September 21st

What Options should Arthur have in response to any fight? Should I pile them all up into one standard list, such as {threaten, promise reward, chide, praise, Katerfaks, retreat, stand with}?

What criterion should be used to assess the state of the battle, with respect to morale? I think that dukes should break individually; one duke’s collapse should encourage more collapses. I could base everything on the Fear_Anger of each Actor. That requires every Actor to emotionally react to every fight. Which in turn requires that every fight have some sort of emotional effect. I can do that.

I’m having a lot of problems dealing with the mass of text. I already have a great deal of text tied to specific Actors, text that helps explain their characters. But there are only eight dukes needing specific handling. What about the 32 knights and 32 squires? Should they each get custom treatment? If I wish to impart their personalities to the player, then each one needs his own treatment. But that’s 72 separate actors, each requiring custom handling. I can’t possibly handle that. 

What if I give preference to stories about dukes, less emphasis on knights, and least preference to squires? Then I can fill in text as I have time. I need a way to get this huge structure set up in skeletal form and then I can flesh it out. 

Another headache: I have eleven text lines for each duke. If I break them down into 11 verbs, I can prevent a line from being repeated. If I break them down into 11 text lines in one verb, then I get a neater handling. Which is better? I think I’ll go with the latter.

OK, I’ve ripped out about 40 verbs dedicated to single text lines, replacing them with text lists in a single verb. But there’s still a great deal of work to do.