Tag: IF

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Steam Highwayman Live on Kickstarter

Steam Highwayman launched last night at 8pm and already, around 12 hrs later, it is nearly 50% funded! Great news. I’ve had some generous support from friends but also have managed to secure backing from gamebook fans and international backers.

My Facebook page for the project is also steaming ahead: another 26 likes and I get to publish my account of the design process for the character of the highwayman. Can’t wait!

I’ve had some great social media support from the gamebook community, so I’m still waiting to find out how far this will go. It’s going to be a great ride.

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Steam Highwayman coming soon!

It’s been a busy summer!  Somehow, between all the weddings, trips, church events and socialising, I’ve ploughed on.  Steam Highwayman will be launched on Kickstarter on the 5th September and for a long a nervous month I’ll be watching and praying, while the book is available for backing from all over the world.  I’ve already been publicising the project on social media, introducing the gamebook to fans of steampunk and fans of gamebooks alike.  If I appear on your social feed, you might start to get sick of seeing me!

I’ve had to develop all sorts of new skills to get this far: graphic design and video-making, advertising and marketing and overcoming my naturally polite, patient tendencies!  I really can’t wait to be back in the writing zone again, when I can concentrate on producing the next volume.

Still, I’ve enjoyed all this work massively, and I hope it’ll bear fruit soon.  It’s amazing to imagine that in a matter of months I may well be holding a copy of my own work, talking to readers world-wide and with the success behind me.

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Gamebook Page Mockup

I’ve been experimenting today with different styles of illustration and layout, using Microsoft Publisher and my own two hands (though mainly the right one). Result: a mockup that resembles a page of my finished gamebook.  Illustrations all my own, with Mitsubishi uniball micro.  Font is Georgia: nicely serifed, not too full-on.

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Velosteam Design

I’ve been working on the design for a steam-powered motorcycle – a velosteam – for my Steam Highwayman gamebook.  Despite having written more than 100,000 words and having made many assumptions along the way, I’ve never actually pinned down the appearance or internal workings of the second main character in my story.

Cue Mr Crabfu of California.  His excellent article about using real miniature steam workings to better understand and design steampunk vehicles catalysed my new design – which may not be perfect, practically possible or the final version I use.  But it does feel a lot more real than anything else I’ve sketched or created yet.  I’m going to show some of the process I used here.

I don’t have any CAD or computer graphic skills so I used what I knew: pencil, rubber, ruler, cartridge paper and a protractor for some laying out.

 

 

This is where I started: with an angled view to feel how a boiler, originally elliptical, would hang between two broad wheels.

I then created a second angled view, with an inversely pear-shaped boiler, clustered with a small firebox, two pistons and a condenser.  I spent quite a while deciding where to put my vent and ended up with a python-esque sausage out the rear left.  Leaf-spring suspension is better for my period, together with some drive linkages and guesses at a mudguard.

I then laid our plan and elevation and angled the pistons, which could feasibly be a little smaller.  I looked at steam traction and locomotive wheels and went for a 24 solid-spoke style.  The leaf-springs are back – I really like the carriage ancestry they imply.  I also drew a line-figure on the plan to consider riding position, seat, handlebars and so on.

 

How would the velosteam work with a pillion rider?  I also reinforced the boiler with oak laths and added that snakey vent.  At this stage I realised how long the velosteam was going to be…  I had started with a 3 wheel length, but the circumference of these wheels is something like 3’3″.  Which would make my whole velosteam more than 10 feet long.  I feel like I’ve got the scale of the machinery wrong for what I’m trying to create and may have another go later at making this machine.  But forward with the process!

 

Now a frame to hang all the components from: two curvy pieces of iron, a spherical gas tank, front suspension, pillion footstubs (which I later replaced), lubrication pipes, steam pipes, and friction igniter.

 

 

 

 

Several stages later, I have added a saddle, fairings, handlebars, regulator handle, gas valve, footrests, an indeterminate F-marked blob (secondary water tank?).

 

 

 

Taped the whole thing to my window for tracing and…

 

 

 

Voila!

