Spankers and Spankees,

Apparently, it’s already the first month of October. The good news is I recently adopted a dog from the local shelter. He is the most gorgeous little thing you ever did see. At 20lbs (9 kg), he’s little bit smaller than I would prefer, but a perfect size for my apartment. Right now, he’s plopped down on the couch next to me (I know, I know, I’m spoiling him) after a long, exciting morning full of pre-dawn walks (*grumble*), three attempts at getting him to take some goofy anti-biotic (*grumble*), a visit to the vet, a visit to the pet store, and a walk through the park.

Also, I have a job offer for a job that won’t totally suck, which means that when I graduate, I won’t be homeless. This also means that I’ll have more time this month to work on Potion Wars because I won’t be preparing for as many interviews.

The bad news is that this month has been a little bit crazy, so I haven’t had as much time to work on Potion Wars as I would have liked. So, I think that’s all there is to talk about. Till next time.

walks away.

Time passes.

Faint grumblings can be heard from all 5 people in the audience. Someone tries to start a slow chant for Potion Wars, but everyone else gives him weird looks and he stops.

There is an awkward silence.

More time passes. The audience starts glancing at their watches, wondering how long before AKA gets tired of this stupid joke. They then get confused, because nobody wears watches anymore.

AKA comes running back on stage.

Sorry, sorry. Forgot to tell you about Potion Wars progress.

Someone coughs. It sounds suspiciously like “bollocks.” But that’s just silly. “Bollocks” isn’t even a word.

“I didn’t cough it you twat, I shouted it!“

Anyway, despite the crazy month full of dog adopting, and job searching, and what-not, I have managed to find time to work on the game. I’ve uploaded a new version, version 1.13. See the download section for links. What I’ve done:

1. Fixed a few stealth bugs caught by PyChecker, before they led to crashes on your ends.

2. Did some writing. I’ve currently written about 60 pages, with about 100 nodes. And that’s just about finished the scene you get at the beginning when you sleep at the guild. I now need to write:
a. The scene for when you sleep at Maria’s.
b. A brief conversation with Elise and Sister Samantha about Carrie’s party
c. A subplot with Carrie (I know what the subplot is. I just don’t want to reveal it because spoilers).
d. A scene involving the teaching of Anne, Peter’s daughter.
e. The whole damn dungeon.
f. Carrie’s party.

3. Upon realizing just how much I have to write, and how I don’t have 16 hours everyday to dedicate to writing, I’ve recruited Jeffrey the Jungle Ape to help me write the scenes that tend to be the most intricate, detailed, and hardest to write: the spanking scenes (I’ve also asked Emily, but she hasn’t responded yet). I’m not recruiting anyone else just yet. Partially because I want to see how things go with Jeffrey first, and partially because if you offer and I turn you down, it’ll be awkward. My fan base is small enough as it is. Don’t need to be scaring anyone away.

4. Sent Emily an outline of the episode for her feedback.

5. Completely revamped the setting. The game is now basically taking place in the Jurassic period (plus a few dinosaurs from the Triassic, magic, humans, elves, and maybe other things) on the supercontinent Gondwana, way down at the south pole, because:
a. Dinosaurs.
b. Fuck yeah.
c. Of the various periods in history, the Jurassic was probably the closest to your standard fantasy world: Lots of giant monsters running around, only two giant continents (which were close enough they could almost be considered one), a ginormous desert in the middle of the planet.
e. Pet dinosaurs.
f. Fuck yeah.
g. During the Jurassic period, the only parts of the planet where you could find
a cool temperate climate (which near as I can tell is roughly the climate that I grew up in) were at the poles.
h. Clothing made out of dinosaur skin.
i. Fuck yeah.

Also, it gives me an excuse to rekindle my boyhood love of dinosaurs.

6. Had to make a variety of small changes to the first episode to line up with the new setting (birds didn’t exist yet, though they did have Archaeopteryx, mammals are few and far between so they don’t have access to milk, and cheese, no flowers or deciduous trees. Also, no wool.). I probably missed something, so if you notice anything that doesn’t make sense (i.e. clothing made out of wool, flowers, birdsong, people munching on cheese) let me know. Note that they didn’t have grasses, so you wouldn’t have grains (which are grasses). However, bread can be made out of things other than grains, so bread is safe. Furthermore, I’m assuming that they have a cottonlike plant that I’m calling cotton. Mostly because dinosaur skin would probably make a scaly leather similar to alligator skin (though some of it, like Iguanadon skin, would be quite supple, others like Stegosaurus skin stiff and hard), which might not be flexible enough for some of the clothing effects in the first episode. I don’t know, I’m not a clothing expert.

7. Replaced those horrid X’s in the dungeon with filled in squares (actually trapezoids, thanks to the magic of perspective). I’ve also rearranged the colors. Now, the entrance of the dungeon (and exit for dungeons that have exits) are blue. Events are yellow (because they may or may not involve combat). Combat is red. Stairs are green.

8. I’ve made it more obvious when you’ve stepped on a stairs square, so that we don’t have the problem of people wandering around for an hour because they didn’t notice the damned “(D)own” command. Seriously, I think someone on AnimeOTK said that he was wondering around for an hour or two because he didn’t realize that stupid grey X was a set of stairs. Thank you person-whose-username-I-could-look-up-but-I-won’t-because-I’m-lazy for not just shoving my game in the Recycling Bin like I might have in the same situation. In particular, now the (D)own/(U)p command is bolded and colored green, and the direction you’re facing is replaced with the word “Stairs.” Hopefully that will make it obvious enough for people to notice.

9. Tried to add a new non-trivial command to my LaTeX -> PDF translator. Unfortunately, my code was so confusing and hacky that I couldn’t debug the new command. So I’ve started rewriting that from scratch (well, nearly. I think I saved two of the functions from my previous implementation) in a much cleaner, easier to follow way. Kind of sucks, but when they say that “good writing is rewriting” they’re not just talking about poetry and prose.

10. Reworked some of my planned future plotlines.

P.S. According to google analytics, I’ve broken 1,000 page views. Nifty.