Jul 28, 2022

Ghost Watchers - goodeugenedm

HOW TO PLAY

Ghost Watchers is totally about haunting evil spirits. The process of haut consists of 3 stages:

Determine the special properties of the ghost
Perform the right weakening ritual
Catch a ghost using special trap

Special ghost properties: Type, Age and Mood. Each property can be determined using special tools

How to catch a ghost

You need to complete all the tasks from the weakening list in the correct order. If you have done 3 tasks correctly, but the 4th one is wrong, you do not need to start from the beginning

At a normal level of difficulty, you can understand that the correct action has been done by the message that appears at the top of the screen and the special sound. On hard and insane - only by the special sound

If you have done all the actions correctly, then the ghost will walk around the house in a visible state. Throw the catcher at the ghost

Pad

To collect evidence and read hints, use <TAB>. You will see a pad, in the left part of which you need to indicate the collected evidence. In the right part you need to select the correct properties of the ghost. The selected evidence from the left part will help to select the propreties in the right part. There are two buttons at the bottom of the pad:

Encyclopedia. This section contains descriptions of all the ghosts and tools
Weakening the ghost. This section provides a list of actions to weaken the ghost. In the right part there is a hint on the action of the tools on the selected type of ghost

Each correct action to weaken the ghost will be accompanied by the sound of a gong and a hint (at an normal difficulty level). If you perform actions in the correct sequence, but do not see these effects - most likely, you made a mistake with the properties of the ghost. Check it again!

There are also some additional quests that gives you coins. Coins can be immediately spent on the purchase of tools. Purchased tools are not transferred to the next session

Difficulties

We recommend you to start from the normal difficulty. You may see hints on this difficulty

On the hard difficulty:

You lose your tools when the ghost takes you away
The ghost can lock the front door at the moment of attack

On the insane difficulty:

The ghost can break electric tools in your hands
Ghost can attack hunters outside the house
Many items have got only one charge

Types of protective items

The ones that need to be thrown:

Different types of salt
Different types of bombs
Holy water
Holy fire

The ones that need to be put on the floor:

Plasma Absorber
Withering Light

The ones you need to hold in your hands:

Cross
Christ
Incense

Gameplay after death

After death, you do not completely leave the game, but remain as a spirit. You can interact with doors, switches, valves and candles. You are able to communicate with alive players in this way or scare your friends!

Ghost Materialization

Before you begin the ritual of weakening the ghost, you need to materialize it. To do this, there is a special device for materialization near the van. It is necessary to correctly determine the parameters of the ghost and load them into the Device for the materialization of ghosts, and then start the Device. If the parameters are determined correctly, the ghost will take its finished form and it can be weakened. If players launch the Device with incorrect parameters several times, they lose the game

The "Ectoplasm collection" modifier

Players have to collect three ghost ectoplasms to get a Ghost Trap. Two ectoplasmas will be hidden on the level. The last one falls from the ghost when it is scared away. Ectoplasm of different types of ghosts becomes visible with the help of different tools: UV flashlight, holy fire or camera. Refer to the Tab for a hint

The "Sanity" Modifier

Players are given a new characteristic - sanity. You can lose your sanity at ghostly events and go mad. If your mental health has dropped to 0, then the ghost protection may not work and you may die. Maintain sanity at the right level with the help of special pills.

The "Pentagram" modifier

Players will have to collect various items at the location for the pentagram ritual. Before the capture, it is necessary to perform a ritual. You must throw a ritual dagger into the pentagram to activate the ritual and summon the ghost. Manage to insert the necessary items into every corner, thereby preventing the ghost from getting out. Beware of the circle of the ghost's attack, so as not to be attacked.

Jul 28, 2022

0.24.0: Undo, Redo, Fridge Achievements

Tiny Life - Ellpeck

At least for the ones of us who reside in Central Europe, it's been a tough couple of weeks with the constant, devastating heat. However, in our everlasting pursuit to give you new content to play with, the heat has not stopped us from working on this update.

Granted, it took a lot longer than we would've liked, and it doesn't actually contain everything that we planned for it to contain, but here we are.

Here's some of what we did do, though.

Fridges and Leftovers

For a long time now, players have been asking us to add the ability to store leftovers in the fridge, where they'll go bad much less quickly than out in the open. You can now do exactly that.

After storing some leftovers in the fridge, you can select the fridge to Get Leftovers, which will automatically cause your selected Tiny to grab a random food item from the fridge. You can also look at the contents of the fridge and tell a Tiny to take out a specific item, which is especially useful if the fridge starts filling up with empty platters from all the food they ate.

