Woo, I was a little writin’ machine this week! I knocked out three scenes worth of dialogue/narration, with one of them (Ah My Goddess!) ending up being a 3500-word monster. That may not sound like a lot, in novel terms, but considering there’s not as much narrative needed for a visual novel that’s pretty big for Mythos.

I’ve been talking about my word counts lately on Discord and Twitter, and you may notice that I’ve never done that before. That’s because I never actually counted before. I may have mentioned this before, but I previously would write the narration, dialogue, and code, all at the same time, writing it all right into Visual Studio Code (and Atom before that). Now I’m writing the story bits in Word, and transferring it over to Visual Studio Code for the tech parts. This means I can write the scenes a lot faster, because my groove isn’t getting interrupted by me trying to figure out how to code a certain thing, which would have me Googling Ren’Py stuff or asking other devs. By the time I figured out what I was trying to do, I’d be back in my own brain, instead of the character’s. So while it may have seemed faster to write and code at once, copy/pasting from Word is actually faster for me in the end.

Word keeps a handy word count right in the bottom corner of the screen. Since I didn’t use Word for Chatpers One and Two, I have no idea how many words I used in Chapter One and Two. I have no comparison for if there’s more or less wordiness in this one than previous. However, just by guessing, I think Chapter Three is going to be much longer than Chapter Two from a player perspective, even if you played through the Gala with every combination of heist teams (and I know a lot of you did that!). That’s just a guess, though.

Every Chapter so far covers two days in Ky’s life, but not everything in both of those days were really detailed in Chapters One and Two. Chapter One had a good bit of travel time for Ky, and I wasn’t about to write “The Adventures of Tara and Kylie on the Beltway” or “Driving Down the Long-Ass Boring Road in Crownsville”. Chapter Two had some bits glossed over, since Ky was at work, grabbed some dinner, etc. Chapter Three barely skips anything, because stuff happens at each phase of Ky’s day; morning at work, lunch, afternoon at work, evening, then night.

Like I said long ago, the length of the Chapters isn’t going to be equal. For all I know, Chapter Four could end up being stupid short and I’ll have it cranked out in two months (doubtful, but who knows?).

Yes, I know Chapter Three is taking a while, but it’s for good reason! Even without January and February’s real-life disruptions, there’s just a lot of shit going into it.

Also, the “extra crap” I do (interviews, stories, ask the cast, etc) doesn’t really take much time away from working on the game itself, since most of that I do while working at my normal job. Shhh, don’t tell the boss!

Chapter Three General Progress:

• Side Image Re-Revamp 163 images – COMPLETE!
• Story Flow Chart – COMPLETE!
• UI Improvements – COMPLETE!
• New Music Tracks
  • As Above, So Below – COMPLETE!
  • Geraldine – COMPLETE!
  • Seventy-Five Year Trauma – COMPLETE!
  • Modred’s Legacy – COMPLETE!
  • Codito Ergo Sum – In Progress
  • The Dark Depths of Despair in my Blackened Soul (I’m Dead)
  • ???
• Learning After Effects – In Progress
• Introduction Scene by Nine – COMPLETE!
• Creation of New Characters – COMPLETE!
• New Mythos Logo (commissioned) – COMPLETE!
• Sex Animations
• Chapter Three Title Screen
• Organization of Daz Assets – COMPLETE!
• New Opening Title Sequence – In Progress (Storyboarding)

Chapter Three Scene Progress:

• Scene: Apologies to the Serling Estate – COMPLETE!
• Scene: A Little Help from my Friends – COMPLETE!
• Scene: Yeah, About That… – COMPLETE!
• Scene: It Goes to 11 – COMPLETE!
• Scene: Shantay, You Stay – COMPLETE!
• Scene: Your Call is Very Important to Us – COMPLETE!
• Scene: Reach Out and Touch Someone – COMPLETE!
• Scene: Fuck the Police
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
  • Coding – In Progress
• Scene: Ah, My Goddess!
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
  • Renders – In Progress
• Scene: Touched by an Angel
  • Writing – In Progress
  • Renders – In Progress
• Scene: Magic, the Gathering
  • Writing – In Progress
  • Renders – In Progress
• Scene: Grumpy Old Men
  • Writing – In Progress
  • Renders – In Progress
• Scene: Werther’s Original
  • Writing – In Progress
  • Renders – In Progress
• Scene: The Lyin’ Bitch and her Wardrobe
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
  • Renders – In Progress
• Scene: Ventrilo Harassment
• Scene: It’s Been Revoked
• Scene: Who Ya Gonna Call?
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
• Scene: Cry Little Sister
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
  • Coding – In Progress
• Scene: Fancy
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
• Scene: My Immortal
  • Writing – COMPLETE!
• Number of Alters in Marc Spector’s head (3? I don’t fuckin’ know, anymore)

Keep the Legends Alive!

– Nine