DD# 172 The Endless Journey Continues news - [Neolithic]To the End

Hi, everyone, welcome to another week's developer's diary.

The game is currently on sale because of Steam's endless replayability event. I don't think there are many games out there that can truly be called Endless as not every game can be updated for decades. So, our discount period will even exceed the Steam event.

Now, let our endless journey continue.
One of the aspects of our endless replayability is our procedurally generated content. So, we got more this week.
In Samujier's post office, we now have a new procedurally generated mission.

In a supernatural world, couriers are a dangerous occupation. They may face monsters, eldritch horrors, unnatural disasters, and even more horrible fellow humans. Thus, sometimes they cannot finish their missions. Some mails can get lost. In this procedurally generated mission, you will need to find the location of those mails. It's mostly a hide-and-seek mission. Sometimes you may need to cut down some trees or other obstacles to find those missing mails. The mission may not be as simple as it may sound. In addition to that, for narrative and game design purposes, even though those missions are procedurally generated with a lot of randomness, they are all linked to a location where you may find something that can cause the disappearance of those post carriers. Consequently, you may uncover another existing mission or secret that you may have missed before. For example, one of the locations leads to the discovery of the deep ones while another may lead to some bloody cultists.
Meanwhile, those procedurally generated missions are backed up by a handcrafted mission which also got added this week. The postal manager has a very specific need to find a certain missing courier named "Mazhu." Well, actually, not the need to find him, but to find the package he was carrying. As you can see in the dialogs, human life is not held with much regard in many parts of the world, unfortunately. On a large scale, it's just a number in statistics. The mission itself is linked to another big mission and you may already have found the fate of this courier. The mission will provide additional content to our existing story.

In addition to procedurally generated missions, we also get procedurally generated items added this week.
Remember those Deep Ones promised the treasures from the sea? Time for them to fulfill their promises.
So, they found...

Well, Moskava, the Russian Black Fleet flagship is currently under the sea since it was sunk by brave Ukraine soldiers 2 years ago. Thus, of course, the deep ones can find some debris and give it to you as a mission reward. XD
The procedural generation part is in the item list you can recycle from those small pieces of debris. If you are lucky, you may get something valuable. In the worst cases, at least you can still get some scrap metals.

Another procedurally generated item is the Sadhu's Necklace.

It's an equipable item that reduces some attributions of the wearer while increasing their devotion gain. Each one of those necklaces may have those attributions varied. You can find them in different procedurally generated merchants all over the world.


Another aspect of our infinite replayability comes from the game's openness to customization.
A set of new game options has been added this week that allows you to adjust your character progression speed.

You can adjust the rate of your gaining of battle experience, life skill experience, weapon proficiency experience, elemental proficiency experience, and devotion. To get things even easier, you can directly input a number instead of clicking those "+" and "-" buttons.
So, you may play the game at your own pace. The most important thing is for everyone to have fun. It's not some mobile games that you will need to pay those greedy developers money just to level up faster. It's NEOLITHIC, and you are in control.

In addition to the new game settings, we also get a new console command "LiveALive" that allows you to increase a character's life skill experience at any time you desire. Maybe, when you just did something in the game, and you think that shall allow a character to receive a certain amount of life skill experience. You can do as you see fit. In an open-world game, it's your story to tell.

Some other updates of this week:

As each character in your group may gain experience from a battle differently based on different experience modifiers, their experience gained every battle is now displayed separately. The old post-battle report screen is now split into two. One for the experience display, another for the loot. That shall make the information they carry more clear.

Of course, we also get even more story content. You can now have some conversation with the Grandmaster of the Eternal Staff. You may learn more about this over-zealous organization. If you have played the quests of the Dark Elf king, you may even find why I added them at this moment. They now also have an underground facility known as the Crucible. You may even find someone to sell the demons you captured, for science, of course. :)

Of course, there are still things I haven't mentioned yet. But, the diary is already quite long. Please see all the details below in the full update log if you are interested.

That's for this week. Our endless journey continues.


The full update log of this week:
20240511
English
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[Eternal Staff Estate]Added a quartermaster who sells supplies.
[Eternal Staff Estate]The library now also has an anti-demon/undead circle.
[Item]New Item: Debris of Moskava
[Deep Ones]They may now reward you with items they found under the sea. (The current item list only contains the Debris of Moskava)
[Console]New Console Command: "LiveALive" (Gain life skill experience. (Featrue requested by 吉尔伽美什.))