Right now, fridges are bottomless, meaning you can store as much food in them as you like. You can't store anything else there, though. Sorry.

Undo and Redo

To a non-programmer, it might sound incredibly easy to just add an undo-redo feature into a thing. You do a thing, you go back to a previous state, you do the thing again in reverse. What's the holdup?

As it turns out, the holdup is quite a lot. Not only do you have to take care that stuff is undone and redone in the right order, but you also have to make sure that funds are deducted and re-added properly. That undoing and redoing doesn't lead to impossible states. That there aren't gaps in the undo-redo feature that allow stuff to slip through the gaps while other stuff gets undone. That you don't weep in a corner while infinite recursion is causing your computer to explode. That sort of thing, you know?

We did it, though. But it might also be a little broken at the start. Hopefully not, though.

Look at this cool GIF that shows this feature in action!

Achievements

Tiny Life now has achievements! There's only eleven of them as we speak, but throughout development and until release, we'll be adding quite a few more.

Achievements are unique per save file, meaning you can try your hand at re-completing all the achievements whenever you start a new save file. Achievement progress will always be made by the active household you're currently playing with, but if you switch between households in the same save file, achievement progress will be maintained and made with the new household you selected.

The achievements are also already integrated with Steam, but only with the release version of the game, so anyone who's playing the demo (which is everyone right now) won't have access to the Steam version of the achievements. Sorry!

Adoption

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to add pregnancy to the game for this update like we'd originally planned. Instead, we decided to settle for something a bit less spectacular that still allows you to get new children into your household without cheats or exported merges: adoption!

You can click on the computer to adopt one of twelve children. We're not going to get into the lore of where these children come from, because there isn't one yet. They're randomly generated, okay?

As a side note, we also added a lot more random first and last names in this update, especially a lot of international ones. Currently, the first and last name's source nationality won't be matched, which is why some names sound a little wacky. To see it positively, these r names give us a reason to believe that Tiny Life is set in a universe where society has come far enough to allow anyone to have any name without fearing to be discriminated against. Right?

The Full Changelog

As always, here's the full changelog for your perusal. This time around, we also tried to include a more in-depth API changelog, since the game's API is starting to be somewhat stable, so hopefully modders will find this useful for updating their mods.

Additions

Added the ability to store leftovers in the fridge
Added the ability to undo and redo actions in build mode
Added achievements
Added a paper lantern furniture item
Added the reasoning skill
Added some facial hair
Added the ability to adopt children using the computer

Improvements

Display a notification when first acquiring a new skill
Display a button in the job panel for going to work
Clarify when you can click on a person to head to work
Randomly generate new people for regular visitors and lot employments if exported ones run out
Allow children to be regular visitors too
Added a lot more random names, including various international ones
Improved performance of saves with a lot of people in them
Automatically set transitive genealogies when changing the genealogy of a relationship in the character creator

Fixes

Fixed an exception when getting a job from a newspaper after it has already been removed
Fixed lot employment navigation on lots being incorrect when using a gamepad
Fixed new notifications not being added to the top of the notification queue
Fixed a rare exception when displaying interactions with multiple pages
Fixed death notifications not having an icon
Fixed keyboard camera movement not clearing the following person
Fixed children being able to get the capable carpenter life goal
Fixed ordering from lot staff not working correctly
Fixed being unable to click in the world when the cheats menu is open

API

Objects in a person's hand or in the household storage will now also have their Update methods called
Improved auto-goal triggering system
Added the ability to change an action spot's main direction
Made time a map-based property rather than a game-based one

Jul 28, 2022

Dev Diary #10 - Family

Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn - Adrianus

Dear nobles,

today we will talk about family, and as we all know family comes first.

We will reveal the initial marital status of the player's character, describe the closest relatives and mention the matrimonial challenges and whether it is worth sending your daughter to the order, and by the way we will answer a few questions that we have received from you.

Noble’s Life

Being part of a noble family at the beginning of the 14th century was something very exclusive, especially being a male heir of an old family long possessing their lands. Player character is just such a person, who reaps benefits from his status.

However, most often such an aristocrat since their childhood would be entangled in a complex network of connections that would limit his ability to choose, and that is what we want to partly avoid. Hence, we deliberately put the player's character in a rather unique situation. His parents are long dead, there are no living full brothers or sisters, and the extended family does not live in the immediate vicinity for various reasons.

