Monthly Archives: February 2021

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Connecting to Steam Workshop

Here’s a progress update on Steam Workshop support. I’ve got Fleshcult connecting to the Steam API and fetching the mods you’ve subscribed to in the workshop. It took some fixes in the Python wrapper I’m using. As far as I can tell, looks like there’s one other person who’s using Steam Workshop from Python, so I’m further off the beaten track than I’d hoped. I’ll be sending the fixes upstream soon.

There’s still a fair bit to do before it’s usable. Uploading mods is much more complex than downloading them. It’s the game’s job to upload the files and attach metadata to them – descriptions and tags and so forth. Once I’ve got the uploader working, I’ll be able to test the whole process from end to end, and from there it’s not too far to releasing it.

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World Building

I’ve been finding it hard to focus on programming tasks lately, so I’ve been spending this week working on world building. I haven’t tended to write much background material, but I’ve been hankering to do more, because a post-Baron plot arc has gotta be more than just another antagonist like the last.

My process so far is similar to the one behind Vampire: The Masquerade:

  1. What are the major political divides generated by the premise?
  2. Come up with factions for each position. Give them names, epithets, symbols, founders, derogatory terms…
  3. Who’s allied with who? What are the conflicts? Who won, and how long ago?
  4. What sorts of juicy scandals might’ve been covered up? Who’s keeping secrets?
  5. What’s the sequence of foreshadowings and reveals that leads the player to the bottom of each mystery?
  6. Who do they need to know and where do they need to be, to discover all these things?
  7. What are the tasks and random events that lead them there?

Anyway, I doubt I’ll follow all these steps exhaustively. If I can see a shortcut to writing game content, I’ll definitely take it.