Project 1 Development Journal: So far, so good
I've been working like crazy on my interactive fiction game, "Consequences," since my first entry about its development. It's evolved into an IF game with over 5,000 words of code, tables, custom actions, people you can converse with, lots of scenes, microevents, and more.
In class on Tuesday, we took some time to peer review projects, and I learned a lot from it. Karissa played through my game, and it didn't recognize or generate responses to over half of the things she tried to do; I guess I got so wrapped up in getting the coding to work the way I wanted it to that I didn't think about making it work for other people, too. So I went back and revised the game, adding about 1,000 words of code (to the 4,000-something I had before), code purely intended to ensure that the game would respond properly to some of the things that Karissa tried during the testing session.
I'm quite pleased with the game's responsiveness and interactivity now, and I'm thinking about working more on this project and developing it further for my second term project of the semester, rather than trying to start something new all over again. There are so many things I want to expand in the game... Especially the possible endings. Right now, the game cuts off at a bit of an awkward point, and I want the ending to be more variable.