This allows for a start with a fairly blank slate (besides the steps we described in Dev Diary #8 - Kingdom Reborn which also serve this purpose). On the other hand, he's not entirely alone. His other relatives will enter the stage later on future, but at the beginning of the game there will be two important characters: the extremely problematic half-brother Hennequin and daughter from previous marriage Marie.

The player's half-brother comes to him heavily drunk just after the recent invasion of the English forces and becomes one of many issues at the beginning of the game. Well, you don't really choose your family. P.S. Quality is as if we were recording with a potato, but Steam heavily limits the size of files, and we wanted to show off animations.

What do we mean by "from a previous marriage"? Well, the character is the ruler of a demesne in his 30s, so the chances of him being single by then are small enough that we put our bets on him being a widower.

Marriage

Previously mentioned immediate family will also allow the player to face relatively quickly the huge and complicated logistical, diplomatic and emotional challenge of marrying off his daughter. Finding the right bachelor (of course there will be at least a few available), engagement, preparing a dowry, and finally the entire wedding ceremony. In short, it's a costly undertaking requiring a lot of additional decisions. It depends on the player whether granting the hand of his daughter will serve to simply bolster an alliance between the families, cement the political agreement (a little more on this subject can be found in Dev Diary #6 - Diplomacy) or maybe her opinions and well-being are worth considering.

The dowry will also have a mechanical function. The player will be able to influence how much money or even their own land they are willing to give to Marie, and the amount of resources used will affect the pool of candidates. Another alternative is to send your daughter to the order which was a method of saving money. Although, what is worth mentioning, also the orders often required a dowry from women.

At the beginning of the game, Marie is only 10 years old and is still a child. But at that time noblewomen could have been married from as early as the age of 12, and get engaged much earlier.

Another issue is the player's own marriage, which is a case as extensive as the previous one. Here, too, the choice will have far-reaching political consequences and there will be a number of options. At the same time, we do not hide that the main candidates will be the daughters of the local landowners. This is also due to mechanical reasons. A wife's dowry can increase the size of the player character's demesne.

At the same time, we aspire for the wife of the noble led by the player to be a full-fledged character affecting the entire further gameplay and we will try to do it this way. We will certainly mention these ladies in the future along with the families important from the game perspective.

And of course, a couple can have children whose upbringing can also be a complicated matter. Because there were questions about further gameplay in the shoes of our descendant and more elaborate dynastic politics, we will explain straight away. We would love to do something like this, but we don't want to promise a game longer than we can deliver. The basis is the life of the character created at the beginning (if you are interested in character creation check out Dev Diary #7 - Character creation) and the game will focus on that.

That's it for today. I hope we've clarified things a little. Due to the holiday season, the next Dev Diary will be in late August or early September. We are still considering what to reveal in it, but we will tell you before its publication on our Twitter ( twitter.com/Nobles_Life ), to which we invite you. There, among other things, we regularly post historical information about the Hundred Years' War, which may interest you.

Jul 28, 2022

Our Kickstarter Coming-Soon Page and Demo are Live!

Anitons - nonamejane1

Hello adventurers!

As you have probably figured out, we are still hard at work developing the game.
However, we feel comfortable enough with Anitons that we've decided to take it to the next step and release a {LINK REMOVED}

There, you can follow us to receive a notification when the proper campaign goes out. By following our Coming-Soon page, you are helping us spread the awareness of Anitons to other people, and by that - create an even more awesome community for the game. Please go and check it out!
We also plan on doing customary "Early Bird" packs, so you can grab an early discount. It's on us!

... but that's not the end of the news!

While the game is still in heavy development, with the help of the funds we've previously secured, we were able to work on a demo for the game!

The first demo is live as you read the post. There, you will have a chance to experience a very early introduction to the world of Anitons.

The second demo will come out along with the launch of our full-on proper Kickstarter campaign, so stay put! It will be a continuation of the previous demo. While the funds we've previously secured were enough to prepare the two demos, we still need your help in bringing Anitons to life.

We would like to thank everyone who has shown their support throughout this amazing journey. We hope those little demos will show just how much love we’ve put into this project and that you will enjoy it too. Again - go and check out our Coming-Soon page!

If you want to become a part of an ever-growing community of Anitons fans, check out our {LINK REMOVED}! There, you can talk about the project all you want, find out the newest updates on the game, and even talk to the devs directly!

Meanwhile, keep your heads up for future updates on the game. There’s more to come!

Stay put! ❤️🐐