Coding and Stuff Up Top
I’m currently working my way towards the next WHI update, which will be about fixing bugs in the JP translation. Fixed a crash, realigning stuff, that sort of thing. I’ve also made maybe half the maps needed for the next Chapter 2 update! Half! There’s a lot.
RoP v4.40 and v4.41 Public, Both of Them? Why? READ THIS IT’S IMPORTANT!
I am releasing both versions at the same time. v4.40 was the version released to patrons last month and it runs out of the box perfectly fine with old savefiles, no additions or changes necessary. It also doesn’t have some of the new bugfixes.
Link for v4.40 (Mega.nz / Mediafire)
Link for v4.41 (Mega.nz / Mediafire)
I am also releasing v4.41, which has the bugfixes and also completely overhauls the topics backend code. This is one of those “I should have done this years ago” changes that I finally decided to do. An explainer is later in the post, but here’s what you need to know:
If your savefiles are currently mid-chapter, you will need to use debug commands to fix topics if you need them for quests. On v4.41, ALL of the existing topic information will be lost when you load a savefile, so if you need a topic to turn in a quest (such as for Polaris in Chapter 1) then you will need to use a debug command to fix that.
If your savefiles are on the chapter select screen, or you end the chapter, then that will fix things for the next chapter. You will see error messages in the console when loading but they are harmless.
The debug password “Kitsune Gossip Column” will unlock all topics for all characters in your chapter. Use this on an old savefile to make sure you can still turn in quests. It will also unlock topics you may not know about, it’s a debug password. You can enter it at a campfire.
The password “Beat Up The Press” will return all topics to their chapter default state.
Tales of Strings: Urban Explorers!
The ongoing Tales of Strings series has its fourth entry out, with art by BlueLilyTZ again. It’s on Itch.io! This one is a slasher flick where the bad guy turns you into a doll instead of goring you with a harpoon. It’s scary! Maybe! I love writing these!
I am currently writing the 10th ToS entry, Urban Explorers is actually the 7th one but I release them when the illustrations are done :3
If you’ve been a patron for a total of 5$ over the past three months (February/March/April) then please shoot me a message on Patreon if you would like a free copy.
Fan Art!
By Saya! You know if you people were this enthusiastic about journalism maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Do I need to TF journalists into foxes? Is that what will save America?
By Veena Val! I know it’s a happy moment but this kinda makes me tear up a bit.
Whispering
Why did I do this? (Skip this part if you don’t care about technical stuff)
When I originally set out to design the game that wasn’t even called Runes of Pandemonium yet, some of the design ideas didn’t pan out. The level-up system had you spend XP to buy incremental stat improvements, for example. Topics, however, did stick around.
How topics used to work was that each NPC (Nadia, Blythe, Breanne, etc) had a C++ object that stored which topics it responds to and a “level”. This level was 0 or 1 by default, but could be any integer. The idea was that a topic’s “level” would increase if you did quests. So if you talk to Nadia about the cultists at level 1, she says they’re weirdos who live in the mansion. If you talk to her at level 2, then that’d be after the alraune/dungeon quest and she’d mention you did good killing the boss. That was the idea.
In practice it was used exactly once, because tracking things via the datalibrary’s variable storage is much easier to understand. Every other switch case uses those, so using topic levels sucked. In addition, it produced some very odd behavior.
Have you ever noticed how the topics list in WHI when talking to Thyme starts out making sense (the shopping topics are at the top of her list) but as the game goes on, the shopping topics start moving to the back? This is an artifact of how topics are registered and sorted. Topics are displayed in the order they are registered in the game state at startup. The problem is that topics that Thyme shares with other characters are registered before Thyme’s shopping topics, since Thyme starts with a T and topics are registered in NPC-name alphabetical order. This could be fixed with an internal sort priority, but this still means savefiles have a bunch of useless data in them since topic levels are stored and never used.
To fix it I just overhauled the topic system. NPCs now have a series of topic objects but don’t share them with each other. This means Nadia now has her own “Goodbye” topic object, different from Florentina’s “Goodbye” topic. To unlock the same topic for multiple characters, the program has some scripts that look for the name of the topic as sorted by “NPCName|TopicName” and just unlocks them by scanning all topics. No levels needed, and it also fixes the problem of a character having two instances (55 in the Biolabs is a different NPC than 55 before the Gala, for example). Well, it does in theory, in practice I’m leaving the code in place because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I really should have done this 5 years ago, but it was something you always can do later. Well now I did it! Maybe next I’ll overhaul combat’s internal event sorting and logging architecture. And then beat back the ocean tides with a sword.
The Pile It Is Of Links
Where to find us:
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.
And there’s always Our Discord. You can shout at Salty *in person*.
You can ask us anonymous question on Whisp.sh. If you’ve ever wanted to get smarmy answers to questions, or just know more lore, that’s the place!
We also have a Wiki! We’d appreciate it greatly if people keep it maintained for us. :3
Bottled Starlight Games:
Runes of Pandemonium, the big adventure TF RPG, always free on Steam and Itch.io.
Witch Hunter Izana, a battle-TF RPG. Available on Steam or Itch.io.
Witches of Ravenbrook, a battle-TF dungeon-crawler. The prototype is out now and free on Itch.io.
String Tyrant, a survival horror game, is on Steam and Itch.io.
Other Bottled Starlight Stuff
Salty writes a book series, with audiobooks and illustrations, called Tales of Strings.
Instruments is out now on Itch.io.
Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
Spiderweb Theory is now on Itch.io!
Urban Explorers is now on Itch.io!
Mario is currently working on bringing the Pandemonium story series to Itch.
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Pandemonium Development 