It was nose to the writing grindstone today. I still have triaging to do, of course, but since I was away from the computer today, I decided to grab my notebook and hash out the next encounter.

I managed to figure out some high level stuff first, and then had a pretty good burst of progress working on details. I feel like it's starting to take shape, and is actually pretty well defined. I may be able to start coding it quite soon, in fact.

There are still some issues to sort out, especially with making sure some skills have valid uses during the encounter. However, the main implications for the plot are mostly figured out.

I also did a sort of "offline" triage exercise today. From memory, I created a list of the most important things I could think of that needed to be done with the game. Obviously remaining plot encounters were on there, but some other examples included (in no particular order):

balancing skill sizes to their relative values

battle GUI improvements

hiding/sneaking mechanic improvements

more item variety

more creature types

more scavenge sites

etc.

There were about 15 in total. I'll cross-check that with my "wishlist" for anything I might've missed, but it was good to get one possible view of the final stretch. It's easy for me to go through the 500 wishlist items and agree with each one, but if I just rely on memory to list important features/content, it's interesting to see what sticks out most.

More on that next week, though.

Finally, I just want to remind folks that I'll be out of office (OOO) on Monday. Again, nothing special. Just a day off in exchange for the 10-hour weekdays I usually do. On my next game, I may even experiment with every other Monday off. Some offices do this (10-hour days with Fridays off, or 9-hour days with alternate Fridays off), and it can be really good for keeping workers productive.

Anyway, I'll be around periodically to put out major fires if they come up, but my next devlog post will be Tuesday. Hope everyone has a good weekend, and I'll see you next week!