Devlog 84 / Update 0.2.84a

Changes

• Added waiting interface

• Added auto-eating feature

• Added timely town attacks, connected to monster hunts

• Changed reloading. Reloading now happens automatically when empty ranged weapons are activated or when doing nothing. Reloading happens at half speed when walking and is canceled when acting (i.e., swapping, eating, attacking)

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug where new games would use information from old games (and crash)

• Fixed bug where saved games wouldn't load (and crash)

• Fixed crash when using thrown weapons

• Fixed a crash when activating the omnivator secret functionality

• Made quest sounds more consistent

• Fixed bug where map displayed lairs inconsistently

• Fixed very rare bug where towns generate incorrectly

• Fixed very rare bug where farmers did not get assigned plots of land to work on

• Fixed very rare bug where children venture too far from their homes (and crash the game)

• Fixed a crash when dropping items

Known Issues

• Children do not always return home at the end of the day

Devlog

I started this couple weeks working on a few bugfixes, but then I ran into one of the "very rare" bugs, which I had encountered before. Admittedly I probably went a bit too hard in the paint against it but I still am of the opinion that bugs need to be fixed, no matter how rare. QC is important to video games and I would like to release someday without any bugs.

Anyway I developed a quick tester script and was able to run it overnight several times over the past two weeks. The problem is that these bugs show up so rarely, I can't even calculate how often they show up, although I would estimate it affects one in every 3000-10000 games. The first one involved farmers, who have the "default" job. The problem with this is they don't have a formal building to go to, they have to find a farm plot in order to work. However, not all farm plots (in this case, the ones with mushrooms and/or pigsties) are acceptable to work in, since these things more or less take care of themselves. In exceptionally rare cases, there were ONLY these kinds of farm plots in an entire town, meaning they don't have a farm plot in order to work, meaning they don't have anywhere to go when it's time to start working (and crash the game). Rare, but very silly. I fixed it by not generating these kinds of farm plots until farmers have places to work, and shockingly enough it looks identical to how it looked before, but all the farmers are guaranteed to have jobs.

The second major "very rare" bug was related to how towns are generated. The town roads are required to make a complete network so that all the buildings are connected to a full road network. Often times the network is generated by default, but sometimes the system performs a post-hoc adjustment and adds a few roads to make sure the system is complete. There was a very slight transcription error with a table of directions, and while the post-hoc adjustment still worked most of the time, sometimes it would have a problem. This probably happened one in every 20000 games, as best as I can figure. But at least it was a simple fix since I could just fix the direction table.

I then resumed some of the quest things. I am pretty satisfied with the state of the monster hunt quests, though I might have a few tweaks later. Now, at certain times of the day, monsters will attack the town. If you defeat the monsters, you can get a clue that tells you for sure where the main group of monsters is. Many quest givers will tell you approximately what time the monsters will attack.

Rather than waiting around all day, you can now long-wait for an amount of time you choose. I changed the long-wait functionality (default comma) to display some split-flap clocks and a time selector. You can wait one minute, like before, or up to 23:59.

But won't you starve to death as you wait that long? You don't have to anymore! There is now an auto-eat feature (default off) where you can choose different strategies for eating as you wait, either eating the best food, the worst food, or using up the food you have lying around in your inventory.

And finally, I have changed some of the reloading functionality. It is now a lot easier to reload. Reloading will happen automatically when walking (although at half speed). Reloading can also be actively done by using one of the ranged weapon action buttons (default G or right click).

There will still be a few things to fix up but I think I will start on the "recover" quests. Remember to email any questions, comments, and prayer requests you have to roguesofeuropa@protonmail.com, or just leave them in the comments below.