Improving Day-by-Diary

Good day, friends and enemies! Welcome to THK Thursday!  

Maxi's been rather busy working on the script for chapter 4 now that they seem to have fixed all the bugs that slipped past during the testing phase for 1.6! But worry not, we still haven't finished talking about all the changes that took place, so you've got a few more THK Thursdays to go. 

Before we go into that, however: The Hayseed Knight is proudly part of the curated selection of Season of Pride 2022 on Steam! Get your fix of queer games by queer creators! https://store.steampowered.com/sale/seasonofpride2022 

And now back to our scheduled THK Thursdady content: this week, we wanted to talk about changes and improvements to the Diary!  

The Diary section, which occupies roughly the last 3 or 4 hours of Chapter 3 is, by far, the most complex part of THK both in narrative terms and programming. 

It required much butting heads against code on Maxi's part and messing with the encyclopaedia framework as well... to such degree that Maxi feels like they're playing with a Jenga tower any time a change is needed. We all need a little extra rush of adrenaline in our projects!

The most noticeable change compared to previous versions, is, of course, the GUI! 

Maxi spent quite some time working on remaking the visual department of the Diary, before finally settling for an unified look with the encyclopaedia... featuring our dearest stag making faces instead of Lin, of course.

Another important new addition to the Diary is content warnings! 

Mental health is a topic that Maxi holds very close to his heart—the Diary itself is based on their positive experience going through EMDR therapy years ago as a way to treat their cPTSD. 

Given that due to its very nature the Diary touches on potentially upsetting or even triggering topics,  the player now has the option to see the content warnings that will be featured in each scene before playing through it.

One last little known fact about the Diary is that it counts with a lesser-known Fast Mode, only available upon replaying after achieving unlocking all the memories!

The Fast Mode currently allows players to go through the diary in the order Maxi wrote each entry as a succession of scenes, rather than clicking through the maze individually. 

Consider it a quality-of-life addition, and a new way to experience Sep's memories, all in one!

Maxi plans to change this in the future so the entries follow a chronological order, but... that's a matter for a future update. Facing the Jenga tower at the center of the Diary requires a lot of mental preparation first!

Did you enjoy navigating through the Diary? Did you stumble upon any funny Ader reaction to a memory you just say? We'd love to hear about it!

That is all for now, we hope you found this THK Thursday enlightening!  

Take care, and stay safe out there!