Goldenflame Dragon has been, per usual, hard at work on The Dark Unknown over the last couple of weeks. But before we get into the new updates from that project, I want to call attention to something that I should have highlighted in the previous Dark Unknown update:

My goal, a few months ago, was have a playable demo by around Labor Day weekend, and I might actually be able to make that.

It would be nice to see a demo of the game with all of the changes Goldenflame has made to it over the last…what is it, now? It must be a couple of years, at least, if not a couple more than that, since the last demo release of this project.

Anyhow, when last we checked in with The Dark Unknown, Goldenflame had discovered that the new monster AI had caused a number of issues. However, it would seem that after a few days, he was able to get a handle on those:

Exciting day. For the first time, monsters in the dungeon approached to attack me, and after some debugging, actually attacked me. The game them promptly got caught in an infinite loop, but that’s beside the point. Still some big bugs, but some good progress too.

Indeed, by just before the end of August, monster AI was working again:

And there we have it. Monsters have AI- melee only, I’ll have to add in each special ability and such that they have, but… they’ll look for the player, aggro when the player comes within range, attack when adjacent, and go around each other when they get in each others’ way. The AI system exists, now it just needs to be expanded, much like I still need to code the higher level spells.

This means the rest of the weekend can be spend on the early game plot…and maybe, just maybe, there can be a demo some time soon.

Goldenflame then distracted himself with some NPC dialogue:

Made the mistake of starting the new dialogue with the jester, but hey, he has a riddle now. And a lot of references. I decided not to have him try to play the Game. Also implemented secret doors and found a sound effect for them.

Next, he turned his attention to one of the cities in the game:

Decorated the city of Nassau, which had been one of the first I’d made and so I didn’t have graphics for any furniture or fireplaces or what have you. Provided conversations for 4 NPCs in Nassau so far, and added some quest flags.

Oh, and also this:

Also- have scripted my first moral choice. There will be a karma meter- it will not be plot necessary to do anything either way on it, but it will exist. Various sidequests will modify your position on the meter, and right now I think having good karma will be an XP bonus.

Within the first few days of September, however, Goldenflame has made significant progress on implementing a complicated-sounding quest in The Dark Unknown:

Added “attacking a town” to things that cause a penalty on the karma meter. Seemed reasonable.

I’ve finished coding one of the more complicated quest bits that I have in the early game. Codewise, not really plotwise. To wit:

(1) Go to the nearby village of Nassau. Talk to Kyvek, who complains that the king owes him money but he can’t get in to see him. Offers you a share if you can pry it from the King’s fingers.

(2) Talk to the King. He laughs at Kyvek’s cleverness at using the king’s own child to get his request past the guards, and tells you to tell Trevor, downstairs, to fetch and give you the money.

(3) Go to Trevor. Trevor sits at a desk just outside the treasure room, which is behind a magically locked door. Talk to him, and he will get up, open the door, walk in, find the money, walk back out, relock the door, and give it to you. You have to Pass (or do whatever you like to pass the time) while this happens. Incidentally this brief span that the door is open is your only opportunity to get in and loot the treasure room, though you need to attack a guard to do it.

(4) When Trevor gets back to his seat, if you’re still in the room, he gives you a sealed box.

(5) Either return the box to Kyvek unopened (for a share) or (U)se it from your inventory to steal all of the money and take a karma hit. (This does have an “Are you sure?” style prompt.)

The quest has a number of steps, and I need to make sure that you can never get Trevor to hand you a second box even if you open the first one.

The code is all done. Almost certainly doesn’t work, but I don’t have time to test it tonight.

Of course, what is a quest without a setting?

To test the Kyvek quest, I needed everything in place, which meant making the treasure room. Which meant putting chests in it. Which meant writing up the loot tables for those chests. Which meant making the basic versions of object definitions for all of the available scrolls. So this was a tedious but productive evening. Squashed a few small bugs, too, around the names of some signs and (L)ooking at people you know.

And as of today, it would appear that work on the quest is complete:

Kyvek quest complete, with both possible endings. A few minor loot bugs squashed. Added reagents and quest items as categories for the inventory screen.

Now, Goldenflame wasn’t able to deliver a demo over the course of the Labour Day weekend, but he has certainly made excellent progress on getting the game ready to be shown off in the near future.