I finished entering the existing set of 50 Act I encounters. They still need lots of work; a few of them have no options and none of them have any of the reactions or their algorithms. But there are lots of other problems to occupy my time.
One of them concerns props. My original intention had been to dispense with all the other paraphernalia of the Storytron technology: props, stages, actors, verbs, roles, etc. Yes, there are eight actors: the eight sub-kings who will decide Arthur’s fate after Mordred rebels. But they will take no action until that point.
In the meantime, there are a bunch of traits I need to keep track of. In an earlier diary entry, I mentioned promises as an important component of the dramatic interaction. Actually making promises works requires a lot of technical scaffolding: the promise must be recorded and, at the appropriate time, tested. I have no idea how to implement this just now.
Then there are two classes of props: gifts and warriors. Gifts are items that Arthur picks up through trade that he can award to his sub-kings (or their wives) to retain their loyalty. To make this work, I must have some sort of award system. Now, in my Storytron technology, there would be a verb ‘award gift’ that would present the player with a menu of possible gifts. I can’t do that, because an encounter can have only five options, and encounters take place out of the control of the player. In effect, I must invert the process. When Arthur receives one or more gift items, that must trigger subsequent encounters, one for each potential gift. Or perhaps I could include a gift option in response to an encounter in which a sub-king does something Arthur likes. Again, there’s a tricky problem: there are only five options and there are eight sub-kings and many more possible gifts. So there’s no way to cross-reference X sub-kings against Y gifts. They must be handled one at a time. This will be very difficult.
Then there are warriors. Each sub-king will have his own collection of warriors, and those warriors will be necessary for military attacks. But how are they tracked, how are they applied to combat, and how are losses recorded? This certainly sounds like I shall need an independent data structure. How will I integrate that data structure into the encounter data structure?
One good thing: since the Encounter Editor is now just for me, I can greatly expand the window to make everything easier to work with. This illustrates an important principle: for years I have tried to cater to other people’s needs. Now my attitude is “screw ‘em!” I’m doing this for myself. I don’t care what other people think of it, nor do I care if nobody is able to follow up on it. If they want to do so, let ‘em. I won’t stand in their way. But I’m never going to constrain my efforts in the future to benefit other artists.