Quite crazy that.
I've moved house and I got a job in care home for the disabled. Shift work and 10+ hour days have kinda killed me on the writing front. Also that fiasco with the flowchart software. I don't have my chart notes now, so I've had to do it by hand manually and count each and every variable and codex trigger inside the story. =/ That's a lengthy process. Also, I've had to use math. I hate math, that war-system I coded in, I went the simplistic route, basically each choice in the game adds or subtracts to the variable stat (attack/Def/Strategy) and I planned to have units in the game that would be recruitable and would lead to higher/lower stats. But that made my work troublesome, keeping track of the values and trying to make it so you can't over score on certain points, but at the same time ensure that you can't pick choices that would definitely eliminate options for victory for the player.
So I toned it down and allowed the first battle to be very generic insofar as there is only a singular unit available anyway and one of the options was a soft-instant win button. Problem is, I still need to count the variables for each route in the future so I have rough estimate of what the numbers will be later. That way, the next battles can be done more smoothly. I can also create units for those later battles, or route-restrict them.
What I've learnt so far;
Creating routes is easy.
Creating a smooth 'union' for those routes is not. If I want the story to progress along the lines I want it to, I have to limit the impact of certain choices or else, I'll be writing three or five different stories for each route option and it just gets silly. So, now for the first chapter I've thought that the routes should change the information you gain, the backstory so to speak. I've some ideas on how to do this.
I've also decided that I'll put off any massively game-changing choices until chapter 2. But I'm not planning that out yet, because it's taken me two years as it is just to do the Prologue and I would say almost 1/4 of chapter 1.
Good news is, I've still got my planning file and my codex plans. So all I need to do really is write the damn thing. I should have more time in the next few weeks as I lost my job (hah! The joys of temporary contracts that!)
So anyway, my plan so far is;
Next two weeks:
Finish up the missing codex entries,
Double-check the count for the variables and stats,
Touch-up any pages on Chapter 1 war route that I'm unhappy with,
Start and (hopefully) finish the 2nd route within the war route. - This isn't particularly a lengthy job, but I don't want to fudge it by speeding it along. I'll write it slowly and try and ensure it flows well. I also need to introduce certain tutorial elements in the blasted thing (This is really why, you shouldn't do route-splitting when you're starting up the story and you're still introducing certain gameplay elements!)
--
Once all that is done... I have a choice to make;
Write the 'union' part of the story to it's full conclusion which, effectively ends the chapter.
OR start on the 2nd main route (The Investigation route) all the way up to the union part and then do the union part after.
I'm considering both options with some difficulty. I may just do the union part and then consider if the investigation route is so different that it would require me to skip the union part and just have the story 'unite' again at the start of the new chapter. But we'll see.
