More polishing

Hello everyone,

Before going back to the posts about the brothel, I wanted to make this little post.

You'll have to forgive me but I can't help but spend time on stuff to improve tiny bits of the game even if I know this is going to make me late :/

What I want to show isn't really "tiny" but it's nowhere near as important as the brothel.

Basically it's a combination of two things: changing the icon system & removing the difficulty system.

I'll start with the difficulty. Back when I started TH2, it was clear in my mind. I wanted different difficulty levels so that everyone could enjoy the game the way they wanted. But I went far enough in the game to realize that the feature is not as necessary as I thought it would. And it's quite bothersome to implement the icons because you have to define a bunch of elements for each quest giver, depending on which difficulty level they're supposed to appear.

So I decided to get rid of the difficulty system. It was overcomplicated and not very necessary.

Along this change, Hime has been coding a script to make icons over heads to be "animated" (up-up-down-down). I asked for this because I wanted a sort of cohesion between all the interactive elements of the game. Forgive the look of the screens, they're mainly here for explanation purposes :x

Now, there are icons for everything important to interact with. They also have color/shapes, depending on the action itself. First you have the "basic actions" which are now in a red squared icon. There's "Look", "Talk", "Take" and "Move" (for the teleport points). Of course, they're all just interaction points, but I thought it would look more lively to have icons with the proper interaction (gives a bit of a point and click feeling to it.)

Of course, thanks to that, I removed the "blinking" elements for items to get/see. Everything has an icon and it makes everything much more coherent.

Then we have the green circled icons. Those are for scavenging. Inside each circle is the tool needed to scavenge it. Once again, it'll make things easier for you I think. Rather than checking each element to see if a "!" pops over Kaya's head. Even if you don't have the tool, the icon will appear (this should help you remember old spots to check again when you get a new tool.)

And lastly, we have the pink heart for H scenes. They'll be mainly used for optional scenes or quickies. If a quest leads to a H scene, then the character will have a "talk" icon instead (both to avoid spoil and also because it's more relevant as making the quest progress is technically the main point.)

Thanks to Hime's coding I can make icons as big as I want. So I've already prepared a huge "open" one for the brothel (so that people who don't read the tutorial stop wondering how to open the brothel :x) Of course, I might use it for other purposes in the future now that the feature is coded.

And lastly, I haven't forgotten people who don't like being held by the hand. Hime ALSO coded the possibility to hide all those icons. You'll be able to deactivate/activate them in the options :) That's a good alternative to the difficulty sytem to me.

This is extra time I took during the last days to implement all that (spent too much time on the icon look :x), but I think this was clearly worth it.

I'll see you next time for another post! o/

EDIT: There's a small thing I forgot to mention in the post. Kaya's "!" is STILL there. However, it will only appear in interactive elements that aren't very important (mainly background elements that are here just for the sake of it.) Conversations follow the same idea. You can still talk to NPCs who don't have an icon over their heads. The ones with icons are just important ones (mainly for quest related content.)