The beginning of a new week! A fresh surge of willful energy and all the time one could want in which to explore it. I recall piecing together my game plan as I drifted off to sleep last night: “Should I start by drafting the entirety of the mechanics? Jump right in to Ren’Py? Or learn it all from the ground up?” The morning saw me, necessarily, taking the last of those options.

You see:
I’ve got a pretty good idea of how everything in Collegia will fit together. Some of the interactions will need refinement, but all the major pieces are conceptually in place. Were this a board game, I could grab my scissors and cardstock and whip you up a simple prototype in under an hour. But it’s not! It’s a digital game constructed in an engine I don’t know with a language I’ve never used! So, to reuse a favourite analogy of mine, I need to learn how to use these particular scissors and what exactly you can do with this strange new cardstock. So today brought a simple start:

• Formatting! Python is markedly different from JavaScript in its use of whitespace as a meaningful parsing element, instead of just a personal organizational preference. It took me a little while to adapt, but I am very much a convert. Not only does it do the job, it standardizes everything! It makes learning from examples much easier.
• Storing and accessing variables! The crux, really, of what will make Collegia a management game and not, as the engine would encourage, an interactive novel. <Ha! I just thought up a new genre term. Collegia will be a Lore Game. Need to remember that.> Having a basic knowledge of how variables and arguments are passed and called in code has helped me a lot here, but as so much of what makes it work is contextual, I’ve been taking thorough notes about how exactly Python prefers this to be done. Knowledge++ ! <wait, no. That doesn’t work in Python>
• Making the experience feel distinct from its engine! You know that launcher that precedes so many Unity games? “Choose your resolution, your graphics quality,etc.”? I don’t like it very much. It’s a preassembled bit that, although it allows some easy customization tweaks, is ultimately shaped in the image of the engine, rather than built to optimally present the game waiting behind it. Starting in Ren’Py with this in mind is helping me to make decisions based around presentation as I go along. It just won’t do to have the default text boxes along the bottom of the screen, centered option buttons, and a thoroughly practical font. Bring on the theming! (but only so far, of course, as it serves the game…)

So it’s only really three things today. Not terribly much when I look back on it, but an important start. This evening I want to play with screen elements. Slide-out trays and optional overlays and all these little leaves that fold in on themselves ad infinitum. Well, we’ll see. That might be too much of a jog for a little old hobbler like myself. But I think I just might feel a second wind coming on.