember the wonderful P60 error that was popping up every turn.
And then I fixed the code and everything appeared to be great, the error went away, we moved on.

Now the AI won't move. Turns out the code I messed with was sort of important in AI movement.
Whoops.

So, uh, one more goal before the next demo. Sorry about that.

Roadmap to the Next Demo

Once these are completed, I'll release the next demo:

• Map out ocean immediately surrounding Belisarius
• Diving Suit √
• Airlock

• New Disasters
• More visible
• Requests of assistance
• Larger Monsters
• Kraken √
• Hammerhead Whale √

Will update this when objectives are complete or if there are more sub-objectives I've forgotten.
EDIT: Just put together the scene seen in the traditional Pressure picture. Hammerhead whale smashes through the window. If you're in the room? Dead. Also, the Kraken has eight tentacles, each with an independent action. You may need a team if you want to fight it.

I'm A Jerk

I know.
Uh, so, Pressure! Wooo! Everyone loves it, right!
Right!

Honestly though I sort of slacked off there.
Sorry.

But I have two things to post.
First, the water system is refined. There is a universal rule in place for the spread of water throughout rooms. In addition, flooding will not pass through doorways; if a door is adjacent to a flooding room, it will lock. If you force it open, the other room will begin to flood.
In addition, there is the thing that prompted me to post right now.
This is probably the greatest feature of Pressure yet.
I figured, hey, what if there was something you were scared of? And to counteract that, what if there was something that was like a security blanket?
So now two random objects are selected at the beginning of the game. One will cause you to freak out, and the other will reassure you (Mechanically, it's a +1, -1 to your sanity, so it's not a huge impact).
However, these can be any two things in the game universe.
For example, I just ran a game where I was terrified of frozen fish, but as soon as I saw the Captain walk into the room, my troubles were over.

Um.
I will try to update more often than once every two months.

I Done Goofed

First: THE DEMO IN THE PREVIOUS POST HAS A FEW BUGS, MOST NOTABLY THE P60 ERROR. WHILE STILL TECHNICALLY PLAYABLE IT IS SORT OF UNPLEASANT. SORRY ABOUT THAT.

 Okay. So. It is apparent that there are a few problems with the previous demo.
Well, probably more than a few.
But, that's (sort of) why we have tests-so this shit doesn't happen on release.
So, my main priority right now is figuring out what the fuck is going on with that error. I know it has something to do with the pathfinding code, so I don't have to go digging around all 13,316 words.
Oh, did I mention there are 13,316 words? There are, which means I have had to move up to the .gblorb file format, meaning that you'll need a new interpreter. I linked to an appropriate one in the previous post, so go ahead and click on that.
Anyways, gotta fix the P60 bug, as well as a few grammar rules. After those horrendous mishaps are taken care of, I'll add some more game-breaking stuff, like the ocean, and escape pods. I'll also try to flesh out the pathfinding routines.


Sorry about the bug, and I hope you enjoy what's coming up.

Demo Number 2 NOW!

First! The link!
THE GAME
And you'll need an interpreter, depending on your operating system.
WINDOWS
MAC
UN/LINUX

What's new!
CONVERSATIONS. Initiate a conversation with "Hello [NPC]". During conversations, you can "ask" "tell" "give" or "show" a subject. End conversations with "Goodbye". NPCs can be either helpful or unhelpful. The information they give may change depending on that. Additionally, subjects are based on knowledge, so you can't ask about a thing you haven't heard of or seen.
DISASTERS. There are three new disasters. Also, both the monkey wrench and steel wrench will work to fix the air filtration unit (Though they can no longer be weapons). Rising water will be accompanied by a short text blurb.
SPAWNING SYSTEM. You will now begin the game as a random class. Accompanying this  change is a new AI system. Disasters will increment the Alert Level. NPCs will change their course depending on this.

Also, I made maps of the beginning area:

As always, post opinions, comments, and improvements here.

T-Minus 3 Days

Three days until the release of the next demo.
Still writing dialogue.
List of what will be new:
Conversations. You will be able to talk with NPCs. The dialogue will be somewhat limited, but the functionality will be there.
Spawning System. You will now spawn as a random class at the beginning of the game.
More disasters. A few in-your-face disasters will be added. Primarily of the gigantic monster appearing sort.
Alert levels. This is slightly more behind the scenes, and won't make itself as obvious, but a lot of disasters will trigger an alarm and a reaction from the NPCs. There aren't any escape pods though.

Thanks for the support and kind comments everyone. You're awesome.

Oh, and I currently have a guy working on the graphics. I'll post samples when I get the chance, but I just wanted to let you guys know that, when it comes time to add graphics, all I have to do is add the functionality, not spend time actually making them.

Alert Levels

First, the bad news. Definitely won't be getting anything out by tomorrow. Look for something next Friday.
Next, the progress update.

For esoteric reasons that I cannot recall, it became imperative to me to figure out the spawning system. Now, I left it out of the previous demo because I didn't have time to properly figure it out; the AI movement overruled the player's decisions (since the system was basically you possessing one of the NPCs) and made player movement next to impossible. So I obviously needed to fix that. My first thought was to make a schedule chart (at 7:30, if the player is not the doctor, send the doctor towards the med bay, stuff like that). However, this is a terrible solution. Why? Because, in the middle of a disaster, if the time is 7:30, the doctor will, no matter what is happening around him, look at his watch and dash off to work.
So, I threw in an extra layer of checks. There's now an "alert system". Disasters will raise the alert level (by differing amounts based on the severity of the disaster). Depending on the danger level, NPCs might be pointed towards repairing areas of the ship, pulling in from the ocean, or straight-up evacuating. At some point I'll also want to get it so that there are different sorts of alerts; food poisoning won't freak the mechanic out, but the doctor will be rerouted to the clinic.

Speaking of the mechanic, I wrote his dialogue today. I won't tell you exactly what his default response is, but I will tell you he is very invested in constantly tweaking the machinery.

Next Release

Still working on the dialogue.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
I'll try to have everything in by this Friday, but I don't think I'll make it; I still want to add more events as well as the ocean.
Also, I have finals in a week, so look for a demo in the next two weeks.

A Word About Conversations

Working through conversations, and I thought I'd describe how it works.
Conversations can only be between two people. Starting a conversation with a second person will end it with the first.
Conversations are started with the command "(say) hello (to [character])." Only the "hello" is necessary; the engine will attempt to disambiguate what you mean in most cases (Hello will default to a random person; other examples, such as "take log" when you can see a burnt log and a smelly log, will ask you which one you meant) but specifying the exact character is generally a good idea.
I previously stated that talking would be built off of a node system. For the purposes of simplicity, I've decided to scrap that. Pressure is not a heavily social game, and the benefits of a node system would largely go unused. Instead, I am using a traditional ask/response style. Conversational commands include ask, tell, show, and give. Typing "Show Cook the frozen fish" will check if there is a default response for the cook for showing the frozen fish, then check for a default showing response, and finally a default response. The consequence of this is that there will be a lot of "default" responses as I build up the conversation library.
Added on to this is a knowledge and subjects system. Inform likes to treat everything as a physical object. This works fine, until you want to discuss love with the mechanic. So, subjects allow for out-of-world ideas that can be discussed. The knowledge system compounds this. You can only discuss things that you know about. So, if you (the character) have no inkling that there's a conspiracy going on, or that a plant is murdering crew members in their sleep, you (the character) can't immediately start the game and ask about them.

I've only really completed one character's entire conversation library, so it'll probably take a while to finish all of the existing characters'. I'll keep you posted though.