The Status of the UI

It's no secret that the UI of the game right now is, quite frankly, awful. Although this is due in large part to my usage of choicescript as the engine, it's not choicescript's fault per se. Choicescript was made for more narrative works, where the senses were touched by the words and each choice had a large impact on the story. This is not a narrative work. In order to complete basic actions, players must navigate through menus after menus, to see information about the state of their game, like the contents of their inventory, they have to click a button that brings them away from the game and then navigate more menus, and there is absolutely no sensory detail other than the more summary-based words on the screen. Like I said, this isn't choicescript's fault because choicescript wasn't made for this sort of work.

So why did I choose choicescript?

Well, put simply, choicescript has a good enough "backend". I have very good control of the flow of the story, and I've found it hard to reel in that same level of control with other engines that offer more support for UI changes. I've been told everything I want to do can be done, but whenever I've tried it's felt like I was working against the system. Sometimes I've even been told when asking for help on how to do something that I'm probably wrong for wanting to do that thing. That stories ought to be constructed in this other way. Of course, I could still stick with choicescript, but the UI has just turned into a non-negotiable state.

So, I've decided a while ago to just build my own engine. Admittedly I have not looked into the other engines very much, but I'm also just not very interested. I just want a system that works for my story rather than against it and I know I can make that. However, it will take work. The UI will remain clunky for months, maybe years. But I'm hoping I can get a very, very simple fragment of the story up soon at least as a demo of what it could look like. If there are specific UI features you're looking for (like a "quick look" at the stats), let me know. In the meantime, I'll keep you posted about the status of the new engine, but don't expect anything anytime soon.