Lost in You v0.8 progress update #4

Hi there! No event previews this time around, sorry! We'll be taking a look at a new feature coming to v0.8 instead: Linear Mode (aka. VN Mode).

When starting a new game, you will be prompted to select your desired game mode the game will default to. This does not, however, mean that you are stuck in this mode permanently. You can change modes at any time from the settings menu through a newly added option under "Gameplay":

If you're switching from sandbox to linear, you can simply skip the current time of day (by going to bed or waiting for the next time slot) and the game will automatically throw you back into linear mode.

Caveats

Linear mode:

• does not keep track of the current weekday and will reset the game to Monday at the start of each event;

• attempts to increment the day counter as would happen in sandbox mode, but is very likely to do this inaccurately;

• does not account for missed affection or lust points from skipped repeatable events;

• ignores all event requirements that would apply in sandbox mode (e.g. weekday, time of day, affection/lust requirements).

That means if you were playing linear mode and wanted to switch to sandbox mode for the rest of your playthrough, you may need to grind additional affection or lust points.

Event system rewrite

I rewrote the event system from the ground up to make it easier to add new events, make the code base more maintainable, and eliminate the possibility of incorrect requirements. Previously, event requirement hints were entered entirely by hand. In rare cases, that meant there could be a mismatch between the hint and the actual requirement (sounds stupid, but it has happened at least 3 times now). This should no longer be possible (in theory), as event hints are now hard-linked to the actual trigger conditions. Aside from fixing that issue, this change is mostly to make my life easier. If you spot a bug in an event's hints or trigger conditions once v0.8 launches, give me a shout in the bug reports channel on Discord!

Warning: Technical portion ahead!

For the tech nerds among you, here's what this new system allows me to do:

Every event has two mandatory properties:

• "id": This matches the label Ren'Py will jump to when the event requirements are met.

• "name": The name displayed in the event tracker.

Now obviously we need a little more to get this working. So that brings us to all the other optional properties we can add:

• "character": This defaults to "None", which means it's a main event. Can also be a character codename (e.g. saki, friend, teacher, ...) to make it a character event.

• "location": A key representing an in-game location (or phone contact). Abstracted away through a class with static properties and methods to retrieve the correct key.

• "requirements": A list of all requirements that need to be matched to trigger the event.

• "completed_flag": Due to legacy events, the default completed flag of "event_id_complete" needs to sometimes be overwritten, this can be done by passing the alternative flag here.

• "missed_flag": Either a flag name to be checked or a lambda function. Event is marked as missed if this evaluates to True.

• "alt_name": Used for providing the glitchy text for uncompleted Yume events.

• "is_hentai": Marks an event as an h-event if True (shows up as pink on the event tracker).

• "chapter": Chapter number this event is part of.

Make note of the "requirements" list. The example I provided contains 2 different types of requirements. I'll just show you the implementation of one of these so you get an idea of how exactly it works:

Every requirement type must implement the following two methods:

• "is_match": This checks whether or not the given requirement is met.

• "to_string": Converts the requirement to a formatted hint string to be used inside the event tracker.

All of this is automatically checked by the game and passed through to all the necessary places with 0 further work on my end (hooray!).

I don't know if people are actually interested in some of the more technical aspects of game development, so I would appreciate some feedback on whether short write-ups like this are desired. And if anyone is interested in a deeper dive into the new event system (say, aspiring devs looking to learn some Python), let me know and I'll see if I can arrange something. :)