#project den

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AHHHHHH I'M SO HAPPY SEEING NEW FEMALE LEADSSSSA CAN WE HEAR MORE ABOUT THEM!?? ANY SILLY THING???

Fahima the Grinning Spider is over 100 years old and known to be a mild menace to society. Her dedication to her craft has forced people to begin to acknowledge alchemy as one of the foundational schools of magic like Arcanism, Linguism, etc (where it was previously scorned as the route people with no magical talent took to gain meager power). She's bright, loud, and energetic, bouncing around from place to place for fun and to continue her studies. She's deeply religious to her deity, Amare, and while she turns the other cheek when it comes to people bad mouthing Amare (per Amare's orders), she revels in the rare chance to shred people who speak ill of them.

She's one of the most well-known Spiders as well, and she's a known braggart. "Even the King of Winter and the King of Spring concede to my brilliance! That is why I, Fahima, am the greatest alchemist in the world."

Noelani (previously had a different name but it ended up switching to this one) is a tall Blooded Hound. This means her eyes glow with the same burning fire as her Goddess, and she's very devoted to honing her spear skills and protecting people. She was born AMAB, which contributed to her height and size, but Violo's work on her body is seamless. She's a quiet individual who is currently tasked with acting as Fahima's body guard and solving physical challenges. Outside of her pursuit of physical prowess, she likes flowers and weaving. It's not uncommon to find her stringing together leis to grant people small blessings from her Goddess by having them. She loves children and you can usually find five or ten of them hanging off of her and asking her to play with them. She would like to be better at drawing, but it's not a skill she's particularly good at.

Her quite nature often makes it easy to miss her, even with her being on the larger side with burning eyes. Fahima's loud exuberance makes her look meek in comparison, but don't mistake her shyness for her being timid. She will punch a hole through your chest if need be.

And as a teaser for Sissy, she's fun because in her game you actually meet her last of all of the romancables. She also currently has the highest PC kill count for reasons.

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Uterus is starting its monthly plan to murder my sleep schedule and well-being, so I'm going to jot out some quick mid month notes to celebrate small successes.

Firstly, I'm nearing the end of the Challenge portion of Challenge 2 of Sacrarium Contego. I suspect I have about 3ish more days of work on that before I'll get started on the Task portion of Challenge 2. I needed to get the Challenge portion written first to be able to add in the timing checks that modify task variables. EX: how late in the game do you do x can affect how x plays out. That will probably take another 15ish days of work after I break things up into chunks. It may be more since I need to add in more high affection reward conversations. Still, this is leaps and bounds compared to being near the start again.

Necare also, in typical Necare fashion, outright determined a certain choice to make the MC "incompatible" with her. This will be my first time testing a delayed outright failure flag, but I think it will be interesting. Since she's only rivaled by Amare in how few fuck's she has to give on your opinion if she thinks it's a shit one, she might give them a run for their money on the monopoly of "pickiest LI in Sacrarium".

For Resisco, I've finally mapped out what CGs I want to have done. I don't know if I'll get to have them all, but I'm going to try. The ones that will be cut are the flashback ones sadly (as introduction, pre-climax, climax, and good end reward CGs come first). I think I might manage it however since as a single LI the total count is on the low end (only 7).

For GSLH, I've continued fleshing out Faded Glory, Fahima, and Noelani, including giving Fahima a design tweak that better fits her aesthetic as a Spider (her previous incarnation was cute, but it didn't really sell the vibe of Spiders as much). I've also determined that Kiddo will not becoming along on this adventure because I don't want to have to get sprites for them. Frugality and what not.

For Project IC, I've made the discovery that Pencil (WIP nickname) has a high proclivity for bringing the Agent human body parts. Eyes and fingers mostly, and only on a high interest run. This has unveiled some interesting quirks to his character. I've also decided to go back to my roots and focus on only developing what is relevant to the story. I got a little too caught up in minutia and that was making things way more complicated.

