Custom scene example: Introduction

Hi all!

For the next release I'm going to work through a new scene for the game using Velocity & Yaml as an example for scene-writers. I'll be showing the full process, including non-writing steps.

This will probably take longer than adding content in the Java, especially as I'll be documenting the process, but I think it'll prove valuable for getting other people's work into the game in the future.

Unlike the existing example scene, this one will be a proper in-game scene that'll be fully included for everyone to play through as a random event.

This will be the only major change in 0.4.12, so it'll be a smaller release than usual: hopefully this means it'll also be quicker, although it's hard to be sure how much overhead doing this as an example will add.

There's a few things writers should know about this new scene:

It's a narrative scene structured in a flowchart-style. As such I don't expect to make any use of NPC actions or the default PC action functionality. These are primarily used for turn-based scenes, which are often larger and more complicated than the scene I'll be adding.

It's difficult to be certain of the scene's size, as I have a tendency to go off on writing tangents and make things bigger than they need to be. However, the intention is for it to be a mid-sized scene. Not so big that it's confusing to read, but not so small that it's trivial as an example.

The writing process will involve new functionality being added to the custom scene system. For example, I've added a new method to retrieve cheating severity.

This isn't ideal, but it's necessary because it's quite a new system and because I'll be working with some new game mechanics that haven't been fully fleshed out yet for custom scenes.

You might find yourself in a similar situation if you're a writer. If you're making a scene and find that you need a certain transition or method that exists in the main game but isn't available for custom content then you should just make a post, comment or discord message (flagging me to get my attention) and ask me to make the change. I expect to be refining the custom scene system over several releases before it reaches its final state.

In the long-run, once the system gets more mature I expect it should reach a point where changes only need to be made when new game mechanics get added. That'll make things a lot easier, and it's a place I want to get to before I start comissioning paid writers to work on the game.