Hi there! Thanks for taking a minute to check out this devlog. I recently finished deep continuity edits and review on my entire, very branching, very complex demo's script!!! I'm extremely excited to share some of that process for this month's post!!!

Get comfy. This is going to be a really deep dive into how I use flowcharts, outlines, and check for continuity. I hope it might be helpful to some of you, be it for writing, editing, or game directing!

Seriously tho this is some shit, trust that I will elaborate near the end of the devlog. Really. I made a new flowchart just to explain this post.

So!

Below is the complete (though slightly out-of-date) flowchart for the demo of Catalyst: Blind Faith. It covers over 45k words of script, 8 "endings," dozens of choices, and hundreds of unique scenes. It looks a little insane, but we're going to illustrate how the hell this is a helpful tool for me momentarily.

Behooooold✨

You might be wondering, "Alaric, what would compel you to touch this? Why would you ever edit this behemoth again? What is wrong with you?"

Ray, the service dog and best friend of our main character (who you control in Catalyst: Blind Faith) is vital to the game. He is arguably the real hero of the story, and I decided to give him a wolf collar long after I was done writing the demo's script.  Accounting for this weapon/defense/narrative device in the script is well worth the effort to me, even though it is a TREMENDOUS amount of effort.

Below is some concept art of him. This is really rough (ruff) but hopefully is helpful to visualize why this collar does need to be accounted for in the narrative lol.

He is a very good boi.

Please note that editing this entire monstrosity of a demo for continuity changes took me less than a month.

I did 26k words of it in one sitting today. 

This was made possible by VERY SELECTIVELY identifying what actually needed to be changed, and exhibiting unholy amounts of self-control to not touch the rest. On average, each "Chapter" required only 1-4 new scenes. Some took as little as adding a single sentence. Some needed no changes at all!

I still picked through every single punctuation mark and image change with a fine-tooth comb, and I am very pleased to share that it was made exceedingly simple by using flowcharts. The charts above and below were made in Twine, which is a robust yet lightweight software. I cannot praise it highly enough!

I have each one of those little boxes filled with labels, variables, and essentially every branch in the story, so it is very simple to quickly visualize what part of the script I am reviewing and how it connects to other parts of the script. Below is a view of how these things look zoomed in, within Twine itself! (I am using custom CSS to have an ultra dark mode for photosensitivity accessibility. It's great.)

As you can see, the first flowchart posted in this devlog is EXTREMELY zoomed out. This is intentional! Taking a step back from the script is mandatory for me to understand how things interconnect.

A huge part of the editing process I undertook this month for continuity was not just identifying single scenes which needed adjustment. I strive to work as efficiently as possible, so many of the changes were made with brevity in mind, by identifying how EVERY permutation of events worked together. NOT just scenes in isolation.

This is exactly as challenging to do as it sounds lol so let me elaborate with a very specific example.

Far and away the most difficult scene to do this with was in the third chapter of the demo. The player battles two formidable opponents: an orc warchief by the name of Orgoth, and a demon who resembles a giant centipede.  Some sweet concept art of the demon is below :^) <3

The final art assets are still being worked on, so this is quite different stylistically from what we will have in the complete demo with the final art, but I hope you enjoy!

During this fight, the player has a multitude of rapid-fire choices they can make. They can die twice. There are multiple ways to deal with Orgoth, who plays a huge role in the demo. You can time travel into the end of the fight from a later chapter. It's ridiculous. I love this fight, but damn was it extremely difficult to figure out where to place the continuity for this wolf collar stuff.

I initially identified nine (9) spots in this chapter where the collar would play a role. That's a lot of edits, and definitely not ideal when I still have 122 chapters for the full game's script to review!

Below is the utter insanity of me identifying which locations in the script would be affected by the collar, including things like time travel and deaths. Trust the process. I will explain momentarily what this actually means.

In short, the green segments on the chart to the right was where I had identified edits may be needed.

But that's wrong.

You see, I identified that all points in this scene actually pass through one, singular, identical moment.

It really wasn't necessary to do nine edits at all! I simply wrote ONE moment into the script in that ONE scene which accounts for continuity. Since ALL scenes in this fight flow from that moment, no other edits were required!!

This is an ultra-simplified version of the flowchart, which will hopefully illuminate what on earth I have been talking about. (I made it just for you, please enjoy lmao)

So in short, I was able to take a colossal chapter that I thought would require nine (9) new edits just for continuity correction, and was ultimately able to make just one (1) tiny edit instead. Flowcharts are amazing.

Today I completed these continuity edits for the entire demo's script, which completes its writing in full!!!!

The last several weeks, I have also been flying through the final programming features on my to-do list. They are complete, so literally all that is left for the demo's final update is the final art assets!!!

I may be a speedy reader and writer, but I am the world's slowest artist, so it will take me some time to do those final art assets. I hope you enjoyed seeing this process for the quality and care I have put into the game's script in the meantime!

Feel free to check out the early development version of the demo on the game's page for Catalyst: Blind Faith, if you'd like to get a feel for its depth of choices!

We also have an official Catalyst community Discord with ample memes and quality discussion, frequent updates from me, game dev streams, and art updates. We've got a sweet Patreon where I'll be posting high res stuff, early art access for patrons, and more of these insane devlogs in the weeks to come.

Thank you very much for reading this far! Looking forward to bringing you more updates really soon.