1. [Neolithic]To the End
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[Neolithic]To the End News

Update, Version 20220110

English
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If you really attract a lot of police officers to go after you, they will now have a formation of multiple lines in the battle so that none of them are outside the screen.
A bakery is open in the restaurant located in the commercial street of Liu.
New food: Baguette
New weapon: Baguette (Yes, that's also Baguette. They can have prefixes.)
Baguette can also be melt into Baguette.
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Subdivided the speech life skill into Intimidation, Persuasion, Deception, Seduction.
They are all still based on the speech skill. But, additional modifiers can be applied to those sub-categories.
Taunt skills now use Intimidation. Those skills' description is also changed to reflect this change.
Seducing police officers after committing a crime is now using seduction skills. It no longer has gender restrictions. However, gay officers are rare, almost non-exist in Liu. Thus, it's usually harder to seduce a male officer as a male character.
You can now also let any of your group members do that.
But, again, some non-human teammates may find it harder to seduce a normal human being unless in some rare cases. (I only succeed once during the testing, using a kitten to seduce an officer.)
Luring homeless people to the Unfinished Building is now a deception skill check.
All other previous speech skill checks are converted to persuasion checks.
All those skill checks now show which skill will be used in their options.
简体中文
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现在,如果你遭到了大量的警察的追捕,他们将会在战斗中有一个分布在多行的阵型,从而确保了他们不会那么容易跑到屏幕外面去。
在疁城商业街的餐馆里开放了一间面包房。
新的食物:法式长棍
新的武器:法式长棍 (对,依然是法式长棍,并且可能带前缀。)
法式长棍还可以熔化为法式长棍。
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细分了说服力技能为 威吓,说服,欺诈,诱惑。
它们均以说服力技能为基础值,但是可能在各自的细分领域有修正值。
嘲讽类技能现在使用威吓。该类技能的说明也进行了对应的修改。
犯罪后色诱警官时现在使用诱惑技能判定。不再有性别限制。但是,疁城的警察中几乎不存在同性恋属性的警员。因此男性角色色诱难度相对较大。
你现在可以使用任何队友来色诱警官了。
但是,非人类队友可能会在进行这项活动时有更高的难度修正,除非刚好遇到某些...特别的情况... (基本上我在测试的时候只成功过一次,用一只猫猫去色诱警察。)
欺骗流浪汉去未完之建筑现在是一项欺诈技能检定。
其余的此前的说服力判断都被转为了新的说服判断。
所有上述技能检定会在对话选项中显示具体使用的是何种技能。

Update, Version 20220109


English
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[Sushi Bar]A new sushi bar is open in the restaurant located in the commercial street of Liu.
[Sushi Bar]Added 5 types of Sushis
[Sushi Bar]Added new alcoholic drink: Sake
[Sushi Bar]The chef of the sushi bar will buy fish from you at a slightly higher price. Thus, the fishing skill can be slightly more useful.
[Sushi Bar]The name of the chef read the same in Japanese as a certain character from SAPC++
简体中文
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【寿司吧】在疁城商业街的餐馆里开放了一间寿司吧。
【寿司吧】加入了5种不同形态的寿司。
【寿司吧】加入了新的酒精饮料:清酒
【寿司吧】寿司吧的主厨会以高于其它地方的收购价格向你购买各种你钓到的鱼。因此,可能会让钓鱼技能更有用一点。
【寿司吧】寿司吧的主厨的名字和SAPC++中的某个角色的日语读音完全一样。

20220108 Hotfix-1

English
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[Localization System] Fixed a crash when the install path of the game has non-English characters.
简体中文
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【本地化系统】修复了游戏路径存在非英语字符时可能崩溃的BUG

Update, Version 20220108

English
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[Steam Workshop]Mods can now add new languages and add more content to existing languages.
[Localization System] Make the language file system more robust. It shall not crash if a previously selected language no longer exists anymore.
[Steam Workshop]All the Google translated languages are no longer a part of the game. They are turned into a localization template mod, uploaded to the Steam Workshop.
[Steam Workshop]The reason to move them out from the game itself is to avoid potential conflicts with future community localization mods. It also makes the language selection menu less messy.
[Steam Workshop]Add localization template for Japanese and French.
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[Liu]A small restaurant is open in the commercial street. (It's just a map right now. There will be more content to be added.)
简体中文
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【创意工坊】加入了对于自定义语言包的支持。同时也可以扩展现有语言包的内容。
【本地化系统】使本地化语言系统更健壮,不会因为此前选择的语言被移除而导致游戏崩溃。
【创意工坊】此前未被完整本地化的语言不再是游戏本体的一部分。他们现在作为一个本地化模板MOD被上传到了STEAM工坊内。
【创意工坊】移出本体的原因主要是为了防止这些语言包与未来的各语言本地化MOD发生冲突,同时也能让语言选择界面变得更为简洁。
【创意工坊】加入了日语和法语的本地化模板。
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【疁城】一个小餐馆在商业街上开张了。(目前只有地图,内容还没加。)

DD#51 We are...the first RM game that has a Steam Workshop?

