DD#149 Another Seemly Peaceful Week, or Is It? news - [Neolithic]To the End

The 147th Week and Version 20231201Hello, agents of secret worlds, supervillains of underworlds, and all the spies in this occult cold war, welcome to a relatively peaceful week. As mentioned in last week's developer's diary, something in the "normal" side of the world is slowing down the development. Or, is it?

Oh, well, at least she disagrees.
You can find this silent maiden in a strange building in Samujier.

The House of the 20th. What's the secret of this building?
So, far it's not yet revealed. But, when it does, maybe you will find another layer of the meaning of NEOLITHIC. Previously, some clues already existed in the House near the Paddy Field and the dialogs of a Father and a Doctor.

Meanwhile, Hottle Equipment Store is open for business.

You can find the weapon merchant is selling wind-based weapons while the armor vendor is selling wind-proof armor. They certainly do not get along well. However, their manager seems happy to see such competition play out all by itself. He has more important matters that are having his attention after all. You may find one of those matters if you can break into the backroom of this building.
Meanwhile, as a quite open RPG, you certainly can have a lot of dialog options to get information and discounts from him.

Players with business person backgrounds may have an easier time here while everyone else can still achieve it by passing a persuasion check.
In addition to a discount, he may also provide you with vital or...not so vital information.

Maybe, one day you will find out what that means. A clue exists in another developer's diary a few weeks ago. :)

That's basically all the obvious content updates of this week. However, there is more behind the veil.
I think it's a good time to clean up some code and optimize some workflows.
Thus, you can find some quite huge game updates this week. That's me refactoring code to make them more flexible and can make content easier. The most significant part happens in the random item generation parts of the game. Now, almost all weapons and equipment can be easily turned into 3D printing blueprints. They will automatically scale based on the crafter's 3D modeling skills on their base attributions. Their prefixes are also mostly managed by a unified prefix manager so that when something changes in the prefix, I no longer need to go over all the item codes to check everything.
To prove this concept, three new crating blueprints have been created immediately. They are sold in Liu's PSB and the Bazaar, allowing you to craft common shirts, pants, and police uniforms all can have their attributions affected by your skills when crafted. Some small changes also got updated along the way when I worked on those two locations. For example, the Friendly Old Lady now provides you with endless cloth materials so that some players no longer need to rob those poor NPCs' pants and recycle them to craft their own clothes. :)

The GPA faction also gets an update. You may now find more of their agents in all major towns of the Sayinas Isaland. Some of them even stand right next to the Tomb Stone card players. Some items in their shop now get much cheaper. Meanwhile, to bring more awareness to the still ongoing war in Ukraine, mini-games such as "The Special Tractor Operation" and "The Ghost of Kyiv" now also reward you with GPA coins. I see many people seem to get some level of war exhaustion in this marathon. But, that's not me. Because, THIS IS NEOLITHIC, a game updated for more than 19 years since 2004.

The art pipeline also gets a bit improved. I am slowly moving my workflow into another 3D modeling software. Although the progress is slow, one obvious improvement this week is I figured out a way to easily solve some skin texture issues. Previously it may take quite a while to manually fix those issues. It may not be a problem for our male characters because not many care how ugly they are. :P
However, when it comes to female characters, I hope other people will not look down upon them just because I failed to make them born with a good appearance in general. That's not a problem for me as I think all girls are beautiful. But, let's face it, many people do. A pity.
Thus, consequently, after improving the pipeline, we now get two more female characters in this week's updates made with my new skin texture tricks.
If you only see one, look closer, the other girl is also in this developer's diary with a close-up photo of her beautiful face. :)
The appearances of both of them can be used for your character customization.

That's the content of this week.
I'm still preparing for something in real life that will happen in December. 3rd. Thus, maybe there will not be much update during this weekend. After that, I will likely come back to bring more progress. Meanwhile, in celebration of our Steam release anniversary, a sale will take place soon. Have fun. :)


This week's full log:
20231125
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[Samujier]New Location: The House of the 20th
[Butterfly]Once you enter The House of the 20th, you can teleport to this location.
[The House of the 20th]A butler will block your path for now.
[The House of the 20th]Added 4 dialog options on the bulter.


20231126
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[Character Customization]New Playable Female Character Variation: The Maid.
[The House of the 20th]Added a maid.


