The Ditty of Carmeana
Summer Sale - The Biggest Sale of the Ditty of Carmeana Ever
Fix for a crash when talking to Tabitha
Thanks to the user who submitted a crash report, a little thing any one of you can do to help improve others' Ditty of Carmeana experience.
Other fixes: A couple typo corrections (less than usual), a note advising people who equip things using Tabitha's Inventory App that they can use the Equipment menu instead (that nobody will heed), and a couple tweaks to Gozamata.
Another minor update to add more hand-holding
And another barrage of typo fixes.
Crash fixes, and a new setting for streamers
Plus, a new setting useful to people streaming the game. And the usual barrage of typo fixes.
Crash Fixes
Now, I want to emphasize something. One of the crashes occurs only if you missed something very, very obvious, and you got that crash, you should be a ashamed of yourself.
The other crash was sporadic, and only happens in rare cases when you're in the library. Probably you didn't see this, and if you did you restarted you weren't able to reproduce it since it's sporadic and rare.
New Setting for Streamers
Another thing I added was a setting to reserve the bottom-left or bottom-right corner of the screen to put your webcam and/or animated avatar in. The caption box will be moved out of the way, thus benevolently allowing (or cruelly forcing) people watching the video to read the full captions.
A New Major Sidequest and Other Major Changes
Murder Mystery Side Quest
A murder has taken place at the library. A member of the library staff has been found dead, having fallen from the library's roof under highly suspicious circumstances. For some reason, the person they want to solve this mystery is you, who is in the middle of a highly urgent quest to Rescue the Princess™. She's only the crown princess and heir apparent, and the last thing standing between peace and a succession crisis. But no big deal, she can wait. You have time to solve a murder on the side.
But the mystery deepens as murders continue to pile up, all on account of a rare and mysterious book, and you're in the middle of it all.
And if you think that sounds suspiciously like the plot of The Name of the Rose, well, uh you got me. This is an homage to that book.
The quest is quite long and there's an awful lot of dialogue to read, so it may not be the thing for all players. Also, the quest will involve navigating with a map, and you do actually have to navigate. You get no other help and will get lost if you aren't careful. But successfully solving the quest will get you a highly cathartic reward.
The Murder Mystery Side Quest will appear in any saved games retroactively. You don't have to start a new game to play it.
Other Changes
In addition to the new Murder Mystery Side Quest, there are many other improvements, clarifications, bug fixes, and typo corrections.
- Huge fix so that the game now recognizes so-called Xbox Gamepads (many or most of which aren't actual Xbox gamepads, but are treated by the operating system as if they were).
- There is now an app that lets you keep track of your Main Quest and all your Side Quests. You have to buy it, though. You don't just get it.
- Some of the items in some treasure chests have changed. In the original game, there is a (let us call it) joke item that seems useful, but is actually extremely, maliciously evil. Later on, there is a similar item that is actually useful. This update expands the number of treasure chests these two items might appear in, and thus gives players more opportunity to acquire the useful item earlier in the game. (You still have have to look around and explore a bit to find them, though. They are not just an automatic thing you will get on the main quest.)
- The changing rooms in Regal Amory and Outfitters are now open, so you can go in and try armor on. That's just a nice little touch, really. There certainly isn't any larger benefit to you in this game just by being able to try on some armor.
- All buildings in the Town of Brobensy can now be entered.
- A couple new achievements. One for solving the Murder Mystery Side Quest, another one for figuring out how to use a late-game item that otherwise seemed to have no use.
- Lot of new signs.
- A completely and utterly useless rugby pitch on the overworld. There's not a rugby match there in this game, no one goes there, nothing happens there, and it's not at all properly marked or sized. There is literally no reason to have a rugby pitch in the overworld. But by golly I put one in, because I go hard.
