Coming off the heels of next week I've started working on a prototype Quest System!
This has been the most exciting part for me so far. I want to make my quest system something challenging that actually engages the player. You can see where I'm going with this. NO MARKERS! No none at all! I'm taking a cue from Morrowind, in that my quest system won't have any quest markers and the player will be tracking their quest progress via a journal that is auto populated from data contained within a Quest. The quests themselves will be scriptable objects derived from a quest class script.
I understand this means I'm automatically shutting out a large demographic of possible players. I'm opening to tweaking it after the first round of playtesting is complete but I'm really banking on this staying in the game. Foolish words I know, there are many devs who've echoed similar sentiments, all I can say is "fingers crossed".
As it is right now, the player can now accept and deny a Quest via dialogue and also complete said quest. For an ambitious polish I might push for quest specific dialogue this week. I know its a lot to invest in but I really want to make a demo thats gonna wow people. Plus Oz comic con is in November now with a new indie section, fingers crossed I get enough done to bring it to the table proper by then!
I've also been doing some more world building/story concepting. I spent so much time creating a cosmology for the game world that I neglected the main story. I'm trying to focus on the various races right now, culture building etc. I need to be decisive with these things I suppose, no need to create something super intricate just yet, that can come later. Buuuuut that doesn't mean I'm just going to string together something super low effort. I'm trying to see this project as something fun and not something that I HAVE to do. Because that's what it should be. Something fun and a way to express myself.