Storyboard complete!

Hey guys! I’m happy to report that this evening I finished the storyboard to a standard I’m happy with. Tomorrow I’ll be able to start actually building playable scenes for the next version of the game!

I made some big changes to the last part of the storyboard over the past few days. Something wasn’t working out in execution: it felt like (a) too much of a reskin of Oceana, and more importantly (b) like the scenes were set up for the heroine to experience, not like how they’d actually arise in the setting.

Once again (like in 1.12) I had to let go of the structure that I was trying to force on the story, and let it take its own shape. I worked on the changes from Friday to tonight, and the result is a scene that’s smaller in some ways (there’s less of a “wow factor” to the climax) but heavier in others (it feels more personal and less artificial as a result).

Our lovely illustrator Victoria (who’s following the storyboard in progress closely, so she can draw clothes and new avatar art to make the scenes work) messaged me and said: “it feels a lot darker than before. but it makes much more sense now.” I think she’s right, although I wasn’t trying to deliberately write a scene that’s dark; it’s just how it came out in a way that feels genuine and right for the next part of the story. It’s not what I’d planned, but in real life plans start changing the moment you cross the start line.

(She also messaged me to trash talk me about the game tonight – she's based in Italy).

What’s next?
The storyboard is my writer’s plan for the scenes we’ll implement. We build it in Google Slides: here’s an example of how it looks (in a scene that’s been removed from the next update for pacing reasons, but will probably get reüsed later).

He's often right, and it's always annoying.

Tomorrow I’ll start actually building the first pages in the game engine. In the storyboard lots of the narrative is basically written, but there are also placeholder sections that need to be filled in. Also, when building in the actual game engine, I kind of play along as I go: this means that sometimes new branches and options occur to me during this part of the process.

In parallel with that work, avatar art needs to be drawn, exported, uploaded and executed in the code. Code for things like facial expressions and dice rolls need to be added to scenes; sometimes totally new features need to be created (e.g. the bikini lines/piercings/tattoos menu for the shower scene in 1.12).

Basically…a lot of work goes into every release of Female Agent. We’ll get started on this next phase tomorrow, and report back to you on progress next week.

Lifepath update
More news on this Soon™. Like I said in last week’s update: I have some ideas on this, but I’m fully tasked on 1.13 activities at the moment. However, the Lifepath isn’t permanently dropped: I keep running into scenes where, as a writer, I’m thinking I wish I knew X or Y about the heroine’s past for this scene. We’ll figure out how to finish and connect it with the main narrative Soon™.

Okay…apparently I’m missing some kind of football match on the TV? I’d better go watch it so nobody thinks I’m unpatriotic. But I’ll be back to work in the morning, and I’ll see you guys with a progress report next weekend!

Sure hope I didn't miss anything in the first few minutes of the match...