20240512
English
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[Samujier Post Office]New quest: The Missing Postman. (You can get a pair of boots with "Speedy" and "Urban Explorer" prefixes as your rewards.)
[Wiki]Added the wiki page of "The Missing Postman:" Neolithia.fandom.com(Quest) [Samujier Post Office]Added a mission board. Procedurally generated missions are to be added later.
[Eternal Staff Estate]The background music will now based on your story progress with this organization.
[Eternal Staff Estate]New location: The Crucible
[Butterfly]You can now use Butterfly Wings to leave the Crucible.
[Furniture]New Furniture: Skull Gate.
[Shopping]Random Furniture Vendors now sell Skull Gates.

20240513
English
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[Boombox]Added 2 game BGMs that you can play at any time.
[Eternal Staff Estate]If the background music is "The Righteous Marches" then it will not change during battles.
[Quest]New Procedurally Generated Quests: Locate a Missing Mail. (It may not be as simple as it sounds.)
[Samujier Post Office]The mission board may now have a random amount of the "Locate a Missing Mail" missions.
[Procedurally Generated Quests]Mission rewards now use the item's display color in their reward text.


20240514
English
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[Eternal Staff Estate]Added some dialogs to the Grandmaster of the Eternal Staff. (Slightly different based on your main character's gender. And such a slight difference hides an interesting secret.)
[Localization]Changed the display name of the Grandmaster of the Eternal Staff in the English localization.
[Game Setting]Added a new game option to change the rate on how fast you gain Battle Exp, Life Exp, Weapon Proficiency Exp, and Elemental Proficiency Exp. (There is also an option to change how fast you can gain devotion. But that is currently WIP.)
[Game Setting]When click a cancel key in the combat setting, you will now return to the main setting menu instead of exiting the entire setting.
[Game Setting]As we now have more settings, the game settings are now on two pages.
[Special Attribution]If you change any of the gain rates of Battle Exp, Life Exp, Weapon Proficiency Exp, and Elemental Proficiency Exp in the game setting, you will find your characters receive new special attributions to affect those related Exp gain rates with the source marked as the "From the Game Setting." (Those Exp modifiers are actually special attribution tags. They are using the same system.)
############System################
Optimized the weapon-proficiency-related special attribution display in the item details window.
The "element list to display" array is no longer an array of ranges. It's now an array of numbers so that display is optimized. All places in the code that use this array have changed accordingly.
Battle Exp, Life Exp, Weapon Proficiency Exp, and Elemental Proficiency Exp will not go below 0 when you gain those Exps.


20240515
English
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[Speical Attribution]Added a new special attribution that modifies the devotion gain rate. (Cannot reduce the rate below 0% when it takes effect.)
[Game Setting]The devotion gain rate game setting is now working.
[Game Setting]You can now directly input an experience gain rate.
[The Crucible]Added an NPC in this location who can tell you more about this place.
简体中文
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【特殊属性】加入了新的特殊属性可以调整虔诚的获取率。（在发挥作用时无法导致虔诚获取率低于0%）
【游戏选项】调整虔诚获取率的选项现在已经实装。
【游戏选项】你现在可以直接输入一个经验值获取率的数值。
【试炼之间】加入了一个新角色，可以提供更多关于这个地方的信息。

20240516
English
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[Battle]As we now have more things to display in the post-battle screen, the result window has been split into two. One for experience and one for loots.
[Battle]The experience window shall display every character's exp gain separately. The number shall now be posted to all modifiers including the game setting or any modifiers on the characters. Thus, each character in your group may gain a different amount of experience for each battle.
[Battle]If a character levels up, such information will be displayed in the experience window.
[Battle]The loot window now displays the loot you gained only.
[Battle]Those 2 windows respect the game setting of automatically making them disappear without the need for any confirmation inputs if you desire.
############System################
Added a more versatile popup class taking a window class as a parameter and an array as a parameter of that window class that can use any window class as a temporary popup.


20240517
English
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[The Crucible]You can now sell captured demons here.
[Procedurally Generated Quests]Reduced the reputation penalty when a mission failed because of timed-out.
[Locate a Missing Mail]You can now choose to destroy the mail and intentionally fail the mission.
[Item]New Item: Sadhu's Necklace
[Shopping]Random magic item vendors now sell Sadhu's Necklaces
[Loot]Random Monks may now drop Sadhu's Necklaces
[Loot]Increased the loot drop chance of monks.
############DEBUG################
[Procedurally Generated Quests]Fixed a bug that if your reputation is a negative number, sometimes failing a procedurally generated mission can reward you with a positive reputation.
[Loot]Fixed a bug that sometimes the post-battle loot window does not display all loots.