Progress Report 2021-02-01

Hello friends and welcome to Wayfarer’s first Weekly Update+!

Because this week has been so busy with the release of the new Chapter 1 content, there isn’t much to report. But I did want to give Patrons a brief run-down of my goals for February and some of the content you can expect in the coming month.

Since I am discussing the game’s development, there are SPOILERS for all released content and a discussion about future content.

Public Release on Itch & Other Platforms

The goal I’ve been working towards since releasing the original demo of the game last November has been to complete Chapter 1 in its entirety before taking it out of restricted access on itch.io.

Itch is a really good platform for indie developers and it emphasizes fairness across the board to all developers, regardless of status. When you make a game public for the first time, your game is listed on the front page for a week—and then it can never be on the front page again. You have one shot to make an impression.

Considering that, I didn’t want to release Wayfarer publicly on Itch until the Prologue and Chapter 1 were complete in full, since I feel that content combined will make the biggest impact with the scope of the chapter and the amount of playable content. But at the same time, I did want people to play the game and experience the content since feedback about player experience is really valuable (and also it’s lonely creating +200k words in total silence?). So that’s why there’s this kind of “public but not really public” thing going on with the current public build. To keep the game from displaying on the itch front page until it’s ready, the public build is technically in restricted access and only available through the password-embedded link on my tumblr.

Once Chapter 1 is complete, I can take the public build out of restricted access and officially launch it on itch and announce it on other social platforms outside of tumblr.

The Alpha Build

Currently, the Public Build is up-to-date with the Alpha Build. There will be a few growing pains in this regard going forwards. My goal is to keep the Alpha Build one chapter ahead of the Public Build, but since we’re at the beginning of the game and content is taking a while to create and code, things haven’t quite lined up the way I’d like them to. I will be working on Chapter 1’s Route B this month but I haven’t quite decided yet when I’m going to start coding the content (with the Chapter 1 Route A, I waited until all of the story content was written before coding because it’s far easier to edit a word document than it is to edit passages in Twine if I need to change something). Ideally, I will have an update to the Alpha Build by the end of the month.

Chapter 1 B Route

The B Route covers what happens if the MC doesn’t go to the Docks and doesn’t accept Zenaida’s contract right away. There are four locations the MC can choose to investigate, depending on their available action points, and a final location that needs to be unlocked in order to discover the artefact. If you got injured by Kane or if you visited Zenaida, you’ll have limited places to investigate and you’ll need to think about what looks promising to you. Not every player will be able to successful uncover the mystery and find the Count’s missing artefact before you run out of time.

There is some cross-over with the A Route here, so I do have a head start on that content. The Cove and Edgewater will remain mostly the same, but I’ll be editing the content to change some conversations/situations (for example, on the B Route, your apartment in Edgewater will not have been raided). The Cove will work differently depending on whether you have money or not—if you have 0 crowns because Luthais robbed you, you won’t be able to buy anything, if you have 5 crowns you may be able to haggle a bit. If you accessed the B Route by failing to convince Aeran to take Zenaida’s contract or declining the contract yourself, you will have the same options in the Cove as you do on the A Route. The main difference is the interaction with Larks Drakehand in Runes & Relics as he may or may not be able to give you some of the clues you need to find the Count’s artefact.

The visit to the Viridian Lady’s villa is completely new content. You’ll be able to approach it two ways—either through stealth (which requires good agility) or going in the front door and talking your way through the situation that arises (good persuasion). I’m excited to write this sequence because I enjoyed her introduction in the A Route and I’d like to spend more time with her character.

If you left the Kane fight by escaping over the rooftops, you’ll have the option to report the magical fire to the local Guild chapter. You’ll get docked a few approval points from Aeran (he doesn’t like mages and he is going to be grumpy about it); you also have to pick a specific choice in order to unlock the area (selecting “You don’t care, you need to move on with your mission” will lock you out of the Guild, “You don’t care about Kane, but you are concerned for the townspeople nearby” will unlock the option). The Guild will give you an extra clue, so you may have an easier time passing the check to the final area.

I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to execute this yet, but I want the check to the final area to be determined by how well the player paid attention to the text and not just "you could only visit 2 areas so you get locked out automatically because you don't have all the clues". It’s a bit of a mystery and you are going to have to put the clues together yourself. If you have more clues, the easier it will be, but you could still guess correctly with fewer clues.

Zenaida has three introduction points in the chapter. You can either meet her early (by going to the Docks), meet her at the mid-point (if you fought Kane, Malsara will approach you after you visit your first exploration location—you can either go with her or decline her; if you go with her, you’ll have the same encounter with Zenaida as you do in the A Route and choosing to accept or decline her contract will determine whether you continue with the A Route or jump back to B), or meet her after the final Boss Fight. How early she is introduced will affect the approval of the Order of Lethalis. On the A Route, the approvals starts at 50 and there are opportunities to raise or lower it (it depends on how to behave when Zenaida confronts the Viridian Lady). The approval starts at 35 if you encounter her on the B Route and if you refused her offer and then encounter her at the very end, it will start at 20.

Ideally, there should be pros and cons to each action. One path through the chapter is not necessarily better than the other and each comes with its own rewards and drawbacks.

Obviously, there’s a lot of content in the B Route and I doubt that I can finish the writing portion within a month. I suspect that working on the B Route will take all of February and March to complete.

Coding Upgrade

While I’m working on the story content for the B Route, I need to practice with Grunt. Grunt is a Javascript Task Runner (which I have never used, which I’m sure is the source of my anxiety about using it). Twine’s creator made a Grunt plugin that allows you to combine Twine story files into one HTML5 document, alongside any extra CSS stylesheets and Javascript you may want to add. The Twine editor UI has a design flaw where the more passages there are, the laggier it gets. The lag in Wayfarer’s story file right now is pretty bad (there’s over 700 passages). If I’m editing a passage I either have to be very patient and wait for the program to respond to what I want to do, or re-code a passage in Notepad++ and copy/paste the entire thing over. It’s slow, and while it’s workable, it’s very annoying to work through.

Having separate story files for each chapter is going to be a huge help because that removes the threat of lag. I need to practice a bit and get used to the task runner. I’ve been through the walkthrough a few times, but whenever I see this:

I go ahhhhh it’s unfamiliar help. I just need to do it and it will be fine.

(I had exactly the same problem when uploading assets to itch for the first time, I thought I would never understand what it meant by making an index and using relative paths in the Twine story file for embedded images, but it’s… very straightforward and I made a big deal out of nothing ahaha).

Bonus Content

I’m working on a few pieces of bonus content for this month. My goal is to share 2-3 pieces of bonus content and/or writing tutorials a month (I thought about doing it weekly but I need to figure out my workload first, so this will be an ongoing process of finding the right balance). If you’re in the Follower or Recruit tiers, feel free to let me know what you’d like to see for bonus content/writing tutorials so I can figure out which piece should be accessible to all patrons. 

For everyone else, there is a poll I posted in January you can answer to let me know what kind of content interests you the most!

Love you all,

Anna