Dohohoho.
Ah, man. Your commentary on the coven history is agonising (I’m not complaining!). I actually shrank down some of the options I originally planned for complexity. I’d love to be able to have things be mixed and multifaceted, I just don’t want to bite off too much. The more I develop things, the more I have to account for, the more coding I have to fit in (and blending, specifically, is a huge web of possibilities).
I’m keeping one eye on future coven interactions. I intend to keep emphasising that the resentful MC is intentionally toeing the line and not penalising their resistance for acting well-behaved while secretly not being so much. iirc, I’ve generally coded it so that there’s a distinction between how you act and how you think.
RE: bruised - mm, something I’ll take a future pass at, I think. The injury system is a bit WIP in itself, and that Mal scene is surprisingly complex in code (it’s simultaneously taking into account whether your shirt is off, how you reacted to it, whether or not you’ve got a thing going, whether you have blackend veins or the maw).
RE: eyes! - Whoops, that’s a slip up. I catch myself referencing Dime’s eyes often and have to train myself out of it. Clearly I missed that one!
RE: Flashback injury - ooh. yeah. That’d be a good addition.
RE: consistency - I’m gonna tweak the wording there. It means as in “If you’d all listened” - since ultimately the group didn’t, regardless of where the player fell on that axis.
RE: name ref - Whoops! I wrote player’s-name-with-Altruists by accident there.
RE: option not dropping off - Ugh. I have a hard time with these sometimes. I think it’s a quirk of having a conditionally-selectable option alongside the hiding code. Thankfully it’s only cosmetic, but I still want to fix it at some stage.
You and everyone else, apparently!!
sksksk uhh I’ll think about it.
Another (small) writing update:
I’m on the final stretch for chapter 6. We’re at 71k+ words and counting. Why did I do this.
Today felt like a good things-come-together day. I finished up getting the code pointing where it should (well. I hope. testing necessary) so that everything flows properly and I got to write some fairly delicious trauma.
All that’s left is the conversation about Not-Prii, which is going to be interesting to write and code (same dialogue choices for the player, their conversation partner reacting differently).
Here’s a preview of one option!
Dime, why are you calling the civillian. Dime. What are you doing.
Hesitation. Confiding any of this to Alistair crosses the line from foolish into out and out insane.
If you speak to him, it has to be in the vaguest of terms, stripped bare of almost all detail. Would such a neutered conversation get any of this off your chest?
*choice
#It might.
Only one way to find out.
#Probably not.
But your phone is already in your hand.
You hit call. You get an answer on the fourth ring.
"'lo?" says a bleary voice.
*if expressive > 65
"Hey man. I know this is a little out of the blue, but it's @{aliname $!{aka2}. You know, |}your friend from the shipping container."
*else
"Um, is this Alistair?"
"Speaking, yeah," he murmurs, sounding half asleep.
"It's @{@{aliname $!{aka2}. You know, |}your friend from the shipping container."
There's a pause. "For real?" @{(expressive > 65) He sounds marginally more awake.|}
"Yeah. @{expressive > 65) Hope I'm not interrupting anything."|Sorry for calling so randomly."}
@{(expressive > 65) "Other than my sleep? Naw, nothing."|"All good. Often call folks in the middle of the night?"}
Ohhh shit.
You kinda didn't think of that.
*choice
#"Sorry, I kinda didn't think of that."
