Status update

Greetings me hearties, here's a long overdue status report from the Land. The year, in retrospect, has been busy on other fronts than development. Since my last blog post last spring, I did start to flesh out rules and effects of alcohol and drugs, making some changes to how the Grit stat (♥) works.

Grit UI outline with wounds from the right and
state («giddy») from the left. ©placeholder art

The new design is using ♥ to track, in addition to wounds, various states of being (including intoxication).

Extending how ♥ works, to accomodate the new designs re: drinkin'n'drugs, affects various game systems. (At the end of the day, status effects will probably be implemented as a kind of data kit. That way, statuses will be very flexible to deal with in the game engine. Different kinds of drugs/poisons, special rules for swimming and sprinting, etc. will all be possible, at least ;)

At some points, elements of the GUI need to change. And frankly, it's becoming increasingly difficult as LoSt's graphics rendering has become an ugly bugly mess over the years. This time, I started to implement some changes I've been thinking about for a while, and the whole graphics engine is currently in the middle of a refactoring.

It means the game itself is in a bit of a limbo, but it's okay. I'm taking my time and making sure the next iteration is designed in a way that will be robust with regards to future plans. By now, I think I have a pretty clear idea of what I need.

Depending on how various factors in my «other RL» (real life) pan out, I may get some more time to tinker on LoSt by the end of the winter, or come spring. In the meantime, I wish you all the best.

As always,
Minotauros