Esoteric Update #182 - Interactive Poetry?

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday, but I felt really ill. Worst so than usual. I still feel sick right now, and I don't feel like formatting the lore, so we'll get right into the update.

So we've actually made a good bit of progress on multiple fronts last week, which we can broadly split into content/writing and algorithmic/gameplay progress. So let's go at them in that order.

Writing-wise, we've finally finished all writing (but are still a bit backlogged) on the implementation of intro changes, serving to introduce some of the new mechanics into the intro and also explaining them with some brief tutorials.

The first is the interactive poem redo, as we've found ourselves unhappy with the previous implementation. This one is a lot more free-form, with more choices you can make and additional UI considerations to make the process a little more informative. It currently looks like this:

(Personally, I like the adaptive glossary the most - it limits the terms listed to only those relevant to the already selected lines and the current selection. Over the process of navigating the poem, it expands and contracts to fit what's visible on screen.)

The second is the emotion-based responses, we've already introduced two sets of such reactions before, but we've also added the third set. The writing for it is done, and the implementation is next, which will finish off the issue of the intro for the moment. We've also added a little tutorial to explain what the point of these reactions is. It appears the first time they show up.

Additionally, I've progressed on a few other events, with chunks of planning and writing, mostly trying to better use the current UI systems (the responders) to create more in-depth interactions. I wouldn't call them complete redesigns, but they are pretty extensive. I'll hopefully have some more time to get stuck in with these.

But it's not really the events themselves that have been keeping me busy. Really, if anything, what I'll be getting at here, the algorithmic/gameplay progress, has been slowing down my ability to get those finished. I've been working on two pretty big chunks of code. The first is related to the CSP articles I've started writing. I've designed a pretty extensive method of generating locations for investigation using CSP and associated techniques. I've now tested it on paper and will be doing a progressive implementation with articles soon. The second is still more up in the air, but I've gone back to some of my older articles on writing and looked at them from a different light. There was a time when I wrote a lot about agency based writing and how fictional characters within a narrative can be treated as agents by the writer to help determine realistic courses of action for the story. I might be thinking now about actually implementing a rudimentary form of agency into a character that mirrors the same consideration a writer faces but from an algorithmic perspective. This might help develop characters that can adapt to situations, allowing the narrative to better adjust to the player's actions.

I am not sure how the next week will turn out; Monday was really difficult and today continues to be so.