desiderium-interactive-fiction

[desiderium-interactive-fiction]

What is Desiderium about? (Interactive Fiction) + Update!

Desiderium: : an ardent desire or longing. especially : a feeling of loss or grief for something lost.

Quick summary of Desiderium: A kingdom has been taken over and transformed after the death of a king. You are able to play as one of six premade characters (including a prince, two soldiers, and three priestesses with powers) or a custom character (who could be a mage, soldier, servant, or navigator). All of these characters will be ROs!

Throughout the story you learn more about each character and why they are doing what they are doing. Everyone has lost something or is longing for something. Often, something they had before. Fall in love with any of the seven ROs and choose to have them help you accomplish your goals or help them accomplish theirs! These characters have some *depth* and I hope you all enjoy discovering all parts of them!

Additionally, throughout the story you will discover that although the kingdom has fallen, some things are worse but... some things are better. It's up to you to influence who should be ruling over this kingdom and what customs it should follow. Choose a side or forge a new path that you think is better.

There will be betrayal, healing, magic, myth, lore, gods, goddesses, fantasy, action, and most of all... love!

Category of book: Romance, Fantasy

As for the update...

These past few days I've been adding more variables and whatnot to keep track of things. I'm not going to make this have a bunch of stat checks where you can fail things (that will be, if anything, a rare occurrence), I mostly want to add flavor text that changes depending on your relationships, personality, etc. So I've been adding that in.

Also, one of my friends from college is a fantastic writer and she has been helping me revamp some things and strengthen lore, characters, and more. She's a much stronger writer than I am, so I think she will be a huge boost to the overall quality of this project. She's very busy, but has agreed to help me when she can!

Hoping to update the demo in a day or two with some more changes.

[desiderium-interactive-fiction]

Added Another 5,000 Words to Demo & Work Philosophy For IF

Desiderium is now at least 15,000 words!

I added about 5,000 more words to the demo (maybe a little less). I'm trying to update it daily. I had a lot of fun today playing around with how each RO will interact with each other in a particular instance (asking if the RO the user has chosen to pair up with for a scouting mission has ever been in love). Still have to write the pairings for the user-created character, though. That will involve more choices compared to the scenes with pre-made characters, though.

A lot of this is just a rough draft and while the core concepts will stay, I definitely plan to go back and add flavor text, more descriptions (not tooooo much though), reword things, and just overall make things better.

As for work philosophy, I'm a BSA (business systems analyst) in my professional life and have a background in software development and the SDLC (software development life cycle). I'm planning on completing this book/game the way I would manage a project for my software team.

I plan to put at least several hours of work in a day and am using a Kanban methodology to keep track of everything. While I haven't really coded much since college, I am familiar with choicescript and it's honestly kind of a breeze compared to C, MIPS, Java, etc.

Keeping track of software development is kind of my thing so I'm anticipating that I will be able to stick with my milestones and overcome risks as they pass by.

Additionally, I have created an internal documentation stack on Confluence that has a bunch of lore for the world in my story and I can't wait to share (the non-spoilery) parts of it with everyone. Stay tuned!

Also, currently I'm using CSIDE as my IDE but I've heard that visual studio might have a choicescript plugin and honestly that might make it easier to push updates via git so I'll be looking into that, too.

[desiderium-interactive-fiction]

A Good 10,000+ Words Already!

Updated the demo and am pleased to say that this WIP already has 10,000 words!

I have a branch open for chapter 1 on git and I am excited every time I get to update it.

In chapter one, we dive into the priestesses, soldier, and (optional) servant/navigator/mage starting their journey by either strategizing, scouting, or gathering information.

For the most part it's the MC and whichever RO they choose to pair with for the scene, so long as the RO is in the opposite career (so if a priestess, RO would be a soldier, if a soldier, RO would be a priestess). This will not lock in ROs and it does NOT mean that ROs have to be the opposite profession. Right now the goal is to have every RO be available to the MC regardless of gender, profession, etc.

I've written almost all of the rough draft of the strategic meeting and about half of the rough draft of the scouting mission. We're add 5,611 words so far for chapter one and I can anticipate chapter one being upwards of 10,000 words. I intend to cap chapter one at 30,000 words (but that sounds really ambitious... I don't think we'll ever hit that limit).

Once the rough draft of chapter one is done in its entirety, I intend to go back and add more flavor text, internal thoughts/dialog, more options, more stats, and a tonnnnnnnn more if statements.

The goal is that you can get the gist of the story in one playthrough, but you find out way more information the more you play with multiple perspectives.

I plan on releasing an "official" demo around chapter 2 or 3 with the intention of asking for feedback on both the forums, tumblr, and reddit. I feel like there will be enough content that it will give people an idea of what the book will be like but it won't be too late for me to correct mistakes/implement new ideas and suggestions.

Until then, here's the demo that I currently have out:

[desiderium-interactive-fiction]

Chapter 1 Updates

I have updated the demo again and it should now have the journey that the original six characters make to the camp.

Additionally, I have made it so that even if you do not choose to customize a unique character (meaning you have chosen a pre-made character), that you are able to have a unique character still be in the story that you do not play.

This brings the total "main" and "playable" characters up to seven.

The stats screen has been slightly updated and some new variables have been added as well.

My main goal for this first rough draft is to just have the story for the most part fleshed out and then go back and adjust branching and flavor text. We'll see if this strategy continues and/or pays off.

[desiderium-interactive-fiction]

Character Customization

I've decided/figured out a way to allow for a custom character to be chosen in addition to choosing a premade character as part of the story.

Hope to update the demo with that process today.

Additionally, I am going to allow the user to customize the premade characters a tiny bit for their playthroughs in the hopes that it allows the player to identify with the premade characters. I'll still have some defining characteristics be static, though.

[desiderium-interactive-fiction]

Announcement of Desiderium IF

I'm pleased to announce the commencement of my work, Desiderium. A story about reclaiming something lost and maybe in the process seeing that not everything has to be found.

It takes place in a fallen kingdom and can be played from the perspective of six different characters (Note: I'm still playing around with perspective and POV so this might shift to more, less, different, or player generated characters).

On the quest to reclaim the kingdom, the player has the ability to influence if culture, customs, and society will be put back exactly as they were before or to change them for the betterment of society.

Additionally, the player will be able to make friends, romance other characters, use magic, fight with swords, discover secrets, unlock lore, and so much more.

Link to demo: https://dashingdon.com/play/wisteriamonster/desiderium/mygame/

Currently, it just contains a prologue and will most likely be rewritten several times. But for now, it is what it is. I'm working on my writing skills and also would really like to aim to have this be coded as cleanly and efficiently as possible.

I'll keep track of all code using git so if something needs to be reverted, that won't be a problem. I'll also be using the ChoiceScript IDE.

I'll post updates on this blog as well as lore and more.