#ddwcaph previews

[ddwcaph-game]

MC's Dad

Whoops, the preview about MC's Dad took me a while longer, because I just added 16 new trinkets to the game!

"How can I get the new trinkets?" you may ask. Well, check out the new backstory details about MC's Dad below:

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Note: These scenes are all in the prologue, when MC is writing their short story. Variables and flavor text are set to my testing defaults, with MC having [Draconic Ancestry].

Now that you know MC's Dad is an anthropologist, surely he must have some souvenirs from his trips, right? Well, that's where the new exclusive trinkets come in!

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The last souvenir trinket has an extra-powerful bonus effect, so that's why I'm locking it for NewGame+.

Anyway, the above scene previously showed a different choice, so I moved that to the scene after MC wakes up in their new home:

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And yup, MC's Dad is the reason why MC likes collecting trinkets!

I've updated the prologue with new information about MC's Dad a couple times already, but this is probably going to be the last one. The prologue has always been unclear about how much the twins remember about their dad, but this should help clear that up.

As for the new trinkets... you might remember from the earliest versions of the story that the locket actually gave different bonuses according to the gem you selected. I removed it since I didn't want to tie MC's favorite color to the bonuses, but this was the perfect choice to bring that back.

I love designing RPG items, if you can't tell. 😛 I had loads of treasure items and trinket ideas with their own special effects when I was younger! 😄 But yes, the new souvenir trinkets will be a lot more powerful than the trinkets you can currently find, and I tried to make sure the new effects are thematic, with a certain playstyle in mind.

This is a bit long already, so I'll show the new trinket effects in a later preview!

[ddwcaph-game]

💎 New Souvenir Trinkets

As promised, here are the effects of the new souvenir trinkets! Here's the last preview if you missed what the new trinkets are for.

Porcelain Figurine: +20% Resistance to All Stat Penalties

Ankh Keychain: +33% Healing Received, Cleanses negative effects of 🖤 [Healing Sickness] from triggering 🛡️ [Plot Armor]

Shield Knot Emblem: +20% Damage Resistance, +20% Chance to reduce damage taken to 1

Golden Apple Magnet: +10% to ALL Relationship Gains and Losses

Postcard Collection: 25% of setting-specific bonuses apply to all non-homeworld settings

Antique Toy Biplane: +1000% Exploration EXP

Kaiun Omamori: 33% Chance to succeed failed stat checks; reduce chance by 1% when it activates (until 5% chance)

Vintage Handkerchief: 💯 [Perfect Health] Bonus also grants +10% All Stats

Dream Catcher: Cleanses 🌞/🦉[Sleepyhead] Status Effect, Doubles effects and extends duration of 🔋 [Well-Rested] bonuses

Wooden Ceremonial Dagger: Gain Bonus EXP when taking damage and failing stat checks, Temporarily gain +2% EXP Bonus for each negative status effect

T-Rex Tooth Replica: +50% Intimidation

Resin Bookmarks: Increase EXP Gain from Codex Discoveries by 5% for each Codex Discovery

Yin-Yang Signet: +10% to All Stats and balances all attributes

Gebo Rune Talisman: +30% Main Attribute, -10% All Other Stats

Spiral Conch Shell: Grants 👀 [Enhanced Senses], Converts Grace Penalty from 💦 [Soaked] Status Effect to Grace Bonus (Only available if your Ancestry/Heritage Trait doesn't grant Enhanced Senses)

Alexandrite Bracelet: +25% Maximum Locket Power (NewGame+ only)

As always, these are subject to change, especially because I have no idea how powerful most of these will be. But since they are supposed to be extra-powerful, I've made it so that the [Goblin Ancestry] bonus doesn't affect the souvenir trinkets.

So what souvenir will you be picking for your MC?

[ddwcaph-game]

Okay, so here's the second update preview! This is the bike ride scene in Chapter 3 that I accidentally made unselectable. 😅

Unfortunately I have to take a screenshot of the code instead of the in-game text, but you can probably see why I have to do it this way. I took out most of the stats code so it's hopefully easier to understand, but here's a quick guide:

Anything that's bluish-purple is mostly variable text, the "house" variable corresponds to your background trait (Middle Class = 1, Country Child = 2, and Impoverished = 3), and "wordy" is the variable that changes MC's precocious/naive vocabulary.

If this is too much, don't worry, the next preview about MC's Dad will have in-game text instead!

[ddwcaph-game]

Alright, since the majority wants to see more miscellaneous update posts, here's an updated description of Mary in Chapter 4 to start us off!

Her waist-length wavy hair is dyed in a bright blue and turquoise ombré, perfectly framing her hourglass figure that you really only see in Uncle Robert's magazines... and her height of roughly two preschool-Waynes tall—a full nine inches taller than Kuya/Ate Paddy's six feet. As Wayne likes to say, she's not tall, she's a venti, hehe.

So yup, I finally decided how tall Mary is. I promise there's a reason for why there's such a big height difference between them. 😅

I've got a bunch more choice/scene previews in the hopper, so I'll start a new tag so you'll be able to view them all easily later.

