1/22/2025 - PyNori v1.1.0

Hey again! Shirley here with another update, this time classified as minor instead of a bugfix. Don't worry, there won't be a situation with the version number this time, haha.

So, I don't know how it took me this long to realise, but the enemy pools for the first two areas were... VERY unfair, to put it lightly. There were tons of overpowered enemies for an area that's supposed to be a starting point... so I did some tweaking, and Kiku Village should be a lot more balanced now. I've even introduced a new enemy to the game, called "Bayet" (pronounced "bah-yeht"). They're about equal to Pessimistick in terms of power, so don't worry about dying to them over and over. They also come with a whopping 4 interaction options (the MOST an enemy has ever had in the game so far, others usually having either 2 or 3!)

That aside, there's another feature I forgot to announce that's been in the game since v1.0.2 I believe, which I did want to keep out until either v1.1.0 or v2. I suppose it's not so bad that I released it earlier than expected, but I'll stop beating around the bush now. This feature is... shop bans!

... it's as stupid as it sounds, yeah. Shop bans. You can get banned from shops now. This, like your stats, resets when you beat the game, so don't worry, this doesn't transcend timelines to serve as an ultimate punishment. That'd be stupid, especially given how important shops can be at times, but I digress. HOW do you get banned from shops? Well, that's a secret. You'll either have to goof off a bit or peek in the code like a party pooper if you want to know. But who would WANT to get banned from a shop? Not me, that's for sure, so... you might as well pretend this feature doesn't even exist.

THAT aside, this version does actually fix... two bugs, I believe. It may have fixed more, but I honestly can't remember (I'd have to check my personal dev log, which is far less formal and occasionally disorganised). The first being, "pronounBelonging" is now formatted properly when the flavour text requires it be capitalised. Yes, enemies DO have pronouns if you haven't noticed, and yes, I did go through the trouble of making them dynamically handled instead of just baking them into the flavour text. I love being a goofy goober, okay? Sorry, conservatives.

The second bugfix is that, in the final battle, when a "hit rank" message is triggered (there are hit ranks, yes, I'll get to that later), it should no longer get stuck even if the next attack is not within the range to trigger it again. So, say you deal 700 damage to the final boss, which is a "fatal hit", then you deal 27.3892434 damage, the game should no longer say 27.3892434 is a "fatal hit" even though it's not. But, I should probably explain what this hit rank stuff is all about.

Hit ranks were added before v1 even came out. It was one of those unplanned things I randomly came up with and, because it sounded cool, I implemented it. The hit ranks are as follows:

0: Miss (funny sawtooth sound)
1-19: Weak Hit (low beep)
20-99: Normal Hit (sound depends on which attack you're using, unless you're in the final battle where it's "hard"coded)
100-199 (or at least half of the enemy's Max HP): Critical Hit ("pew!" sound)
200-299: Super Hit (high pitched ding at F#)
300-399: Ultra Hit (high pitched ding at G# or A (I can't tell because it's so high pitched lol))
400-499: Brutal Hit (high pitched ding at... I don't even know)
500+ (or at least all of the enemy's Max HP): Fatal Hit (super high pitched ding)

The fix was, I literally just had to round the damage behind the scenes. I don't know how I didn't think of that. ChatGPT of all things suggested this to me. When I'm too dumb to function, ChatGPT has my back, I guess. I don't use it for literally everything unlike some people, so don't you dare start complaining. I only use it as a last resort when I'm completely stumped as to how to implement or fix something, because guess what? I'm NOT the goddess of Python. Wow, who could have guessed? Surely that explains why there have been so many bugfix updates lately, 2 of them being because I'm sometimes extremely slow, but I digress (again).

Anyway, that'll wrap up this devlog. See you next time for v1.1.1 or v1.2.0!