A few questions on spawns and triggers [spoilers]

[AngryWombat]

-I was wondering what specifically triggers the robber that has the blue key on the second floor to spawn. Is it story and time based, as in after talking to the people at your door and then you just wait? Also there seems to be a case where without ever interacting with this guy he sometimes just explodes on his own if/when he spawns at all (as I understand it, he's meant to explode upon exhausting his dialogue but sometimes I just hear the loud ass explosion sound upstairs before ever seeing him).

-Skeletons, what gets them to spawn? I know from reading another post that not sleeping gets spiders to spawn. If I kill all of them after a spawn wave as I would call it they don't seem to spawn for a little while too (thankfully lol).

-Not to be confused with the NPC that you talk to upstairs, there is also a robber that shows up and roams the house, I don't really understand this guy's spawn... or purpose for that matter. Does he actually steal something then leave or what?

-The rainbow face NPC in the basement after going through the sequence of dying and getting the glasses you're supposed to 'trade' with them. I've done everything and talked to them again with the glasses in hand and wearing them but the dialogue reset and they just ask you to die again. Dying again just resets the cycle and the glasses, if they were placed somewhere, just disappear and respawn in your hands. Is this just the end of the sequence so far or was it glitched?
By the way they spawn like at your crotch and get in the way when you try to walk unless you drop them or wear them.

-What is that green crystal looking thing next to the rainbow guy, I didn't find a purpose for that.

-I may as well ask if there is any way to completely prevent any spawns of rats or other things or do they just always spawn anyways? I put everything I could off the floor that I could find based on what Papi (or however you spell that) said regarding "rat aids".
I learned if they walk over glass that they die so I just placed glass outside their hole and it just became like an endless dead rat cannon lol. I came back and the whole side of the room was filled with them.

Anyways I had a lot of fun digging around for how things work in this demo so far, it seems so open ended, I feel like you could do so much with the systems in place. This is such a weird game I love what's there.

[neetdev]

The robber currently triggers after 45 minutes if you do nothing but that timer is lowered to around 30 minutes if you start going about the house and talk to the trick or treaters.

A big challenge I have going forward with the story is that I want to let players play their way. You want to stay in your room and pee in cups while playing the computer and ignoring the doorbell? Great. you want to take care of your needs and shower and cook for yourself? Also great. But the thing is things still have to progress even if you do nothing.

Here the robber spawns after a while, but if you dont interact with him, he still dies after a about 5 minutes and you'd have to stumble upon the key in that room (which is covered in blood and the noise is pretty loud so I would expect people to investigate) to progress. But you don't have to.

Skeletons spawn when you don't eat for too long. I tone their spawn rate down every time I do an update but they seem to spawn pretty quickly still. Spiders work the same way but with sleep. If you stay well fed and sleep well they won't spawn. I'll make this happen a little later in later releases too to let the game start off a little bit more normal so that the endgame contrasts more.

Random thieves will also break into the house, these wear masks that once removed will instantly kill them. If you spot them and get too close, they'll flee without grabbing anything. If left alone, they'll rummage around the house until they find something valuable to flee with. The mask is valuable by the way, if you do grab it. Keep an ear out for breaking glass (eventually you'll be able to repair windows the same way you can repair doors as a measure against thieves, since once a window is broken they can get in silently).

The demo kinda ends once you get the glasses and come back, I should've gave the rainbow face npc a line about that. Sorry for the wasted time. The glasses do let you see death and steal souls if you wear them while someone dies. Soul meter is only used to trade clones with the rainbow faced npc at the moment, which isnt very useful yet but a little funny. The crotch spawn for the glasses is a bug I hope to remove in a patch I should upload before the end of the year.

The green crystal doesnt do anything yet but will do story related stuff.

The rats will stop spawning if there's no food off the floor. Your problem might've been that "food" is anything that can be eaten, even if it's not really something you'd eat (so poop, rat corpses themselves, etc.. I'd say follow the rats (staying far enough for them not to flee back home) and you might find what they're trying to get to. I don't see a way for them to spawn without a "food" target on the floor, but it might indeed be a bug.

Yeah the scope could be extremely large given the systems in place, but the beauty is when you watch people play, you can see what they try to do that's not currently possible. Then you add that feature. It'll be time consuming to go and think of all the dialogue options and combinations of things you can do at any point. People seem to kill NPCs a lot so it might not be the best to invest massively on them and branching dialogues. That said I'm biased since I can only watch streamers play.

In the end I hope to be able to do something interesting with what's there. This update had a LOT of story/event infrastructure added as well as save/loading stuff (which is currently the source of almost every bug) so I'm in a good position to start adding more content.

Thanks for playing and check out the discord if you'd like to see more frequent updates or want to give more suggestions.

[AngryWombat]

Wow, thanks for the fast and comprehensive reply, that answered all my questions so far I think. I look forwards to seeing where you go next with this. No problem on the "wasted" time btw I had fun experimenting anyhow and kind of figured it wasn't a completed system yet.