Hiii! A bit of a comprehensive devlog for Abyssal Depths' current progress so far. I'll also be talking about some of the plans I have for the game mechanics to give a heads up about the upcoming demo.
Made a significant progress this week! Elfrid's scene was long done, and Lucian's needs just one more portion finished before the prologue progresses further. I'm past the original wordcount of the old demo's prologue and chapter 1 combined too, so the current prologue is definitely longer. This is also considering that the old chapter 1 is merged with the prologue now, with additional scenes that wasn't in the old version of the story. Starting tomorrow (monday), however, progress is gonna be a bit slow again because I'll be returning to school (last week was a long-week break for us). I've set the weekends as my writing day, though, to at least ascertain that I'll have progress no matter how little. May is my finals, though, so I'll also be a bit busier. But! After that is vacation, finally, so lots of time to write again!
If you're one of the people who liked code diving and saw the files for the old demo, you probably saw how messy my coding was. I had lots of variables, which, in my defense, made writing easier for past me. That isn't the case now—I found myself having less patience with tracking tens of variables every time I have to add choices and stat checks. So! With that said, I decided to tweak the stats for easier tracking.
Instead of percentage, I made the numerical value into whole numbers instead. Meaning, instead of adding or subtracting %N (number) for a moderate increase/decrease in stats, it will be like +N instead. This is because it gets significantly difficult to accumulate points the higher your stat goes. There's no more visible opposed_pair stat bars as well, as I'll be turning every stat into text rather than making it numerical. There are still stats that go against each other, like the personality stats. For example, it still goes like sincere or cynical, you just won't see them in a stats bar anymore, just a text description of what kind of person your character is.
Your choices, then, have 6 instances: slight, moderate, and high increase or decrease. However! Don't be scared if, say, a stat decreases. There's no such thing as a bad ending for the story, just different outcomes. I, myself, don't like reading bad endings, so that's one thing I actively avoid in writing. I like angst, though, so you might find yourself in interesting situations with characters you have a low relationship stat with. A reminder too that you don't entirely have to be good to a character in order to romance them. You can play as a mean or stoic character and still be able to get romantically involved with characters. If you're not one for romance, that's alright too!
For easier gameplay, a heart symbol like this [♡] will be in a choice that indicates an increase in romance points. Additionally, you can play as a character who can be "in denial" of their feelings towards a character. Keep in mind that this automatically determines that your character is romantically interested in a person, but it doesn't stop you from gaining romance points with other character. Moreover, you don't have to actively show interest to gain romance points. Sometimes, even choices that may seem normal give romance points. Although, keep in mind that you still need to show interest sometimes to garner enough romance points and be able to choose a character as your RO.
Another thing, I pulled out the character profiles I posted for the meantime. I'm changing some info that doesn't fit them anymore, so I took them out.
I think that's all for now, since the rest of the game mechanics is pretty much something you'll directly notice once you get to play the demo. I just thought it might be a good thing to explain a bit here so that you'll have an idea as well about the type of character you want to play as. Have a good week ahead, everyone!
