Hello everyone! There is a bit of a heat wave going around here in Central Europe so I have been struggling, but time waits for no one.

This month, I've been working on a few more battle animations I mentioned last time, as well as a new character related to a storyline that requires a lot of sophisticated tinkering behind the scenes that you may not even be aware that the game is doing...

.. it gets a little complicated.

So let's just get right into it!

More funky flashy animations!

Last time I talked about improving the graphic fidelity of battles and today I bring you a few more GIFs to show!

A few animations for Wgt gain, featuring a few stereotypical food choices. I'm hoping to get a few more done by the time the update drops!

An animation for gaining Fit, look at that flex!

And finally, an animation for successfully blocking oncoming Wgt with Fit.

There is also an animation for "breaking Fit" - inflicting more Wgt than there is Fit, although you'll have to wait until the update to see that, as it might be a bit too saucy for Patreon ;)

These mark the first ever frame-by-frame hand-animated visuals in the game, so that's fun - everything else in the game is animated through simple tweening and distorting of static images. I don't particularly enjoy animating nor am I very good at it, but these were simple and short enough to the point where it was actually quite enjoyable.

Another new face!

We're not stopping after the character I revealed last month, here's one more guy, and a familiar one at that:

That's right, we're getting festive... [checks calendar]... 6 months early. Wow, they just keep pushing Christmas earlier and earlier, huh?

As the in-game calendar's closing in on December, it is finally time to bust out the Christmas storyline. Ah yes, Christmas... something of a gainer theme classic, thanks to a certain movie.

As you can see, it's not exactly a traditional portrayal of Santa. I had a lot of fun doing a more modern spin on the design, and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the results. What's his deal and what's his role in the story? Who knows!

Card of the Month!

Breaking convention and putting CotM not last: of course Santa over here comes with a slew of Christmas-themed cards! Here's one of them:

That should be a fun little effect that's sure to mix things up!

You can look forward to seeing this and more in the update!.. but to make this new storyline work, a new system needed to be put into place.

The secret machinations going on behind the scenes

CoG is pretty bold in its structure... in that it doesn't really have one. You can pretty much start any storyline and finish it at your own pace - it really is more of a sandbox with a bunch of various stories rather than a linear game with a cohesive storyline.

... the newest Experiment MQ breaks this convention

After you initiate it, it becomes both narratively and gameplay-wise the highest priority: an urgent problem that needs to be solved before anything else. It wouldn't really make sense for the main character to go running around doing sidequests when it could be their last time doing so. Now, you as the player can do that if you like to live on the edge (or are curious to see what happens), but...

... did you know the game actually prevents some events from triggering during that MQ? Specifically scenes in storylines involving the core minigames that involve a surprise fight - Ikem's workouts, the fishing spots - instead, it just plays the generic dialogue. Even that one Ferger scene that happens when you leave your room is disabled. This is because these are the only few fights can happen without a warning - all other fights, where the player usually knows the risk, can still trigger.

Another storyline with a similar schtick is the Pub MQ

Specifically the final part of it where Cedric gives you an actual specific timed deadline for when the next scene triggers: a week. The next scene then triggers on the morning of the deadline when you leave your room.

... but did you know there are ways you could "skip over" that deadline and break everything? Any scene that takes multiple days - that involves you staying the night over at another place (Ikem's, Arnold or Akello's storylines), or most importantly: any fight you lose, as it forces you to spend a few days at the hospital.

You probably didn't know that, because, actually, it can't happen. Similarly to the fight scenes, the game prevents you from running into those scenes if it overlaps with Cedric's deadline. Ikem's just plays the generic workout scene, Arnold's marker doesn't appear on the map to begin with, and Akello just tells you to try next week as "no one is there".

But what about losing fights? In that case, the game doesn't allow you to continue after losing, and just displays a RETRY screen after you lose the fight. This one's kind of a sassy little trick, because the game doesn't really explain the reason behind it. I wonder if anyone's ever run into that and thought the game just didn't have a losing branch for that particular fight?

Where is this going?

There are a ton of other little places in the game where it covertly doesn't allow you to start the next storyline or its next scene because of details like this.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because the upcoming Christmas storyline will require a similar trick, as it'll be the first storyline in the game that is date dependant. Not just that: similar to the Pub and Experiment MQ, it becomes "the main focus" for a period of time and needs to make sure no other important story is overlapping with it. This will require a more sophisticated evolved version of the deadline checks in the Pub MQ.

I remember when I first implemented Cedric's deadline for the Pub MQ - I even said in a development log that it felt so complicated I would likely never do anything like that ever again...

... and then of course I came back and took a gamble with the Experiment MQ, making it the first storyline in the game where you're pressed for time in a long-term sense. The result is far more interesting stakes and also a more cohesive and focused chunk of storytelling.

The problem with both of these "urgent timed storylines" is that it doesn't make sense for any other "urgent story" to jump in and happen in the middle of it. This wasn't an issue until now: all the MQs are sequential and only happen after the previous one is completed (and none of the side storylines involve "urgent problems"), but now that we're adding date-triggered events into the mix, things start to get really muddy.

Funnily enough though, the time urgency during the Experiment MQ is just an illusion: the game doesn't actually have a time limit once you ingest the concoction, as long as you keep your Wgt below the maximum, you can go on forever.

... in the current version that is. Because we will need a time limit.

I've realized while planning out the Christmas storyline that allowing a questline like this to go on forever would be unsustainable.

A race against time

Adding a time limit to the Experiment MQ will be the first time the game opens up to a potential hardlock, an actual inescapable game over. This isn't a problem in the Pub MQ with its deadline - it resolves the storyline regardless of whether you win or lose at the end. But here, it will just lead to an immediate game over - what if the player has no saves where there is enough time to finish in time?

There are games out there that are designed like this - where the player is expected to manage their save files in a smart enough manner to where they can't get stuck - but CoG hasn't set the precedent for this at all, it definitely warrants a heads-up of some kind.

What do you think about this direction with more time-constrained events in the game? Do you like the urgency they introduce? Or would you rather prefer more free and open storylines like the game currently has?

And that's the end!

I will be in the back tinkering with the secret machinations to make sure they're working as intended. And until that's done: thank you once again for reading and for supporting the project!