Dev Log 5

 Woops, I forgot to do this right away, so there's probably some stuff I missed! But I do write notes, so hopefully I'll get most of it.

Completed

• Added a sixth time period (noon) and adjusted the code in all the relevant locations.
• decided which locations allow for foraging
• set up the barebones of foraging for the north mountains
• added connectors to the south beach proper
• added a proper connection from town to home
• resolved fishing so that it sends the player back to town properly and cancels fishing for the day
• added the startup tag to the init passage; this makes it run every time AND gets rid of the initial white space for the starting passage >:3

Learned

• About the startup tag! Stick this on any passage you want to run when the game launches; it runs the passages in order, and then kicks to whatever is set in the project as the starting passage. Super cool
• With all that in mind, will probably not actually build the systems proper for now, and keep the twine prototype with just barebones systems. It is, after all, meant to be a reference.

To Do

• decide how to pass/update time. When do I want to do that? the end of day or beginning? How do I resolve things if the player decides to them at night?
• Likewise, how do I want to update time for the twine prototype? Might just be a manual update, which is how I set up the fishing for now.
• add in forage basics for the south beach and for grazing fields.

RPG Maker vs haxeFlixel

I did some digging around the two different programs I'm considering. haxeFlixel is a game framework. It uses ActionScript 3 as the base, so there's lots of resources both on the basic as3 stuff as well as for haxeflixel itself. It seems fairly small, but it's an open source framework and looks, at a glance, fairly easy to work with. It would give me a lot of room for customization, and looking through material, it seems to do pretty well with assigning sprites and stuff. Plus there are tutorials and resources on how to import/make sprite sheets and such. As I know ultimately I want this to be a game in a similar style to stardew as far as looks, with a Jotun touch, that's nice. It is a newerish framework though, and pretty small community, so this might end up being difficult for any future problems I run into. 

RPG maker is a game engine, which means it's got a lot of scene making stuff out of the box, with tons of shortcuts. I actually own both MX and VX ACE, so I have my choice in resources and what would best suit what I want to do. RPG Maker uses Ruby to write scripts; I have no familiarity with this language either. Since it's a script and not actual from scratch code, this does mean that there are very likely some hard limits to what I can and can't get the engine to do. It does allow for very easy importation of sprites and such, but I hate using the map creator/tileset makers that are provided with vx ace; the layers in mx make more sense to me. Either way, both programs have a ton of scripts other people have already made so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. I also know for sure that the database is built in and supported, plus has a nice gui--really important for the inventory and such.

At the moment I'm leaning more strongly towards haxeFlixel; I love the ability to properly customize everything. What I will probably do to decide is try coding the starting part of the story in both--it's much shorter/less work than the whole game, and critical in either case. Then I can pick which one I want to use long term from there.

Whew. That was a lot!!!! 

Dev Log 6 - storybeat chat

 

 

So this picture is the general base structure for the village, as well as the various branches of the starting path before it syncs up with the main game. 

Completed

• actually remembered to double check the choice to give half the forage to the food stores, and make sure it only takes half the stuff.
• created the various village families and their occupations. 
• set up the market place
• set up the other forage sites

To do

• figure out the travel distance? honestly think i'm basically done with the twine prototype tho, and how time will work in twine is very diff from how i will have it working in whatever game engine/framework.
• set up the shops
• allow player to trade in some of their forage for favours and such with said shops--communal society means mostly stuff is barter, and everyone does get stuff no matter what
• set up time cycles
• have traders pop in from mid spring to mid fall, while the mountain pass isn't snowed in
• set up unlock for visiting the sister village for the clan

Story beats

In all this, wanted to make sure I didn't forget the overarching story beats; funnily enough, I've done almost no writing relating to the actual central focus of the story!

• Start: Ease player into game cycle, have them meet Cousin and a few other people, and let them get started
• a few days in: player meets up with the WITCH, who obvs has history with the mc; witch suggests joining at a cove
• cove unlocks: player can visit any time in the week after speaking to witch and meets the ORCAMER :3c
• player is free to build relations with the clan and the orcamer, which eventually branches into.....
• choice: allow orcamer to stay w fisher over winter, or orcamer will leave over the winter migration and return the following year. unavailable if relationship not friendly enough
• which snowballs into choice: romantic or friendly relationship with orcamer
• which snowballs into choice: propose to orcamer!!! or STAY BUDDIES
• also at any point, if the player is a BIG NASTY JERK to the orcamer, relations tank and orcamer is no longer available

the various types of endings are grouped into sets

• my love is the sea - contains the gray ace/aro ending; the YOU WERE A MEAN JERK BUT PULLED YOUR WEIGHT ending, and so on; friends w the sea; all alooooone
• wuve - ends up pairing romantically with orcamer
• kicked out of clan - player has to be max jerk asshole for this to like.... everyone, and also do absolutely nothing to help the clan. just a real toxic person.

game time:

• one season is 25 days.
• game prob takes place over 2~3 years, depending on actions
• maybe let player continue game post, but not sure what post game content, so maybe not