Progress Report 2024.12.06: December Plans & New Branch

Hi all, 

Happy December! 

This was my November to do list—I’ve finished everything I had planned outside of the December character scenarios for Patreon, which I am lagging behind on a bit. I have next week’s scenario mostly done and should be wrapping it up this weekend. 

Additionally, I am well into the thick of it with Episode 3’s finale. The branch that took up most of November is now finished and I am now working through the other branch. Just to quickly revisit the general structure of the finale (vague so as not to spoil things): 

• There is a split between whether the MC remained hired or was fired by Lethalis (this determines which Lethalis characters are present at Diradan and affects much of the dialogue and how the MC is spoken to)

• There is a split between low and high faction approval, with an additional in-between branch that will route onto either the low or high routes depending on how the MC answered Sabien Quirinus’ questions in Episode 2 and what their feelings about magic are

• The low approval branch is done and serves as the template for the high approval branch, which is the one being worked on now 

It’s always a bit weird to back up and do what is essentially a re-write of an existing scene but with more favourable dialogue. Faction and character approval are one of my favourite things to handle in interactive fiction, but to do it well I think you do need to push outside the boundary of simple flavour text and actually pursue differences in how NPCs engage with the player character based on how they feel about them. An additional complexity is giving flexibility in the MC’s dialogue options and general demeanour without bloating the scene too much. Approval tracks not just how a character or faction feels about the MC, but also how the MC feels about them and those two things are not always aligned. 

I’ve been describing the Episode 3 finale to my partner as a verbal boss fight. It will fly by when you play it, but it is a tangled web of action and reaction and consequences. 

This is my to do list for December: 

The very optimistic goal is to finish this high approval branch by the end of December so I can funnel everything into the major bottleneck and start on a fresh scene in January. Since I am writing very slowly right now, I am not going to make that a firm goal, but it is something I am striving for. 

Additionally, I want to pen the Patreon character scenarios for January to March in advance so I have those in the backlog and ready to go. Writing in advance helps me keep up to date with Patreon specials and benefits so I can queue them up when finished and let them post themselves.   

Thank you all so much for your support! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know below. 💖