For Project Den, I've been enjoying fleshing out the NPCs. It's rare I get to have a larger cast, but an IF would allow it since I don't have to worry about visuals. It's been very enjoyable figuring out dynamics and figuring out what the first few bad endings are. You can get thrown out of your new job within five minutes of meeting one of your new co-workers if you bungle up a conversation badly enough. Writing a family that loves each other rather actively has been fun as well. I known damn well I am going to have to figure out how to code a family tree though. Too many connections to keep track of in game otherwise.

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Sometimes the notion that violo is a top genuinely baffles me cuz that man just screams "pathetic yearner" like maybe it's just me idk

The notion baffles me as well since he's a vers not a top.

I think that most of my cast is a vers in Sacrarium. Heimos, Violo, Vivere, Zahir, Yukimira, Necare, and Noelani are all vers. Fahima is a top exclusively. Amare is ace so they are out of the running entirely.

The LI from Project IC is also a vers, tho in a cthulu way.

And the Den chars are still in development. I think they're all vers too though.

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Me: I don't really like Bubba's current name. It feels a bit off all things considered. I wonder what I could change it to-

The obvious answer:

AH YES! DELECTABLE CHOICE.

Henceforth their pair nickname will be the Calendar Kiddos, and I can add in the angst that their dead mother named them after people who were so prevalent their names even survived into the post-apocalypse, hoping that they'd live lives just as impactful. THEN THE MONKEY'S PAW CURLED.

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Seeing the asks by the beleaguered would-be thief just trying to get by as a successful antagonist in the Sacrarium universe made me giggle. I can imagine them chewing a pencil while frowning down at a flowchart of possible evilisms with all the options crossed out and labelled 'DEATH'!

Can you tell us a bit about Project Den? I haven't seen it in the pinned post before!

There are so many options for villainy! Just...not those options.

Project Den will end up being one of two things story wise.

It's going to be a venture into IF/CYOA style formatting for sure. The question is gonna be the genre.

Which will either be:

That one game I babbled about before about the routes being who the kids you take care of ship you with (4 Routes + 1 Acearo route focused more on found family). Each kiddo has a specific person they want you to end up with, and I just find them adorable. It'd be in a fantasy setting, which is why I pause since I do want to dabble more in non-fantasy to scratch some other genre itches.

A zombie apocalypse game set far, far into a world where a heavily mutated virus continues to be a problem. It's set far enough that previous countries and cities have crumbled, groups have fought one another, and a new order has been established to slowly recover. It would have 3 romanceable + 1 Acearo option for just doing your job well. I like the romanceables in it. I just need to squint at the setting more because that requires more hardline lore rules and what not. Figuring out how to properly dismantle and remantle countries and what not.

Of the two, I am slightly leaning more towards the zombie one because I have always loved the genre, and the romanceables in it are some ancient ass OCs of mine that I wouldn't mind dusting off to give some loving to.

Haven't decided yet though.

It's something for me to pick over while at work, because I have sadly discovered I cannot outline or write Sac from my phone T_T (I can only character plot + rough outline) The screen is too small. I'm too used to my giant ass monitor, making it way easier for me to scroll back and check things. Thus, I can't write for Contego or outline for Resisco while in cubicle hell.

So this game would be something I could work on during my downtime at work to keep my brain in the writing mood and get errant plot bunnies and ideas out of my head to declutter it for when I hunker down for Sac.

For anyone wondering why I need the extra screen space to write & properly outline, it's because I write & full outline directly into VSC. My process goes:

Rough Outline (literally just when major convos happen) > Proper outline (flesh out each scene more to hit key points + include code like affection score effects and other conditionals) > Write (write everything out, adjusting the code as needed. Inputting scene transitions + setting up the frame work for CGs) > Sprite Hell (Adding the Sprites & their expressions) > Sound Hell (adding in any and all sound + music. I do this last because adding it in too early makes me go crazy when trying to bug fix)

Needless to say, I'm flicking between .rpys and cross referencing things all of the time. Doing that from my tiny A54 is impossible.

I still wanna keep the writer's muscles from getting too noodly though. Thus me wanting to work on this. I think I'll challenge myself to actually write it in Ellipsus too. That way I can practice just usual script writing without integrating the code into it automatically.