Devlog #1

Objectives:

My current objectives now are to expand and diversify the mechanics in the coding/task progression of the main gameplay loop itself. This is in order to better represent the back and forth of creating code for a game and make things a bit more interesting than just watching bars go up. Once this is all done I am going to be introduced text labels to better display the progress being made as well as the adjustments of minimum/maximum bar values as pertinent.

What's Done:

I have a new breakpoint system already largely functional, it just needs a few more parts in it as well as a dialogue introduction upon triggering and it will be complete.

Currently working on a bug system where each tick of the coding bar has an increasing chance to generate bugs dependent upon the differential value of the coding bar and the testing and efficiency bars. These bugs remain hidden until the testing bar is selected and will gradually reveal themselves according to their complexity.

The Work:

Problem- Going only for coding causes bug generation, on the first task especially, to explode exponentially.

Potential Fix- Placing cap on maximum bugs that can be generated in case of a player making the mistake of going all in on coding progression could limit them from completely destroying their own ability to complete the task.

Idea- Or... we could make the problem also the solution. I have an idea to include a 'Research' option at some point in this... could have those bugs get locked beyond a threshold that the player otherwise isn't able to reach with their testing progress after a certain point... we could have a Research section which expands the max values of these bars to broaden what they can do. Perhaps even use this to completely shake up what the game's main progression loop... explore this further later once the bug system is complete.

Adjustment- Removed the bug_compile function from the bug_checker to put it inside of another function, rename it bug_trigger, so that the effect of the bug is not revealed until the bug_finder function discovers the bug.

Problem- I want to have testing marks, as in specific values of the testing bar that have to be reached, which trigger the reveal of the bugs in question. However both adapting these to adjust with the current testing progress value and in respect to the previous 'marks' of the other bugs is troublesome as just appending them to a dict is going to just have a bunch of bugs reveal at the same mark location upon being generated by the coding progress...

Hypothesis- Maybe, creating a dict with two Arrays (one for storing the Strings of each bug's difficulty) with one of them storing the Test Thresholds that need to be matched or exceeded by the testing prog if we base the formation of whatever bug there is last in the entry for that calculation we can add that to it and make it adapative for an incremental integration.

Practice- Works almost to a T. Almost though because once the testing starts and then stops when going back to coding the jump between test threshold marks in the array is substantial...

Hypothesis 2- Perhaps the fix for this whole problem is simpler than I'm making it... maybe just have a second entry in the same dict which is a static int value which only modifies initially if there is no value present and once the trigger is activated the value adjusts with the current test progress and modifies according to the next string entry in the array within the dict...

Dilemma- I feel I need to test the loop further to determine how impactful this issue is before deciding on the next course of action for remedying this...

Problem and Dilemma- Despite all of this there, mechanically speaking, is nothing strictly preventing the player from just going 100% on the coding, ignoring testing until the completion check fails upon a breakpoint generating, running through all the breakpoints and calling it quits there... which maybe is an option worth leaving on the table but perhaps at the least this option should be noted in a dialogue bit and then presented with a 'Leave as Is' or 'Go back to fix' and the 'Leave as Is' option would have diminished emotional state boosts as well as boosting negative emotional traits. Worth revisiting once the system is complete.