Wise-Woman's Dog update coming Sunday

Competitions IFComp
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I’m going to be uploading a new version to the IFComp website on Sunday (21 September) around 3:00 CST, which will break all existing saves and autosaves. So if you’ve already started playing, and won’t finish before Sunday, please keep the tab open and don’t reload it; otherwise you may lose your progress! If you haven’t already started playing, you may want to wait until Sunday evening to do it.

(What’s changing? Nothing huge—it’s just a bugfix release—but reviewers have pointed out various pain points that I’d like to smooth over now that we’re ⅓ through the judging period. Expect a few more hyperlinks in certain time-sensitive areas, to make sure you don’t need to hunt through menus for the proper link, and a bit more explicit guidance on your overall objectives in the city. A big thank you to all the reviewers who provided feedback so far!)

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The new version is live! If you download or play it online now, it should say version 1.02, serial 250921.

Updates:

  • The RECALL command will no longer produce nonsensical disambiguation messages
  • Additional hints to clarify what an ominous feeling or a pleasant feeling means and what effect it has on the game
  • Soldiers will not confiscate previously-confiscated items again until you leave the room and return
  • Special hyperlinks added in time-sensitive sequences to avoid spending precious turns looking for the right link
  • The goal of chapter 3 is now more explicitly called out in a certain item’s description, with a marker on the map until that item has been examined
  • Hints for two difficult puzzles now include explicit step-by-step solutions

Enjoy!

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I’d hoped to only do one update during this competition, but multiple reviewers have now expressed frustration with the same thing (the tutorial messages can’t be turned off, and an informative message when you read several footnotes in a row gets grating when it repeats), so I’ll be publishing one more update this coming Sunday, 28 September, at noon central time. This one will be minor: adding an option to turn off the tutorial messages, and making the footnote message disable itself after appearing twice.

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The update is live! You should now see version 1.03/250928.

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With any luck, there won’t be any more updates in the last 17 days of the competition, but if anyone’s autosaves got broken—or if you just want to play around and experiment after you’ve played your two hours—I left some debugging commands in, which can help you get back to where you were.

Debug commands

DEBUG - turns on debugging mode, enabling all the other commands
ACT2 - opens the front door of the house and lowers the ladder
ACT3 - completes all puzzles in the village
SUMMON [amulet] - gives you the silver or gold amulet
SUMMON [spell] - gives you any spell
SHEKELS [number] - gives you any amount of money
TEMPLEDOOR - opens both doors in the Temple of Tarhunt

I don’t recommend using these until after you’ve played through the game normally, because, well…they skip past all the puzzles and such. But if you lost your autosave, I figure it’s better to have these available than to start all over from the beginning.

3 Likes