Look who's talking now [Engineering build 0.3.3ap]

Well that was harder than I thought it would be.

LINK TO BUILD BECAUSE PATREON DOESN'T LET YOU POST BOTH AN IMAGE AND A LINK IN THE HEADER 

As it turns out, the dialogue system in SDT (which I have been aiming to maintain compatibility with) is a lot more complicated than I had previously thought. To be honest with you, before I started implementing the functionality to parse SDT dialogue files in Hyperdeep I really had no experience using it before, and when producing the previous update a few weeks ago I was mainly referencing the default dialogue file that comes with SDT and barely uses any of the available features.

So it came as rather a shock to find out that a) it didn't work properly, and b) when it did work, using a dialogue file longer than a few lines gave you enough time to program your own dick sucking game while it loaded so you wouldn't have to deal with me anymore.

"No worries" I thought "This should only take a day or so of troubleshooting to get fixed up. Better state a timeframe that nobody even asked for so that everyone can be disappointed when I inevitably miss it!"

So I hope you are all good and disappointed because I've done the update now and here it is. It didn't take "a day or so" and it wasn't "no worries" but that's behind me now. Doing the initial parse of the dialogue files still does take rather a while (seems to manage about 200 lines per second on my machine), but this is a lot better than it was and now the game only parses a dialogue file once you select it in the menu, so overall startup should no longer be affected. More crucially, the lag on actually displaying a dialogue bubble should be (I hope?) eliminated now.

Functionality-wise, the dialogue system should basically now support all the main features that SDT did, in particular: conditions and triggers. If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, you should frankly be relieved. But if you actually do want to know what I'm talking about then you should read this tutorial.

Do let me know if run into any bugs while trying out dialogue. As explained in the previous build post, not all dialogue capabilities correspond to things in the game yet, but if you think something should be working and it isn't, let me know (and please include the dialogue file you're using).

Visuals-wise, the bubbles still look a bit rough, so I'd like to address that soon. I think the idea of the bubbles is pretty cool but I'm also planning to add a simple text box mode as well for those wanting something a bit less flashy.

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In an out-of-left-field move, I also for some reason decided to jump into thinking about environments while working on this update. Check out the new "meadow" environment from the in-game menu! Is it particularly good? No. But the act of producing it gave me a lot to think about when it comes to how environments will be handled in general, and how the game can support you lot importing your own environments.

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Boo! Surprise! It's a meme image! HD-chan is doing the Jack-O challenge like all the other fictional thots! She has a harder time of it too because her being 3D precludes her warping spacetime to actually achieve the pose.

[Changelog]

Mechanics:

+ Dialogue system probably works now
+ Dialogue system loads much faster

Visuals:

+ Minor tweaks to post-processing effects

Customization:

+ New environment: Meadow