Progress Report 2021-04-26

Hi friends,

Just a quick update for this week. I was originally not planning on writing one today so I could get onto my bi-weekly update schedule, but there are a few things in the works that I wanted to write about.

Patreon Goals

Most excitingly, I’ve reached my next Patreon goal! Woohoo! I cannot thank you all enough for your continuing support of the game’s development. At this goal, I can now start looking for a graphic designer to do a logo design for the game. This is something I’ve wanted for a while and I’m trying to think in advance and look at licensing fees for merch opportunities (and that kind of thing). I have an idea of what I want, but I’m expecting this is be an on-going thing to find the right artist and go through the commission process.

If you know of any graphic designers who do fantasy artwork/logos or related things, please let me know!

Discord Emotes

With some of the funding from Patreon, the Wayfarer Discord server will now have a collection of custom emotes! Dana Mucci created the emotes; she’s a freelance illustrator who specializes in Twitch art and emojis. She was a lot of fun to work with and I am really happy with how these came out. You can check out her portfolio here!

Game Updates

In last week’s poll, The Cove had the most votes to be the next section of the game I work on. This section is significantly less complicated than anything in the Viridian Lady’s Villa, so I’m expecting this to go a bit faster than before. I have about 4000 words of new content created for this section. I am hoping to get it finished and add it to the alpha build when I do my next typo/bug corrections.

After a lot of contemplation and grappling with game mechanics, I have decided to drop the player’s ability to jump from the Chapter 1 Route B onto Route A. What I’m calling Route A is all of the content that occurs after the player character accepts Zenaida’s contract and refuses to search the city for the missing chalice. What I’m calling Route B is the player character’s investigation of the town, which is accessed by either going to Rat Alley or going to the Docks and not taking the contract.

After the player goes to Rat Alley and does their first Exploration section, Malsara will always show up and try to bring the MC and Aeran to Zenaida. Currently, at the end of the VL sequence, the player can either choose to go with her or refuse her outright. This was supposed to link up with the content the player gets if they go to the Docks. However, there’s a gameplay issue with the player running out of action points if they do this while wounded (getting wounded in Rat Alley docks 2 action points, going to the first Exploration section docks 1 point, talking to Zenaida docks 1 point). This means that players who went to Rat Alley, got injured, did their first Exploration section, then talked to Zenaida and accepted her contract would not be able to visit The Cove to buy items or Edgewater and have that conversation with Aeran. This feels unnecessarily harsh to the player as it would lock them out of content that most other players would see and shorten the Chapter. I could cancel those action points entirely, but this would affect the Route A content and I would have to write more additional content to account for continuity.

I also didn’t write the Route A content with multiple points of access in mind. I would have to write additional content to account for the player possibly meeting the Viridian Lady before they talk to Zenaida, alongside a handful of other variations. Because of the way Route A content is coded, it is really difficult for me to go back in retroactively to add content.

It is going to be a lot easier on me moving forwards if Route A remains locked behind going to the Docks. It may make more sense for the MC to choose whether or not to follow Malsara during Route B, but getting all of the continuity to line up to reflect that choice is way, way too difficult for something that is going to cause a bunch of game mechanics and balance problems anyway.

I’ll have to rewrite some content at the end of the existing VL sequence, but on the whole I’m happy with this decision.

New Update Schedule

I’ll be posting another weekly update next Monday just to get things sorted for May before I jump over onto my bi-weekly schedule. I have a few changes I’m thinking of making to bonus content. I’m feeling a little worn out with my schedule and I’m considering going down to 3 bonus content posts a month rather than 4, at least while I’m trying to get these next sections of Chapter 1 done.

Thank you for your support! Have a great week! ❤