Incubus Island Monthly Goal #6 - September 2020

I didn't accomplish as much as I have in previous months, but I am pleased with what I did accomplish.

Last month's goals:

1) Work on Typhon's story.

I really like how it went. I axed a lot of what I'd already written a while back because it was one of those cases where you have a character exposition dumping on you within minutes of meeting him. Much better to have him allude to things and then you can ask him for specifics later, or learn them somewhere else. I think it's probably better to underexplain things than overexplain things - the player can fill the gaps until the missing information is delivered. There's probably still areas where I can trim some dialogue, and should. 

One thing I don't like about regular games is where a character you just met asks you to do something for them - which often requires risking your life and breaking the law - without any solid justification. Normally, you don't ask even small favors of people you've just met, so it seems fake. I can see why game writers do this; there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief with a game because you don't have time to put hours of building trust story or the like. Still, I'll try to ease that suspension of disbelief wherever I can; it'll always be a tradeoff between relative believably and brevity. (Ironically I think I just spent 3 sentences saying something when only 1 was required.)

I have mentioned previously an uncertainty of weather or not I'd have a 'party' system where characters follow you around. I was also uncertain if combat would be part of the game. The former I'm definitely doing now, which means the latter is more likely as well. 

A thing I didn't entirely make this month, but 'renovated', was the chimein widgets. They're a way of easily having a party character comment on what's going on in a situation, that the game will only show if that character is present at that moment.

For example, if Typhon is in your party when this piece of code is reached, he'll say the dialogue provided. (This is not actual dialogue from the game; Typhon is not a whiner.)

<<chimein typhon "This is another fine mess you've gotten us into." >>

If I want a full conversation to ensue, I would use the following. (This is also not dialogue from the game, but it's on-character.)

<<chimeinconvo "If you ain't gonna try to fuck that hoe, I'm gonna.|I'm about to go talk to her. Wish me luck.|I can hear everything you guys are saying, you know.|Bahahahaha, sorry _NAME, I kinda fucked it up for you didn't I?" typhon player wendy >>

The dialogue alternates through the list of characters in the order provided (typhon, player, wendy, then cycles through the list again), and the dialogue string has each line separated by a pipe ('|'). You can probably follow the conversation, knowing this. It's fine for ad-hoc little conversations. I use the same system for the CONVO: property in my CUBUS linking system. 

I also have the ability to require the presence of characters to enable certain links. For example, without Wendy, you won't see or be able to choose this option: 

<<say "This security guard's going to be trouble. Can you distract him for me?"     PARTY:wendy     PAGE:32     "CONVO:How am I gonna do that?|Use your mouth.|Yeah but what am I gonna even talk to him about?|I didn't mean have a conversation. I meant suck him off.|What? Ew! I'm not going to suck him off!|You absolutely are. You owe me, bitch. Don't forget that.|Sigh... ok.///she says, your dagger of guilt hitting its target.///I'll do it. But this is the last time." >>

(A "///" separates dialogue from prose within a single line of dialogue, so this would read: "Sigh... ok." she says, your dagger of guilt hitting its target. "I'll do it. But this is the last time.")

It's probably worth mentioning that Typhon's scenes are 4 scenarios so far. I think they're about as complex as any individual scenario in IC. Next month I'll do a tally of all the scenarios so far - it's gotten to the point where I've forgotten what I've made.

2) Reorganize how things are laid out in Twine. 

Easily done. I don't know why I put up with the previous way they were organized for so long. 

3) Pull all event content I've written into the game. 

I decided against doing this except for all the things that were above a certain level of coherence (also left out old scenarios I wrote for unfinished RenPy projects that need to be converted to plain text - maybe I can find a tool to streamline this process). In doing so I uncovered a few things that I forgot about, which pleases me, but also realized I couldn't find a few things I know I've written. They'll turn up eventually, I have no doubt. 

Other things I did: 

- Redesigned the logo. Not a drastic change, and I'm not done, but still. 
- I realized how CSS's z-index actually works, and now I've made it so location backgrounds no longer require specific classes. This isn't a huge victory but it pleases me nonetheless. (Update: I might actually have to reverse course on this change because the new method causes the background to flicker when a new passage is loaded. Doh.)

