Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.
The title basically already has covered the major development of this week's updates.
Early this week, we got the curse stones, coming from the distant past of our game. An anomaly starts to come into our world in 2004, the year when the Project Stone Age was initiated. Those who are unfortunately exposed to such stones may experience unfortunate events at a statistically abnormal level. In the current iteration of our in-game world, such unfortunate events have been implemented. They will cause various different effects on the victims of the stones. The flow of calamity can be powerful and unpredictable. Thus, maybe even the most powerful entities in the universe cannot survive if you can find a way to dump tons of such stones on them which requires an admirable effort.
A deposit of curse stones can be found in the deepest part of the Abandoned Mine of Queensmouth. Maybe this is just a coincidence. But, maybe it's not. The misadventure of a certain ambitious entrepreneur and his miners were doomed from the first page of their stories. Yet, that's just one way to perspective the whole event. A superstition way, some may call it. We can put the grand topic of whether destiny has been written or not later. But, one thing is for sure that the calamity effects emerge from the stones are quite real as they can be observed in any battle. Everything no matter how inconspicuous nearby can be fatal under such anomalous effects.
More details can be found on the wiki page:
https://neolithia.fandom.com/wiki/Curse_Stone
Next, we went back on our expedition to Egypt. A city known as Baldat'Aten'Almaleuna appeared in the middle of nowhere in the desert. It's named by some locals who speak Arabic. It roughly translates to the Cursed City of Aten. Who is Aten? Well, there is an entire cult you can find in the city. You may find some friendly cultists that can provide you with some information.
Yes, those half-naked guys with a symbol of a black sun on their chests.
Although they are not hostile initially, they can be provoked to attack you. From the technical point of view, they have a highly complex behavior tree scripted on multiple levels, a combination of both normal citizen behaviors you can find in Liu and the hostile behaviors with limited tactical coordination you can find similar to the vampiric researchers in Site Demeter. With enough, provoking, the entire cult will decide to hunt you down. But, each individual cult member also remembers what you did to them. Should you have done something that makes them hate you enough personally, that single cult member may just decide to murder you with a passion. What makes things even worse is, they have friends within the cult that may call in to help no matter when they are attacked or they just want to attack you.
Still, you may learn something by talking to them. Maybe some low-level crimes such as picking their pockets will not turn the entire cult wants to make you the next sacrifice to their sun god right away. They are surely far from the most friendly folks in town.
Although they spend most of their time just worshiping and sunbathing, they are certainly up to something.
I wonder what will happen when the day breaks. :)
Of course, this is not a city that only has those half-naked men in masks to creep you out. There is a teahouse in town with a bartender who tends to tell some sick jokes. Well, that may not help at all. But, at least you may find a room to rest in this relatively safe place. You can either pay some money to rent a room or just go direct to hack the electronic lock. Either way, you get a little hotel room in a seemly normal teahouse. It's likely nothing bad is going to happen here so far.
That's for this week. Fortunately, this DD was not consumed by any random cosmostic accidence or melted by strangely hot sunlight.
Today's changelog:
##########Content############
[Egypt]The entire Cult of Aten may now turn hostile if you have taken too many hostile actions against their followers.
[Egypt]When they turn hostile, they will actively chase and attack you on sight.
[Egypt]When they turn hostile, they may coordinate their attack together.
[Egypt]On the good side, you can collect their corpses or harvest their souls together after defeating them.
[Egypt]Killing the Cultists of Aten is no longer considered killing innocent citizens.
[Egypt]Even before the entire cultist faction starts to attack you, some cultists may now try to help their fellow cult members when they are attacked. (OK, that means you can also collect their corpses and harvest their souls in one go.)
[Egypt]Those cultists who were attacked by you before and somehow survived will now remember you. They will certainly want to kill you. That's just personal, no matter if the entire cult is hostile to you or not. (And, nearby cultists will join in as well.)
##########System#############
Added a new function that allows NPC behavior to switch between their normal actives and their hostile actives.