Version 0.016 and last bits of maintenance (Patreon)

It's not ready just yet!  So don't get too excited.

I have implemented and tested Pêl-O Sugn, which means I have a version ready.  However, as I mentioned in the last weekly update, there are a bunch of other little things that I also want to get done for this release.

Of the three outstanding charms, one has been implemented and tested.  There are two remaining charms.

The first is related to The Portly Gentleman's payouts.  I've been going back over the NPCs and tweaking their code to fit a common template.  The Portly Gentleman and The Madam are both on the list to be done, and I'll likely implement the charm related to his payouts at the same time.

The second charm allows players to spot the lamias, arachnes and such as they are introduced rather than being surprise-snek'ed in the room.  This means going back to their scenarios and adding little chunks of text here and there.

These are not the only required changes.  I've held off tweaking old harlot scenarios as I've added new charms, ailments, player stats, etc.  Charms are the last major thing to affect harlots, so this is a good time to go through the existing harlots and make a few tweaks here and there.

The protective charms are an interesting one.  Originally, I was going to tier the harlots something like this:

Easy: Only Bad Ends the player if they have a low value in the relevant stat.
Medium: Bad Ends the player unless they have a high value in the relevant stat.
Hard: Bad Ends the player unless they've picked up the relevant protective charm.

I haven't yet added 'Hard' harlots, but I have a few ideas on the way.  It has made me think about how the protective charms interact with Easy and Medium harlots.  It probably doesn't make sense for a player with a protective charm to survive the 'hard' version of an ability and then die to the 'weak' version because their stat in Constitution is too low.

This only affects a few harlots, but I want to go through and make sure there aren't any 'Huh?' moments where mechanics interact in a way that seems counter-intuitive.

The other reason to go through is because I made a few tweaks to the testing framework and need to test a few harlots just to make sure I didn't make any typos  (always test your changes, no matter how minor!).

These are all minor things.  Everything is compartmentalised and the testing framework is setup to be able to test each scenario individually.

The Charms release was originally planned to be spread over two months, but I've made more progress than I was expecting and might be able to get close to everything done in one month.

I have a couple of days before the end of the month, so I'm going to use them to knock as many of the maintenance tasks off the list as possible.  If it ends up being a little more complex than I anticipated, I already have a release version ready to fall back on I can put out, with the maintenance then being pushed to the next release.

What this means is that you'll be getting version 0.016 on Saturday/Sunday, and what version it is will depend on how many other little things I can get implemented and tested before then.