Writer's Blog: Recoding Love (Patreon)

First off: thanks to my neighbor for letting me use her computer! Now onto “Friday’s” blog post.

Ahem.

The list of things which I intend to polish during Mind Blind’s second draft is too lengthy to include in a single post, but today I’m going to talk about one of the most important aspects which I intend to rework: Romance.

When I first started writing and coding Mind Blind, I didn’t know what I was doing. To some extent, I still don’t when it comes to code—the choice script wiki is a permanent fixture in my internet browser. In particular, I wasn’t certain how to code a natural-feeling romantic progression. I tried to do it numerically using the “crush” variable to indicate Button’s level of romantic attachment (and this is what’s currently in the game), but going forth I found it unnecessarily tedious, not to mention vague.

Does a Button who doesn’t choose ever pining option feel less for an RO? Possibly not. Perhaps they’re good at compartmentalizing, or in denial, or simply have their priorities in order (terrorists first, smooching later). But when affection is a number, and each love-struck option adds more invisible affection by Button towards the RO (+X to the Crush variable), a lot of that nuance is lost.

To solve this, I’ll be changing romances to instigate along a progressive three-step scale. Each RO will have three variables: Interest, Infatuation, and Devotion. Early game, choosing any romantic option for an RO will set Button as being “interested” (by setting the Interested variable to “true”). While there will be multiple opportunities to activate the “interest” variable, it only needs to be activated once. It won’t matter how often you choose an interest option; the game will remember Button as feeling attraction if you select any of the interested options. Button can also be interested in more than one person.

Buttons who are remembered as being “interested” in an RO will eventually be able to select options that set the “infatuated” variable true. These infatuated options will only be available to interested Buttons, and again it won’t matter how many you select—all that’s required is that, at some point in the romantic progression, the “Infatuated” variable for an RO is set as “true.” Button can only be infatuated with one person at a time. (This is in large part due to there being variable scenes where Button thinks about their love interest, and having them interested in multiple people at this point leads to too many variations that are ultimately futile, as none of the ROs are poly.)

This same progression applies when going from “infatuated” to “devoted,” which marks the committed romance. Devoted is when your romance fully locks in and the RO returns your feelings. The reason this is different than the “infatuated” variable, however, is because there will be ending variances for Buttons who are “in love” with an RO but never cement the relationship (in particular, Sally and Gray). In addition, the ROs will react differently to an “infatuated” vs a “devoted” Button.

It’ll be a heck of a lot of recoding, but I feel like this will create a cleaner, more reactive (and most importantly, more organic) way for the romances to progress (instead of just one canned response, RO reactions will change based on which variable you’ve activated). Currently, each RO’s romance fully activates if Button has high enough affection and a crush stat—a method which requires Button to select certain choices in order to tell the code that, yes, you want to deepen the relationship. This new multi-variable progression will make sure that you can still achieve the romances without choosing every pining dialogue option, as well as providing me with a better foundation for the future ace/demi romance pathways (where alternative “interest” options will become available at the “infatuated” level, leading to slower romance progressions that mostly disregard initial physical attraction).

Each RO’s path will still progress at a different speed. Glitch’s “infatuated” and “devoted” variable activates much earlier than the rest of the cast, for example, whereas Rosy’s activates the slowest. Either way, I’m excited to eventually share Mind Blind 2.0 with you. (After the alpha draft is released, that is, because right now my priority is simply to finish.)