Oookay, I’ve uploaded the final version of the Noiseart update. Should be available on both branches rn.
Will send out a proper announcement post and all that tmrw. Thanks so, so much for playing!
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Infimus Major Update #2: Noise Art
Play it here!
https://dashingdon.com/go/8686
- Work with another team of supervillains! (they don’t exactly have a very high opinion of you)
- See someone get wiggled very, very hard! Like, really hard!
- Quote: “I will make your dad puke EYES out of his MOUTH!”
- Fight the world’s most glamorous superhero!
- Embark on an obligatory dream sequence!
This update took a lot more time than I thought it would. I feel much more confident in my ChoiceScript skills now, and have built up a pretty good routine. Fingers crossed: future ones should come by much faster.
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Aha! Didn’t expect someone would get the error message so quickly, but there you go lol. Should be fixed.
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12/08/2021 - DEVLOG #11: Archetypes And Reputation
It’s no secret that a large part of this game’s mechanics were inspired by Disco Elysium’s various RPG systems. Skills with weird names and weirder descriptions instead of your regular charisma, strength, intelligence, and so on. Dice rolls behind a lot of interactions, which can result in hilarious failures. Self-contained bits of story and lore that have gameplay implications once you’re done with them.
Disco’s systems worked for the kind of game Disco was. Doesn’t necessarily translate 1:1 to Infimus. I copied the homework without making any changes. That doesn’t work. The teacher notices. So, after testing the current RPG systems extensively through development, I’ve decided to revamp them. Better now than later: the longer I wait, the more work I will have to do. Let’s analyze the intended purpose of every single one of them, its problems, and how I plan to fix them. Today, I’ll focus specifically on Archetypes.
You Are Not You, But Many
Archetypes, in my original design, were supposed to be similar to Disco’s copotypes and Fallout: New Vegas’ reputation system. You’d make your name known as a particular kind of villain: an Operator, getting right into the thick of it, preferring to deal with things personally and decisively; a Mastermind, manipulating others and the world for your own ends, always plotting in the shadows, using your creativity and intelligence for nefarious purposes; and finally an Eccentric, doing things your own way which is literally no one else’s way because oh god why would you do that. What are you doing. Stop. This would help define your supervillain’s style, and let me have the world react accordingly. If you’re known as a Mastermind, people will be wary of your schemes. If you’re an Eccentric, they will know to expect the unexpected. An Operator, they won’t cross you. At least not overtly. And so on.
There were three problems with this system. One, I really couldn’t think of good ways to make it play into the game’s recent developments, so it wasn’t at all integrated with it. Two, it’s reductive. Not all supervillains can be constrained into these three archetypes. Three, it’s completely opaque that the system works this way.
You Are Not You, But What You Think Of You
I’m going to do the following to address the issues with the Archetypes system:
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Rename it to “Reputation” to make it clear what it’s about, and add flavor text pointing at what it does.
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Instead of 3 broad archetypes and fitting various styles of play into them, introduce various statistics that reflect the way you play and then go from there. What do I mean? Instead of you deciding to take a civilian hostage and me going “ok I guess that makes you a bit like a Mastermind” and raising the related stat, you taking a civilian hostage raises your “Ruthlessness” stat. The world will then react accordingly: the more ruthless you are known to be, the more afraid civilians will be of you, and the harder the legal system will punish you if they capture you.
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Archetypes are still present, but are now more about the way you choose to present yourself. Think of it like classes in RPGs, but you get to pick them as a consequence of things you do. Going back to the previous example: if you’re ruthless, if you don’t care about the lives and well being of others, you will move closer to roles like Beast, Reveller, Mastermind. And further from something like Antihero or Smooth Criminal. All of these are separate “classes” that you can opt into if you have a particular stat distribution, and you can switch from one to the other if your methods, and by consequence those stats, change.
What do you think?
Of course, all of the above is subject to change. If you have any feedback about it, lemme know.
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I’ve been focusing a lot on refactoring the game’s code and rewriting a lot of its mechanics this week, so no story update. Next Saturday’s is gonna be spicy though, I guarantee.
So, poll because I’m curious: of the 3 members of your crew, who’s your favorite so far? Another one is gonna join them soon…
- Flowerboy
- Spin
- Verve
0 voters
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DEVLOG #12: Skills And Rolls
Skills
Skills, in all RPGs, are a way to represent the player’s ability to influence the world around them. As the player’s knowledge and mastery of that world grows, so - in theory - should their skills. The particular set of skills you have depends on the game itself and its setting - on the ways in which you play. In an RPG about mechs, you’d obviously have a Piloting skill. In a western one, you’d have something like Sharpshooting and Tracking and Horse Riding.
