Speaker Beta Update - 1/31/23

My apologies for the delayed update! I meant to get this out last week but ran into a weird bug that made the game stop loading at all, and I had to fix before I could work on anything else. 

After spending much longer than I'd like googling and having conversations with more experienced coders, I managed to get rid of the error by deleting and recreating the StoryInit (which near as I can tell is the Twine equivalent of blowing into the SNES game cartridge)

so if you run into a "passage" or "load" error pop-up message, please let me know so I can keep working on it! it'll pop up as soon as you try to open the game, so you'll know right away. but hopefully, none of you will run into that 🤞

on to the update!

I recoded all of the intro scenes for the route split. It won't look any different on your end, but it's much better behind the scenes than the mangled ball of code it had been before, and will be a lot easier to work with going forward. New additions from last time:

•the first set of choices on Azalea's route have been changed. I decided to move the option for hugs to a later part in the chapter, in a scene that everyone will get. I wanted the option for platonic hugs to be available to Speakers on other routes too.

•the first scene for the Bas/Li poly route has been added!

•part of Li's route is complete! the first scene is done, as well as all the ones following the first choice set. both options of the first romantic choice are fully coded, including POV scenes, but only the shy/reserved choice is there for the second romantic option right now, and there's one more series of choices I need to code for both the platonic options. Obviously I'd intended to have the whole thing done for this update, but the load error had to take priority.

I'm in the process of coding the bold/flirtatious choice for the second romantic option, but it'll be after midnight when I get it done, so I wanted to get this out to you now. I'll update when I have that done, and again in a day or two when I get the platonic scenes coded.

total new word count: ~12,000 before code

You can play it here! 

password: theendisnigh

Li's route is probably the most complicated from a coding perspective, because of the possible variations on their history with the Speaker, so I wanted to tackle it first. once I finish it, I'll be doing one of the less challenging ones next, and hope to have that done much quicker... as long as I don't run into anymore game breaking bugs. I'll update on a route-by-route basis until they're all done!