Hello all! I'm still handling some other obligations outside of LIFELIKE for a bit, but I'm very happy to say I met my goals for this week!

• The script is now at 8200 words. Math savvy readers may notice this under target (8,500). This is because I edited out some areas as I was writing. Despite the editing, I still wrote 500 words a day! Next week could be the last week of draft writing as I tie up some loose ends and make sure as many interactables as possible are accounted for. Tracks tend to fall around 9,000-11,000 words depending on what's going on in them, so another 3,500 words this week should nearly cover the rest of the Track's events. As a fun aside, this track will definitely put LIFELIKE's combined script at novel length. 
  • This week's writing work also involved gameplay design considerations in the realm of puzzles! It's nothing too involved (I like keeping difficulty reasonably easy, I know some folks are here for the story) but I think they'll make some exploration segments of Track 2 more exciting. 
  • I got a bit of editing done between all of the writing. Not too much to write home about, but I'm proud of how it's shaping up.
• I also met my rebuilding goals this week! Four rooms: Ken's house, Ken's basement (if you haven't been, check it out), East Main Street, and Animate Control. Gamemaker tried its best to get in my way by randomly deleting important object event code during this process, but I've managed to work around the peculiarities of mass importing. I hope it'll calm down soon. Please knock on wood for me. 
Aside from hoping, I'm doing my best to diagnose and avoid any issues around this.
• Saving has been made more stable in preparation for supporting Track updates. This is still in progress, but it's making debugging way easier. 
• To cap this update off, I'll repeat what I did last week and set my word and rebuilding goal again:  
  • 500 Words of script/day 
  • Overture Main Street, its respective shops, and West Main Street rebuilt. These don't have too many complicated cutscenes in them so I'm hopeful they'll move faster granted Gamemaker behaves itself. 
• Overall, I'm very happy with the steady work I got done this week. Track 2 is becoming more tangible by the day and the complete game is moving along at a pace I'm learning to be okay with because it's the fastest I'm able to go.

One final aside... I also got some fun work done this week! Things were a bit more lifelike than usual...

See you in a week! 

Mantis