Update 6/28/22: ~PAIN~

Ugh

UGH!

Before I say anything else, let me apologize: I will not, unfortunately, be making my planned release date for the newest build.  Long story short, because of a combination of family, work, and a hand injury (my dominant one, no less) I essentially lost three weeks of time I had planned to devote to the game. The injury was shortly after my last post, and has since (mostly) recovered, but it made me unable to grip things (e.g. a mouse, a tablet pen, etc.) for much of that period.  To wit, I have since recovered, and have been trying to make up for lost time, but... Well, there's only so much one can do, you know?

Out of fear of another incident compromising my next intended release date (or, an injury relapse?), I won't promise a hard date, but believe me when I say I want this next update out as soon as possible.

Moving on, then. To make up for my period of silence, I aim to have an update every day for the next two weeks--simpler posts compared to past ones, but there'll be some kind of new thing each time.

As such, for today's update: an oft-requested feature, the QUEST JOURNAL.

In my mental image of the final state of FEF, I envisioned the player doing stuff, going back and forth across the map, engaging and interacting with NPCs, and making choices. Some interactions might cause something later down the line; others might simply have immediate rewards. All cause the party to level up, advancing the 'time' of the game. This, to me, was a translation of the interactive CYOA that FEF the game is based on.

That said, I also am an amateur game maker, so I to that end, I dunno how to make interesting quests. So instead, I make a lot, or I make them complicated. And that's... unfortunate for players.

So, Quest Journal. Tracks quests you've done, classifies them as MAIN or SIDE Quest, and more importantly, lists the actual things you need to do for the Quest. This would be a pain in the butt to event/code by hand, but thankfully, everyone who does this kind of thing agreed, and so Quest Journal/tracker plugins were made. I'm using the Yanfly one, which is simple in theory, but offers a lot of little bibs and bobs to keep track of.

Look at all of that!

Quests in FEF will have 5(?) components in the Journal: Title, Questgiver, Location, Description, and Objectives. The first three are negligible, but Description and Objectives will, for the most part, have several updates/ data changes per quest, which necessitates hunting down the individual interactions that dictate each one. I don't want to get too specific this time-- maybe tomorrow's post?-- but it's, well, a lot. And that's with me paring it down a tad.

Anyways, my estimate is that Phases One and Two have around 30 quests in them thus far--quests being basically anything that requires the player to move from one map/screen to another. I also treat character recruitment as a Quest, so stuff like Jamie and non-Rumia Phoebe count, too. And the descriptions of the quest are written in a way so as to track/record what the player's done--and to also suggest when a quest has caused something to happen in the future...

And for an example of one of *those*, well....

...

More next time.

And again, my deepest apologies.