devlog, part 2: so many details

(part 2 of this is coming soon. expect a lot of panic, coming up with general character ideas, cutting a character, being annoyed at speed of testing, hurting hands, cutting every single unessential part of the game, and shipping with major bugs)

We left off at 5PM, 8 hours before the game jam is ending. I've just gotten out of work and am aware that I need to start writing. I currently have 3000 words, and I know that I want at least 24 'scenes' (1 for each hour and place). I've written ... two of them; one in the first room, following Nadia (the pseudo-main character), and a second one, following a character ... Evelyn. It makes sense to have a 'rogue'-type person, like a

I am stressing myself out, so I actually drew the character portraits I mentioned in the first devlog ... here, right before I started drawing. And with the pencil (apple pencil if you want to be specific) in place, it helped me think ... what lines should I have here? What do I want?

Okay. Person one: red cross shirt. Wants to do good. Has done bad in the past. Introduces you to the ball.

Person two: Er ... you? maybe? Ah, scratch that. We don't need to conceptualize you, you're just looking at other people other than when I wanted to make a Hot Topic dress, right? Right.

Mmm. What stereotypes do I want?

Two seconds in, I realized that I wanted a Luna Lovegood-type character, spacy, weird. This is me IRL so you know. Gotta have it. So ... the name ... yeah. That was easy.

I also wanted a Vera-type (like Monster Prom). Who else ... I wanted a pretty boy I think, and also a NB boy who was cute and wasn't dating-focused. Also, I really like Alastair from Dragon Age. At this point I was realizing that dating probably wasn't the focus, but you know what, this is what I thought of it most of the way through development so there you go. The name is only partially wrong!!!

And with that I wrote a small guide of 'where everyone should go'. I thought it worked great, then ate dinner and spaced out, and while I was eating at my desk ...

...

deleted it accidentally. No recovery.

Oof.

It's still good! OK, it's now 6:15. I am out of time to stall, so I start to write. Hmmm. Where should I start then?

I start writing a few of the character interactions. Do I want characters to interact with each other? Oh god. Words. I just need to write words.
I write all the Foyer parts; they come by pretty easily. Then I write the Luna parts - outside of the end. They come out really easily. Maybe I can do this? In writing them I realize how I'm going to figure out what people see. I'm going to literally just count up how often they've seen the person before! Yes, you can just spam the game in order to find these things out.
It's 8PM at this point. I am assuming the Nadia stuff will go pretty easily, so I look at everything else. Alistair time now, and I go through and write those parts.

The game should be finishable, so I do a quick test run. There's a bug. I fix the bug, and create another one. Fix that one up real fast and I can again finish the game, but testing these is super annoying if I want to test more than one runthrough. I add the link to the masquerade after you beat the game, so I can test faster, and if you want you can speedrun the parts and see all the writing. (Reading an intro five times is zzz.)

I then go back and write the Steven parts; each character also lets me kind of feel the places they're mostly in, if that makes sense? So I start also gap-filling, a little bit. I write Alice's Dance Hall part.

Midway through writing Steven's part I realize I put Nadia in two places, and Lena in two places, at once. I hurriedly (aaa!) move them around and then delete some of them. More blank parts; I'd rather have blank parts than not. Steven's part also makes me realize that I can just drape most of the soundless NPC's around Steven, and also his presence can give people a reason to be around different places. As good a reason as any and a sort of unifying part.

I realize that there's no place for Steven's path to actually end, wander around a bit and place him back where he started. I guess it makes sense? Whatever!!! Also there's no place for Nadia to be in the third one. I hurriedly write her running off into the second hour, and mentally check that off.

It's 11. Oh, god. I look at the ending. It's written terribly; I need to change it at least a little bit. I rewrite the ending rooms and the setup, make sure that everything mechanically makes sense and there's no stuck part the simplest way I know how - I repurpose the Evelynn ending as a 'you can either do this or Steven's path' ending. I look at and have a lot of fun writing the end of Luna's path. Seems great. I write the end of Nadia's path, and think. I really want a choice here. It doesn't fit in my general picture of how the paths should work.
I spend some time thinking about it, then realize I just don't have any time. I quickly write a choice, point to the ending. Seems good.

I look at everything. It's 12. OK, I need to write Alice's path in at /most/ an hour! Aaaaaaa -

I write Alice's path. It's very short for this reason. That finishes at around 12:30.

I realize that she's going to see things based on what happened previously, etc., so I add in a bunch of interactions between. I rewrite an Alistair part to acknowledge that wine was spilled last hour, and then go through and personalize the endings, rushing as much as I humanly can. Once I finish, I do a super-fast run through to ensure I didn't break anything.
And I finally ... get to the end. Seems good. I look at the clock. It's 12:50, and I hit submit.