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DD#62 Restaurant Improvement and A Janitor's Job

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

Before we start, we shall not forget our Ukrainian friends are still bravely defending their homes.
Thus, a Ukrainian assault rifle has been added to the game.

Let's call it a special content balance operation. We can't let AK-47 be the only assault rifle here.
Technically speaking, Zbroyar Z-15 is a more balanced and stable rifle with far less recoil compared to AK-47. In real life, it usually has a price twice as much as an AK-47. However, from a game balance point of view, I don't think I shall make it that expensive.

Many other developers had made more game bundles to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine. From Humble store to Unity assets story. From Fanatical to different developers here on Steam. They are all doing great jobs. However, I now start to believe humanitarian aid is not enough to solve the problem. Maybe peace can only be achieved if our brave Ukrainian heroes can defeat the invaders in the war.
Thus, I'm calling direct support to the Ukrainian army.
Give them guns via the Bank of Ukraine: https://bank.gov.ua/en/
Help them win to stop more tragedies from happening again.

Now, let's go down to more content of this week's update.
The first major update happened in the restaurant of Liu. We got more furniture, banners, and decoration items there. More types of food are sold there. As a game in a supernatural world, there is certainly something weird is happening. There are many stories about people eating spicy food and starting to breathe fire. Maybe those stories are true. Take a bite on Ultimate Wasabi, you can temporarily gain the ability to let enemies burn unless you drink some water to cancel it. But, that's not the most fun part. With our cooking system, you can add wasabi into any food you are cooking. The mechanism will be transferred from wasabi to all the food you just made. There is almost no restriction on what kind of weird food you can make as we shall all have an open mind in this bizarre game world.

The second major update is about our friendly neighborhood janitor A'Ti.
He now has new dialogue options and can give out new procedurally generated repeatable missions asking you to clean the city as a part of "A Janitor's Job."
All the targets of this mission will be supernatural creatures. We only have slimes for now. But, it will expand in the future. There will be new enemies and new boss creatures. The rewards of this mission are items with "cleansing" prefixes. They provide the cleansing skill to purge negative state effects. They also have a secondary attribution to reduce the MP cost of the cleansing skill to make it more useful and flexible under different circumstances. This secondary attribution can be added together from different pieces of gears that have "cleansing" prefixes, resulting in a full set of gear that may make cleansing skill cost very little MP.

Other small changes include bug fixes, system optimization, and battlefield environment adjustment.

That's for this week. I am still in quarantine in Shanghai. But, that cannot stop the endless evolution of our game.


Today's changelog:
#########Content##############
Changed the reward of "A Janitor's Job," reduced the amount of money reward, added a random item with a "cleansing" prefix as a reward.
It only affects newly generated this type of mission. Missions that were generated before this update still have old rewards.
With a set of cleansing gears, it's possible to reduce the MP cost of the cleansing skill to be really cheap.
Reduced basic MP cost of Cleansing 500 -> 400
New location in Liu: Quarantined Neighborhood
#########System###############
Added a content cache so that the item detail window shall only draw each item's detail once and reuse previously existing content.
It shall improve the efficiency if repeatedly scroll around the content of item windows.
Items may now have attribution that reduces a skill's MP cost.
New prefix: Cleansing (It has the same name as a skill.)

Update, Version 20220323


English
#########Content##############
New procedurally generated mission: A Janitor's Job. (After the tutorial. The janitor A'Ti can give you a list of supernatural targets he wants you to cleanse. The list only has slime for now.)
New minor boss: Sewer Overgrowth. (Big slime that can split into three small ones on death. One of A'Ti's janitor job targets.)
New dialogue options for A'Ti. (You can ask him for directions.)
New battlefield environment tag: Underground.
The underground tag is applied to the sewer in Liu, the secret tunnel in Queensmouth, and all areas of Site Demeter.
Removed the "urban" tag of the secret tunnel in Queensmouth.
Added a sound effect when opening the door of the priest's house.
The exit arrows in Liu will no longer be hidden during the mission "Hello Stranger." However, Alicia will stop you from entering those areas.
#########DEBUG###############
Fixed a bug that booby trapper may sometimes not be triggered some procedurally generated NPCs.
简体中文
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新的过程生成任务:一份保洁工作。(在教程结束以后,环卫工阿提会给你一些需要打扫的超自然敌人。目前这张清单上只有史莱姆。)
新的小型BOSS:下水道增生物。(一个较大的史莱姆,死亡时会变成三个较小的史莱姆。阿提的保洁工作的目标之一。)
新的阿提的对话选项。(你可以询问他一些疁城的地点的方位。)
新的战场环境标签:地下。(这些地区加入了这个标签:疁城的下水道,王后镇的秘密通道,前哨基地-德米特的全部区域)
王后镇的秘密通道的“都市”标签被移除。
王后镇牧师的小屋开门现在有了一个音效。
在『你好,陌生人』任务中,疁城的几个出口位置的箭头将不在隐藏,但是艾丽西亚会阻止你进入那些区域。
#########DEBUG###############
修复了诡雷可能无法被某些过程生成的NPC触发的BUG。

