Hello! Good morning! It's time for updates!
Before I get started I'm just gonna say that I am aware of The Horrors, and they are causing me great anxiety, but I feel like my job here is to provide a bit of rest, away from all that. That's why I'll just be talking about game work. So lets take a little break together.
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I actually got a lot of writing done last week, I think. I pushed through the rest of the section that was blocking me and wrote the remaining endings.
I ended up changing a lot of the late game stuff from the original plan. I think that might have been part of the writer's block- not feeling satisfied with the original plan.
I also ended up adding a couple of different versions of endings to make the story flow better. I added some different scenarios on the last night, and a new ending for the final day after that. And... I decided to change one of the nicer endings into something a bit darker as well. Apologies to the soft Lawrence fans, but I just feel like this story has become very different from the original BTD path.
If it's any consolation, I also wrote a consensual sex scene. For maybe the first time ever 😂
I've gotten to a place where I feel more sure about the writing and the story. It may not be what people wanted, but it's the story I want to tell. And what am I even doing if I turn away from that?
Anyway, you might have noticed that the 'core' of the script is filled in now. That's the stuff that generally always happens in the same order.
What's left is what I call 'floating endings'. Floating endings are like in YKMET:Strade when you run out of health and then you get the ending where you bleed out- and it can be triggered kind of anywhere in the script.
Floating endings take a lot more work to program than normal ones, because on top of writing the ending, I need to go over the entire script and make sure the stats and checks for it work. Like in my bleeding out death example, I needed to make sure that MC always takes damage with their HP bar properly, and put in a line of code that asks if the health has hit zero, and send them to the health death ending if it did.
While I work on these floating endings, I also need to edit the script and update it for other stuff as well.
I need to check health, sanity, and lawrence's sanity through the script
I need to go over personality stats, which are present in this game but will be used WAY LESS than Strade's game. I'll only be using them for minor stuff.
MC's drug dosage
[ REDACTED ] - I need to check and write edits for something else. This will consume most of my time and effort
So, even though the script looks nearly done, these last few bits will take a disproportionately long time.
I gotta do what I gotta do.
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So, next week I'll start getting into those floating endings and the editing work for the full script.
OH ALSO I almost forgot- I'll be opening my store again tomorrow. It will just be the old products at first, and will still remain closed to the US.
I will also be closing it again temporarily [ a day at most ] if I get 100 orders, to give me time to process them. I'll keep repeating that process if necessary until demand slows down. I know it's kind of a pain in the ass but I've decided that I'm not willing to do 200-300 order processing days any more. They burn me out too badly.
Eventually, the store will return to a normal flow, and then I'll work on releasing the new products.
Thank you guys for your patience with this 🙏
Take care, stay safe, and see you all next week!