Conviction Chronicles blog post #31 - Demo update + Some in-progress stuff

 I'm releasing an update to the demo, adds some stuff and some bug fixes.

--Motive system start--

I've added the start to the motive system where before each trial a motive that changes how the game functions is introduced. It's actually being set up to be pretty complex, right now I have 38 motives planned. Some motives will take longer than others since they require making cutscenes and more dialogue with certain gameplay systems exclusive to them and such. It allows me to do things like Solitary which I had in mind since the beginning of development.

Right now the game will force the player to always get new motives until they have seen 18 unique motives. The first motive will always be one of the first 10 motives in the list. Once the 18 unique motives has been seen across multiple playthroughs then it will have a "previous run" motive blacklist of up to 3 motives from the previous run. This is mainly since around 7 motives/trials will be the max and it depends on the average. Forcing new motives to be showcased before 18 unique motives will make the starting runs feel much more unique. 

Eventually the player will be able to make their own blacklist and be able to disable the blacklist fully, but this will take a very long time.

I'll go over the motives I was able to add so far. I'll most likely forget I typed this out and will type it out again once I finish the motive system.

The Untouchable Writ - The killer cannot be voted against during the next trial. 

The Hunger Lock - Food cannot be bought or gotten until the cafe until someone dies.

The Silence of Judgment - The next time an investigation starts, no matter how many people died, a trial will not happen. The difference between the Untouchable Writ is all murders are benefited from this compared to only the first and it's much easier to cover anything up.

The Scorch Protocol - Every day the temperature increases which gives people less energy. If someone starts the day off with 0, they die. If it lasts a certain amount of days then everybody dies. Makes everybody go on edge mentally.

The Blackout Hour - The while prison's lights go out which allows airvents to be used at any time.

The Shifting Veil - At the start of each day, if someone isn't murdered, at random someone's personality will change along with their feelings on themselves and everyone around them.

The Vanishing Weapon - When a killer kills someone before this is claimed, then the person claiming it will have all of their contraband on them removed.

Influence Game - I made the influence game a motive instead of something that always exists. Many people didn't like it since it felt random at the start and didn't have the character's feelings for each other defined by this point. So making it a motive removes the downsides where it happens in the middle/end of the game making it more impactful. I think doing this saves the idea of the Influence Game, as I was having doubts on how to deal with it after a while.

The Wealth Divide - So this is based on P:EG's chapter 2 motive where everybody gets money based on their first letter of their name. Here if you don't end the day with 15 dollars, you die. You cannot enter the work room for any reason, leaving playing Baccarat as the only way to make money. Originally I have thought of making a new minigame for this, but Baccarat already has a system where people interact with each other to make or steal money, and this flows well with the blackmail system and Emma's special ability to always win at Baccarat. It makes who lives and dies more diverse doing it with Baccarat as someone may or may not win big even if they start with a bunch of cash.

--Improved murder tracking system--

So the new system was needed for motives that give rewards upon the first kill. To not ramble too much, it mostly keeps track of certain items given to everybody and if they die because of that. If a player spikes the food and the player dies from starvation, the person who spiked the food gets the reward. If a person moves some painkiller labels around and someone overdoses because of that a long time later, then they are rewarded. So it is possible to be rewarded for a murder set up multiple trials ago as actions are tracked.

If a character does an action another has done, for example, if Agatha gave Aishia some cyanide water but she doesn't drink it. Alexis also gives her cyanide water. If Aishia now drinks then Alexis will get the reward no matter what glass she drank from, as Alexis giving the water was influential to her drinking anything at all.

--E&S Playhouse--

I've decided to add something when booting the game that shows some dialogue. The first time booting it has a small cutscene going over the idea of the Killing Game so players know a little more just in case.

Later on, it's going to have unique dialogue for every day of the year to always start the game off with a feeling of something new.


Anything else?

I'm going to finish off the E&S Playhouse events before doing graphical resets to the Nightmare/wakeup call events. Mainly to make them more stylish/exciting as they happen every in game day. Maybe some rewording/adding onto them to keep things fresh and to connect them more with the motive system, so certain motives have dialogue changes.

After that I'll finish the motive system and review the character action code some more. I fixed some stuff with Baccarat so the AI can play it more when in the room with the money to do so, along with some other bug fixes.

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