Behind the scenes: scripting the flow of a scene

With the release for chapter 6 just about wrapped up, and work on chapter 7 yet to start in earnest, I figured this might be a good time to have another behind the scenes look at some part of Light of my Life, and in this case I'd like to talk about some of the stuff that comes into play when creating the flow for a scene.

In this particular case, I'm gonna be using one of the more pivotal scenes in chapter 6 as an example, so if you haven't played it to completion yet, you will want to leave and avoid spoilers, trust me. I'll give you a minute to clear out.

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Right, last chance? All that wanted to avoid spoilers left the room?

Good.

The scene

So, the scene in question is the scene between Macy and the MC near the end of the chapter where they finally get to "know" each other, in that sense. It is a fairly dramatic moment for them, and an important one as this is an event we've been building towards since the first chapter, in a way. I don't really want to discuss the impact and meaning of it from a story perspective though. I want to talk about how its flow is scripted and what kind of choices the game makes, depending on how you enter it, and what you do inside.

Let's pick this up from the moment the characters enter inside the building. 

Starting states

When they enter, one of the following situations may be the case:

• Macy and Denise are locked out, and your Love Points with Macy are low.

• Macy and Denise are locked out, and your Love Points with Macy are good (or very good).

• Macy and Denise are not locked out, but your Love Points with Macy are low.

• Macy and Denise are not locked out, and your Love Points with Macy are good (or very good).

So those are our entry points into the scene. From there on in, events have to unfold in a way that makes sense, but still allow the scene to work it's dramatic effect.

A picture with a thousand words says more than a thousand words

I made the following diagram, and I should point out, this isn't actually how I block out these scenes when I'm designing. I've made it just now, to illustrate the different big parts of this scene, and how they play out differently depending on your path through it. 

It does follow how the script is ordered in the source code a little bit, and that kind of follows from how I write it, first writing one path, and then adding in switches and gates for the other paths as well.

It's also far from complete. In the game, it's doing a lot more checks and conditional bits of dialog and modifying what people say and choosing the responses you can give them, based on earlier choices and stats, but we'll gloss over that for now. 

It also doesn't really show where there's quite a few points where bits come together and share a few lines or dialog before splitting apart again. 

For this purpose, it's complete enough to illustrate the point.

(attached at the bottom as well if it's too friggin' small)

As you can see, the scene starts almost the same for all paths, except for the "on path/high love" one, where we set up a tiny event to unfold later.

For the paths where you're locked out, there's (a little bit of) bonding, but other than that, there's not too much going on, and it's mainly there to indicate the little wheels turning in Macy's head as she comes to some conclusions about her relationship with Denise.

The scene is substantially more beefy when you are on her path, and the biggest part of the playing time and story development in this scene by far is tucked away in that one little line there that just says "making love". 

But from a choices and consequences perspective, at that point, all choices have been made, and it just plays out in one flavor or another, depending on the choices offered inside and the things you did before.

Finally, it all sort of comes back together again at the end, where there's several flavors of exiting (or lingering al little longer before exiting), ending that scene.

The "on path/low love" route

The interesting bit about this is if you've held Macy at arms length all this time but were still on her path. Because now, you are given a chance to repent and get back on her good side. That choice is tracked though, so don't expect her to let you get away with anything after this, because you're on thin ice, mister!  

Alternatively, you also get one more chance to leave her path for good.

So why have this choice in there anyway, one or the other?

Lock out Macy

One option here is that you can decide to finally get off the Macy path (with Denise soon to follow, which the game will warn you about). 

Perhaps you dragged it out all this way but now you're sort of done and want out? Perhaps you role played and you want to see what will happen? If the game traps you with her, and makes you be bosom buddies now, that's gonna be disappointing.

But just handwaving everything to be okay?

If you don't lock Macy out here, you get a whole bunch of love points for one click to bump you to the "med/high love" track. That's cheating isn't it? 

Only it isn't really, and I'll get back on that in a bit. 

Up until this point, the game allowed you to stay on Macy's path even if you weren't on really good terms with her. But if your relationship with her is quite tense, it doesn't make sense for the MC to have this intimate moment with her. So that's not an option.

If it now said: "You lost Macy! In fact, you lost somewhere in chapter 5 when you didn't start to pick up the love points you needed to get a passing score here." that would annoy you. I know it annoys me when it happens in a VN. So that's not an option either.

Instead, you can have your break-through moment here if you wish, and make amends, and promise to do better, and then kiss and make up.

A chance to get back in the game

So here we come to a principle I feel is very important for games like this, but I don't see applied so often, which is to allow a player to get themselves back in the game when they're falling short for some reason or another. 

In this case, Macy flat out tells you to shape up or ship out, and you can shape up (and be damned sure she'll take you to task if you slack off), or you can ship out. So it doesn't come without a cost, but you can still get back on track.

This happens at other points in the game as well. For instance if you mortified the Coven before you (or I for that matter) knew they'd become a staple to the game. If you did, you can express regret for getting off on the wrong foot, and that basically resets their love point score to a value that allows you to see their content (or piss them off again). 

The same goes for not having had interactions with at least two of them. In that case, their plotline chapter 6 is very limited, but a substantial portion of their lewd content for this chapter becomes available as a dream, if you chose you want to have it. 

It's not a game game, see?

I guess it comes back to what I wanted to do with Light of my Life. I didn't make Light of my Life to be a challenge, or a puzzle to solve. It's all about the story, and making sure you get to enjoy all of it, or just as much of it as you want. 

The puzzle as to how to tie it all together to make sure you can play it without having to worry about getting every point and saying exactly the right thing, that's one I have to solve, not you.