Heya all! o/

While work on the art and assets for "Knuffles is missing!" is ongoing I finished implementing and testing the puzzle chains for the first act of the second case "Reginald Ursington's Stalking Kittens - Recipe for Seduction" just the other day.

Working quite a while on the improved blueprints and framework paid out and I am very happy with it.
It feels very efficient and structured to work with and everything stays comprehensible, which is always a very good thing for later steps.
During this time I identified only one small further improvement to the framework I'll add with the next act.

This means I can finally dive back in to writing out the details of the story and dialogue of this act, always my favourite part to be honest.

One challenge of wearing many hats in a project is that you get less consecutive chunks of time working on one topic, on one part of the whole.
In my experience, in writing and development alike, I find it best to keep the topic in the back of my mind until a segment is finished. It makes it easier to jump back in the next time I am sitting down.

So, I took general advice bits for writers about structuring work, mashed that up with stuff from my project managing background in software development, adjusted it to my case of game development and came up with how I want to proceed from now on for each self contained case or "act":

1. Writing: Sketch out ideas and storylines.

2. Writing: Write descriptions, backgrounds, motivations and evolution for characters, groups, locations etc.

3. Writing: Sketch out story beats and key scenes

4. Writing: Sketch out chains for puzzles and advancing the storylines.

5. Writing: Sketch out happenings alongside the chains and key scenes.

6. Development: Combine the resulting gameplay from all above into variables, values and flowcharts to verify everything is in order, no unwanted crossing of branches, all ends are reachable etc.

7. Development: Implement everything as rough draft with short descriptive texts including stage play as descriptions.

8. Development: Test play the games logic and check that the flow feels "right".

9. Writing: Write the key scenes and main storylines.

10. Writing: Write happenings around the chains and key scenes.

11. Development: Implement writing, graphics, stage play, sound etc.

Working along this guideline should allow for stretches of time closer concentrated on writing or development while allowing for division of work and integration of changes that come up along the way.

Of course I'll stick to other advice one picks up about writing and working on creative projects in general like "Do at least one thing a day" and all that.
But I guess everyone knows and follows some of these as listening to "others who came before" helps a lot :)

Cheers! /Dagget