Hi, everyone! Welcome to the first developer diary of 2022!

Let's start this year with Steam Workshop Integration!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1519140/workshop/

Alert! This developer diary is going full of boring tech nerds stuff.
So, if you are just here to see results, you may scroll down a bit, skip a few paragraphs.

During my research, I didn't find any other RPG Maker games integrated Steam Workshop.
It's a shame, considering RMXP already existed for more than 17 years.
The closest thing I can find is some UE4 projects that provided me with quite a lot of useful information.
(See the credit file for more details.)

Deep down, I implemented C++ code and hook it with the old RMXP engine.
I have options, one is to make a DLL, another is to make a separate program.
Considering making a DLL and doing such things almost always make some anti-virus software screaming, I decided to make it a separate program that will be summoned whenever it's needed.

Another thing that needs to be careful is the non-English characters that shall always be converted to UTF-8. It's something lacking in the UE4 project I found. The good news is, my C++ skill not rusting. Thus, I fixed that part relatively easily.

So, let's go down to a few tech details.
Steam Workshop basically does 3 things.
1, Allow us to upload content.
It's done with SteamAPI. The upload limit is based on a game's steam cloud size. Thus, I maximized it to the biggest number Steam allows me to set. You can very likely upload up to 50 mods without problems. And then, Steam's page system will kick in. But, let's worry about that later. Some preparation has been made. As a result, the game is now fully capable to upload files to Steam Workshop.

2, Download content.
This part seems automatic. Thus, there is no need to do anything from our side.

3, Provide us with information.
Once again, we got some encoding problems here. But, everything has been taken care of in our C++ layer of interaction.

What shall we do on the Neolithic side?
Well, almost nothing. All the tech almost already existed.
The first step which we just did this week is to allow ALL graphics assets can be fully overwritten by any mods. It's basically is a file searching system. The game just needs to know if there is any mod that exists, then it will check those folders first whenever it seeks to use any graphics resource.
It's just that easy. (More complicated features will come in later. Those will require a bit of scripting skill from mod developers. But, the system is kinda capable of changing every aspect of the game. We will cover that later.) I wrote the system in a fairly flexible manner.

However, do we really even have to rely on Steam Workshop?
I think not
One thing I learned during the development of NEOLITHIC is, everything dies.
During the past development of NEOLITHIC,
All the three biggest RPG Maker communities died.
Google and Yahoo are forced to abandon China.
Mega.NZ blocked by the Great Firewall.
Hundred Thousands of Websites died with most of their resource and memories gone.
What about Steam?
The government of China just tried to block it during Christmas.
Even though Steam is my favorite platform that I have been using for more than 10 years, it's just too risky to have one single source.
As a result, I further expanded this Mod system to allow users to customize the mod path itself.
As long as a mod exists on your PC, you can totally bypass the Steam Workshop.
All you need to do is just input that path manually into a text file.
And the game will handle the rest.
That shall work even when we lost the Internet for the files are all local.
You can also turn mods on and off by editing those paths.

What I want to achieve is the diversity of the content, the liberation of people's minds, and a highly customizable personalized playing experience. Everything that a censorship system tries to destroy. (They want all people to have only one voice.) As the situation of China gets just a bit even worse recently, it becomes my priority this week. (This paragraph will not appear on the Simplified Chinese version of this diary. But, I think I shall mention it somewhere.)

To better demonstrate the entire circle of the mod, the game, and the workshop.
Here is a video:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
So far, we got three mods in the workshop.
They seem to have been tested by many people.
Please let me know if any bugs or problems occur.

The first mod I uploaded to the workshop also has an interesting background story.
I upgraded Alicia's model this week.

But, it seems some of us prefer the old version.
Then, we shall have both. :)
The old version becomes a workshop item that people can subscript to replace the new one.
It's a very example of diversity and a customized playing experience.
I'm glad I can take this chance to implement that.

The other updates of this week include some wolves, some chocolates that may kill wolves, some sausages, new fishing boots, and a new street.
It's a good opening of the Year 2022. Although I kinda lost some money in the stock market, it's still a quite productive week. I still wonder if there are any other RPG Maker games out there that have implemented the Steam Workshop. If not, I love the feeling to be the first. It will be a good memory.

Today's log:
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[Steam Workshop]Upload a cheat mod to make every shot headshot to steam workshop.
[Steam Workshop]Recorded a tutorial video about how this mod was made.
[Steam Workshop]Added an option to open the Steam Workshop local data folder. (It can be useful later. Non-English path support included.)
[Game Options Menu]Added Steam Workshop as an option in this menu so that there is no need to go back to the title menu to sync subscriptions.
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[Steam Workshop] Fixed a bug that causes mod unable to upload to steam if the game is installed in a path that contains non-English characters. (Mod name still must be in English.)
[Game Options Menu]Fixed a missing sound effect when choosing to change the blood setting.