In Infimus, the current set of skills calls back to the old Archetypes system, with 3 for each of Operator, Mastermind, Eccentric. Given that’s something much different, now, I’m going to divide the skills into Physical, Mental, and Eccentric (or perhaps just Weird? not sure, terminology’s still WIP) and make a few changes here and there. So:
Physical Skills
Martial will be replaced by Fleshcrafting (or Fleshgrafting, or Fleshshaping, haven’t decided yet) , with its functions split between various other skills. Instead of having you roll only Martial to decide how to take down a hero, I’d rather have you roll perhaps Glow to distract them or Tinkering to figure out the weak points of their armor, then Spryness to get the jump on them or Endurance (now changed to Vigor ) to hit them hard. That’s more balanced and more interesting. Fleshcrafting will represent your ability to control your shape-shifting powers.
Spryness will stay as it is, I think. Endurance will be renamed to Vigor and meant to include both, generally speaking, endurance and strength.
Mental Skills
Glow will be moved to the Eccentric group and replaced by a skill representing the player’s creativity and lateral thinking. Named, perhaps, just Creativity. Or something weirder like Firemaking, Magic, Eversion. Dunno. The rest will probably remain as they are. I might change the name and function of Tinkering and Erudition a little bit, but that’s that. I think they’re in a good spot.
Eccentric Skills
Glow will replace Palpitations , whose functions will be folded into Zeitgeistlich. I figured out while writing Noiseart that these last two pretty much do the same thing, except one has a much weirder name and description. Which obviously means it gets to stay. The Cool is fine, and will remain as is.
Rolls
I’m of two minds regarding rolls in Infimus. On one hand, I think roll checks can be a wonderful way to diversify playthroughs and reward the way a player chooses to build their character. On the other, it’s extra effort - you have to write both a failure and a success state, compared to simply having no roll. And Choicescript, as far as I know, doesn’t really have an easy way to do dice rolls, meaning I had to build this thing right here from scratch. Which isn’t the most maintainable or extendable code ever.
I’m still new to the language, maybe there’s a better way to do this. Nonetheless, the question is: are dice rolls worth keeping? Do they add something to the game, and if they do, is that something worth the effort? This of course depends on you , the player, so I’d like to ask you: what’s your opinion on dice rolls in this game?
Keep in mind, I will always provide the option to automatically pass or fail all skill checks, though that will be explicitly defined as a cheat code or something of the sort.
What’s your opinion on skill checks through rolls, in this game?
- Positive
- Neutral
- Negative
0 voters
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Happy holidays y’all. To keep you in the loop: I’ll be posting an update the day after tomorrow, then the next one is coming sometime early-mid January. The 8th or 15th, if all goes well. I’ll be busy until then.
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Infimus beta update #14: Fumble Most Foul
Something to tide you over. Infimus returns mid-January.
Play it here:
https://dashingdon.com/go/8686
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Saves are gone it seems.
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Every time, man. Sorry, that’s on me. Should be good now.
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Ngl kinda disappointed we can’t have a trench coat
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After spending my festivities writing ~20000 words in two weeks, we’re back. Business should resume as usual:
- Devlogs every Wednesday
- Major updates every first of the month
- Smaller ones every Saturday
Thanks y’all for sticking with this.
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adding it to the to-do list for the next update!
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Hell yeah baby!
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Infimus Devlog #13: Quickstart System
Quick one today, due to computer trouble I was not in a position to write in the last two days. My least favorite part of visual novels, IF games, and related is when you want to see what happens if you go down a particular route but have to replay one hour of things you’ve already seen, with little to no variation. To get around that, I’m developing what I’m calling the “quickstart system”.
It’s essentially the “level select” screen of your average arcade game.
Once you select your starting point, you’re asked to make all the choices that were made in the previous parts.
The hope is that will facilitate replaying the game and simply be a nice quality of life improvement.
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Does it continue?
soon! def got something for this week
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its 2 am here so not gonna do a proper announcement post, but I’ve updated the main branch on dashingdon!. contains a part where you can hang out (you can call it a date if you want) with Flower and also punch and/or get punched by a statue, the ability to return to the hall and wander which I wholeheartedly recommend, and other downtime activities. there’s been a TON of rewriting and rejiggering of earlier parts of the game, but more on that later. for now, enjoy
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Nice, I’ve discovered the game a few days ago and it’s been very interesting, some of the writing is a bit rough around the edges but it was still a cool read.