Dev Log 4

[felicitygs]

 

Whew, I feel like I got a fair bit done today. Most of this is structure set up so I can actually just... write in the text I need!  As much as I want to keep adding to the story, right now that's on pause while I get the entire town's structure set up. I feel like trying to write a ton of code at the same time as I'm writing all the display text is going to be a recipe for disaster. 

New Twine Fax

A bit frustratingly, I've discovered that you can't store passage names in a variable and then use that variable to direct to that location. For whatever reason, it always reads it as the actual passage name. I'm going to dig around some documentation and see if there's a work around for that. It would be super nice to be able to track and reference that for scene transitions. The workaround for now is going to be just using (display: $location), but it's sloppy. Apparently display just appends it to the end of the current page....

On that note, it seems like Twine also reads the space where I've written code as whitespace, which is super duper duper annoying because.... that's code. Not white space. And it's shoving the initial start passage aaaaaaaaaaall the way down the page because that gets displayed after the initial set up runs when the game starts. That will bother me down the road, but for right now I'm going to leave that on back burner and see if there's some other workaround for it.

One cool thing I learned is that I can shove some stuff I need for every passage into its own unconnected passage and simply stick a (display: 'passage') at the start of each passage I need it. That's super handy, and I'll probably do that for a couple other variables as well, especially for some of the gameplay loops I'm considering....

Completed

I feel like I got a fair bit done this time as well! 

*Set up a 'dateTime' passage in order to display the season : day - time for the player on all passages. That should make it a lot easier for people to budget their time without needing to try and keep track of it on their own.

*actually remembered to make the real home passage, since to this point it just had the game's initial start branch--which does not use the initial home at all. the home, unlike most the game, is not affected by seasons, so i'll need to remember to avoid seasonal descriptions for it.

*in the same vein, added a couple missing locations that i will need for the initial part of town

*set up the docks properly

*set up all the back and forth mess of how the boat will work for fishing. lots of nesting for the time and season, as that's going to affect the fishing, but I do think it'll be ultimately well worth it. I suspect if the game didn't focus so much on the humble fishing village life that I could prob get away with just using 'it is a fine $season day' but oh well. i love sim games, so hand tailoring all the descriptions is well worth it to me.

*added a variable called $location to track where the player is. if i can figure out a workaround for the already mentioned [link test|$location] problem, then that'll be great. Otherwise, it's still going to be very useful for several special events that will happen throughout the year, as I can grab it and use a (display:) to send them back to the proper screen, or even just update it to send them home if it's an all day event.

*debugged the first of probably many missing closing ]s

*Set up time in 5 chunks. I may alter this to 6 later, but for right now they are 1 - dawn, 2 - morning, 3 - afternoon, 4 - evening, 5 - night .

*added in proper seasons and season support.

*added a township variable that will control how well-regarded the player is in town; this will be affected by both how much food they contribute (it's a communal society) and their general demeanor. mean ppl are still not great even if they bring in a lot of food. might need to split this variable later, but added it now just so i can reference it in comments as needed.

To do/future plans

• *add a calendar for special festivals and birthdays the player can reference when at home
• *find a way to fix the white space display at start if i have initialization commands
• *find a way around the stupid link text problem
• *set up the bare bones of the fishing system
• *on that note, set up a basic foraging system for the south beach, northern mountains, and grazing fields
• *decide how the market works, or does that need a rename? do i need a trade system?
• *inventory if trade system and shit
• *what good village life game doesn't have basic inventory!!!!!!!
• *decide if i want a hunger/food mechanic? not really tbh i hate it myself, and i feel like the 5 period day will be plenty to enforce rest
• but should prob implement a penalty if the player stays up all night instead of going to bed