Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.

As mentioned previously, I was hospitalized because of a new strain of COVID. It started with fevers, and half of the tests failed to detect it. It wasn't one week later, that the doctors finally got some conclusive results to prove it may be a new type of COVID. The good news is, I am an indie game developer with little to none social life even during the Lunar New Year. Otherwise, I'm not sure how many people I would have infected if I had run around before getting admitted to the hospital ward. The doctors originally planned to keep me there for 2 weeks because this new COVID-2024 is nothing like they had seen before. During the first 4 days in the hospital, I went through all kinds of tests they considered necessary. Of course, I also received the best medicine they could provide just to suppress the symptoms. However, a two-week-long vacation is simply not something suitable for me. There are still a lot of things to be added to the game. Thus, I came out of the hospital a bit earlier ignoring the warnings of the doctors right after all test results of COVID went back negative. Although, there are some symptoms still remain, such as fatigue and having some trouble breathing, I think I can work with that. Thus, the game's update was somewhat restored a few days ago. It may still take some time for me to fully recover. But, we are getting there. After the game's update back to full production, the restoration of anything additional such as the war support to Ukraine shall follow. It's the first time COVID ever caused any direct trouble to the game's update. May it be a mere footnote in our eternal evolution.

Of course, you are not here to just see me battling COVID behind the scenes. So, let's go down to what happened during this week's short updates.

The story of the Dark Elf King continues.
We now reached his Throne Room. It may still take some time to put an end to this. But, if you have previously collected the rings of his four knights. It may be a time to collect an ultimate reward for your effort.

It's another relic from 2004, re-purposed to be something for our current story.
But, there is no need to worry if you were not part of that old story 20 years ago. The whole story of the Dark Elf King will shed some light on what happened back then. It's an epic story as 20 years have passed in real life and the story develops in almost real-time.

An Army of Trees at Your Disposal

Thanks to Dagarond's suggestion on the forum. We can now bind trees to be our pets, too. That feels weird as it certainly takes some magical efforts to move those trees around as pets. Yet, it can be fun to see those trees stand there to tank enemy attacks. In most cases, they are likely quite harmless as the skills they can learn are quite limited. However, they, too can equip firearms and suddenly start to shoot your enemies or cast some devastating spells from nowhere. It will all depend on your creativity on how to best use them in your team. The supernatural world does not always need to make sense. Sometimes, it just makes meme materials. :P

New Procedurally Generated Quests in Queensmouth

A new type of procedurally generated quests has been added in Queensmouth. Basically, it requires you to snipe some named zombies. To provide a bit of unique feelings on each of those zombies, a name generator has also been added. The quest itself may come with different narratives. Such as a zombie becomes a threat to survivors so that survivors want you to hunt it down, or some survivors feel it's heartbroken to see their previous friends wandering around among the undead so that they ask you to put them out of their misery. Yet, the goal remains the same. It may provide additional activities for you in Queensmouth areas. It can also be used to improve your relationship with local survivors in addition to getting some extra money as a reward in each such type of mission.

Technical Rewrite on Customized Skills
I also took some time to rewrite some infrastructures of the code during this week to solve a problem. The problem is the game's structure is way too free from a data storage point of view. We have endless procedurally generated items. We now also can have endless customized skills as the spell fusion system kicks in. Thus, garbage collection is necessary to make sure the memory will not eventually explode. However, it provides unique challenges once again because of the level of freedom of the game. The question comes to how we do the garbage collection. We cannot just check if a skill is currently attached to a character in our database. Because we allow cross-save character exporting/importing in the mercenary system. We can also drop pets everywhere, especially in the pocket dimension. Thus, we cannot just go around to mark those skills to be removed just because currently nobody has them. Those skills may still be somewhere even in an external mercenary file. Consequently, a garbage collection system in the traditional sense cannot work. So, what can be a good solution? Here is one. What if I do it in the way of a database? What if skills or items can be garbage collected and destroyed, but, they have data that can restore them afterward? And that's the direction I took. We now have data to restore the skills attached to each character themselves. That way, we can now even transform customized skills through character export/import. For example, you can export a character in our mercenary system with customized skills from the spell fusion system. The characters will have code attached to them that knows how to generate those customized skills. After importing the character, the game system had no idea what those customized skills were. However, it will start to execute code on those characters that restore those skills. Consequently, we now have even more freedom in all our related systems. You can now have a full set of powerful customized characters with their customized skills imported as mercenaries to aid you in your journey.
Have fun! :)

Some other small changes include new craft recipes for Baseball Bats and Brass Knuckles, some reworks of zombie enemies in Queensmouth, and some bug fixes.

That's for this week. COVID-2024 cannot kill the updates. I just need to make more effort to overcome its symptoms.

