DD#146 The Broken Veteran and The Unorthodox Father news - [Neolithic]To the End

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary!
This is a very productive week. You can see what I mean below.


First, we've reached the deepest part of the Maze underneath the Paddy Field. The owner of this house, the paddy field, and the secret maze beneath it appear as an old man in a wheelchair.

Let's say he is quite mentally unstable after the delivery of his packages failed for months.
He claims to know you. Is he talking about the truth of your main character's identity or is this just some gibberish is all up to your interpolation. Something for sure is, you will find the clues of his past.

Instead of spoiler what happened in his story, I will jump back to the reality of the real world for a bit to talk about some inspirations behind this story. War, war never changes. Even at his very moment, the war is still raging on in many parts of the world. In Ukraine, the heroes have been defending their nation and freedom for more than 620 days since last February. In Israel, an army is storming Gaza to avenge the victims who were brutally massacred by the Hamas terrorists on the day of Oct. 7th. Yet, wars are not Hollywood movies. Wars are cruel, especially in modern warfare with all those massive destructive weapons we humans invented to murder each other. Every day, soldiers die. Even more, wounded. In many cases those wounds are not just on their physical bodies, they may also damage minds. PTSD is the word to describe the symptoms of those soldiers. It's a coincidence that this update arrives on the day of Veterans Day in the US. But, well, I guess fate brought us here to release such content this week.

In our story, the war may have been over long ago. Yet, in the eyes of an old veteran, he may sometimes still see the jungles and monsters hidden in shadow. You can also find out the answers to what all those scarecrows are about.

This is the doll he calls "daughter."
Be kind to those who are broken because they served.

Now, for people who do not really care much about the story. The Maze also has a feature focusing on getting more material rewards. It's by all meaning a mini-game known as "Kayir's Key and Chests."
You can find many chests with good loot inside them all over this maze. However, you will need to follow the following rules to get your rewards:
In Kayir's room, you can find his key.
[Kayir's Key]It will disappear if you drop it.
[Kayir's Key]It cannot be stored in any containers.
[Kayir's Key]It will disappear after being used on a chest.
[Kayir's Key]The key will return to Kayir's room shortly after it's not held by anyone.
In the meantime, we have all those chests in the maze following the rules below:
[Kayir's chests]The chests on the 3rd floor have 2~3 spell books in each of them.
[Kayir's chests]The chests on the 2nd floor have a weapon of at least +2 quality.
[Kayir's chests]The chests on the 1st floor have a set of butterfly wings and a magic trinket item of at least +2 quality.
[Kayir's chests]Only Kayir's Key can open them.
[Kayir's chests] Their number is endless. They will refresh when you enter the floors again.
In a normal sense, you can only have one key at all times so you will need to plan your path carefully to get what you want.
Yet, can you find loopholes in those rules? maybe it by itself is a puzzle. Should you solve it, you may find those treasures are within your reach.


The second major part of this week is the continued expansion in the city of Samujier.
We now have a hospital and a cathedral.
In the hospital, you can find three nurses and two doctors.
Among those nurses, one provides direction, the 2nd provides medicines, and the 3rd teaches healing spells. (Including healing, mass healing, cleansing, and resurrection.)

As the Nise Federation is by itself a giant anomaly with a long history of struggling against all kinds of supernatural enemies to survive, it's only natural for them to teach healing spells in hospitals for all citizens to learn.

In the cathedral, when entering, you will hear the debate of a priest talking to Father Emilio about the spreading of a new heresy under "foreign influence."

It's just like in the Warhammer 40k universe the Cult Mechanicus consider the Emperor of Mankind to be an avatar of their Omnissiah. By interpolating Jesus Christ of Christianity as their ancient hero god-king, it certainly makes some diplomatic officers' lives easier. Unfortunately, many people on both sides consider this a heresy. For real-life references, it is something that truly happened in history when new religions slowly blended together. Technically speaking, it's also my intention to create Syncretism tenets like in Crusader King 3 to make your own customized faith system that allows benefiting from multiple religions, to bring more flexibility to the system.

