Liora's Price of Dignity Devlog 4 0.1.0-prerelease-1

MEGA-DELUXE

We continue with the devlog posts on Liora's development. Reminder that this is still basically a pre-prerelease state, at the end of the month we will have the proper 0.1.0-prerelease-1 which will be available also on the regular tier.

So, let's jump into what's new this week! I mostly spent the week expanding on the contract system and turning the stub coding into a more proper and flexible system. I also started introducing a first version of the negotiation system. Feature-wise it's already very close to what I have in mind, but internally I need to do a big cleanup round. It's kind of like an economy strategy sim: The moment I have built enough infrastructure for more advanced systems, I already need more infrastructure.

The way the negotiation system works, is that

• The game determines the occasion of the negotiation. Based on the occasion the system is more or less complex offering a wider range for how much the player wants to engage with the system. Currently there are three occasions:
  
  (1) Liora approaching Edgar. In this case, the player can construct custom rules that control Edgar's behavior in combat. If you maybe remember the Tactics systems from older games like Dragon Age Origins, it's a bit similar to that although overall simpler. Based on the setup, Edgar will assign a value for the drafted contract clause (VALUE LIORA) and then offer three preconstructed clauses for the player to choose from. They too have an assigned value (VALUE EDGAR) and then the player can either teak their proposal to reduce the value and make it fit with a less impactful clause from Edgar, or go ahead with one of the choices. In order for a negotiation to be accepted, Liora must at least provide Edgar as much value as she gains (EDGAR VALUE >= LIORA VALUE).
  
  One of the big questions was how much freedom I wanted to give here so it wouldn't end being all about gaming the system and me being unable to control it because of its power and also to prevent the menu and decision complexity from reaching a point where it would become annoying. I hope this is a decent compromise, although I still need to figure out how to better prepare the clauses in Edgar's arsenal. Currently there are I think 4, so that also limits the number of clauses you can make with him. In the future there would be clause evolution (e.g. "Wear Costume Lewd Level 1 -> Wear Costume Lewd Level 2") so maybe that could also resolve the system.
  
  One thing that's missing is that I want the player to be able to assign restrictions to clause, mostly day based, so the rule triggering changes from day-to-day and also to give some freedom in modifying the pre-prepared Edgar clauses.

  
  (2) Edgar approaching Liora at day start due to lack of progress (not clearing an area after a week or more) or triggering a forced retreat (party except Edgar wipes). In this case all clauses will be pre-prepared. Edgar will ask for 1 clause benefitting him and offer up to 3 (currently there are only 2 default Liora clauses) clauses to pick from for Liora. Edgar will also receive a +200% boost to his VALUE, meaning Liora can get higher value clauses than from normal negotiation, at the price of being limited in choice.

  
  (3) The third case is also a case of Edgar approaching Liora: When it's time for Rean to get his weekly treatment to prevent his disease from getting worse and the player lacks the money to pay for it, Edgar will make an offer to take care of it. The process is similar to case (2) except in this case only Edgar gains a clause benefitting him, while Liora and Rean get his help on the payment.
  
  There is also a difference in the value computation. If Edgar has enough money to just pay for it, you may (if available) get a rather tame choice, but if he doesn't have the money he will need to call in some favors, which will double VALUE LIORA - requiring her to to agree to a more extreme clause if she wants to get his help. Although Liora may not be willing to agree to that due to Lewdness constraints. How to reach those in the current prototype build I will elaborate on in a bit.

To finish my report on the development on the contract system, let's talk a bit about the triggers and effects I implemented this week. There are a variety of combat triggers:

• The Turn Count

• A character killing an enemy

• Receiving a state (currently just advantage)

• A character being defeated

• An area clear being triggered

Besides that we also have a generic system for triggering contracts during dialogue. Basically, at certain points the game sets tags and then contract clauses can check for those tags and trigger depending on them. In the above screenshot you can see the slightly silly "If EDGAR jokes" dialogue trigger.