- I made numerous changes to IC. I will post an update to it within the next week. Most changes were housekeeping/bugfixing, but I also added GrimUrsine's UEE content and some new content of my own. I hate opening up IC because 1) I hate the way I organized it and coded it, makes me feel dirty to even look at it, 2) I always feel a compulsion to add more content to it, and sometimes get carried away. I think I resisted the urge to get too carried away, so that's good.

- Made it so that the game accounts for a girl's traits (eg 'on birth control', 'on fertility meds', 'sterile' etc) in calculating her fertility. 

- Revised how lists are stored for greater consistency.

- Changed how the link system checks conditions, so  that putting a ! in front of a condition will automatically check for the opposite of that condition, where relevant. (eg: "!KNOW:horses" will trigger if you don't know about horses, and KNOW:horses will trigger if you do, "!HAVE:gun"/"HAVE:gun" similar deal.)

- Revised how 'stands' are displayed. (A 'stand' is a png of the character standing which is displayed in the corner of the screen when talking to them similar to visual novels.) (No, it's not a Jojo reference.)

- Created the functionality whereby a 'stand' of a pregnant character who is at a certain stage of her pregnancy will now appear pregnant. It means I have to make two stands for every pregnable female character but whatever.

- Recreated a way to view your character's stats and info on a popup 'character sheet', as well as the inventory system (much more streamlined and versatile) and some other related stuff. I like what I've done. 

- I know there's something else, something significant but not big, but it escapes me at the moment. I'll put it in here later if I think of it. 

- Created two multi-purpose scenarios. I don't know how to describe these, but they're a way of using a single coded scenario multiple times, but iterating on it so it's different - different images, different character, different dialogue, different skill checks, different reward. I'm not sure how far I can - or should - take this idea, but it's worth experimenting with. 

Next month's goals:

I think that this routine of posting monthly goals is having the desired effect of keeping me motivated (even when they're a week late, like this one). I'm putting in about as much as I can, and I am consistently enjoying myself. That said, I could be more efficient and focused. 

Ok so, I've decided that I'm going to release a playable alpha of the game before the year's end. Not any particular reason, I would just rather put out what I've got at some point then wait for myself to be 'ready' with it; I have no idea when I'll be ready, so maybe a ready-or-not approach is better. So in the interest of this:

1) Create a tally of the scenarios and features so far. I am losing track of what I've done, and what I need to do in order for those done and quasi-done things to be accessible by the player. I'll post it here, but I'll censor anything that I figure might be spoilery, if anything ends up being in that category. 

2) Based on the above, finish off and properly integrate features and scenarios. Many things are kinda-finished but not activated or connected to anything. Others are fine, but other aspects of the game have changed since I made them so they need to be updated with this in mind. 

3) Do something about the game's intro. I hate the 'character creation' scenario I've made. It just doesn't work. It was a cool idea, having your character's stats be generated based on a conversation you have with a girl you meet that starts your adventure, but I'm not feeling it - both in terms of writing and in terms of flow and functionality. My choice of model for this scene also makes things complicated as well. I don't know if I'm going to trash it or streamline it or what, but something gotta be done. 

The top model
of holocamera
 (of four years ago).

4) Work on the Photography component. One of the concepts of the game is that you have to earn a living in sleazy ways. One of these will be being a sleazy photographer - taking photos of celebs, crime scenes, hot chicks, and whatever else and selling them for cash. As time has passed, I have not developed this element of the game at all. 

5) Make at least 2 more scenarios. It'll either be two one-shot scenarios or get started on the pharmacist character I've mentioned before. I just had a really odd idea on how to conclude her storyline, which retroactively assigns her a motive that makes her more interesting than I initially thought. 

That's that. I should point out that although I said I'd launch, please don't expect a game as coherent in design as IC was when you first encountered it. This is going to take a while to make, and its going to be quite different than the flow and intent of IC. I do not expect that what I'm going to put out in Nov/Dec will even have an 'ending'.

I've Been Meaning to Ask

How do you people download/play the game? Do you download the full version and play it locally, or use the online version at gamcore or whatever? If you do download it, do you get it here or on F95 or some other site? If some other, tell me where. For that matter, do you use computer or your phone or tablet? I'm curious about all this. Let me know in the comments.