Update, Version 20220321


English
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New gun: Ukrainian Zbroyar Z-15. (It can be purchased from the weapon vendor in the Bazaar.)
简体中文
#########Content##############
新枪:乌克兰 Zbroyar Z-15. (可以从巴扎的武器商人那里购买。)

Update, Version 20220320


English
#########Content##############
Added more decoration to the fast-food sector of Liu's restaurant.
Added burgers on the menu of the fast-food sector of Liu's restaurant.
The sushi bar now sells "Ultimate Wasabi."
New skill: Fire Breath.
A new mechanism that grants Fire Breath after eating some "Ultimate Wasabi." (Temporarily. But, I think we just weaponized food.)
However, if drinking water or being attacked by water/ice-based skills, you will lose this temporary effect.
Ultimate Wasabi is also a new food ingredient.
You can add wasabi to any food you are cooking to transfer this mechanism to your food. (It's possible to make weird food and drinks like Wasabi Apple Juice. I'm not going to put too many restrictions on your creativity.)
简体中文
#########Content##############
在疁城餐馆的快餐贩卖区域加入了更多装饰。
在疁城餐馆的快餐贩卖区域的菜单上加入了汉堡。
寿司吧现在贩卖究极芥末。
新技能:火焰吐息。
新的机制,通过食用究极芥末可以获得火焰吐息技能。(临时效果。但是,我们貌似就这样把食物武器化了。)
但是,如果期间喝水或者被水/冰属性技能攻击,这个效果将消失。
究极芥末同时也是一种料理素材。
你现在可以通过烹饪的时候往食品里加入芥末使这些食物带有这个机制。(有可能制作出非常奇怪的食物或饮料。 比如加了接芥末的苹果汁。在这方面,我不打算过多限制大家的创造力。)

DD #61 The Ghost of Kyiv

Hi everyone, welcome to another week's developer's diary.
The war continues in Ukraine in both realities.
Even with the inspiring speech from Zelesky addressing the world.
Even with the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers giving their lives to defend their nation.
Even with the unity, I see from Ukrainian people as I witnessed a Ukrainian lady selling cookies in Shanghai to gather donations for her nation.
The tragedy of a Mariupol theater still happened.
Alas, is there nothing more we can do to stop such tragedy from happening again?
I am hoping a no-fly zone can be established as soon as possible.
Many may consider it's too risky to do so.
However, in the face of a war against all humanity with all the atrocities committed, the people of the free world chose to back down just because they are afraid of WW3, leaving millions of Ukrainian people to die alone from air raids. Is this what we want in a history book?
No matter what those so-called leaders and politicians think.
I shall give Ukraine jets to close the sky. (Even that's just in the game.)
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Have you heard the story about the Ghost of Kyiv before?
An ace pilot of the Ukrainian air force shoots down countless enemy aircraft to protect the sky.
Some call it an Urban legend. Yet, an Urban legend is just what you can find in our secret world.
There may not be just one, but many for we live in a world with legions of heroes.
Even the RPG Maker engine is not meant for such content, I will it to happen.
Thus, we now have this mini-game in our game, integrated into our story.
If you wear the hero's medal to the bar, the bartender shall treat everyone in your group a Hero's Glory. Just as I said, this round is on me.
There is also a Steam achievement there for anyone who can win the game in the highest difficulty.
It may not be much compared to our friends raising 6.3 million dollars on Itch.io with their Bundle for Ukraine, we are all doing our part in this war and hope for the best outcome.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, the city is facing the biggest COVID-19 outbreak it ever had in all history. The situation is bad. I am in quarantine. Nobody can get in or out of the neighborhood. Everyone is locked within. Thus, N95 masks are deployed in Liu's hospital in the game. Those are quite mundane items that provide very little protection. However, sometimes, even mundane items can have magical prefixes and achieve great things. We are all special.

Don't worry. Shanghai is an international city that once hosted the Korean government-in-exile. This is the city that provided shelter to Jewish people during WW2. We now also have some of our Ukrainian friends in this city. This is a great city that shall withstand this outbreak.

We also have more food diversity, a new cooking device, and a recipe added to the game today, just in case anyone gets hungry during the quarantine. :)

That's for this week. Stay safe. We all have a war to win.

Today's changelog:
########STEAM#################
Updated the store page regarding the "Bundle for Ukraine", as the bundle on Itch is concluded with 6.3 million dollars raised to support Ukraine.
But our support for Ukraine continues.
#########Content##############
Added cola, fries, popcorn, and a new food vendor in Liu's restaurant. (It still needs more content here.)
New food and recipe: Cooked Apple Slices.
New furniture: "EasyTime" Mini-Range. (It's also a new cooking device. It can be purchased from the manager of No.181 River Road)
Added to mini-range in the kitchen of "This is a bar." (That basically means, you can have access to free mini-ranges after defeating Zhao.)