 

 

 

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A Whiff of the Workshop – Steam Highwayman

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You manage to haul the struggling engineer onto the back of your velosteam and ride off towards West Wycombe. She is not at all impressed when you unload her in front of Lord Dashwood, but despite herself she is fascinated by the steam carriage he is building. He has called it the Wagtail and its sleek aluminium lines are quite captivating.
Lord Dashwood takes you aside. “Good work,” he says, handing you a purse of guineas (1260d). “I knew she’d see sense.”
The three of you get to work on the engine, but after a week’s tinkering and tuning, involving many trial runs, Lalage Harris puts down her tools. “We need a stronger material for the shafts and cylinders. There’s a titanium alloy that people have been using that is what we need, but it’s not easy to get hold of.”
Lord Dashwood claps you on the shoulder. “If anyone can get hold of it, you can! I put prodigious faith in you. Bring me that alloy and you can name your price.”

Leave West Wycombe House…                                                  492

Here’s a single passage from my current Steam Highwayman gamebook.  It’s an open-world steampunk adventure set around Marlow, High Wycombe and Maidenhead.  Rob the wagons of Transport Guilds, intercept the telegrams of the Compact for Worker’s Rights, ride the midnight roads of Berkshire and find lasting fame – through ruthlessness or mercy!

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Steam Highwayman – Updating Inventory and Selling Possessions

shigh22-11Breakthrough!  I’ve rewritten my inventory system in Steam Highwayman to make something much, much more streamlined.  Discovering that I was able to display a passage named after the nth string in an array, I’ve moved onto creating a passage for each generic object and giving the reader the opportunity to read about it whenever they open their inventory.  The same passage, when displayed within a passage tagged “shop”, gives the option to sell that object.

I always wanted to have variation within the game’s prices, so objects fit into one of six or so categories, and shopkeepers and fences will offer you better prices on some of those categories – eg revolutionaries will give you more for weapons, engineers for tools, hungry people for food.

Now that I’m writing it down, it looks like a minor matter – but I assure you, it’s not!

I’ve also included a photo of a (glitchy) version of what I hope to display in your ‘legend’ section – a list of the deeds of the day and your past deeds.  Simply because I’m pleased that it now registers when you have been attacked by a deer.

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Steam Highwayman – The Despolation of Christmas Common

I’ve just completed the first of several ‘Robin Hood’ style adventures in Steam Highwayman – prevent the strip-mining and destruction of a poor Chiltern village by challenging the Regional director of the all-powerful Coal Board.  Your response can be variously ruthless, and variously successful, which may lead to trailing consequences.

I’m planning for this to be one of 6 possible beginnings to Steam Highwayman, allowing you to enter the world in a different physical location, with a slightly different allegiance and with a different ‘base’ – all of which you should be able to change in time.  However, for my planned demo, this will be the first adventure, which is why I’m not publishing it here as a playthrough.

The experience of siding with the villagers against the corporation should give you an on-going set of missions: when people realise that you are wanted by the Coal Board, or at least willing to act against them, shady characters will offer you missions and the local priest may take an interest.  Will it result in an emergent plot?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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Steam Highwayman – Barsali’s Caravan

I’ve returned to Fabled Lands as a stimulus for my Steam Highwayman writing.  I like the short, pithy passages that leave a lot to your imagination.  However, there was never a great deal of conversation in those books and I find dialogue fits into a responsive text very naturally – in fact, it’s one of the easiest and most pleasurable things I write.  So I’ve drafted this encounter with a gipsy family: Barsali’s Caravan.  It gives a flavour of the style of mini-quests I’m intending to include as you explore the world of Steam Highwayman.  Different options would be available to you depending on whether you have collected certain objects, or have certain skills.

I’ve also just begun experimenting with customising colours on Twine, the tool I use to create this.

 

 

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Steam Highwayman – Status coding

This morning I’ve been working on those priority checks – the variables that will test whether you’ve visited a location before, what factors will influence the generated text there and the counters that generate time, the phase of the moon and the weather.  I’m going to head out to do some of the creative part soon, thinking about the way I want these passages to sound and look.

I had a long chat with my brother Jack about this and we agree that there’s no point having long passages of description clogging up a reader’s enjoyment of what is essentially a story.  In the Fabled Lands series, passages are typically around 60 words, and that suits a smartphone fine, so I’m hoping to extrude the all the vital information in a few pithy sentences.