Progress report of Update 1.7

Main.

Usually, I work along the lines of - scene ready in draft → add it to the game, and test it. But because of the specific, "hybridized" gameplay at the beginning of the next episode, it's not very convenient, so I doing the draft of a whole series of scenes altogether this time, about ~ half of the entire update/episode.

The hybridization that I mentioned above is a mix of "free roam sequence" stuff, with Selene wandering here and there and usual scenes appearing as certain conditions are met. Because of this complex structure, I'm constantly having to finalize the "tails" that arise as I work through this *damn-biggy-this-time* draft. Otherwise, I would have to redo it all in the game itself, which would take more time because of the need to edit the code as well.

So, the work is boiling. As always, I wish it were faster, but I'm doing the best I can. In some cases, it's better to take the time. For your own good.

Advice.

I try to refrain from advising you how to play but in this case a small exception. To maximize the content in the next episode, make sure Meralion is alive in your active saves. In the event of his death, the next episode can be... rather short. Especially in this very first half, which I'm working on right now.

I mean, if Mer is dead, there's not much to "compensate" for his death in the context of content. It's like some other RPG where you killed the quest-giver and consequently lost his entire quest chain. It's not exactly a perfect example, but it'll do, you get the idea.

In the big picture, in the context of the whole story, it's just a small episode. So if some future players let him die and just keep playing since the game hasn't stopped, they'll just get to the next episode faster. But most people reading these lines, I suspect, play each episode as it comes out, and you'll be better if Mer survives, in the sense of "better" because it will provide more content. Based on my current draft, we're talking at least a few dozen pages of text. A dead character can't give you all that.

Addition.

By request, added an additional start option (which will be from the next update). In the game, it looks like this:

Huh, now I'm thinking maybe sometime in the future I could add higher difficulty options where the starting amount of Insight is, um, a negative number?

With a negative number of Insight, a number of checks outside of the character's Ability area at the beginning of the game would simply be unpassable until you gain enough Insight to make it go from a negative number to a positive one. This will affect gameplay quite a lot. I think it's kind of perverse to play it that way, so for now, I'm just thinking about this... perversion, yeah.  Well, all for people with masochistic tendencies who always lack challenge xD Are they even here? Or did I just come up with some nonsense that no one gives a shit about?

P.S. Actually, I should probably make a list of suggestions regarding your... suggestions. I mean, I get quite a lot of requests to add or change things, and most of the time I say no. I don't like saying no at all, especially to patrons. Hate that feeling. But some requested changes or additions can really break the game, and even checking to see if they can be made takes a good couple hours of my digging through the code. Quite a "fun" for my humanitarian brain.

But on the other hand, there are a number of changes that are simple, like 5-10 minutes and done, and they 100% don't break anything in the game.

Yeah, I'll probably save that for another post. Just so you can see the difference between suggestions that are not feasible and those that are totally possible to implement at your requests. And I've had to say less "no" and more "sure, no problem".  And feel good about it.