Progress Report 2021-03-15

Hi friends,

I was going to start off with a Caesar joke, but I am little drained so we’re just going to forgo that. This past week has been extremely busy. I am closing in on getting the Viridian Lady sequence done. If it feels like I’ve been working on this section forever, it’s probably because it’s true. I knew it was going to take a while, but this is the most content heavy branch of the possible Exploration sections in Chapter 1 Route B.

Game Updates

The new content is currently sitting at ~40,000 words prior to edits and I have a couple more sections to write. Since it’s a stealth mission, there are a lot of different paths the player can take, with three major ways the scene can end. This section introduces a new character who has quickly become one of my favourite minor characters. Her name is Hera Ambrose and she is the Viridian Lady’s girlfriend. She’s an archaeologist/historian/scholar and the secret reason behind the VL’s magical antiquities collection:

“I know, I’m invisible.” A short, plump elven woman emerges from behind the draped statues, inquisitive brown eyes looking you up and down. She is dressed in flowing brown trousers and a tunic, overlaid with a sleeveless gold overcoat belted at the waist. Curly blonde hair escapes from a bun piled high on her head, the loose locks bouncing against her neck as she moves. Round spectacles perch across a wide nose spattered with freckles.

She eyes your blade and rolls her eyes as she squeezes through the maze of desks. “Oh, put your sword away,” she says as she squeezes through the maze of desks. “No one’s going to lay a finger on you—especially not me. All this sneaking around has been quite exhilaration, but frankly it’s gone on for far too long.”

You scowl. “I—”

“Hera Ambrose,” the woman continues. She reaches the centre of the maze, spins the chair around, and casually throws herself into it. “I have a proposal for you.”

I love her.

I am hoping that I can finish writing this sequence by Friday and start edits and coding. I still have a list of updates to do on the public build (slowly fixing the UI, updating the Patron credits, fixing continuity errors, updating/changing lore, the letter from Cenric/Sero/Varyn that gets added to the player’s inventory needs to be re-written and changed to account for a few new things). I accidentally imported the wrong stylesheet into Twine when updating the game’s CSS a few weeks ago and broke a bunch of things. I need to fix the errors I made there (nothing too big, mostly have to redo a few minor design things and background images on the Codex pages). I have a new design in mind for the Journal, especially for the Companion relationship page, but I’m not sure when I’ll sit down and work on it—it’s more of a backburner thing.

With all that in mind, I am tentatively aiming for March 29-31 to update the alpha build with the VL sequence.

Speaking of the alpha build, itch.io has Patreon integration. I haven’t quite worked everything out yet, but I am thinking about switching to an access key format for the alpha build rather than having a pinned link and sharing the alpha build’s password. Not sure when I’m going to move forwards on that, but it’s something I’m thinking about.

Mid-Month Check In

Excluding today’s work, here’s how March is going. I probably need to take more days off, but I am really pushing to get the VL sequence done.

Misc Updates

Rory has finished the complete set of new Wayfarer portraits, including Nelani and Felix! You can find them all on her blog and her Instagram, but I’ll share them here, too:

They're all so pretty, I love them so much. 

Have a great week!