DD#53 Mod System Upgrade and a Book Store
Hi everyone, Welcome to another week's developer's diary.
The first major part of this week's updates is the mod system upgrade.
The mod system can now have a lot of additional data and code in a mod.
To demonstrate some capabilities that mods can achieve now,
here are some examples we can find in the Steam Workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2720149227
1, a mod that can add new NPCs and stories.
The new Urban Legend mod in the workshop currently proves our mod system can add additional NPCs from a mod to any specific locations in the game. It can also add its own new locations and stories in the future. For now, it just adds a slime mini-boss in the People's hospital in Liu with about a 20% chance to spawn each time you get into that hospital.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2723496939
2, a mod that adds...a playable DIO?!
With customized character walking and combat sprites, animations, sounds, and some code, the mod can allow players to play as Dio in our game. It's kinda a display of how powerful our mod system can be. It feels awesome to see a mod like this in our workshop. So, maybe we can just say, this is the greatest high (最高に「ハイ！」ってやつだ!) during the mod system's development thanks to Una who made it. :)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2720385037
3, and a mod about...Baguette?!
I know I added some weird Baguettes in the game last week.
But, it appears someone has not been satisfied with all the chaotic funs yet.
Thus, this mod overwrites the baguette weapon's item generation code to make them even more powerful, mathematically.
By the way, Dio and bread? Is that some kind of meme? :)
To summarize, we are likely going to see some interesting mods with a large range of diversity in the future.
The second major part of this week's update is the new book store in Liu.
It serves 2 main purposes for now:
1, It provides an alternative solution to train life skills by reading different books. For now, each existing life skill has a corresponding book that provides its respective EXP after reading.
Thus, there is no need to farm exp of life skills while keep getting failure results.
2, It provides some mini-story content. I try to write some short stories in the description of each type of those books to provide a bit of background about such a book can improve your skills. Maybe, you can even find some references from the game content, popular culture, and history.
For example, you may find the Book of a 996 Programmer is a direct reference to the infamous 996 working system in China, and the book can improve your programming skill.
Some other books may have references much darker and maybe "sensitive."
For example, I have to change the description of the Book of a Heartbroken Mother in the Simplified Chinese version a bit. It's the book for gardening skills in a bit more...symbolic way.
That shall cover most part of this week's update.
It's a quite busy week as I expected. Legal businesses are quite exhausting. After all, it's a hardcore PVP game on the court. On the good side, I won two games this week on Wednesday and Friday. So, at least, I didn't fail anyone.
Meanwhile, as the Steam Lunar sale is approaching, a 25% discount is planned. Thus, no need to buy this game right now if you can wait like one or two weeks. :)
Today's changelog:
#########Content##############
[Book Store]New book: Book of a Heartbroken Mother Vol. 1
[Book Store]New book: Book of a 3D Printing Store Owner Vol. 1
[Book Store]New book: Book of a Soldier From South Vol. 1
#########System###############
[Steam Workshop]Added an option to visit Valve's Steam Workshop Agreement page. Valve requires all mod developers must agree on this agreement before uploading any mods to the Steam Workshop. (However, the game does not require this. It can accept all mods from any source.)
[Steam Workshop]Mods can now have their own idle animation data. (Previously, they can only overwrite existing ones.)
[Steam Workshop]Added a function to search a specific file among all loaded mods.
[Achievement]Added two achievements in the Steam backend. (It will be an interesting experiment. In theory, mods of this game shall be powerful enough to even trigger achievements in this game if they want to do so.)