For effects, we have the complex configurable USE_SKILL effect that's the most imporant for controlling Edgar during combat. And then two triggers that are either directly or indirectly erotic related:

• SET_FLAG: This effect as the name implies simply sets a flag. For example the "Accept EDGAR'S next date invitation" is a rendering of the effect that sets his DATE_EVENT flag.

• COSTUME: This one makes Liora wear a costume on the following day.

Try to get them to trigger together so Liora is in a costume while triggering the date event with Edgar!

I decided to go with the staple pink text from SKA to show when Liora is acting out of contractual obligation. Currently, there are three lewd thing to trigger, which also starts the loop of raising Liora's Lewdness. (Of course all of them just stubs right now):

• Lewd Mage Costume. (Raises Lewdness to 5)

• Edgar Date Event. (Doesn't raise Lewdness in the base version, nothing of import happens here. Just some setup for future clauses to trigger here)

• Masturbation Event (Offered if you cannot pay for a treatment. While this event plays at the Inn by default if you trigger both this flag and the edgar date event flag, you will already get a variation on the Edgar Date Event.)

I think this covers most of the Contract System progress from this week. There is still a lot of work left to do like merging clauses with the same condition and different effects, dealing with contradicting clauses (kicking out the old one? preventing it from being added) and so on.

Aside from the Contract System, I have also worked on various smaller systems.

As mentioned, Rean will need to undergo weekly treatments. The price starts at 500 Gold and increases by 250 Gold for every performed treatement. If a treatment is not performed, he will gain a Disease Level in a negative passives (they get cycled through). Decay is the new overall variable defining Rean's total Disease progression and also another mechanism which you can use to get Liora to accept a choice with higher lewd requirements.

I didn't quite like the mechanic of reducing minimum lewdness in SKA so this time around we will be trying around "Temporary Lewdness" (maybe I need to look for a more concise name :'D). Anyways, the point is that one you miss on the first paymenr, Liora will gain a new passive--

Fear of Loss will make Liora more susceptible to accepting Edgar's proposals on Treatment Day. Of course, it will take some stacks of Rean's health getting worse to really unfold, but this way we can get a low-lewd Liora to accept higher lewd actions in a realistic way modeling her progressing despair to save Rean.

I have yet to figure out if Willpower will play a role though so there are no Willpower-locked decisions yet and Liora can still continue to refuse all proposals. I will need to see if Willpower locking will be necessary or not.

Finally, I made some minor progress on Edgar's personal system just today before writing this post. There is now a Wandering Merchant who will visit the town every THUNDERDAY. He will have a Pyromantium in stock and if you don't buy it, Edgar will and provided he has enough money and time, he will infuse it on the next day.

On the SKA side, we also have some progress. Our UI artist is currently taking a look at overhauling the timeslot progressin screen and prepared a first mock-up.

Note that they are just using stock images from the repo, the character image would show Earth Aura's current state. The background is a 3D model our artist reverse engineered from the RPGMaker maps. He will be preparing a drawn background. I'm curious to see how it all turns out.

Trihan has been busy with some behind-the-scenes work, refactoring a bunch of SKA stuff to make it more usable in Liora. He also made use of the english translation manuscripts to throw them into a spell-checker (something that wasn't possible before as the text was all "trapped" in the RPGMaker json data). According to him he fixed a staggering amount of 1131 typos through this. In this way we were able to generate more value out of our translation setup.

Next week I will perform the remaining setup for Edgar's mechanics for his character goal (Maximizing a Prestige variable) and otherwise continue working towards closing the first version of the gameplay loop. Skill learning (which will work a bit different from SKA) is I think the last remaining main system to add. I will also already drop in the Clear Room from SKA to build up the infrastucture for default stuff like the recollection room now that we have 2 events (stubs they may be) to replay. Funnily enough the game will have NG+ before a lot of other things just because it happens to be "free".

If nothing I wrote here makes any sense to you, I recommend checking out the prototype build, although it being a prototype and the fact that I spent several hours fixing bugs while I was collecting screenshots for this builds should be a warning to its stability... :'D Also keep in mind, saves are not yet transferable. Changelogs will also only become a thing after I do the 0.1.0-prerelease-1.

Until next week!