Six
Hi Friends! 👋
I just fell over my calendar.
To my shock, I realized: it's August 28th! TRACHI's turning six, AUTONOMY hits four and ANARCHY lights a second candle. This would be the perfect time to reflect and ponder. But four months of absence aren't free.
So before we dive into content – l'd like to put a thesis to my BFFs.
Opus
Remember my rant about art the other day? I recall being against the term. My key argument was: it's a colorful way to say good or bad. Yet as I looked back at the last 16 months, reality caught up to me. I make big promises, struggle with perfectionism – and by god – am I behind my schedule.
Yes, I've dragged the brand to hell and back. From fictional history to InvAsion's meta splat. Rainy days for people that don't stay dead! And yet: we're on our way to the city, again. Now who in their right mind would come up with something like that?
Hello. My name is nory. I'm artist-brained!
Magnum
TRACHI went with me across the peaks and valleys. It's a chronology of a person trying to find themselves. The fact that the project likes to overextend is not (just) a matter of incoherent planning – it's the reason why we're talking.
Yet there's a catch to everything. Exploration can be entertaining, but it doesn't make a product. That is to say: A product that's worth your time. So what's the key ingredient we're missing? Well – nory needs to stop playing around. Given that I've so far refused to compromise, there's only two paths going forward.
At one end lies a bunch of ideas from a person who tried everything. At the other end, there's a story about people that won't stop asking questions. Although I can't predict where we'll settle in, our next step is crystal clear. I'll say it out loud once we get to the conclusion. Knowing you – and the way you know me – I'm sure you'll have it all figured out by then. For now, let's go back to the place where it all began!
City
Since June 27th, all outdoor tiles are done. This includes the Prologue (Checkpoint, DMZ, Nestville) – and Trachi actual. From Clarin Square to Rondham, Trenton Plaza to Filmore Avenue, Anderson Park and Sigmund Plaza – the city is complete.
Next up are Transfers, Spawners and Events. All the while I'm fixing AUTONOwhoopsies here and there. Most of these weren't too bad, but the connections between scenes took a lot of work. Thanks to our new Hypermap, we can spot and fix inconsistencies with ease. Take Anderson Park, for example. It sits right in the middle of five other maps.
In numbers: 4 hours of tiling – and three hours of alignment. Why? Because it's important that the city appears natural. Every alley, plaza and street should tell a story. ''I wonder what it's like to live here. How does a citizen go about their day? What's Trachi's tax policy? Is this a place worth protecting?"
The answer's a resounding yes! After scratching at the edge of fiction and reality for two years – I think we earned ourselves a holiday. Some place in the Balkans – not far from where Montenegro is today. A cute town tucked into the mountains, close to the Adriatic sea. Let T be a Mediterranean curiosity.
Possibility
As soon as I saw the maps ordered like that, a thought occurred to me. If the Editor loads the districts additively, could we do the same thing at runtime? The theoretical bits of my brain nodded in agreement – the empirical side broke into a sweat. ANARCHY's performance is questionable as it is. Loading and unloading scenes dynamically won't help.
I.e.: If we're serious about this, we'll need a proper plan. Optimization is one concern, but there's much bigger challenges. Most of AUTONOMY's logic goes like this: Enter scene -> launch event. Can you see how that wouldn't work anymore? In effect, we'd stop treating scenes as isolated worlds. We'd have to call them areas – or zones – instead. On the other hand: we'd get a seamless city.
Given the ongoing time-constraints I'm facing – I'd rather focus on the meat of the game. Although that doesn't mean we can't make it future-proof! To recall our earlier example: As I'm rolling AUTONOMY's logic into ANARCHY, I'll forgo OnSceneLoaded() and check the player's location through colliders instead.
It'll feel the same on your end – but you'll know that our systems are ready for anything.
Logic
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
I've been working through the quests since early July. So far, around half the prologue is sorted out. All in all, ANARCHY handles AUTONOMY like a champ. We just had to extend a couple of scripts. For example: We needed a plug-and-play way to convey meta-stuff. I hope you'll find it a relief that messages like '15 minutes later' make a triumphant return.
By far the biggest challenge was the Companion system. As a reminder, our old system worked like this: Whenever we load a scene, Combatant Spawners spawn their Combatant(s) – provided the Spawner's conditions (quests, equipment, etc.) are met. This meant we had to place Spawners for every companion in every scene.
Nowadays, we tie Companions to the player. Whenever you load a scene, there's a check for a blocking flag. If it returns false, the game scans for walkable spots and spawns our Friends. In essence, we flipped the logic from spawning on-demand to spawning by default. Turns out a list, a check and a pinch of geometry is all we need.
That is: If we restrict the entire system to party members. But what if we wanted every Combatant to be a potential companion? It would take a good bit of tinkering, but we'd cover every contingency:
Companion
Party
---
O
O
Hey
O
X
you're
X
O
cute
X
X
Going forth, you can have some of your party members and/or or a collection of random NPCs follow you from scene to scene. Although most of it won't affect AUTONOMY, it's a big leap towards full accountability. After all, a city is more than bricks and stone. It's people, places and events.
T-time
As you recall, we ported AUTONOMY's Quests whole-sale. In addition to saving myself a lot of work, every Task was mapped to a time and date. Here's an example: A, D, G arrive at the Checkpoint on August 25th, 07:00 AM. They're stuck in customs for close to an hour. Trachi's civil servants honor due process over anything. I think it's proper for us to do the same.
