It tastes like orange juice a bit. Anyhow, I got really sick this past week, first nausea without puking, then head cold, then puking, then weakness, then more head cold, then sore throat, then a good day, then couldn't sleep because lungs filling with fluid, then more chest cold, then good day, and finally today I'm back on track. But Yikes! I missed like a week of work, brutal!
@p
I think I'm finally back on track. I tried to work marginally on some other things some of these days but really, I didn't get into it. I watched enough television to last me until I die. Played a little DQ7, and realize it does kind of suck even if it's fun. I can't beat HellCloud and I'm not even slightly interested in levelling or whatever is neccesary. Anyhow.
@p
I am working on the story today. Right now, a lot is fairly nicely laid out, it's actually not that hard to work within the framework of things. The kidnapper starts off by taking the princess, sarsamello chases him, etc., he travels across the system. There are some "hunters" which have an undisclosed purpose at this point in time but probably will work something like minibosses, or else will set up difficult situations for the player, but right now I just want the wild goosechase mechanic to be working. People either give clues to where the kidnapper went, where Sarsamello went (same thing), who was involved, and in the future, who knows something.
@p
So if you ask John Q. Doe about the princess or the kidnapping, chances are they don't know anything, but they might point you in the right direction.
@p
Gameplay really advances per system. As you play the game, you more or less hop from one system to another in a fairly linear fashion, with each system also containing "optional" systems linked off of them as well as the main storyline. This is so that you have more than one thing to explore at any given time, however the clues you need follow a linear progression of systems (for now). The systems themselves increase in difficulty/hostility as you go along.
@p
One open question is how you get access to newer systems. The question is basically, do it organically where really there are a large number of things you might do to get new system coordinates, or tie it always directly into the story. I prefer organic, but it has a problem in that you could fairly easily (at least how things are now) skip ahead to some later system and miss the whole story. If that's the case, then I guess I have to put better constraints into the story, so that so-and-so won't tell you what you need to know until you have talked to the previous person in the chain.
@p
Actually, I think that is probably the best way to go. In your quest thing you'll always have the highest priority quest to explore some system looking for clues, and when you find the clue as to where the kidnapper went next, that will be updated. So you can't really get lost in terms of where you are in the story. But finding access to systems, etc., will be a totally separate problem. I'm not sure how the story constraints will work just yet, but I don't really expect it will be that hard.
2004-06-16