Man from icecream van - The Whenever News #31 - Three and One: The Cursed Mansion

Hi everyone. So, where are we with the development of v0.32?

I am hoping to finish the bulk of the work over the next 5-7 days. However, I suspect the final polishing stage may take a bit longer, because there is a fairly large number of changes that need to be prepared both inside the build itself and on the Patreon page.

So at the moment, I think the most realistic scenario is literally the end of the month, or somewhere around there.

Now, a bit of general development talk. And... The things below are mostly research and groundwork for future updates, rather than features I am trying to squeeze into v0.32.

One way or another, development requires attention not only to the story and artwork that go directly into a release, but also to a certain amount of research. And sometimes that research produces some interesting results.

As I mentioned before, I am currently working on a new generation of talking sprites.

Apart from having much more resolution headroom - the idea is that, depending on the situation, a character sprite could be brought much closer to the camera while still remaining sharp, without blurry outlines - I have also been experimenting with dynamic lighting implemented directly in Ren'Py.

What would this actually give us in practice?

If implemented properly, it would allow a character sprite prepared once to be used under very different lighting conditions, with atmospheric illumination from sunsets, streetlights at night, and so on.

This is something the current sprites are really missing. Right now, they can receive code-controlled color correction, but there is no proper adjustment of lighting and shadows.

Of course, as far as Three and One: The Cursed Mansion is concerned, this still has to be properly implemented.

At the moment, I only have a couple of test sprites without a complete wardrobe, so introducing this system into the game will take many months.

The good news is that the work I am doing here fits very nicely with the structure of Duchess of the Underdeeps as well. The only difference is that I first need to test all of this properly in practice.

Or perhaps the very delayed return of Pusher.

Quite a lot of time has passed since I removed the original mechanic from the game, and now I am finally ready to build a new system around it.

Of course, this will take a considerable amount of time, but I think it could be very interesting.

Helena explains the nature of Pusher in a rather ambiguous and vague way. What has always been especially unclear is how exactly that could work from a gameplay perspective.

So I spent several months thinking about it, and eventually came up with an idea.

How did it work before?

You basically had to somehow slip Pusher into someone's drink, and eventually there would be a moment where you could make a choice.

And that was more or less it.

What I am thinking now is this: there would be no need to secretly put anything into anyone's drink.

Instead, before a quest at the bar, for example, there could be a moment where Mark uses Pusher by drinking it himself.

And, as Helena explains it, out of all the possible ways events could unfold, he would end up with the outcome he wants.

According to the lore, that choice happens subconsciously.

But how would that work from a gameplay perspective? The player could, for example, take control of Zoe from a first-person perspective while she is working at the bar. Previously, this kind of thing was tied to choosing one or two dialogue options... and that was basically it.

In the new interpretation, we would actually play as Zoe. Walk around the bar, carry beer, talk to customers inside an interactive location, and deal with different combinations of events. And yes... this is rather ambitious.

The bar itself would need to be reworked for this.

The cleaning job would also need to change. Right now, you clean one apartment today, another one tomorrow, and so on.

Later, there could be a residential building with several apartments, and you would be able to walk around and clean them in whatever order you want. If some guy in one of the apartments barely pays anything, then let him sit there in the dust.

Would these changes require starting the game over from the beginning? Only if you want to.

If you simply keep moving forward through the story, these events would still become available later. So there would be a choice.

When could all of this be implemented? I think sometime next year. It simply would not be realistic to fully prepare more than one location of this kind within a single release.

Ideally, all of this would also be tied to the introduction of a proper economy system, where we could spend gold coins more freely and buy things in the store without everything being tied to a specific scripted moment.

That is all for now.

Thank you all for your support!

Stay tuned!