Flashbacks and -forwards – aka Fragments should tell you that our timeline extends from 1913 to 1926. In general, we want to display a lot more meta-data in the game. Time (and Place) are just two steps to expose TRACHI's hidden layers. As the story's secret protagonist, you deserve to know who's talking to whom when, where, how and why.
On the same page, there's several thousand words of background lore that haven't made it in. Since I'm very strict on the Dialogue, we need to convey exposition through another way. Players should be able to find out what 'EnKAD' means without a character blurting it out. The most elegant vessel would be a book that says: 'EnKAD – A republic dies in monochrome.'.
There's just one catch. As you know, I've grown attached to the abstract. Not that I don't love to manifest a 'moment'. On the contrary: It's when I get to be a kid again. Since I semi-retired from being a 'fulltime dev', writing has become therapy.
Suffice to say – we'll keep it recreational for now. There'll be plenty of stuff to read, just not in the game at first. No biggie, though! As per my promise, word-by-word AUTONOMY is our first priority.
Parity
In short: Events, locations and dialogue remain the same. Up until the moment we release a sola scriptura build, I'll refrain from changing anything. Believe me – it's much easier said than done!
I tend to be a very explicit person (duh). You might remember that the prologue had a lot of fluff. Here's an example from the second Task: 'Feel free to take a seat over there, if you want.' Now compare it to: 'Feel free to take a seat over there.' You see how we're conveying the same information?
The first set of post-parity changes might just be a major slimming down. T will stand for Tight, as more and more books and papers hop into the game. The last four years had me set a lot of background info straight. I think it's high-time to prove that TRACHI is an iceberg with many layers.
Thawing
On the top-top-level, there's three people and a city. Below is a story about spies. Something about a country named Ionia – hungry for a city. Until we see that there's factions in those states. While the Nestville Trachi, Solka Faber dynamics are criminally undercooked, CoExA EnKAD also merits more attention.
At the fourth level sit interpersonal relationships. Atlas and Lorna, Daphne and Hyperion, Lorna and Eurydice, Ganymede and Orpheus – I could go on. The primary idea is that characters are more than walking timelines. Every person is a node within a web of interest.
While some people live in the fringes, Atlas, Eury and Daphne et al. form a historic nucleus. Beyond their complicated relationship, there's a profound solidarity. At its best, they understand each other without too many words. That's the base ingredient of TRACHI: people talking amongst themselves.
Bidirectional
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
At least that used to be the case. Three years ago, we cracked the window in the question room. Whether that was a wise move strategically – we'll see. Morally, though, it was – and is – the right thing to do.
Besides, it's not like they know everything. None of the characters have access to real-world information. Although the same doesn't go for the system. If you've paid close attention, you'll have spotted that the A in TRACHI sets itself apart. Even discounting the #801e1e aura, the kerning shows that there used to be another letter there.
To understand what happened, we'll have to examine TRACHI's origin (0,0). That would be a time before the world learned to speak words. Through the perspective of a random vector (V), we follow its path to make it rain. Incidentally, that's about as much as I can say without spoiling ANARCHY.
Rest assured though: There are mountains of intermediary pieces! We just need to gather, sort and aggregate the information. Now if we put one and one and one together, we get ourselves a summary. I want to write in my own time without polluting the game just yet. TRACHI needs a portable, web-based knowledge base.
And you can deserve to see it.
TRAKI 2.0
After years of migration, we finally settled down. TRACHI.net is now a github-pages built on mkdocs. That is: a site where we live and speak (almost exclusively) in markdown. Although it doesn't have the breadth of a full Mediawiki, it's extremely low-maintenance. That means I can sit down whenever and focus on the things that count.
If you check it out right now, you'll see that there's the known articles – and some more. One of the recent additions is the entry for Ionia. I hope you'll find it a worthwhile addition. And if not: Feel free to suggest changes on any post at any time.
Speaking of changes: We've also imported (almost) all the devlogs from every platform. I cringed a bit reading posts from 2021 – but I'll gladly prove my awkwardness if it makes you smile. On that note, one of the sites closed its doors a couple of years ago. Waybackmachine had the last two pages of announcements, but the earlier stuff is gone.
If you come across anything written by me pre-2020, please burn it before reading. 🌚
Future
Since we're approaching the end of this post, let's hear the conclusion.
The truth is: My PhD is roundabout 4/5 done. That spells around five more months of grinding. At the same time, I'm writing applications. If all goes well, we'll be over the hump next year. As to what that entails: It mainly depends on what kind of job I land.
After my crash out in March 2024, most of my waking hours went into Python, Transformers and Databases. Partially because work is more fun than fun, but also because it's in demand right now.
So here's my answer, in two paragraphs: I've been preparing for a crossroads all the way from 2022. I was able to bend TRACHI to that goal – but only for so long. Early last year, the project couldn't take it anymore. We had to transform our marriage into a distant relationship.
You know how these things go. Either you drift apart completely – or you'll understand a deeper sense of love. I'm lucky to live in the second timeline. There's going to be a lot more TRACHI, I just can't say when. Although we should have a much better idea when 2025 nears its end.
Percentile
In the meantime, I'd like to have it on record that six is ten percent of sixty. You better be ready for many more promises – and grovelling apologies! Whether that's for months of content drought, or being tsundere about attention. One way or the other, I won't let go. Owing to a five-letter word, I know exactly what I want.
Thank you again for being part of this journey! Please know that your continued patience is everything to me. So when the going gets tough next time – you've got your Friends right here.
From a fervent admirer, kissies from your #1 fan! 😊
much love
nory