BIP(ish) - The Editing Queue

Hey all! 

As one might expect, I don't have anything new I can show off as a BIP right now, having just finished the draft and now being in that part of the editing stage where I'm mostly figuring out what I need to do and in what order. But the spirit of the BIP is previewing what's going on, so in that spirit I present to you a tidied-up version of my editing queue, along with some explanations of what each of the steps actually amounts to. I hope you're excited for what's to come, because I certainly am!

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Step One: Reverse Outline/Beat Sheet/Trigger Warnings - In this phase, I'm doing what's called a "reverse outline," so I can get a better idea of what the game looks like from a zoomed out perspective. This will also help me in compiling the content warnings, because I'll be reminded of exactly what scene is where, and can do my best to compile the possible triggers accordingly. 

Step Two: Trim anything that was superfluous - Sometimes, you write stuff because you think you need it, but then the subplot kind of drops out of things. Or it turns out it's better covered later or earlier, you know. That sort of thing. I don't know yet exactly how much will be trimmed out, and this step will honestly probably take place throughout as other things change, but any obviously dead branches on the story will be excised as I move to the editing copy of the game. 

Step Three: Character Creation/Give Option to Skip - I tried to do a sort of integrated character creation approach in the first draft of the game, and results were mixed. I honestly think pausing to ask someone what their eye colour is is always a little weird, so I'm just going to get all of that kind of thing out of the way at the beginning. Plus, some people really don't like detailed character creators, so I'll include an option to skip it in favour of a few different preset appearances for those folks!

Step Four: New Personality and Skill System/How to Integrate with Romance - I have... big plans for this one. I'm not yet completely sure that those plans will work, but that's why I do all this editing on a separate copy of the game. This will likely be something I talk more about in a bonus content very soon, but the hope is that it will make the relationships feel more organic while simplifying things like skill stats so no one feels like they have to constantly go check their sheet to see what they should do. That's immersion-breaking, and not very fun!

Step Five: Add Dionysus Options/Retool Magic Descriptions - I've always had in my head that the player will be able to explore more Dionysian style magic, but other than a few small references to things, it never materialized. So I'm going to actually build in an arc where players can get funky Chthonic magic and use it. Existing descriptions of the player using magic in combat will also be redone to feel more unique to the PC's domains, because right now it mostly all looks like energy bolts and shields, and that's too generic, methinks.

Step Six: Decide what the main beats of the character routes will be in the next game - Believe it or not, I kind of need to know this in order to repace the romances/platonic bonds in this game. I was never sure how much to give away or when it would be appropriate for certain things to happen, because I always knew vaguely that there would be a sequel that explored these subplots a lot more. Now I kinda need to know exactly what the subplots are, and how much of them needs to be out there before the sequel starts.

Step Seven: Outline next game - And while I'm at it, I need to outline the next game. It likely won't be in a huge level of detail, but I do need at least the basic beats of the main plot and the character-specific subplots, because I need to make sure all the right foundations are laid for that stuff in this story.

Step Eight: Re-Pacing the Routes/Adding Romance/Character Arc Stuff - Once I know what I need to cover, and what the skeleton of this game looks like (per the reverse outline) and what the systems are (per the skills/relationships redesign), I'll actually be in a position to replot/adjust the routes. This should hopefully involve adding some more romance/platonic bond scenes that feel different for each character, so that they're not all on the same slow burn for some reason. They'll probably all be a little bit slow burn, considering the situation the PC is in, but some less slow than others.

Step Nine: Make sure everything that needs a variable for the second game has one/ list all the options for each variable in a doc - I definitely don't want to do that thing I've done multiple times in the course of making this game where I need to refer to something that's already happened but there's no variable in place for how it happened. It's a pretty easy fix in the same game, but not so much between games, I'd imagine. I think my approach on this is going to be to give variables to a lot of things. If I do that, though, I'm going to need a big reference sheet with all the names, possible values, and what they track, so I'll just build that at the same time, I suspect.

Step Ten: Non-Missable Eurydice Scene before Chapter 8/Adjust Eury’s scenes and arc - In general, I'm fairly happy with how Eurydice's story goes. Most of it is missable, but that's... kind of okay. I just want to make sure there are at least two non-missable scenes with her before her plot resolves, so that it doesn't come out of nowhere, because the PC is always involved in the resolution, and it should feel like there was at leas some build up to that. This may be as simple as adjusting one of the earlier scenes to be mandatory instead of avoidable, or I may write a whole new scene; I'm not actually sure yet. 

Step Eleven: Integrate new personality system in other scenes - By this point, the new system should be integrated into the romance arcs, but there are plenty of other places it can and should have an impact. Dialogue with non-ROs, scenes with internal reflection, and definitely how all the action sequences go in Chapter Seven, just to name a few. 

Step Twelve: Smaller Adjustments leftover as needed: motifs, callbacks, etc. - By this time, all the big structural adjustments are done, so this will be the place I do things like add new choices to existing scenes, alter descriptions, use my new variables to add little bits of responsiveness in scenes, and so on. Anything smaller than significantly adjusting a scene will be done here, near the end, because there's no point in making little changes to a scene that may not exist later, or adding choices to a choice block that might disappear. 

Step Thirteen: Line and Copy Edits - Once all the substantive changes are done, it'll be time for line and copy editing. I've done some of this as I went along, which will hopefully make the process a bit easier, because it's definitely going to be a slog. No way around it—I have to read the game, word by word, and make sure my sentences make sense, things are spelled and punctuated correctly, and it sounds like something I want put out into the world and not a complete mess. 

Step Fourteen: Steam Capsules - These are publication assets that HG needs to publish the game on Steam, which I am hoping they will want to do! Basically I have to do a lot of playthroughs and take screenshots of things that are particularly illustrative or dramatic. I don't think it will ultimately take that long, and it's sort of an "icing on the cake" step for the editing process, really.

Step Fifteen: Submit the game for Publication - Pretty self explanatory. 

I might do a closed beta in here somewhere, so people can give me an idea of how they like all the changes. If I do, it'll probably be after Step Thirteen, and will really only be seeking feedback on how the new stuff feels, plus any changes testers might like in Step Twelve sort of stuff. Of course, if everyone overwhelmingly hates the new skill system, for example, that's a good thing to know, too, so I can revert back to the version without it, but with the changes that are actually liked.

It's a lot to do, but my hope is that these are the changes that will really make the game shine, and turn it into the best version of itself than I can write. I'm hoping it won't take me more than three months or so in total, but I have no basis for knowing how accurate that estimate is. In any case, I'll keep you all up to date as big changes some in, and are made playable, so you can try them out for me and see what you think!

Thanks for reading my huge text wall if you got this far; but then I figure if you've read FoA, you're pretty used to those. :)