- It's not super easy to find, and it's not readily apparent what it is, but you can now obtain an item that can help you get one of the game's more difficult achievements.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy. I had a lot of fun making it, since I have the game machinery well oiled and it's pretty easy to add new features, even when they need a game engine update (which quite a few new features did).
Ditty News
For those who can't countenance Doge Boy, I have added a new social media site on Blue Sky. I'll be posting most non-update news about The Ditty of Carmeana to both Blue Sky and Twitter X. (I also have a Facebook page but I rarely update or visit it because, come on.)
Update on "Update on new content update"
Well, it's the end of February, and I am done with the content of the update (with one annoying exception, long story), but I made so many changes to game engine to implement some of the new content, that the game needs a thorough test run or two before I can release the changes. That'll take a little more time, a week or three. But it is still coming soon.
The need for game engine changes was the major delay, along with my fatal flaw of going on tangents. I had thought the update was pretty mild in terms of features, but it turns out one area that had some topological irregularities needed a lot more updates to the engine than I anticipated.
But, it's (almost) all in now.
Anyway, to hold you over, here are a few outtakes of things what will be in the update.
- More opportunities to get a (useful) speedup earlier in the game. Probably my biggest regret is that it took most people too long to get the useful speedup, amusing as the non-useful speedup was.
- Many locked doors are now unlocked, especially in Brobensy. Other doors are still locked but the game explains them better.
- There is now a way to keep track of your quests and side quests.
- There is now a rugby pitch on the overworld. A rugby match is mentioned in the dialogue of one of the new side quests, but there was no reason to actually add the rugby pitch to the world, and yet I put one in.
Update on new content update
Long story short, I've been developing this new content under the George R. R. Martin model of game development. Instead of sticking to the relatively small scope of the content, I went off on all kinds of tangents fixing hardly noticeable issues and adding new features that had little to do with the actual side quest. (As an example, I needed to add a new item you have to purchase as part of the side quest. I could have just added this item to an existing shop, or made a new shop in an existing location. Instead, I decided to create the interior of a whole building. Then I added a bunch of other stuff to the building to fill it out.)
As with George R. R. Martin, the feature creep has caused the schedule to slip a little bit. Unlike George R. R. Martin, I am actually going to finish the thing.
The Ditty of Carmeana on sale for the Holiday, plus new content coming!
Ditty of Carmeana is the perfect holiday gift for your friends because, let's face it, you don't know what to get them and you hate shopping. Keep things simple and give them the gift of Carmeana!
Especially now that it's on Sale for the Steam Winter Sale.
And really especially because an update with a major sidequest is coming!
Update on Update
I am trying to get it done by the New Year. It's, well it's coming along but I kind of got distracted on something. There is a thing in the game that is not done, and not something that has a Future* DLC sign on it. I had kind of overlooked it and only realized it was still unimplemented about two days before the release date, I was frazzled at that point and was like, ah, it's a minor feature, I'll just implement it first release. And here, nearly three years after the release I'm finally getting to it.
That has nothing to with the promised content, except that the update will be a few days or so later than it would have been. The actual DLC update is coming along just fine, it's pretty complex though. You can see a sneak preview of the setting if you head to Tivany Hall in Brobensy.
And, uh, if you are one of those people who thinks this game had too much dialogue, you might want to skip this new sidequest....
Some minor conversational additions
One of the new conversations help flesh out a minor character who ought to have a had a bit more characterization in the game. Another conversation (well, it' more that it adds to an existing conversation) helps players get through a situation many players seem to be particularly bad at.
Future Updates
As some of you have noticed, there are two sidequests in the game that are not complete and I have labeled "Future* DLC". I've made quite a bit of headway one on them, and I expect it to be complete pretty soon, dare I say by Christmas? We'll see. It's pretty extensive too.
It's not DLC you'll have to buy separately; it'll be delivered as part of a regular update.
Typo fixes...
(Also fixed an obscure crash, corrected a situation where Tabitha's gives the wrong advice, and added an option to open the Inventory app from the Inventory screen.)