Future Plans + What I've Been up to lately

Hey all you cool cats and kittens,

Figured with everything being locked down now would be a good time to talk about what I've been working on and what I plan to work on in the future. This will probably be a longer post so there will be a TL:DR at the end for your sanity and convenience.

So, haven't worked on Tales from the Road much. Just haven't had much inspiration to write the last bits of part 3. Figured it'd be best to wait instead of trying to hash out trash. (Although let's be honest, it'll probably be trash no matter what). Instead I've been working on other projects! Specifically I've been working on a combat system for Twine 2 Sugarcube. Which I've built out of black magic and JavaScript! I've also been working on the writing for what might be my next game. More on that in a minute.

The combat system is what's been taking up most of my time. Been working on it since last month and have made pretty good progress. You can fight an enemy using a set of moves and unlock new moves by progressing. Attacks have a base damage which is then modified by your character's stats. E.g high strength will let you deal more damage with melee and unarmed. It's simple right now but it works well enough I think. Still working on refining the AI and implementing an item system for both combat and non-combat situations. Also still have to test it out in the context of my next project. As my current iteration is just the DIO vs Jotaro fight from Part 3 of JoJo. You fight DIO in 3 different phases and gain a new move in each phase. Works good for testing out new stuff. I'm thinking of posting it on Itch.io as a sort of "proof of concept" kind of thing. As there's a severe lack of Twine 2 combat system examples, I learned this when trying to find examples myself. Never know, might help someone out.

Now, my next project. Before that I think I need to discuss Tales from the Road's future. I don't think I'll be continuing development of Tales from the Road after I finish part 3. I love this game, I've put tons of time into making it, I spent all of last summer working on it. But I'm starting to get bored of writing it. I also want to work on something that's more programming oriented, which Tales from the Road is not, it has no programming at all currently. So I've been thinking about how I could turn Tales from the Road into a more combat focused text game.

Well, there was no way to directly change Tales from the Road into a combat focused game without doing some bullshit writing. So instead I came up with the idea to spin it off and tie it into something else. Into my next project that I came up with while writing part 3. Tales from the Road protagonist gets knocked out, seems to wake up somewhere unknown. Whole different world kind of thing is what I'm going for right now. Plan on having a combat system (hence working on one this last month), and maybe a party system. Part system is not set in stone as I haven't tested it out, but it seems theoretically possible.

The whole project and idea is still in it's very early stages, I only have about 4 pages of story written up, though I've crammed quite a bit of info into those 4 pages. So far I've really enjoyed writing it, I feel like the world it's going to be set in will allow me to be more creative with the writing when compared to Tales from the Road. And the combat system will allow me to work on something more programming oriented. Still, it's early. Might not even go anywhere, just have to wait and see.

I think that's it then. TL:DR is: Not much work done on Tales from the Road, been working on other projects. Made a combat system for Twine 2 and plan on using it for my next project. Might stop working on Tales from the Road when part 3 is finished. Next project will possibly tie into Tales from the Road somehow and will be combat focused.

Stay safe and take care.