[Neolithic]To the End Windows game

DD#180 May Our Diversity Be Our Strength in This Dark TimeThe 179th Week and Version 20240712Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.

But, before we start to talk about this week's game content, I'd like to have your attention on a hospital.

This is the surgery room of one of the biggest children's hospitals in Kyiv, Ukraine.
It was bombed by Putin's minions this week. Given the strong air defense of Kyiv supported by everyone so far (as maybe you and I all have donated our money there already), such an attack on the hospital was certainly intentional and took a lot of effort. Life is simply unfair, people are not born equal, some are born in rich families, and some are born in developed civilized countries, yet, some of the kids in Ukraine were born with cancer, spending their childhood in that hospital, and they are now facing something even worse than cancer, that is Putin and his missiles. We are having a better life than those poor kids have. But, we shall not take that for granted. People cannot decide where they are born. We are just lucky. As such, at a moment like this, we shall once again provide our support to them. For we are human.

We all come from different lines of life, living in different parts of the world, and having our own stories. Such diversity shall be our strength for we are gifted with our distinct talents.

So, shall be the pets in the game.
In this week's updates, pets may now have different perks when they join you. Some of those perks provide numerical advantages on certain attributions. But, some may even add a new layer of mechanisms.

For example, the perk shown above may even allow a seemingly killed pet to come back alive. (No pun intended, but do you know "Come Back Alive" is a Ukrainian charity organization? :D )
Of course, there are certain facts that will determine the likelihood of a pet to have certain perks. For example, dogs may be more likely to have the "Loyal" perk and rats may be more likely to have the "Escapist" perk. But, there are no hard limitations. It's totally not a bug to have a bunny with the "Pyromaniac" perk. (Actually, that's kind of fun in such a chaotic random system.)
As we are talking about pets, we now also have a new pet added this week.

Those big cats are called Beiruyka by native people in Nise. Although they are bigger, they are still considered cats. So, they can still have all game features related to cats in the game. Imagine this, a huge sabertooth suddenly jumps in front of you, it's scary. Some may even need to do a sanity check. But, instead of attacking, she just meows at you for food. :)

We also got more Dragon content this week as this faction will soon become more important in the game's storylines.
Previously, when talking about the Dragon, people may immediately think of them as the secret supernatural society in China. That's likely because, so far, we see their activities are in Liu which is a town in Shanghai, China. And naturally, you cannot have a very separate organization independent too far away from the government in China. It's just like you may be able to make private mercenary companies or private weapon manufactories in the US. But, that's absolutely unthinkable in China. The Party must have full control of such sensitive supernatural matters. Thus, unlike the Foundation or the Illuminati. The Dragon in mainland China is now essentially a government program.
They even have PLA commissars in their ranks.

However, that's just the modern-day Dragon in mainland China.
(OK, even within the Red Dragon, there are different sub-factions that hold different goals and even ideologies.)

Dragons Come in More Than One Color
There is now a new document you can find in the book shop of Liu. It provides a more detailed background history of this organization. Actually, the Dragon you encounter in Liu is just the Red Dragon. There are others out there. All may share an ancient heritage, yet divided by all those historical events in the past thousands of years. From the ancient Romance of Three Kingdoms to the Mongol invasion and the Fall of Song Dynasty. From the Three Slaughters of Liu when Manchu warlords tried to get rid of the Dragon resistance to the Revolution and the Fall of Qing. From the Black Dragon's attempt to claim the true successor of the ancient order and unite everyone under the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to the Schism in the Chinese Civil War. The ancient order has shattered into many. Yet, all claim to be the Dragon.
More stories about them shall come in future game updates.

The last part of this week's major game content updates focuses on addressing some feedback.
There are various improvements in different game systems.
For examples:

You can now have more control over the loot you get from a battle. You can take them all, discard them all, or decide each one of them. It shall solve the problem of having too much loot all dumped into your inventory after several battles. Although we have no inventory space limitations, it may sometimes cause lags when you open the inventory. (As the game grows, it somehow becomes more and more common to see people carry thousands of items before they go to a merchant to sell them.)
Another important improvement is that when you allocate your attribution points, you now see your attributes in their raw forms without being affected by any equipment or state effects which shall give more accurate information and avoid miscommunication.

That's for this week. As the 20th anniversary of this game, as the longest-living RPG in China, was just last week, I think it's only fair to have an extended sale even after the Steam Summer Sales are over. Have fun and enjoy your summer. And also remember, try to help those in pain if you can. For we are human.

This week's full developer's diary:
20240706
English
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[Pet/Enemy]New Pet/Wild Animal/Enemy: Beruika
[Species]New animal species: Big Cat.
[Perk]Ailurophile's effect works on "Big Cats" as well.
[Item]New meat: Beruika Meat.
[Outside the Xuanhuang Cave]Beruikas now appear in this area.
############System##################
A system to add random perks to newly generated pets is currently working in progress.


20240707
English
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[Perk]New Perk: Brave
[Perk]New Perk: Foodie
[Perk]New Perk: Prayer
[Perk]New Perk: Escapist
[Perk]All those perks are now in the game's code. You can add them by console command. However, the system to add them randomly to newly generated pets is still working in progress.
[Wiki]Added a page about the character perks: Neolithia.fandom.com [Shopping]Dr. Kyofu now sells some anti-debuff items such as shower gels, sunscreens, and eyedrops.
[Pet Fusion]Big Cats + Bunnies can now correctly make TigerBunnies.
[Pet Fusion]Lowered the pet level requirements for Pet Fusion. From lv50 to lv30. (Higher levels still provide attribution bonuses.)
[Pet Fusion]Fusioned pet shall inherit all perks.
############DEBUG################
[Pet Fusion]Fixed a bug that causes fusion pets to have extremely high initial attributions while also making them not grow at all.


20240708
English
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[Pets]When you gain a pet, they may now come with different perks.
[Pets]Some pets have a higher chance to have certain perks while some pets are less likely to have certain perks. For example, dogs are more likely to have the "Brave" perk while many types of undead and machines are unlikely to be "Foodie."
[Perk]New Perk: Seducer.
[Perk]New Perk: Not Dead Yet.
[Perk]New Perk: Loyalty!
[Perk]New Perk: Hard to Drunk


20240709
English
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[Pet]You can now pet Big Cats.
[Pet]Big Cats will now also meow to you when you pet them in the menu.
[Faith]The "Cat Worshiper" tenet now also applies to Big Cats.
[Character Customization]Added one more playable male character appearance.


20240710
English
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[Document]Added a new document: Dragons Come in More Than One Color
[Liu]You can now find "Dragons Come in More than One Color" on the bookshelves of the bookstore.
[Dragon's Treasure]You can also purchase the book here. It costs 2 Dragon's Marks.


20240711
English
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[Battle]You can now choose to take all the loot or discard all the loot after a battle. (Thanks to 客官不可以's suggestion)
[Battle]You can now also choose to get down to details to decide whether you want to take or discard every item among the loots.
[Battle]If you set battle auto-end without the need for your input, you will automatically take all the loots by default.
[Battle]If there is no loot, the choice window will not appear.
############System################
[Battle]Refacted the code of the post-battle loot window.


20240712
English
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[Character Customization]Attribution Point Allocation Menu now displays your character's raw attributions not affected by equipment and state effects. (Thanks to M1kh4iLyN/A's feedback)
[Prologue]If you choose to skip the prologue, you can now still get the pistol and some ammo.
[Pet Perk]New Random Pet Perk: Pyromaniac