Esoteric Update #208 - 4th Year Summary

Update time. But today is a special update. And I'm sorry it's late; I just had to take some time to get this written up properly amidst working on a few other things.

So, where do we stand for the 4th yearly summary? Mainly in the realm of mechanics. If you might remember, for the 3rd year, I wrote about how we finally have systems that can carry this game in the way we've always envisioned it to be. But, of course, there are still issues, and I'd like to talk about them a bit too. And I will get a bit personal.

(Image I: I nearly lost the last shreds of sanity I have left making this map, but now that it's done... I find it very pleasing to look at.)

1) The two big issues

This last year was hard for me, not due to the game, but for health reasons, and in turn, those have significantly impacted the game, especially during the last three months. There's not much point in going into detail, but some things are happening with me medically, and part of them are somewhat concerning. For the game, though, the biggest issue is dealing with the drudgery of living with a painful chronic condition and the physical and mental exhaustion it can bring. Still, I have no plans of giving up on this game. There are just some things I'm incapable of doing, especially when there's only one other person actively working on that game.

(Image II: The SVG image generation code for books is something I'm still immensely proud of, and managing to boost rendering performance through some backend fiddling, to facilitate faster rendering.)

And in regards to that last point. We're always looking for people who would be interested in joining us on this project. We have an article discussing the types of skill sets applicable to development; it's not the usual one you'd find on more traditional games. However, I'd also like to add that we're interested in collaborating with Ink writers. And, of course, I'm around to provide whatever assistance is required for anyone interested in joining.

2) The main lines of progress

E♥E is ultimately a game about magic and mystery, and much of our work over the last year was focused on this. However, when we hit a workable level of the base systems last year, it suddenly turned out that we could implement many of the mechanics we'd been thinking and talking about early on in the game's development.

(Image III: The stipulation mechanic (according to which we describe the player character using conditions with semantic meaning) is one of those things that just massively simplifies working with such an in-depth and complex model for the character and the world she inhabits.)

Initially, those mechanics weren't possible to implement in a manageable way, but what we have now not only matches but also exceeds those initial plans. Of course, there's still a lot to be done, but now all of this feels feasible. We have a complete inclusion of Oculomancy and magic items (not to mention a much stronger item implementation overall), a good start for Oneiromancy and ritual magic... and we're still waiting on the other two forms of magic.

We've also finally managed to tackle issues of magic lore in the sense of what the PC knows about magic. It's an essential mechanic for a game like this, and I admit I've neglected it over time.

(Image IV: A whole subsystem is dedicated to helping the player track information about the game. Unlike many modern designs, it isn't here to provide new information to the player, such as lore, but instead to provide a fallback to verify game mechanics and what their character knows about the world.)

For the mystery aspect of things, we've done a lot of work on unique forms of stealth, perception, scene examination mechanics, containers, locks and tools that can be used in problem-solving. A lot of it comes from a series of interconnected mechanics I am proud of designing. I think they offer us the space to build unique experiences for the player in the future.

We've also leaned into the current advanced in AI technology to help us with development. We're not doing any of the "an AI can make your game for you" clickbait. We're just using various systems as tools to produce assets (currently only images) or assist in writing. You've seen us post results from multiple platforms so far, and some of them have turned out to be very, very usable. Of course, if we could, it would be better if we were able to hire artists to create a more targeted look for the game, but we've spent most of the last four years spending more money than we've earned in a given month. And overall, we've spent far more money than we've ever made, which is the unfortunate state of our ability to hire help for the game.

(Image V: As a fashion-forward person, it's important to me that we provide the options needed to build diverse, interesting and appealing outfits for the player character. And that we have mechanics that reward playing around with the system, too.)

Recently we've also been leaning toward Ink integration, and you might find it interesting to note that Ink was initially considered as the development platform for E♥E. However, it was rejected due to multiple factors, including a lack of data structures and string handling, both issues that are very important for the systems and mechanics we build. Returning to it might seem strange, but in this case, we're using it on top of our systems, effectively letting it inherit all of our work while giving us a development platform more suited for rapid additions.

3) The novel

You might also remember that I made an effort to rekindle my writing habits by participating in NaNoWriMo. I'm still planning to release that novel as a tiny bonus for the game. However, at the moment, I'm too spent to work on it. Editing is harder work than writing sometimes.

(Image VI: At some point, we experimented with interactive poetry writing. We consider this experiment to be successful.)

Ultimately the question might be if it helped me with writing. Well, statistically speaking, yes, I've had a much higher word output since doing it. However, due to the coincidence between my health problems and working on the novel, I can't say it was a pleasant experience or that I have fond memories of it.

I'll try to get it done when possible. But, unfortunately, it's largely one of those things that fell in the cracks of the end-of-the-year crunch.

4) The things we don't show you

With weekly updates, it's easy to assume that we just show you everything we work on, but we actually don't divulge details concerning some aspects of the game. Revealing too much information about work on plotlines, characters, locations, etc., would spoil the experience of playing through that content. Explaining mechanics or technicalities doesn't have that effect so we can discuss it more freely.

(Image VII: Our API contains quite a diverse array of tools, despite it being the first layer of solutions we use in the game. We have other suits of modules built from these elements and integrated with our systems and mechanics.)

We also don't go into many technical details on the bookkeeping end. Working on this game requires organising and managing pretty vast pools of information. The details of this process are not particularly interesting.

Of course, this makes observing this project rather peculiar. We release content infrequently, but we are building a game from scratch, and it's a complex game. We need proper foundations to construct the content on top of, and that's what we mostly do. The plans we outline often inform the kinds of mechanics we implement, leading us to implement mechanics that can later be used to realise that content.

(Image VIII: AI lets us round our books and in-game Internet with visual additions we'd not be otherwise capable of including.)

We also have our own lives and responsibilities we rarely discuss, usually only in situations where those things get in the way of making this game. It's an unfunded hobby project, not one that would let us support ourselves. As much as the fantasy of living off it might seem tantalising, I don't think it's something that could or should ever happen, as even if I had more extensive funding, I'd prefer to re-invest it into the game.

5) The future

There's nothing surprising to say about the game's future. We plan to continue working on it and do what we can to realise our project goals. And I'd like to underline that our goals include making a game, designing a setting and experimenting with new types of systems and mechanics for interactive, narrative games.

That's what we've been doing so far and what we plan to continue. Even when things are difficult, we still want to work on this project.