20231127
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[Localization]Moved item prefixes to their own localization file.
[Prefix]New Prefix: Storm
[Hottle]New Location: Hottle Equipment Store
[Butterfly]Once you visit the Hottle Equipment Store, you can teleport there.
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added a weapon merchant who sells weapons with the "storm" prefixes. (Weapon types are random.)
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added a dialog option on the weapon merchant about the source of those weapons.
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added smelters and magic aveils.
[3D Printing]Crafted Stone Axes now have their attributions scaled with your 3D modeling skills.
[3D Printing]Crafted Stone Spears now have their attributions scaled with your 3D modeling skills.
[3D Printing]Crafted Bone Spears now have their attributions scaled with your 3D modeling skills.
[3D Printing]Crafted Daggers now have their attributions scaled with your 3D modeling skills.
[3D Printing]Reorganized the sword's item generation code. It's now an OIG item with an independent item generation code instead of attached to a crafting script.
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Added a new module to manage the 3D modeling level's crafting effects.


20231128
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[GPA]Added a generic GPA agent NPC prototype that can be used for generic purposes.
[GPA]Added a GPA agent in the Samujier Supermarket.
[GPA]Added a GPA agent in Hottle.
[GPA]Added a GPA agent in the Marinas Station.
[GPA]Use GPA coins to purchase Butterfly Wings now cost 1 GPA coin. (Previously 2.)
[GPA]Use GPA coins to purchase Circuitries now cost 1 GPA coin. (Previously 3.)
[GPA]Use GPA coins to purchase Out-of-Print Game Disks now cost 1 GPA coin. (Previously 8)
[Special Tractor Operation]This mini-game now rewards GPA coins equal to (10% of captured tanks).
[Wiki]Added a page of Special Tractor Operation on the game wiki.
[Ghost of Kyiv]This mini-game now rewards 5 GPA coins if you win on any difficulties.
[Ghost of Kyiv]It's no longer a hidden achievement on Steam. It's now public.
[The Bow of an Elf King]Increased the basic attack value from 117 to 177.
[Prefix]Feeble is no longer a random prefix that may appear on random loots. Now all random loots only have positive prefixes.
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Almost all weapon OIG codes are now in a new format. It shall allow all of them to easily become a craftable item later if needed. They are now also under the management of a unified prefix manager.
Some unique weapons still remain in the old format as they manage their own prefixes.
My automatic debugger has been running through all code changes without problems. But, if you see any bugs on random weapons, please let me know.


20231129
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[Item]New Item Template: Leather Armor
[Loot]Longdead Rome Soldiers may now drop Leather Armors.
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added a new merchant who sells equipment with "wind-proof" prefixes. (Their attributions are a bit lower than the random loots dropped by enemies.)
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added an interactive chair.
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added a forge master.
[Hottle Equipment Store]The forge master can provide you with some information.
[Hottle Equipment Store]You can convince the forge master to give you a discount either by the business person's background or your persuasion skill.
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added an inside joke. XD
#############System################
Almost all equipment OIG codes are now in a new format. It shall allow all of them to easily become a craftable item later if needed. They are now also under the management of a unified prefix manager.
Some unique equipment remains in the old format as they manage their prefixes.
Standard auto-debugs have been performed on those code changes, and one bug was detected and annihilated. (Located in the function: change prefixValue in pplist)


20231130
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[Crafting]You can now craft common shirts and pants. (Blueprints are sold by the Friendly Old Lady in the Bazaar.)
[Crafting]You can now craft police uniforms. (Blueprints are sold by the officer in the warehouse of Liu's PSB)
[Item]Added 5 types of element stones in the database.
[Hottle Equipment Store]Added a set of alchemy devices.
[Hottle Equipment Store]You can now pick the lock and enter the backroom of this building.
[Hottle Equipment Store]New document: Another Shipment Delayed.
[Hottle]New Location: Hottle Illuminati Field Office
[Butterfly]Once you visit the Hottle Illuminati Field Office, you can teleport there.
[Liu's PSB]The police officer in the warehouse now sells police uniforms. (No prefixes.)
[Liu's PSB]Slightly changed the police officer in the warehouse's comments about guns
[Liu's PSB]Added a dark joke on a police officer.
[Minesweeper]Added information about how to mark mines.
[Bazaar]The Friendly Old Lady now also sells cloth materials.


20231201
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[Character Customization]Added 1 new female character customization.
[The House near the Paddy Field]Scarecrows will no longer wander out of the Paddy Field. They will also no longer chase you if you escape out of the Paddy Field.