Since my last mini devlog ive mostly been building systems on top of the big encounter refactor i finished last week.
Biggest thing is that the ui popups I mentioned at the end of the last devlog are now complete. Encounters can now throw up these new resuable choice popups instead of each interaction needing its own weird logic. The first thing i did is convert enlightenment to the new system. After that i started working on using it for creature encounters where things can fight back and you can now choose to flee or dodge or fight back yourself. This makes encounters a little less confusing. If trying to eat something, for example, results in it instead trying to eat you, since its bigger and considers you as prey. Then it pops up a new choice, for you to flee or fight, when it attacks back instead of just trying to fight back automatically and losing or whatever. If you are confused, that of course also affects your popups. Plan is to add this to non-aquatic encounters next so that for example you have the option to ambush an osprey when it dives for you and so on. Which should be great fun.
I also did a pretty big overhaul of how creatures gain skill levels in the world sim. Previously creatures would slowly gain skill xp just by existing. Which meant you could get things like 5 year old peasent dwarves with bizarrely high fighting and foraging skills despite them never fighting anything or doing anything. This was because it was hard coded to gain those skills at higher rates. Now creatures will , on approximately a weekly basis, specifically attempt to train specific individual skills they already know. Training uses a new “Learning” skill and concentration and inquiry and the dc to beat to gain xp in that skill goes up as the level in the skill being trained goes higher. Sapient creatures get a small expldoing die XP reward when they successfully train their skill. While normal creatures get 1 xp. So far the result looks way more believable, young creatures mostly have low skills. Old creatures gradually become more competant as they level their Learning skill, and have more organic looking skill distributions. And very old creatures now not only have noticibally better skills, but also higher inquiry and concentation since they’ve spent so much time leanring things.
This has also produced an extremely important discovery wherein I found that an immortal ascended giant scorpion can eventually end up smarter then a teenage elf. Which is very funny.
Im also planning on making this new skill useful to the player. As part of my self imposed limitations when developing Pilgrimage is that for any skills or actions ai can use/do. The player must also be able to do it and use it.
Current idea is:
A train action where you can deliberately attempt to practice one of your skills.
And being able to learn skills from other supernatural/sapient creatures.
You will roll the exact same thing AI does. Except with a bonus due to the time scale of the game.
So, essentially at this point I’m finally getting past a lot of the infrastructure work and into the part where I can start adding more of the weird/fun interactions I actually wanted the refactor for in the first place.
Still not releasing 0.3.5 yet though :3
I want a significant amount of player facing content before I do that.
