Follow-up mutation tweaks

[Ilysen]

Summary

Balance "Even M O R E mutation system adjustments"

Purpose of change

#61036 established some positive momentum that I wanna keep rolling. That one focused on consistency, and next on my list of things I wanted to do was transparency and responsiveness - adjusting messages to be more clear, communicating instability in a more straightforward way, and such, as well as fixing some issues that the last PR either missed or introduced.

Describe the solution

here's a changelog:

• introduced a Mutation distraction type that interrupts long activities when you gain or lose a visible mutation. like other distractions, it can be freely toggled on and off in the distraction manager.
• true random mutations (from radiation, Genetic Chaos, etc) are now actually true random; they don't use the instability mechanic to determine whether they're good or bad, and can instead be literally anything. as a result, they also no longer cause instability, since they're separate from the balance and gameplay of voluntary mutation.
  • since this means that Genetic Downwards Spiral no longer respects instability chance determination, it's gotten its old behavior back (the one that makes all mutations negative or neutral) to replicate the same thing, while keeping its rapid instability reduction as a just-in-case.
• entries in effects.json that mentioned things like "frog mutagen" now refer to primers instead, ala "frog primers", to go along with what they are now.
• rewrote the descriptions and names of the effect used to telegraph instability. hopefully they should be clearer!
• rewrote the message displayed when you fail to mutate due to a lack of primer - it now explicitly mentions the cause, since right now it's a bit misleading (...) You crave a more exotic mutagen.
• messages displayed before, at the start of, and after a mutation cycle can now be one of several varieties, to spice things up.

Describe alternatives you've considered

the main thing I've thought of is keeping the instability in involuntary mutations, even though the initial inception of the new mutation system did not do so. I implemented it in my initial PR because it seemed more sensible, but I heard some legitimate concerns that swayed me towards reverting that change, since they're effectively different experiences.

Testing

I made a debug character and did a few different things -

• used radiation and then Genetic Chaos to test that true random mutations were actually true random and caused no instability, along with some hideous debug code to verify;
• gave myself alpha primer + mutagen to check the new messages and make sure that instability was incrementing correctly;
• purified those mutations to make sure that they'd be removed correctly, and that instability was still incrementing.
• repeated the alpha step but with 2000 instability to make sure that negative mutations were being applied.
• started fresh, and gave myself Genetic Downward Spiral. waited for a while with it on its own, then gave myself beast primer and a buncha mutagen to make sure all mutations from both instances were negative, or if they were positive, because they were prequisites for a negative.

everything seemed to work as intended, at least!

Additional context

N/A

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

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• The strain of mutation fades, leaving a throbbing sensation like a bad headache. Or an afterglow.
• There's an enervating sense of dysmorphia throughout your whole body. It waxes and wanes, but never quite goes away. Mutating this much can't be good for you…
• You feel your chest wriggle and begin to palpitate. Here we go.

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[Nebnis]

Really nice to see you back Ava, mutations really needed some care for this game.

[Ilysen]

i appreciate it! I'm really nothing special; if I hadn't made changes, someone else would have. I'm just glad to help out if I can.

[Dignut]

Oooh! I like this, good work! I love this better than the old system where mutations with robust would basically be all good if you used unstable or chaos, them being totally unbiased is awesome and them not giving instability makes it more than diet downward spiral, makes it something incredibly interesting to play with.

[LiteralMushroom]

BRING BACK ROBUST GENETICS-GENETIC CHAOS