April 28 Update (Patreon)

I find myself unexpectedly emotional about variables.

It's completely unsurprising to feel some emotion about the scenes I'm putting together. This isn't really saying goodbye to the characters (lots of stuff in the epilogue and postgame), but the final battle will include moments I've been leading up to for a long time. This is standard dramatic arc stuff.

However, as I'm doing some final calculations, I've been more sentimental than expected while working with the variables that I've been manipulating for so long. Like the good old Social/Religion/Economy stats... they haven't been the primary gauge of the player's progress for a while, but they're some of the earliest major variables established (variable IDs 15-17). And now they're contributing the player's progress one last time.

(Maybe dialogue in the postgame might change based on it, but you know what I mean.)

Because this is meant to be the culmination of everything. There are definitely pieces that I've seen people think I've forgotten that will contribute to the finale, though I'm sure that are some others that I truly have missed. Some revision and additions may be necessary, but as a whole, all these variables are coming to a head. Little numbers I established so long ago are finally serving their purpose.

Most things are on track. A few calculations are weird because the variables aren't exactly as planned, but that just means the behind-the-scenes parts are odd so that the whole thing feels fair to the player. We'll see how many tweaks need to be made afterward.

One thing I do worry about is what you might call "second layer balance". The final battle should flow fine for good saves (and be somewhat easier for optimizers), but I'm not sure how it will play to the actual average player. What I mean is that I can create different results for different variable levels that are reasonable on their face, but I don't know what percentage of players will actually hit the different outcomes.

Without spending a ton more time testing, I don't know how the compounding effects will interact, so it's possible that the final battle may have some variable ranges that need modification. Hopefully I will get feedback from everyone and not just the players who have been crafting perfect saves all this time, because I really do want the final battle to seem reasonable to players in general.

Anyway, there are so many little plans that I have been holding in my head for years that are being implemented in the game now. Some are just little numbers. But they mattered to me, and I think given the TLS community, they matter to a lot of you too. Hope to do them all justice.

Now, unrelated: the images on this post are something Annikath and I were having fun with on Twitter. ^-^ I've been informed Twitter is blocking NSFW, so I've duplicated them here. First she did a meme in TLS style, then I couldn't help but respond. =P