Unfortunately, not everyone was happy with that, so the priest brought up the topic, arguing for immediate action to launch an inquisition, to purge such dangerous thoughts. To his surprise, his request was denied.

Such is the grand master of this cathedral you will meet.

After the priest angrily leaves, you can go in and talk to him.
He will ask you a question about the difference between humans and animals.
Based on your customized faith, and its tenets, you may have many options to answer.

He will react to your answer with different dialogs. Especially, if you talk about certain topics he is satisfied.

He will reward you differently, providing additional attribution points and devotion.
But, most of the answers will allow you to get a Strange Cross.

For players who have played this game since 19 years ago, you all know what this means.
Let's not spoil this to new players. :P

Meanwhile, I know many JOJO fans are already calling out the name of another Father.
It's quite true. It's no coincidence.

Maybe they are the same while just in different realities.

Or, maybe someone is calling out him as President Obama.
Well, his attack animation is like kicking a door if you know that meme.

Anyway, this is the new character we got this week.

As he has the "relationship card" in UI, you can expect that he will play a more important role in future stories.

In addition to those two major updates, we also get many small content updates and improvements:
Dr. Jackel now buys more types of corpse parts from you.
Many enemies have their faith set correctly now.
Your 3D modeling skills now affect the crafting results of many items.
And, we also get some new dark humor from China:

In Shanghai, I found a parking lot makes more money than 99% of the local population every month.
All their hard work at school and career means less even compared to a 2.5-meter by 5-meter concrete floor. Life is simply unfair. :)

Well, anyway, I hope you enjoy this week's update. I will probably finish all of Kayir's story in his maze next week if nothing big in real life kicks in. Cheers.


This week's full update log:
20231104
English
############Content################
[Maze Underneath the Paddy Field 3F] The entire area is accessible.
[Maze Underneath the Paddy Field 3F] You will finally meet Kayir.
[Kayir]The story continues when you meet him. (Even though this is a side quest. It has some connection with the main story. He will also talk about who the main character he thinks is. Some of your teammates also have their unique dialogs here.)
[Samujier Hospital]Added three nurses. One provides direction, the 2nd provides medicines, and the 3rd teaches healing spells. (Including healing, mass healing, cleansing, and resurrection.)
###########Debug##################
[Kayir's Brother]Fixed a bug in AI.
[Kayir's Brother]Fixed a bug that the combat system considers them human. (Sorry, they are no longer human. >_>)


20231105
English
############Content################
[Samujier Hospital]New character: Dr. Safe. (He can heal you. If you are a Nise citizen, it's free. Otherwise, he will charge a fee based on your level.)
[Dr. Safe]You can make fun of his name.
[Dr. Safe]You can ask him about his method of healing.
[Dr. Safe]You can ask him about his faith and he will give you a book.
[Item]Reduced the price of Plastic Explosives from 10000 to 4000.
[The Ancient Stone Bridge]Random cars may now park in the parking lots.
[The Ancient Stone Bridge]Added a recent real-life dark humor of a parking lot in China.


20231106
English
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[The House near the Paddy Field]New item: Kayir's Key
[Kayir's Key]It will disappear if you drop it.
[Kayir's Key]It cannot be stored in any containers.
[Kayir's Key]It will disappear after being used on a chest.
[Kayir's Key]The key will return to Kayir's room shortly after it's not held by anyone.
[The House near the Paddy Field]Added many Kayir's chests on all three floors.
[Kayir's chests]The chests on the 3rd floor have 2~3 spell books in each of them.
[Kayir's chests]The chests on the 2nd floor have a weapon of at least +2 quality.
[Kayir's chests]The chests on the 1st floor have a set of butterfly wings and a magic trinket item of at least +2 quality.
[Kayir's chests]Only Kayir's Key can open them.
[Kayir's chests] Their number is endless. They will refresh when you enter the floors again.
[Wki]Updated this secret side quest of a secret side quest to the game's wiki page[The House near the Paddy Field]Added a new document: Kayir's Note. (It tells how broken Kayir has become and the anomalous attributions of his key and chests.)
[Language]Changed the default fonts of Chinese languages to a Microsoft-Recommanded UI font.
############System#################
Added code support for all anomalous features of Kayir's Key.


