I’m sick. I hate being sick. Perhaps a bit trite, because I imagine everyone hates being sick, but still. Apparently there are some new COVID strains going around - my girlfriend reckons she’s got it, too. I had a vaccination earlier this year, but no dice; still caught the bugger.

Well, anyway, I took the last couple of days off work, and aside from coughing in bed and playing Battle Brothers, I’ve been working on the game a little bit while listening to Kate Nash’s first album, something I’ve not done for probably fifteen years. It’s still roughly as good now as it was then, though not all of the lyrics have aged that well.

Rather than lying around all day feeling sorry for myself, I got around to adding a permanent location system to the game. What this means in practice is that there’s a sort of central navigation hub just called ‘The City’. From here, you’ll be able to discover and navigate to other locations within the game world - for example, to Caerdyf Central Square, or to your home. Within each location will be some permanent actions which are unlockable and then stay forever (e.g. in Central Square you can admire the statue in the middle of the plaza, after you’ve drawn the card unlocking it from the deck), as well as other locations which will be nested within that location (e.g. Central Square will contain the location for Central Square Market, unnavigable from The City overview.) Also, each location will have its own deck of cards to draw from; some cards will be universal, but some will only appear in specific locations. Fallen London eat your heart out.

To test it worked - and some bits were a fucking headache, honestly - I created a card which opens up Caerdyf Central Square from the navigation hub. You can then jump back and forth between the City and Central Square as much as you like. Once the location has been discovered, the card to discover it disappears forever (but the card can’t be discarded, and even if it could, it would only disappear after it’s been played - you’d just draw it again and again). So basically, all the logic works - it was just a case of getting the syntax correct and then asking my New Best Friend Claude to help me debug when, for example, buttons started disappearing for seemingly no reason.

I also added a separate page for the inventory, as although I implemented the logic for it last time, I didn’t actually make it viewable. Now you can see a text list of everything you’ve collected, which, for the moment, is just the gear you have when you start the game.

I’ve been thinking more and more about the main story, but I haven’t actually managed to sit down and write it yet, and I don’t think I will for a while: first, Claudeyboy recommends I figure out roughly how my UI is going to look before I commit to more systems. So, this weekend will entail me sketching out some shite UI designs on paper, taking pictures of them, and seeing if my artifical bestie can create the code for me that makes that work. Then I guess I’ll head over to itch.io to try and find some free assets, or maybe I’ll ask one of my artist friends to design some cards and backgrounds for me. Yeah, I know some artists. It all depends on what sort of style I’m going for, I suppose, and I don’t have an answer to that question yet. All I know is that the world is mythic solarpunk, if that’s even a thing. But not, like, this. More, like, this.

So that’s where I’m at with the game, unless I’m forgetting something else. In other news, I also wanted to add a newsletter option to my website, but all the services are paid, which is annoying. If you’re a dinosaur, you can still subscribe via RSS. Otherwise, you’ll just have to check back for updates whenever you remember. Eventually, I will migrate all my pretty well-performing articles from Medium over here, so there might be some random posts about handjobs and academic writing style popping up. Them’s the breaks. Remember to wash your hands.