It took a bit longer but here it is: This one adds "Gongs". Gongs are mutations on your clone that improve your clone's abilities like improving the range you can squeeze out of warp-jumps, reducing information costs, improving possible melee weapon damage, etc.
Each Gong has a level that can be increased. Normally you increase a Gong's level by ingesting a "gong-larva" which you can buy at some clinics. Each type of gong-larva increases the level of a certain Gong. Some Gong larvae come pre-identified while other are unidentified and only reveal what they do once you ingest them. The Gongs on your clone, their level and what they do can be seen at your home in the Cryonary. You can get there by clicking on your portrait on the left side of the home UI.
To prevent the Player from permanently losing an improved clone when they cycle, each clone you inhabit will create what's called an "Imago" in the cryonary. When you change clones (either because you cycled or through other means) any clone you previously inhabited will be available at your cryonary as an Imago. You can change back to an Imago by buying "re-gen" at a clinic. This works in a similar way to "insurance credits" for ships.
See also the manual
I've also improved the whole "story" "charm" mechanic. Instead of a low possibility of giving a once-off small percentage decrease in topic costs they now mostly give a more significant flat reduction on topic costs for the NPC you use the story on. You can now also stack multiple "charms". The amount of charm (that is, the reduction in topic cost) diminishes by a random-ish amount each time you buy a topic. Stories should also be a bit easier to find.
Technical change list:
- Actor interface for Skills.
- Fix NPCs don't have Skills.
- Increased the chances of NPC having a StoryTopic.
- Warp-jumps now all auto-determine their speed from the distance of the jump (because else with increased warpRange Skill jumping futher with a lower-tier jump would be too slow).
- Insurance credit Item is now mainly orange to match ShipAdminPanel UI colors for lost Ships.
- Topics that the Player doesn't have enough vudu for now show their price in red.
- TaxiUI.showWait(...) now takes an optional Pane as parameter that can be displayed instead of the regular SleepUI (clock).
- Reduced some of the abuse the Player gets when a Fare gets angry (removed some swearing etc.).
- Traffic is no longer a SiteDataRoot now that it doesn't need to store topic-timeout data anymore (because Galaxy.npcData now is used for this).
- Rename ExtendedData, ExtendedDataCollection and ExtendedDataRoot to SiteData, SiteDataCollection and SiteDataRoot. SiteRecord.extendedData has also been renamed to SiteRecord.siteData. Similar for ZoneRecord.extendedData (now ZoneRecord.zoneData).
- Renamed all the XDABitArray, XDACommonFlags, etc. to SDABitArray, SDACommonFlags, etc. (for 'SDA' for 'SiteData' instead of 'XDA' for 'ExtendedData').
- NPC.addAttributeData(...) etc. have been removed because NPCAttributes (and everything else to do with NPCs) now store data as NPCData (normally on the Galaxy.npcData NPCDataStore).
- NPCAttribute.scoreModifier(...) and other methods like that now return an immutable ScoreModifier class that holds a mutliplicative modifier and an additive modifier.
- Story Items still cause charm or offense but now these have an amount that simply equals the reduction or increase in Topic costs on the NPC the story was used on. The amount can be reduced/increased by using more Stories and each time a Topic is bought from the NPC the amount of charm or offense is reduced by a random-ish amount. The charmed or offended state and amount now also generally stays on the NPC even after the Player leaves the NPC (e.g. by leaving the Site). See rule #0079 and Story.use(...).
- The likelihood of an NPC 'selling' Story Items is now greater.
- The 'intimidated' NPCAttribute and definition now have their own classs NAIntimidated and NADIntimidated.
- NAHostile removes 'charmed' and NAIntimidated removes both 'charmed' and 'offended'.
- New system for saving data for NPCs that is not attached to a Site but keeps an NPCDataCollection for each NPCDefinition.id and NPC name pair. Everything to do with storing data for NPCs (NADABirdiesUncle and topic-timeouts) has been ported to the new system. Fare has also been changed to use that system (its own NPCDataStore) for its own NPC data where necessary. The new system has separate data stores for data that must be available across session (saved in SaveFile) and data that is only available for the current session.
- NPCs can now indicate through storeDataInSave() whether their data is stored in the SaveFile data-store or the current-sesion-only data-store.
- Cryonary where the Player can change to previously inhabited clones (called 'imagos') by using 're-gen' available from Clinics.
- Skills (or 'Gongs') on Player clones that increase the Players abilities in all kind of aspects. From increasing ShipWeapon firing-arcs to making story-charms more effective. The Gongs can be bought from Clinics and upon consumption increases the level of a certain Skill on the Player. The Skills and their level can be viewed for each clone/imago in the Player's Home Cryonary. Skills on clones will restore together with the clone/imago when the Player uses 're-gen' on an imago.
- NPC.read(...) and NPC.write(...) don't read/write temporary NPCAttributes anymore because this conflicts with attributes that save NPCData and restore themselves. This in particular applies to PassengerItem (which used NPC.read/write) to store its NPC.
- All stuff to do with the old 'Skill' (e.g. BaseSkill, etc.) has been removed.
- ItemGroups are Items that are a set of Items and can be used when you want a set of Items to be picked from as if it was only one Item in an Item Index. So if the Item picked from an Item Index is an ItemGroup then it will use ItemGroup.pick(...) to pick the actual Item it is going to pick.
- HomeGarage now shows light squares where unoccupied Ships and mods are on the Ship and mod grids (just like HomeCloneStorage does). The selected Ship now also pulses a bit like the selected clone on the HomeCloneStorage clone/imago-grid.
Next up I'll patch-up the "Eldergrav" storyline (which I think might be broken). After that I'll probably move to version 0.9 and do a big round of bug fixing. After that I'm hoping to finally start adding more regular content (more planets, more creatures etc.) and flesh-out the galaxy a bit more.