20231107
English
############Content################
[The House near the Paddy Field]Added a scarecrow doll in Kayir's room.
[The House near the Paddy Field]When you try to interact with the doll, Kayir will reappear in the room.
[The House near the Paddy Field]Added a dead body on the 3rd floor. No story content to it yet. It's on my TODO list.
[Samujier]New location: Samujier Cathedral (Most parts are still inaccessible right now. Mostly because I want to put some stories here.)
[Butterfly]Once you've visited the Samujier Cathedral, you can teleport there.
[Enemy]The templar knight enemy at the end of Chapter 2, Illuminati path, now has his faith correctly set to Christianity.
[Enemy]The Templar Knight enemy also now has the sword slash attack animation.
[Faith]Added a very basic generic Samujier faith to the database for NPCs to use.
[Enemy]Kayir and his brothers now have the Samujier faith.
[Enemy]Meketaten after turning hostile on certain paths at the end of Chapter 2, her faith will turn into Nihilism.
[Enemy]Leien also has his faith set if you decide to attack him.
[Enemy]Anomalous "The Mirror" now also copies its victim's faith.
###########Debug##################
Fixed a bug that Kayir's Brother does not trigger the map callback functions correctly when they appear on a random map.

20231108
English
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[Character Customization]New playable male character variation: the Priest. (You can use this on your main character or customized teammates.)
[Crafting]The 3D modeling skills now matter when crafting the following items: Guan Dao, Mace, Sword, Business Suit, Doctor's Coat, FireAxe, Gas Mask, Illuminati Body Pillow, Old Detective's Magnifier, and Zombie Disguise Clothes.
[Crafting]Something special is, that 3D printing skills can also enhance their unique attributions.
[Samujier Supermarket]Added a 3D printer.
[The House near the Paddy Field]Added a 3D printer.
[Dr. Kyoryu's Research Station]Added a 3D printer.
[Samujier Hospital]Added a skeleton doctor.
[The Jackel's Nest]Dr. Jackel now also buys skulls.
[The Jackel's Nest]Dr. Jackel now buys corpses at their 100% value instead of 50%.


20231109
English
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[Bazaar]You can now choose to adopt sheep from Afaf, in addition to cats or dogs. (She still does background checks to see if you are a suitable owner.)
[Butcher]The game now tracks how many pets you sent to Zhao Sandao to be butchered.
[Bazaar]Afaf will no longer allow you to adopt any pets after you have sent at least one pet to be butchered.
[Wiki]Everything mentioned above has been updated to the game's wiki.
[The Jackel's Nest]Dr. Jackel now also buys "A Helping Hand."
[Faith]Changed how the game checks if faith is Christianity to be tag-based.
[Faith]Changed how the game checks if a faith is an Abrahamic Religion to be tag-based.
[Faith]New tenet: Samujier is Jesus. (Requires either Christianity religion or Samujier religion. It basically combines the benefits of both. It works just like syncretism tenets in Crusader King 3)
[Samujier Cathedral]The entire area is now accessible. There is a short story when you enter. It's a religious debate that will unlock "Samujier is Jesus" for you.
[Samujier Cathedral]Added a new BGM for the story content mentioned above.


20231110
English
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[Item]New Item: Strange Cross. (From more than 19 years ago. It's back again.)
[Samujier Cathedral]Added new story content with Father Emilio.
[Father Emilio]He will ask you a question. You can unlock different answers based on your faith tenets. He will react differently to your answers.
[Father Emilio]Special rewards to use "Seek for Heaven" answer. (Additional devotion and attribution points.)
[Father Emilio]Special rewards to use "The end day is coming" answer. (Additional devotion and attribution points.)
[Father Emilio]Most of the answers will reward you with the Strange Cross.
[Relationship]After you answer his question, Father Emilio will appear in your relationship list.
[Father Emilio]You answers will decide your intial relationship value to him.