Hello everyone and Welcome to our 9th devlog. I am Georgi a new programmer at SD Games. I would like to start off saying that we are focusing our resources to develop the game as much as possible before Early Access coming on the 17th of September 2024.

Today I would like to show some of my work and explain how some of the systems work.

Also if you like what you see and want to be among our community do join our discord server by clicking here.

Dialogue & Quests

We are working with a few great systems from PixelCrushers called Dialogue System and Quest Machine. These systems allow us include our NPC’s dialogues in the game with ease and also has the possibility to make the dialogue lines modular so we do not have to copy and paste a single line or a branch of the dialogue tree.

This is one of our dialogues written inside of the Dialogue system.

You may have noticed some coloured symbols on some random nodes. They indicate the connected functionality that is activated with the player reaches/chooses the dialogue option. Most of the time that is how we connect the Dialogue System and the Quest Machine so they can communicate with each other.

Quest Machine

Speaking of Quest Machine, we also have a smaller but equally as important Quest logic tree that allows us to display the current state of the quest, and decide when the quest is completed or failed.

These quests are very simple in the nature of logic, however these are only for Brachyura Island so it is at the very start of the game so we don’t want to overwhelm the player with intense and confusing quests right at the beginning. But if you are into the harder quests do not worry in the later parts of the game we will have quite in-depth quests that you can sink your teeth into.

So, Why do the quests you wonder. They will reward you with rare weapons and gear, as well as skills, XP, and last but not least different relationships and the different behaviours that are connected to these relationship statuses.

Love Hate

That brings us to the system integration I am developing. Love Hate is yet another system made by Pixel Crushers. It stores and records data between the different factions which allows us to change the behaviour of the NPCs towards certain factions depending on their affinity towards one another. I am currently making a system that is going to read all of the data from Love Hate and automatically assign different behaviours to factions.

The Faction Behaviour Definer that we can see to the right of the picture contains the default affinity Thresholds of the factions. However there is also individual affinity thresholds for each faction that can fit any affinity requirement individually on each faction. There is also the Affinity Behaviours under each Affinity Level. These are simple lists where we can define what behaviour is activated at what level.

The Faction Data Component is responsible for each individual faction. As it is currently still under development I can only show that for now. But this component contains not only the affinity thresholds that are individual to the factions, but also the tags that control the members, hostile and friendly tags for each faction. Currently the hostile tags will be attacking the other faction members immediately when they are being spotted and the friendly once will be sharing information and also the player will be able to do quests or discuss matters with the friendly factions.

A small advice from me to you do not tell anyone, try to not be on the bad side of the other faction. You will benefit much more.

Deeds

The last think I want to share and talk about in this devlog is about the deeds in the game. This is the main way that the system will be changing your relationships with the other factions. Deeds will happen automatically when you as the player do something for or around the NPCs. Currently, Attacking, performing dangerous acts, Killing, Completing Quests, Trading or Destroying faction properties will case faction deeds to be activated and change relations with the relevant faction. There are going to be many more deeds programmed at a later time, so keep an eye out and remember: Actions have consequences!

Thanks for reading and keep an eye for more updates. And hopefully I and the rest of the team will see you in our discord.

Until next time, Georgi.