Progress Report 2021.07.12

Hi friends,

Another month half-way gone! I’m trying not to think about how quickly time is passing as I keep my head down and continue work on the game. I have completed another big chunk of the Route B endgame, but despite my best efforts, I definitely did not write according to the plan. 😅 Sometimes you just need to jump to the scene you want to write the most instead of sticking to the outline.

I’m happy with how things are going (there are some scenes and game mechanics that I am extremely excited about), but the pace is a lot slower than I would like. Some sections required more attention to detail than I had originally planned and I chose to extend things a bit rather than cutting the section. This decision has added a lot of content to Branch 2 of Route B’s boss fight, but overall I am very pleased with the new content with the direction I went, even though it has extended Chp 1’s development time by quite a bit.

Game Updates

As of today, I have finished Branch 2 and Branch 3 of the boss fight at the Count’s villa. They are 42k words and 14k words respectively (Branch 2 has a lot of variations in dialogue and choices, Branch 3 is much more linear for narrative reasons).

Branch 2 ended up being quite content dense. This branch originally wasn’t even in the chapter’s outline, but when I reached the Count’s villa scenes, I realized that Route B has a very different arc and build to it than Route A. On Route A, the MC is already on their way out of Rona and the Count is a peripheral villain, someone they have to deal with due to extenuating circumstances.

On Route B, his character is built up a lot more. There’s a sense of dread hanging over the MC and all of their actions, as they know that they will eventually end up back up at his villa and they will have to confront him. Because the MC pursues the chalice investigation on Route B, the conversation with the Count takes a very different tone and gets pushed in a different direction. Of course, outcomes are dependent on whether you find the chalice or not (or whether you choose to give it to him or not).

Originally I had planned to take most of the fight content from Route A and adapt it for Route B, but that doesn’t quite work in this content. Branch 2 is an entirely new way of dealing with the Count and features a new game mechanic that I am really excited about (going to keep it under wraps for now, but just as a hint – if you feel like you’re running out of time to do something, you may want to finish what you’re doing in as a few actions as possible 👀).

Branch 3 is also unique content and only occurs if the MC successfully finds the chalice and hands it over to the Count. It is shorter content than Branch 2, but it is a bit of a doozy.

I am working on Branch 1, which has a number of “link” scenes and pieces of dialogue that need to be written to account for different continuities. This involves a lot of copy/pasting existing material and then re-working it and editing it so it fits with the pace and flow of each continuity. The fight on Branch 1 will re-use one of the fight branches from Route A, so again that will be a lot of copy/pasting existing material and then re-working it for a new context. It’s not quite as time consuming as writing fresh material, but it still does take time and attention to detail so nothing gets missed.

Once that is done, I have 4 scenes with Zenaida to write. Because the player can either have met her and refused her contract, or have never met her in the first place, these 4 scenes are really 2 scenes with 2 different versions. (Never have I written a more confusing sentence). I’m hoping these last scenes won’t take me too long to do since it’s more dialogue heavy than action/skill check heavy.

I am really, really hoping that I can finish drafting all new content by July 19, code the new content, update the game with a patch for all the current errors, and then spend the rest of July playtesting and polishing. I seem to jinx myself every time I aim for a new launch date, so I’m just not going to say one this time. 😂

Some Other Things I am Working On

I am exploring dark mode designs. I haven’t spent too much time on this and since my CSS stylesheet is already ridiculously long, it’s pretty labour-intensive to go through and adjust the colours to a new design. I also have to re-do all of the assets so they look good with black/dark backgrounds. I figure that if I’m going to make an official dark mode, then it needs to look good as a dark mode, and not just a replication of what dark mode browser extensions do to the game.

I’m a bit of a loss as to what to do for certain areas of the game, namely the codex and letter pages because they have the map background and a parchment texture. I haven’t landed on anything that works with a dark passage background/white text combo yet, but I have a few ideas I haven’t tried yet.

I am working on added a fullscreen option for the menu. You can enable fullscreen in your browser with F11 (sorry Mac users, I don’t know what the equivalent is), but I feel that a lot of people don’t know that and it would be nice to have the option visibly there for those who want it. I personally think the game looks best in fullscreen.

I've also very briefly experimented with adding the ability to select your options with your keyboard. The keylink macro doesn't work the way I want it to and I'm not skilled enough to edit the code to do what I want it to do, so I'll probably drop this idea. 

I am also working on adding a Return to Game button to the menu. It’s always bothered me that any of the Journal/Codex pages (any of the auxiliary pages that aren’t the actual game text) had to have separate Return to Game links at the bottom of the page. I did this originally because when I put a return link in the menu, the inventory duplicated on passages where it added new items. And it could duplicate infinitely if you jumped from the game to the Journal and back again ad nauseum. But I think I figured out a way to add it to the menu, I just need to test it thoroughly to make sure it doesn’t do anything wonky.

This Week’s Plan

• July 12 – Branch 1
• July 13 – Branch 1
• July 14 – Branch 1
• July 15 – Branch 1
• July 16 – Zenaida scene 1 (versions 1 & 2)
• July 17 – Zenaida scene 1 (versions 1 & 2)
• July 18 – Zenaida scene 2 (versions 1 & 2)
• July 19 – Zenaida scene 2 (versions 1 & 2)

(Don't worry, there will be a break in there 😂)

Patreon Updates

I was hoping to do a bonus content piece this month, but I’m thinking that probably won’t happen while I’m still grappling with the end of the chapter. 😅 Apologies for the continued hiatus on this benefit!

That’s all for this update, thank you for your continued support! ❤