One more thing: RPG MAKER XP is currently 100% off on Steam. It can serve as a map editor for our game. Our game fully supports map export/import with RPG MAKER XP. Thus, it may be a good idea to grab it. :)

This week's full update log:
20240214
English
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[Pet]You can now bind all those trees as your pets. (There are five types of them in total right now. Thanks for Dagarond's suggestion on the forum.)
[Tree]Added necessary art assets for them to be played as pets.
[The Sealed Palace]More areas in the Throne Room are now accessible.
[The Sealed Palace]Added a magic anvil to the left of the Throne Room.
[The Sealed Palace]Added a new BGM for the Throne Room.
[Spell Fusion]A character with fusion spells on them will no longer lose those spells when exported to a new save file. (It does not affect any fusion spells made before this version.)
[Spell Fusion]A dropped pet with fusion spells on it will no longer lose those spells when you leave them in your pocket dimension for a long time. (It does not affect any fusion spells made before this version.)
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[Customized Skill System]Some big systemic changes to ensure all our crazy features.
[Customized Skill System]Now each character has their skill-restoration code attached to them in case the rest of the world blows up, they can still restore their customized skills.
[Customized Skill System]Automatic garbage collection system for randomly generated skills is now on. Hopefully, nothing explodes.
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[Mercenary]Fixed a crash when importing mercenary characters from a file.
简体中文
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【宠物】你现在可以用封印术把那些树都变成宠物了。（目前一共有五种。感谢Dagarond在论坛上的建议）
【树】加入了让树变成宠物需要的美术资源。
【封印迷宫】王座之室更多的区域可以进入。
【封印迷宫】王座之室左侧加入了一个魔法铁砧。
【封印迷宫】王座之室加入了新的背景音乐。
【法术融合】带有融合法术的角色被输出/输入到一个新的存档后这些融合法术不会再消失。（不影响这个版本前制作的融合法术。）
【法术融合】带有融合法术的宠物不会再因为你把它们丢在你的口袋空间里几亿年不管而丧失融合的法术了。（不影响这个版本前制作的融合法术。）
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【自定义技能系统】一些大的系统改造，确保了对游戏中各种疯狂的系统的支持。
【自定义技能系统】自定义的角色技能现在会有额外的冗余代码直接粘在角色数据里。就算全世界悲剧了，他们也能恢复自己的自定义技能。
【自定义技能系统】自动垃圾回收机制现在对自定义技能系统开启。希望不会爆炸。
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【佣兵】修复了从文件导入佣兵时的一个崩溃。

20240215
English
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[Item]New Item: Armor of Ultimate Soul
[The Sealed Palace]If you have the 4 rings of the Dark Elf King's Knights, you can now unlock a chest that contains the Armor of Ultimate Soul.
[The Sealed Palace]Added 4 chests in the forge area of the Throne Room that contain elemental stones.
[Crafting]New Blueprint: Baseball Bat.
[Crafting]New Blueprint: Brass Knuckles.
[Loot]Random bandits, survivors, and business people may drop the blueprint of Baseball Bats.
[Loot]Random bandits may drop the blueprint of Brass Knuckles.
[Katan]The Weapon Merchant now also sells the blueprint of Brass Knuckles at a relatively higher price just in case you don't want to deal with all the RNGs.
[Queensmouth]Bob's Grocery now sell condoms.
简体中文
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【物品】新物品：终极灵力铠
【封印宫殿】如果你带着四界守护的戒指，你现在可以解锁那个有终极灵力铠的箱子。
【封印宫殿】在王座室左侧的熔炉区域加入了四个有元素石的宝箱。
【物品制造】新设计图：棒球棍
【物品制造】新设计图：指虎
【掉落物】随机的强盗、幸存者、打工人现在可能掉落棒球棍的设计图。
【掉落物】随机的强盗现在可能掉落棒球棍的设计图。
【卡坦】武器商人现在也会贩卖指虎的设计图，价格会略高。用于解决掉落物随机性的脸黑问题。
【王后镇】鲍勃的杂货店现在贩卖避孕套。

20240216
English
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[Skill]New Skill: Dark Wound. (To appear in the quest: The Legend of an Elf King)
[Enemy]The enemy group generating code of zombies is now managed in one function.
[Enemy]The enemy-generating code of zombies is now moved to data override to ensure everything is consistent.
[Random Name Generator]Added about 100 entries and made it possible to generate random characters' names in Queensmouth.
[Quest]New Procedurally Generated Quest: Return to Dust. (They will appear on the mission board of the Queensmouth Police Station, requiring you to eliminate certain zombie targets. You can use booby traps to finish the mission.)
[Wiki]Added a wiki page with more details of this quest: https://neolithia.fandom.com/wiki/Return_to_Dust_(Quest)
[Booby Traps]Added some other case checks to make sure booby traps count as kills in some procedurally generated quests.
[Return to Dust]Added 4 different quest narratives.
[Return to Dust]The targeted zombies shall now have their item drop list set accordingly.
[Return to Dust]Added 7 different locations where targets may appear.
[Queensmouth]Added the number of random quests each time the mission board in the police station generates.
简体中文
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【技能】新技能：黑暗之伤。（会在《黑暗精灵王传说》任务中出现。）
【敌人】僵尸队伍的敌人生成代码现在由一个函数统一管理。
【敌人】僵尸敌人的生成代码移动到数据重载的位置，确保数据一致性。
【随机名称生成器】加入了大约100条内容，并且可以用于生成王后镇的人名了。
【任务】新的随机生成任务：尘归尘，土归土。（在王后镇警局的随机任务板上出现。要求你去击杀特定的僵尸。你可以用诡雷完成任务。）
【维基】加入了一个维基页面来更详细地解释这个随机任务： https://neolithia.fandom.com/wiki/Return_to_Dust_(Quest)
【诡雷】加入了另外一些规则判断，确保诡雷在某些随机任务中的击杀可以被确认。
【尘归尘，土归土】加入了四种不同的任务描述。
【尘归尘，土归土】目标僵尸的掉落物清单现在会被正确设置。
【尘归尘，土归土】加入了七个可能出现目标的地点。
【王后镇】增加了警局随机任务公告板每次生成的随机任务数量。