Update 6/29/22: Quest Journal Functionality

This update will cover the general behavior of the quest journal, or rather, how I'll use it.

I'll use a Phase One quest as an example here!

In the main menu, there'll be a new category/page to select, the Quest Journal. Selecting it will bring up this menu screen:

'Available' Quests are quests the player has received, but not completed. Generally speaking, Main Quests will be given to the player via cutscene/overall narrative progression, while Side Quests will procc after talking to NPCs. In the above screen, the quest 'Marissa and Kristin' has been triggered by talking to Marissa, and thus, it appears on the left as an 'Active' Quest.

 Selecting the Quest, brings up...

...This screen! Some minor info, a contextual description, and the 'objective, e.g., what the player has to do to advance the quest.

So, let's tell Kristin!

After telling Kristin--one of the options--the description has now changed! However, the quest isn't done yet... The payoff hasn't occurred, has it?

Fastforward to Phase 2, and...

After checking back in with Kristin, the quest is now complete, and moves to the 'completed' section. The description changes yet again, summarizing the ultimate outcome, and hinting of something else in the future! (I don't know if Kristin will specifically amount to anything in the future, admittedly).

Alternatively, if we DON'T warn Kristin...

The quest is still completed, but records a completely different outcome!

(Marissa, on the other hand, WILL return in some capacity at the end).

Updated descriptions will generally include the relevant info from the previous iteration of the description, essentially functioning as a truncated story itself. Ideally, when the game is near the end, the player might go through their quests and look over the events they took part in, and more importantly, decided the outcome for.

That said, note the section marked 'failed.' The Phase design of the game means that most quests have a hard cut-off point... Which is to say, you can fail a quest by simply not finishing it when you can. (In this sense, the Marissa quest may not have been the best example, as doing nothing there is a valid choice).  I presently don't intend to actually mark quests as failed-- it's kind of a whole *thing*, as quests don't inherently use a universal trackable resource or anything, meaning I'd have to place a bunch of specific conditionals at the end-of-phase sequence to determine what was completed or not. And that's a bit of nitty-gritty that's presently not high on my list of priorities, haha.  Maybe I'll go back to it later.

Next time, I'll show off/spoil(?) a new quest, related to our friend, the rogue cowgirl....