It’s been really good to continue the work on Drama Princess within the context of The Path. So many things come up when dealing with a real game, that I would never have thought of when dealing with the system on a more abstract level. The engine has changed quite a bit already, in response to the new behaviours that I’m creating for the game.
Speaking of which, making those behaviours is laborious. They are all little applications that drive the actor, sometimes multiple actors. It’s quite a bit of work to figure out the conditional structure that makes sure that the actor walks to the right position, faces the right direction, etc before doing something. Several of these things could be automated on a higher level, and some have been. But I want the behaviours to remain very powerful. They can steer the whole game, if necessary, in a relatively simple way.
I do have a feeling that there are only so many combinations of actors, objects and interactions and that at some point, old behaviours will start serving as templates for new ones, making the work a lot lighter.