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So sayeth Yokcos:
It's rather hard to tell how big No Pain No Grain should be. On the one hand it takes less time to make a small game. On the other, the bigger the better. Until recently I was intending to make NPNG a rather large game indeed, with various aspects that I have since decided (maybe temporarily) to simply not make. Such things include the greatest conversation system known to man, a sprawling metroidvania-esque overworld, fine granular morality and a plentitude of endings. While these things would be nice and I may end up de-retiring one or two of them, they are costly indeed.
The conversation system would do something that I'm sure is commonplace but I personally haven't seen any examples because I never do research: A system whereby dialogue options influence various aspects of the listener's mind; one option may make them angrier, another may cause them to view another character in a positive light. Dialogue would then change based on these variables, as opposed to a path down a massive tree of dialogue. This strikes me as easier to make than huge dialogue trees, but still a boatload of work. I may end up implementing a simple form of this with only a few variables to affect. The complex overworld, the more I think about the more it seems like it would be No Big Deal. Of course the problem is that if there's all these areas then there has to be something to fill them with. Can's just have a bunch of differently themed corridors with nothing in them, that's boring. Morality would work a consequence of aforementioned conversation system. Any morality would merely be people's opinion of you. Kill enough in front of someone or speak evilly enough and they may view you as evil. Kill their enemies and they may regard you as a hero. Earning the favour of certain key people would make certain paths through the game tolerable and thereby allow access to various endings.
These are ideas of questionable validity, and ones I would love to see executed well. But whether or not it is a good idea to implement them into No Pain No Grain, this I do not know. It is not necessarily a good idea to add everything into a game short of the kitchen sink.
As for what I have made and what I will make, there are new plants - Artillerichoke has a self-explanatory name, and Jewelweed which explodes when extremely wet. I intend to keep adding plants until there's more vegetation than one can reasonably count. This may be another case of wanting to add everything but the kitchen sink though. Maybe best to limit the plantcount to fifty thousand or so.
You may notice that the ground looks different now. The ground tiles have been changed to look more simple and not attract as much attention as important stuff - the plants and people. Soon after that I added outlines to the plants to differentiate them from the ground further. I think that's enough to make them stand out. There was briefly a bug where instead of merely being outlined in black, the whole plant would be black. I was pleased to realise then that each plant has a unique silhouette. This wasn't something I'd thought about thus far - you often hear about unique silhouettes only in terms of character design and I don't think of these plants as characters. But it's important to identify these plants at a quick glance so for them all to be completely different shaped, it is an asset.
2017-09-23
So sayeth Yokcos:
You can now converse with your allies and adversaries through the medium of bullets, as is allowed in any self-respecting videogame.
The obvious usage of this is to make some options harder and/or easier than others but I'm sure there will be a lot of potential to use these linguistic ballistics to add flavour to a conversation.
There is also now an alternative way to water crops as opposed to using the boring hose: Splashbang grenades.
Although at the moment considering they're consumables, they're a bit shit at watering crops. Definitely need to be buffed severely.
There will also not be this angry box. Angry boxes are not on the list of approved features for this videogame.
2017-08-05
So sayeth Yokcos:
Look at this, it's a website that is arguably not some kind of abhorrent disgrace, although I will allow you to be the judge of that statement and form your own opinion accordingly. Rearranging the furniture and hanging of paintings around here will likely continue in the short term future as I consider the combinations of carpet and curtain colours and other such decorative minutia. Posts from here on out will mostly be on the topic of No Pain No Grain as opposed to being a website comparing itself relentlessly to a physical household. The ??? link comes right back here, I'm aware of that, probably will continue to do that for... a while. Few months, maybe a year.
2017-07-21