@Mario

Another issue mentioned in the reviews was that some users struggled to figure out how to use the bot. Looking at the failed commands they attempted, it seemed that first-time users weren’t sure what commands were available. To address this, I added a welcome message that appears whenever someone joins a Slack channel containing the bot, directing them to the help command if they need it.

I took a look at the feedback I got on this project’s first ship. Some of the reviews mentioned how limited the draw feature was, so I implemented Claude Sonnet 5 through an API to generate images if the user provides an unknown subject as an argument. Unfortunately, the AI isn’t all that great at ASCII art, so it is probably best if only used for very simple subjects. I also decided to expand the predefined subjects from 4 to 10.

I added a new event system that triggers location-specific events each day based on the player’s current location and a luck seed generated at the start of the game. While the screenshot may not make it look like 10 hours of progress, most of that time went into building the underlying systems that will manage every event throughout an entire playthrough. Right now, there’s only a single event implemented, but the framework is in place to easily add many more. Investing time into these core systems now should make future development significantly faster, cleaner, and easier to expand.

I added a confirm command so that players can move on after finishing character class selection and skill point allocation. The confirm command starts the actual game in the town of Ivywood (starter town name I have for now, and is subject to change), and on day 1. I haven’t added anything to happen after that yet, as that will require the longer process of defining how all events during the entire game will work. The main challenges I faced were having to define a rudimentary process through which a player can advance a day into the future, and also having to deal with the strange ways in which the terminal sometimes handles large text outputs.

I built out the game’s opening experience. The game now has a proper introduction that leads into a character creation phase before the adventure begins. Players can choose from several fighting classes, each designed to encourage a different playstyle, and spend their starting skill points on a variety of attributes. These choices will influence how the game plays as you progress. With the introduction and character customization in place, my next goal is to start developing the main gameplay that follows this opening sequence. I’m planning to add a combat system, a way to interact with other characters throughout the world, and plenty of other features. One thing I’m still missing is a name! If you somehow decided that all of this was worth reading, ideas for the game’s title or features in general would be much appreciated.

I started implementing some basic commands that players can use to interact with the game. At the moment, the only available commands display help information, but I now have a solid command-handling system in place that should make adding new commands and features much easier going forward. Creating the help page also helped me think through and refine how the game’s core mechanics and player interactions will work.

I created my project and started setting some basic functionality up. It can now start the program through a simple command, which results in a simple start screen being displayed. After that, the user can write inputs, and the program will see them but not act on them. I don’t have a name for the game yet, so the title screen has “untitled” in ASCII text as a placeholder.

I’ve been working on trying to make the bot available for anyone to use in any Slack workspace. I tried to accomplish this without a domain because I didn’t want to pay for one, and I wasn’t aware of the free options available. Even though only 2 and a half hours are being logged from the occasional edits I’ve had to make in VS Code, I spent at least 4 hours on top of that working through this, mostly on the terminal. I’ve applied for the GitHub Student Developer Pack, which will hopefully allow me to obtain a domain and make this process much easier.

I got the bot working 24/7 using nest. I had some trouble figuring out how to update the bot so that it would use the latest version 24/7, but I figured it out eventually. Also added both Bluey and Pikachu as drawable characters and implemented the asciified API to add ASCII text.

The main functionality of my bot is finished. I will be working on getting it to be live 24/7. Also looking for suggestions as to what to add next