It's that time AGAIN, holy frijole!

Ok, this week was a 2-pronged attack on BUGS and REWORKING THE SHOP.

So... there's not a lot of new visuals to see, but everything works a lot better and there is more functionality in the game code itself. It's not flashy, but.... it's gotta be done, baby!

Anyway, check out the frickin' shop!

THE SHOP

That's right... she has a NAME now!

Yeah, so... I decided to name the Shopkeeper and actually give her some lines of dialogue that update as you go through the game. At times, she'll give you hints about how to prepare for the challenges ahead, so you should definitely listen to her!

Also, whenever I post her on bluesky, everyone says "I love her GAY sweater", but it has a zipper! It's a JACKET. I have truly failed in my mission...

Anyway.

Actually... Muscles seems like a Jorts kinda gal... perhaps she SHOULD be able to equip them....

So yeah, it all seems to be working just fine! There are no sound effects yet, but I'll deal with that later. But... those of you with a keen eye might be noticing something missing...

THE STEAL COMMAND

Lord knows, I have spent TIME trying to come up with a good way to implement stealing into the shop menu, but I just haven't figured out anything FUN to do with it, yet. So, for now, I'm axing it, as a concept. Get outta here!

Maybe it'll return in the future... but no guarantees. My feelings at the moment are.... it's not really that necessary or relevant to the vibe of the game, so I'm not losing any sleep over not including it.

OTHER STUFF

I'm going to see an orchestra perform music from Stardew Valley this weekend, so that's gonna be PRETTY SICK. That also means... I'm not gonna be able to get a lot of work done.

...that's just how it is, I suppose. But, I got a hotel room with a pool and isn't that what matters?

Also it snowed like crazy AGAIN here... I can't park anywhere and my neighbors all put cones and chairs and trash out in the street to "reserve their spot" and it drives me crazy. It's NOT YOUR SPOT! But... I guess it isn't that big of a deal. Oh well! The walking a few blocks to-and-from my car will do me good.

I continue to play Miku picross like a man possessed. I can't think of the last time I put more than 10 hours into a video game, but we're coming up on FIFTY on this bad boy. Number in boxes? That's the good stuff, lemme tell ya.

I finally found some motivation on my Japanese studying too. I've fallen off pretty hard recently and, while I've been enjoying reading manga or playing games in Japanese, I haven't really done any REAL studying. My homie Frex has been studying really hard, though... and it's been very inspiring. She streams and draws, so definitely follow her on bsky and twitch. Anyway, I've been walking around my office and doing Bunpro grammar lessons and reviews and I'm already feeling the progress! It turns out that consistency and hard work actually occasionally produce results! Who'd'a thought?

I'm getting a lil nervous about my trip to California in two weeks. I'm not nervous about flying, but getting the staff to accept my guitar as a carry-on sounds like it might be a pain, even though I think they legally must allow it. Did I mention I was playing a ZAKU show in San Francisco? If you're in the area, please come out and hang out!! We're playing Thursday, March 12th at DNA Lounge! TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW!

Ok, ok, enjoy some git commits:

GIT COMMIT CENTRAL

* PRE SHOP REWORKING*

Added more dialogue and a "NARRATION" dialogue type (for Gisele's email), fixed bug where items did not disappear from the item menu when being used, removed some useless code from the select_floor_prompt, after accessing network terminal for the first time the tutorial no longer displays
Started reworking the shop menu. fixed a bug in the status screen where certain stat labels would not appear, changed the fade in and out speed when warping to be a little slower, added an optional argument to the scene switcher to allow passing in arguments when areas or scenes are loaded
Added shop dialogue, changed firecracker to sellable, added portrait and voice for Grel, reworked the shop from the ground up, fixed a bug where you could exit the mall side path to the east, moved dialogue portraits and names to layer 105, added functionality to the CharacterResource get_stats() function, where you can now pass in an item and you will receive the stats as though that item was equipped, save stations now cause the action icon to display, cleaned up dialogue manager a little bit, added get_sellable_inventory() function to playerglobals

TIL NEXT TIME

Alright! Sorry for taking so long to get this week's post out! Next week's post might be a little slim on account of me taking a trip, but ain't that just the way. Thank you so much for your continued support and I WILL do my best to release this game some time before the heat death of the universe. I PROMISE.

OK BYE BYE BYE