Last week, I reworked the way conversations work in GearHead Caramel. Originally, the conversation generator gathered conversation bits from every plot in which the NPC may be involved and arranged them into a conversation tree. Unfortunately, this means that certain dialogue paths might get hidden in the maze. For instance, if you wanted to ask Vikki to join your lance, sometimes it would take two or three conversations before the option would present itself.
Instead, now the conversation gets rebuilt at each dialogue exchange. Because of the dialogue construction rules not every offer can lead to every possible topic, but you should be able to get to any other conversation topic via “Could I ask you about something else?”. This seems to be working very well so far.
I’m hoping to make a new release soon. There’s a lot more stuff now than there was in the Tip’s Eve release, but I want to have a bit more randomization in the combat mission.
In related news, I’ve started commissioning artists to make portraits for GearHead Caramel. If you want to help me out with that you can support the game through itch.io or using the tip jar in the sidebar. GearHead is and will remain free, but it’ll get done much faster if I can afford some help.
2 comments
Oh, fancy Gearhead portraits. Who are you gonna commission? I really liked some of the “animeish” portraits of Gearhead 1 and 2, but because of various styles they clashed with other drawings. I’d really appreciate if we could get set of one style portraits, all of the same quality.
Author
I’ve been talking with Ladi (who did the anime style portraits in GH1 and GH2) and have contacted some other cartoonists I know who work in similar styles. I’m trying to maintain a more consistent look for GHC than either of the earlier GearHead games had.