Progress Report 2021.10.20

Hi friends,

October has been a pretty challenging month. I’ve talked about this on some of my progress reports before, but I have pretty severe chronic dry eye syndrome, which impacts my ability to write and code the way I want to. I’ve been in and out of the optometrist’s office over the summer and fall for various treatments, and I’ve been in different levels of eye pain and fatigue throughout the last two months.

While the condition is starting to get under control again, long stretches of screen time is the main culprit, which ultimately means I can’t write as much as I would like to. I’m working on finding a writing system that works better for me (including doing some drafting by hand so I can at least still write without having to look at a computer screen), but regardless it does mean that I have to slow down and I can’t produce content as quickly as I want.

Because of this, Chapter 2 is still moving along, but its material is taking longer than I had originally anticipated. I am nearing the end of Scene 1 (which was a pretty big section) and I am hoping to have it done by the end of the month. I have a few more subscenes to finish, but once those are done, the material needs to be proofread before I can code it and add it to the alpha build.

Game Updates

The current new material is approaching 50k, so when it is released, there will be a lot of content (and a lot of interesting dialogue trees and new lore 👀) to play around with! 

Ideally, I would like to update the alpha build with new content before the end of the month, but it will depend on how long it takes to finish these last few sections and have the new material proofread.

I’m going to hold off on updating the progress schedule for now until Scene 1 is finished and I have a better idea of how many hours of screen time I can devote to writing each day.

Other Updates

I have found a graphic designer and a commission for the Wayfarer sigil is in progress! I’m really excited for this and I can’t wait to see it brought to life.

I’ve been writing short Twine tutorials on my development blog (usually in response to coding questions I receive, but sometimes on topics that I think are helpful). I am considering writing a formal, two-part interactive fiction/Twine guide in the future. It would be specifically for long-form roleplaying IF games (the kind Wayfarer is).

Volume One would be a beginner’s guide to working in the Twine editor and coding in SugarCube; basically, a compilation of all the things I have learned that I found helpful or useful. Volume Two would be a guide on IF narrative design—basically, all the components that go into structuring, designing, and writing an IF game. This volume wouldn’t be coding-focused outside of the conceptualization stage, so its guide could be applied to IF written in any engine or language.

I also want to create a few SugarCube templates that are annotated and include elements and custom macros I find helpful.

This would be a long-term project developed when I have time (game content always comes first). I am thinking of releasing drafted chapters on here as I work on them, likely as additional bonus content for that month. When both volumes are complete, I’ll likely release them here in early access before releasing them on itch.io as a game resource.

That’s all for right now—fingers crossed for getting new Chapter 2 material up soon! Thank you all so much for your support! 💕