It’s the end of May roundup! I’m deeply into the Firesnuff path through Chapter Six, and it’s pretty ridiculous. Firesnuff is one of the less popular sponsor endings for Cakes and Ale, but I think you’ll get a kick out of this chapter.
There are two main paths through it, each one connecting with one of Col. Firesnuff’s deep interests and activities, one of them obvious (bold adventure), and the other one that he keeps rather quieter. In one path, you’ll find yourself attempting to learn a piece of extremely juicy gossip by getting yourself in just the right place at the right time in a lady’s boudoir as she has a gossip session with her friend; in the other, you brave the wilds of a extremely dangerous jungle in search of a fragile treasure.
But the part that I’m really enjoying is that, although you choose which quest you wish to undertake, if you do really, really, poorly on either one of them, you’ll find yourself with an unexpected reward, which will allow players singularly unsuited to those particular quests to get something pretty neat out of the experience. Structuring this path such that it has a worthwhile failing forward plot was a little tricky, but at last it’s coded and about halfway written.
The other tricky part of this path is that there’s a particular liability you can acquire in this path which I suspect will follow the player around for a while, and that’s the sort of scope creep that I live for, but which does tend to swell things beyond all reason. I still implemented it. I will make a note to blame myself later for this.
Popping in just to report that the Firesnuff path through Chapter Six is now done! That completes the Mysterious Benefactor path, the Spud Nuggets path, and the Firesnuff path, leaving the Aunt Primrose and the Harlow path.
I’ll be starting Harlow tomorrow, doing in the initial code skeleton and roughing out the general flow, and I hope to get Harlow done by the end of July–it should be a slightly less complex route than Firesnuff’s–so it shouldn’t take me a whole month to write!
Harlow’s path will appeal to those who want to dabble in local politics, and equally, to those who want to get involved in some chaos just for the fun of it. Every character will be able to get through this path with varying levels of success and amusement, but it will cater a lot to the skullduggery/persuade crowd and the intellect/culture crowd, I suspect. You’ll have the opportunity to be a demagogue, to foment a riot, to engage in civilized debate, and to indulge in immature pranks. But you’ll also have the chance to learn more than you ought to about Harlow–if you choose to pry–and then you’ll have to decide what to do with that information.
Just wanted to pop in and say that I hope the writing is going well! I realized a couple of days ago that Tally Ho and Cakes and Ale are two of my favorite games, period, so I hope the sequel’s been a charm to go through :>
It’s going great–I write every single day, and even on a slow day like today, I put away 3k words. But there’s so many moving parts and little branchy bits and callbacks and such that it just takes a while, and because prose style is so important to the feel of this series, the polishing and revising takes even longer. I feel pretty good about finishing Chapter Six around the end of August or the very beginning of September. I won’t hazard a guess about how long the last two chapters will take, though!
But so far, it’s been light and fun to write, and I pretty much laugh every time I write, which I take as a good sign.
I forget if I mentioned this on the forum before, but I was sitting writing a part and I thought of a certain bit from Chapter Two, and I said aloud “is that part of this same game?” and it was unreal when I realized it was. Because I wrote Chapter Two a while ago, and many, many many words ago, and the fact that I’m still writing that same story momentarily made me reel.
(And if you or anyone else ever wants more granular, up-to-the-moment updates of where I am in the writing process, I update the first post in this thread every single time I write, updating the word count, and adding a little paragraph on what I wrote that day.)
That’s the kind of thing that keeps me going when I’m in the middle of writing a lengthy adventure that you’ll only get if you 1) have Firesnuff as a sponsor and 2) do well enough in Chapter One to acquire a rival; and 3) refuse to let an insult go by unchallenged. These little side adventures that acknowledge your choices and help create the texture of the game is what I’m all about.
I think I’m going to take that day off, too, and sleep a lot, though. We’re getting closer and closer!
singlehandedly supporting the keyboard industry, do you have any keyboard recommendations? I use mine mainly for programming but it’s not very ergonomic I can’t imagine writing even a quarter of jolly good on it
Wanted to say just one thing about our protagonist and that I had come to notice that we are never given a proper physical description/options to have a decisive physical description (hair (color), eye colors, etc.). I don’t have a problem with it, but I wanted to say how impressed and in awe I am at how I had only realized that after at least? 5-10 or more playthroughs? Gower reeaally knows how to get you immersed into the story and knows how to put emphasis on your actions and personality traits that affect them, and especially in regards to the romance, the Dialogue alone is enough to keep me entertained and wanting more!! I swear Jolly Good and Tally Ho has to be my two fav COG games ever :0
I use the cheapest dell keyboard money can buy. I touch type very quickly–and LOUD–and I wear it out like nuts. The “E” key appears to practically melt away within weeks. That’s an exaggeration for effect, but it’s not SUCH an exaggeration.
You’re right–I am not personally that interested in the physical description and much more interested in the sound of the characters’ voices! There are a few things, physical description-wise, that I foist upon the character. Here are some: they have some amount of hair, because I included some descriptions that mention hair, and now I can’t retreat from that. Two, they wear a jacket. It is very important to me that they wear a jacket, because you have to have a place where small items and clues can be pocketed. And three, Tabby is shorter than the Jolly Good MC. Those are some physical things I established by fiat.
I wish! It’s probably something boring. We’re still a year away from my finishing…or so. (do not quote me on that when I inevitably am still writing Chapter Six a year from now.)
Today I finished writing the Harlow path through Chapter Six. Originally, I was going to make this a relatively simple path, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make taking the Harlow path attractive–he is, after all, the least chosen sponsor.
Therefore, I wanted to counterbalance a little, and ensure that you want to play it on–well, if not your first playthrough, at least your fifth. Like the other sponsor Chapter Six paths, it is a unique, full chapter full of stuff to do–most of which will require at least three playthroughs to see everything.
The thing I do struggle with a bit is making sure that you care about the minor characters who only appear in the sponsor paths–so a lot of time was spent letting you hang out with them. Also–there’s a love scene in this path with one of the ROs that you can of course only get if you are Harlow’s sponsee. So there’s that. I imagine you can guess which RO it is.
Next up is the VERY LAST sponsor path and then Chapter Six is done. That’s Aunt Primrose, and her path will be all about horse racing, cheating, stupid wagers, Carlington, and Rory. If you like Pilcrow, this will be the path for you. It’s not the only path that will give you the opportunity to get closer to her, but it will open up content with her that you won’t get otherwise..
My goal is to finish Chapter Six sometime in the month of September.
