All roads lead to Poppy

Hi all

Apologies for the ropey pattern of updates over the last week. Busy-ness in real life is starting to creep upwards again. I thought I'd check in today to talk a little about how the mini-update is affecting Poppy's story and what you can expect to see going on there once it drops.

In the first stage of the mini-update, I am implementing the new scene of Down with the Bad Girls! and also coding its ramifications into Avenging Angel. There won't be any new scenes in Avenging Angel, everything going in there is dialogue, but it did need some new lines at the start, as none of the three current ones, (Missy betrayed the popular girls, Missy betrayed Poppy but still screwed Melanie, or Missy is indebted to the popular girls) work with the defeat route, so there will be a new fourth dialogue-only start to the quest, a slightly altered introduction for Angel and a few other little bits.

With this, the first part of Poppy's story finally feels complete, as now both Bad Girl's Bitch and Down with the Bad Girls! have two possible outcomes, which all marry up neatly with the start of Avenging Angel. Here's a visual representation.

 As you can see, this completes a previously lop-sided flowchart. It means a little more work than I was initially anticipating, so there probably will be a round of playtesting for this mini-update in which I'll ask testers to focus on Poppy's story. Avenging Angel is quite complicated in parts, but adding in dialogue required should be straightforward.

So how does this affect the third instalment of Poppy's story? Well as I've already mentioned before, it allows a route that I've been hoping to find a way to add - that Missy can join the losing side. The sub route will still allow you to simply help Poppy take over the school, but you can now join her with defeat mode on and lose to the popular girls or join them and lose to her. The relevant choices will come at the start of the next quest.

Hopefully that all makes sense, and to answer the next question, playing with Defeat Mode off will mean you will see no changes at all. The existing routes through Poppy's story will remain unaffected and the new part of the flowchart up there won't be accessible.

That's all for today, I hope you're as excited for the mini-update as I am, and as scenes start being added, we'll get looking at some previews ^^

See you Wednesday!

Trinian