[ddwcaph-game]

Hello everyone!

As I mentioned earlier, I'll be sharing more information about the new EXP/NP mechanic! Hopefully this should tide you all over while you wait for the next update. 😊

What's the new mechanic about?

Before I begin, let me preface this by saying that I plan to keep DDWCaPH! character-focused and NOT a stats-focused game. In fact, I've designed the new mechanics to be as simple and as unobtrusive to the story as possible, with the side effect of making some of the current traits/souvenirs with overloaded effects simpler.

The old EXP System

Alright, so the EXP system has always been kind of an afterthought (since leveling up from 12 to 13 takes very long). It feels like gaining EXP has no point at all, especially when you get more bonuses from acquiring traits and discovering trinkets.

With the introduction of NP, I tried to solve this by increasing your Max NP whenever you earn a certain amount of EXP. I still wasn't satisfied, but now that there's an NP mechanic, I was finally able to think of a solution to that, along with another problem I had: How do I introduce the special interactions from Ancestry/Heritage Traits without being too jarring? It would be weird if Dragon MC can suddenly just fly, and it would also be weird if they always knew they could.

I didn't go with a traditional leveling up system at first, since I wanted to keep the age = level thing, until I realized that it doesn't have to be MC leveling up, it could be the locket instead!

Introducing: Locket Upgrades!

Starting the next update, earning EXP will now level up your locket! Leveling up increases your Max NP, and gives you 1 Locket Upgrade point to spend.

Since I don't want it to be distracting, you can only spend the upgrade points at the end of every chapter. I'm also including a chapter summary in the next update (instead of just the end-of-playthrough summary), so that felt like a natural, non-disruptive place to put the Locket Upgrade menu. I might change it so that you can upgrade whenever in the VN version, but that's how it'll be for now.

What kind of upgrades can I get?

The Locket Upgrades are divided into 4 categories:

Stat Upgrades

Narrativium Upgrades

Relationship Upgrades

Special Upgrades

Here's a preview of what the upgrade menu looks like:

Most upgrades can be upgraded up to ten times. So if something says +2%, the maximum would be +20%. However, to encourage spreading out your points and not just dump all of them into Knowledge, the upgrades will have level restrictions.

The 2nd upgrade is unlocked at Level 5, the 3rd upgrade at Level 10, while the 10th upgrade is unlocked at Level 100. This will most likely change, but you'll be able to reach Level 20 at around 90,000 EXP, while Level 100 can be reached around 1,300,000 EXP (the original EXP required to level up from 12 to 13).

The first four stat upgrades (the Rubescent ones) will have a different name according to your locket's gem, and your locket shape will determine whether you get Heartful Innocence or Starful Sophistication (I'm only showing both for demo purposes).

I didn't want it to be overwhelming, so some of the upgrades are locked until you finish certain chapters, when they become relevant.

I tried to add a variety of upgrades for each playstyle, so even if you don't spend any NP, you can still benefit from the upgrades.

Special Upgrades

The Special Upgrades category is way too long to show here, so here's a list of all the upgrades instead. All of the genre-exclusive upgrades are only unlocked once you finish Volume 1 (you get upgrades for both your favorite genres), but most of them are one-time upgrades (that cost 5 upgrade points to unlock).

Here's where you unlock the special interactions. I've always planned Fairytale MC to be able to talk to animals, but now I can avoid the "jarring" problem: now you need to unlock "Aesop's Wisdom" to be able to do so. This also has the bonus of making the progression feel more "earned", rather than MC being able to automatically talk to animals just because you picked Fairytales as your fave genre.

Some of the special upgrades are just stat bonuses, but that allows me more freedom to spread out the effects of the more complicated traits/trinkets. Most souvenirs now have less/weaker effects at the beginning (which helps avoid the problem of overwhelming the reader during the prologue), but you will be able to upgrade them later to be much more powerful. This delayed upgrade means I can add more fun effects to the souvenirs without worrying about "this is way too powerful for the first chapter".

The upgraded Ancestry traits (the "+" versions) that you get when you choose fantasy are now called Legacy Traits, and is now locked behind the "Daddy's Legacy" upgrade. Meanwhile, all sources of Enhanced Senses are now temporary. Enhanced Senses was way too polarizing (you also had no idea which traits grant it), so now everyone has the option to unlock it permanently after Volume 1.

Closing Thoughts

I've always loved coming up with game mechanics ever since I was very little, which is how the idea of MC pretending to be in an RPG came to be. I'm not spoiling what the other upgrades do for now, but I guess you can always peek at the code later. I did have a lot of fun brainstorming the upgrade effects and the upgrade names. You can tell I got some of them from TV Tropes.😄

That said, I hope this makes you more excited for the next update! Most of this has been coded already (minus the parts you can't unlock yet), so you don't need to worry about that. I really think tying the story and game mechanics this way will make the overall game experience much better.

Let me know what you guys think! I'd also love to know what kind of upgrades you'd want to focus on (or if you have any speculations about what effects the other upgrades do)!