Weekly update: September, Week 1
Week Wordcount: 7385 words
Total Wordcount: 92919 words
Average Playthrough: 20051 words
What I’ve been doing:
-Making a code skeleton for Chapter 4, and testing it. This includes all the stat changes and checks, along with placeholder text that hopefully makes sense to me when I come to write. The skeleton is about 9300 words long.
Skeleton code sample, mild Chapter 4 spoilers
Max is all "are you looking forward to going home?"
*choice
#Yeah, it'll be great
*goto trainleave
#Yeah, it'll be a break from here
*label trainleave
*gosub holidaygoodbye
And here are Mum and Dad!
*goto homeholiday
#Actually, I'm staying here, and I'm looking forward to it
*goto schoolstay
#Actually, I'm staying here, though it'll be a bit of a bummer
*label schoolstay
*set parentshappy %-secondary_hi_change
What?! But why are you staying?
-Balancing stats and test difficulty levels coming into Chapter 5. In Blood Money, I did this a bit at the beginning but it fell off and when QA testing happened, I ended up with a lot of extremely difficult or impossible stat checks in the late game. I’m hoping that this front-loaded effort will save work in the long run. There were a few outliers - Wit skewed lower than the other Skills, and Max’s relationship levels skewed higher than any of the other characters, so I adjusted them. At this stage, the Skill stats are starting to get higher generally, so for Chapter 5 I’m going to be adding more bonuses for high stats.
I’ll probably make a thread at some point about how I do this, but in the meantime here’s a sneak peek at what my desktop looked like on numbers day.
-Writing Chapter 4.
Mild Chapter 4 spoilers, with excerpt
I’ve made several “emergency” situations that trigger if your Virtue, Grades, or Popularity are low enough. Here’s a snippet from one of them:
Finally, I’ve made a start on the bulk of the main chapter plot. And as for that… the chapter’s called The Winter Ball, so make of that what you will!
Edited to add: the September teaser poll has now closed - thank you for voting! The interactive short story will be posted at the end of September, and will be about Blaise Marechal. Watch this space!