Maids & Masters (& The Approach of v0.2)

 I'm doing this a bit later than I intended, but on the bright side, that's kind of a good thing.

After the issues of last week, this week has gone pretty smoothly. Development on v0.2 is very nearly done, with only about half of one quest and a character introduction to complete. I've already started playtesting specific segments and nothing seems irreparably broken so far. That really just leaves another day or two of dev time and a few days to playtest and bugfix. It might end up being a little longer than a week before the build is ready for release, but not by a lot.

The shop, which will be the post-game preview for v0.2, is proving to be considerably more complicated than I had initially anticipated due to RPG Maker not having certain options by default, and the scripts to implement those options being harder to use than the other plug-and-play scripts that I'm using to add other features. I'll still be able to work with it, and hopefully the finished product will look like it was all planned from the start, but the waters are a little muddier than I want them to be.

With that in mind, I'll be looking for more feedback than usual for the shop in particular once v0.2 releases. There are a few configurations for it that I could change around and try new things, but I don't want to throw a web of choice trees at you and hope you catch on. The actual shop window is much more self-explanatory, and I would greatly prefer using it as opposed to setting up the alternative. But that's why I want feedback. If the current version ends up being too confusing or convoluted, I can give the alternate version a go. Even though it wouldn't use the shop window, it might streamline the gameplay angle. Though it would be harder to program.

But that's for later. We can talk about that more after v0.2 is out.

Right now I'm in the middle of writing out how you recruit your fourth party member. This was originally going to be a considerably shorter nice and quick in-and-out (Clockwork-Orange-inspired pun intended) where you just grab your new character and leave, but that felt like a missed opportunity. With the uncle's Estate being completely optional (and likely going to stay completely optional for the entirety of the game), that put any opportunity to interact with a friendly Master much further down the road than I really wanted it to be. So this section of the game will now also feature an introduction to how Masters tend to treat each other when they aren't at odds, as well as a number of player choices that will hopefully make things feel more like you as the player are guiding events, rather than just following them.

This does mean that this section of the game will be longer than I had originally intended. I see that as a positive, even if it does mean a longer development period, because I had some concerns about this section of the game being too short if you chose to skip certain parts. I will admit that if you aren't the sort of person who wants to get to know fictional characters and do some reading when you open up an RPG, this game probably isn't for you. But in fairness, as much as I enjoyed Mass Effect, I never once opened the in-game codex to learn more about the planets and races. I understand not wanting a game to give you homework in order to have fun. So I still want you to be able to experience the story I'm presenting through your own lens in a way that is still enjoyable. I don't want to punish you for finding certain aspects of the game (such as combat or longer, more tedious quests) unenjoyable when you otherwise do like the rest of the game. I think finding that balance is worth taking the extra development time.

The other trick I'm going to try to pull off is a bit more seasonal, and puts me on something of a time limit. The game world does have seasons, but doing this "early access/release in chunks" style of development means those seasons should roughly line up with the seasons in real life. This creates an issue where that part of the game should happen early on, but by the nature of what it is, it definitely shouldn't be one of the first things you encounter. I already know what I want to do for the "Halloween" update, so most of that content is pre-planned, but given the current cadence of my work it may be November by the time I'm ready to begin working on it. Which further means that any "Christmas/winter" content might not be ready to roll out until spring is already approaching. I have a couple ideas of how I might be able to handle this, but it's definitely a barrier I'll have to overcome, especially since this project wasn't initially planned to have a development span of multiple years.

I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the mean time, wish me luck, and stay cultured, my friends.