No Update for October 2023 (Patreon)

We're sorry to say that the update we hoped to push out, a dialogue system that was less buggy and more standardized by integrating Ink, has taken a bit more rejiggering than we had hopped. Ideally when this process is finished, the Ink development kit, which is a tool for creating visual novel style dialogue systems among other things, will enable us to make more complex dialogue faster than before, but it's going to take us a hot minute.

I asked Addyfo to break down for everyone a list of the reasons why we're switching and the benefits!

• Workflow - Ink dialogue files are written using a purpose built text editor made specifically for editing dialogue files. This editor has the basic expected text editing features along with error checking for gotos and labels (called knots and diverts) as well as the ability to run a stripped down version of the dialogue file within the editor to check dialogue flow. This allows writers to test their dialogue for bugs without having to incorporate it into the project. I'd estimate more than half of our dialogue related bugs are in one way or another tied to failed goto calls, so this would be incredibly useful to have.
• Compatibilityompatability - Many of the features available with the current dialogue parser system have direct analogs with systems within Ink. Converting from one to the other will take time, but there should be no feature loss when swapping systems.
• Extra Features - Ink has a lot of great features specifically designed to be used in visual novel style games. Extra dialogue flow options and the ability to call functions directly from dialogue are the main ones, but there are a lot of fun things that can be found in the Ink API for both writers and coders.
• Modability - Ink files have a standardized API and a text editor that can be ran independently without a copy of Unity, which will make it easier for users to mod the game by taking advantage of the above benefits.

We're sorry for the delay, and hope to have it out early in the coming month, as always though, thank you so much for your support and your patience!

Sincerely

~Hetros, Team Lead for Chivalric Games