Devlog December 2024
I don't want to say that I started this blog with something as well-defined as a content calendar, but I certainly had a vague plan of sorts, kind of. In it, I would cap off each month with a development update.
It doesn't sound like an unreasonable plan, I think you'll agree. But it did sort of skip over the whole starting during the December holiday month thing. As you may have noticed, that last part has since caught up. The result of this is that we've now set a precedent for start of the month updates. Such is life.
What did I do last month?
My most important goal for December was finishing the first act of my upcoming game. Ideally, I would have also begun work on Act 2 (of 4).
In the real world, I'm still in Act 1. There are two reasons for this. First, I've been refining a few systems for use in this and future games. I had prototyped versions of them before but, as you write, things happen and adjustments seemed prudent. These have now been made. The second reason is related: I had planned to expand the world with a New Game+ feature.
The idea was that you would play not as a boosted main character (MC), but as one of your other party members experiencing the MC's decisions. Upon working on it, however, this approach felt as if it took away too much agency from the player's new run. So it has now shifted into a fresh collection of stories for each party member, which is likely going to be added to the game as DLC.
For my Protagonist IF engine, I have been working on the data layer. This already worked fine, but I've been trying to squeeze out some more performance for large data sets. I am making good progress and expect to finish in the coming week.
Lastly, I've been quite busy with the site. The CMS I'm using is custom-built and still has some quirks that need attention. I also hope to make this a place where you can not just read my blog posts, but also play my (and other people's) games, should you not want to download them. I've made progress here as well, but this point will probably remain in the ongoing task column for some time still.
What am I going to do this month?
For the coming month, the most important thing is to finish Act 1 and get as much of the preparatory work for the DLC done as possible. It's better that I do this now, even if it sets me back a little, because I want to explore how much of the new content I can seed from a player's original play-through. This is how all full volumes are going to work, but it'd be nice if player decisions can have some influence on the in-between stuff as well.
Protagonist- and site-related work will be ongoing too and there will be more blog posts. Probably. Until then, I know it's the sixth already, but I want to wish everyone a happy 2025. Let's have amazing adventures and be excellent to one another!