A start ... or something.

AKA: How the hell am I going to start writing a game.

Note: Last year, I made a WordPress site to start chronicling my journey working on a game.  I don't need a separate blog for this, so I'm just going to post it here!

I haven't used WordPress for awhile - not since they added these block things.  It actually felt more difficult to create a site than I remember it being.  I get that they're trying to cater to all types of sites, but I literally just wanted a quick and dirty blog and it didn't feel like an intuitive experience to achieve that.

Anyway.  That's not the point.  Point of this is to keep a little developer blog going since I am trying to be better about working on Chimera Core.

A friend from my day job is doing a NaNoWriMo-type thing while we're in quarantine for COVID-19.  She asked me to join her.  At first, I was going to write a novel too.  It's been awhile since I've done that and I had some vague ideas.  I couldn't get started, though.  Two weeks into the prep work (or lack thereof), I decided I would actually work on this - because I want to and it's important.  Sometimes it just hits you that it won't exist unless you bring it into existence - and here we are.

Wow, these blocks are weird!  At least it's a pretty simple editor.  Not too much going on.  Soooo... I've never actually written a game before.  Let's just start there.  Lemon Kraken (LK, because I'm lazy) is just Stephan and I.  He's the programmer, I'm the... Everything Else right now.  I've written a couple of books (none published, only one I would consider any good), flash fiction, short stories, content for D&D games, etc.  I've never actually written a game, though.

I remember when the BioWare community forums were still a thing (BioWare Social, I think it was?), I sent Jennifer Hepler, one of the Dragon Age writers, a private message asking how she got into writing games.  She actually replied!  (That was one of the cool things about the community: it was very interactive in that way.)  She mentioned that she'd started writing for tabletop games.  As I near a point where I have to write content for the game, I'm thinking I need to approach it like that too.

I keep thinking to myself, How am I going to make this easier to organize?  I'm coming up with all these harebrained schemes of using scripting like ink or software like Scrivener to link to this Codex or that quest dialogue... and I already see myself falling into traps of trying it make things work and getting distracted by the technological semantics.  (Kind of like making this blog - whoops!)

How to link to this or that doesn't really matter right now.  Making it easier to integrate into Unity by learning how to use ink script as I go is going to be too much and detract from what needs to happen.  I don't need to write every codex or bit and bob - in fact, I shouldn't do that because it gets too overwhelming!  It's like trying to edit as you go while you're writing your first draft.  You get trapped in the details.

It's just me, so I need to make this as organized as I need it.  I like the idea of ink, but that feels more like writing a story as I go and right now, it's in a more primitive state.  I can't really write dialogue if I don't know the characters or where they're going.  I need one spot to dump everything in that can then be mined for info at some point later.

Okay!  I think I might use Scrivener.  I really liked the software when I used it for novel-writing.  I also used it when I was working on my Pathfinder campaign.  Ultimately, I just need a space to organize content and I'm at a loss of how to do that.

Originally posted June 5, 2020.