An attempt to make a multiplayer visual novel in the style of the “The Yawhg” by Damian Sommer and Emily Carroll.

2022 Commentary

This project ended up turning into an exercize in dynamic content management and scripting language design.

The greatest shortcoming I saw with The Yawhg is that there will be no more content for it, likely ever. So, I looked into how to set up the project so that it could potentially support modding, or at least DLC, leading me to learn Unity's (at the time) latest tools for asset handling. There was also a randomization element to what scenes would be used, so I wrote in support have scenes fetched and loaded asynchronously, allowing them to be streamed in as the players read.

Pre-generating the final list could have also potentially worked and more simply, except that player choice effects what potential scenes can be picked, and frankly it was more technically interesting to me at the time.

As for the scripting language, I wanted to be able to have my friends contribute scenes to the game without them needing to know how to work with Unity, so once the core design was in place, I put together an interpreter that could populate a template scene using only text in a markdown-like format. Another reason for the dynamic asset fetching as images could be referenced in a script.

It's been a long time since I shelved it (life priorities shifted), but almost all of the core systems were in place. It just needed content and presentation, I believe.

Maybe someday.