Crawling to the finish line

No, I haven't given up. Sometimes, life calls—and when you're the only person on a development team, there isn't really anyone to pick up the slack while your soul is on maternity leave.

But that's doesn't really matter, does it? What matters is that I'm back in the kitchen, slowly cooking this never-ending meal. I've added a rudimentary physics puzzle, an empty two-story building, a submarine, and a mysterious figure shrouded in darkness. The world has been modified to include a soda machine, a trash can, a powerline, and large murals of the city's prominent figures. I'm slowly crawling towards making the place feel a little lived-in—although "lived-in" is a very strange concept in a barely-functioning city.

I've added Barnabas, a monk who resides within the tree. He's the kind of character I really do like. Barnabas speaks in three-phrase passages that get a general point across without being too wordy. You can talk to him once and have a general idea of what to do. But you can also keep talking to him and feel like you're diving into his world. And finally, his text wraps around decently—when the dialogue does loop, it has a sort of moebius-strip type of feeling where his last-triggered phrase feeds back into his first-trigged phrase.

What's next? Well, I still need to do some cosmetic work on the tree. In addition, there's a lot of musical cues that I need to program into the game. The music player in this thing isn't my best work—result in a very clunky track-changing system that it is an absolute bore to program. But I'll power through, as I often do.

As far as "big things" go, I still need to finish a couple of quests to finish the gameplay portion of the game. Then comes the beginning and ending cinematics—terrifying concepts that I don't even really want to think about. Finally, I'll need to implement some kind of save system.

Lots to do, but I really do think I can do it. I'm getting closer with each passing day.