2026-05-05 Type It All devlog

My new strategy for motivation is clearly paying off, with another 6 days of progress in ~8 days. The big story news is that I finished the first draft of chapter 1! The big code news is the addition of several new interface and graphical improvements.

Chapter 1 finishes after gaining entry to the city of Atrion. This begins the much more complex chapter 2, which has a variety of side stories, with hub sections to return to after each side story. Chapter 1 still needs some work to integrate currency-dependent choices and other updates, but most of the writing progress will be on chapter 2 now.

The biggest interface differences you will see compared to last week are the rearranged text containers and the addition of several new items to the pager. In an effort to make the game look better, I've moved the currency banks to the upper right, the pager below the main text, and removed everything else. This should provide more space for the main text and also make it appear less scattered. The pager has had the addition of the menu and prevpage commands, and a progress bar for typed main text. The prevpage backs up to the last bookmark jumped-to, while the progress bar indicates (at 70%) when the nextpage command will be enabled.

The menu is the big interface addition, leading to a page with links to the licenses, options, and exit command. The options page currently has settings for volume, typing speed, and fullscreen/windowed, as well as the ability to reset progress on each story. The return from the menu to whatever story you were on before has raised a lingering issue to the forefront: redisplaying main text results in all of the typed letters becoming untyped again, losing all in-paragraph progress. While this is largely a minor issue, I still need to figure out a solution before I consider the game complete.

The biggest command changes this week are the addition of the last few word and text commands needed by chapter 1, as well as the addition of currency-dependent choices. I've added the word commands RESTART (for bad ends) and SPIKE (the red words which damage your currency), and the text command !ifjump, which handles jumping (immediately) to a different paragraph based on inventory. With the movement of currency banks into the inventory, I can also now change the text (and thus, available choices) based on how many words/letters have been typed. So far, I have only implemented this in one spot in chapter 1, the first choice the player makes, but it will eventually be sprinkled throughout all story text. I also made it so that choosing the currency-dependent choice reduces that currency (making it cost words/letters to choose the tougher choices).

But before you notice any of those cool things, the first thing you'll probably notice (why am I waiting until now to mention it?) is that the letters now fade in over time! This gives the illusion of them being typed out for you, a la JRPGs, and helps greatly in improving the game feel. Another big visual/interface change is that typed text is now still visible, in greyed-out form, and is even still typeable. This will help when typing random letters you missed earlier, as you can type full words to pick them out specifically. Finally, the currencies can be conditionally renamed by the tias file, so the crin tale story has "narrative gold" (letters), "gaseous fuel" (words), and dex/str (LPM/WPM).

The backend has had a few minor improvements and frontend-related refactorings, but the major addition is the analysis engine. This alternate main-scene allows me to programmatically parse through tias stories and run through every possible choice path, spitting the results out to some JSON I can read through more easily to determine various backend facts about the story. For example, it keeps track of the min/max currencies at each choice point, so I can more easily determine decent currency-conditionals for the choices. This will help greatly in writing and updating the stories as I go.

There were several distractions and sidetracks this week, but I'm getting much closer to a public demo. The only large items remaining are a tutorial story, intro screen, and musical track for the first chapter. I hope to have that done in the following week, but I am very good at finding distractions to prevent me from working on the music.