The Master’s Book

(14th of July 2023)

Hello everyone! After the last mammoth tutorial post, today I’m doing just a quick update on recent development progress for Innkeep. This is development update #1! Bit of a historic post. Kind of. Really, dev blog update #1 was written all the way back in 2015… Lol. That series was discontinued after a while. Now I’m back at it. So… #1. Again.

So what’s going on? With an eye to a future demo that Patreon backers can try out, I’m currently focusing my attention on the core game loop. More specifically, I’m getting different elements into place that are needed for this loop. One of these is the master’s book, a diegetic UI element that the player will use to access a range of information in game. So, for this update, let’s take a little bit of a closer look at the book.

In the image above you can see tabs for guests, journal, and supplies. There will be a fourth tab added later, but these are the key ones for now. Here’s how it breaks down in terms of functions…

Guests: A way to access information about the guests that are currently visiting your inn. This is broken down into the four tables / groups that your guests are always divided into. Clicking on a table tab then lets you see the specific things you may have discovered about that table, from your eavesdropping, spying, or nonchalantly prying conversations. 😉 Currently you can see just a bunch of greyed out squares with numbers, but imagine some half decent art in a kind of hand-drawn style maybe. The code behind it all works quite nicely already. There are up to 15 things you may discover about each table of guests (although in reality that number will probably hover at around 10-12). For example, one thing might be a topic you heard them whispering about, that you can now investigate further in conversation with them (so a kind of “key” to more knowledge.) Another thing might be awareness of a certain item you see them wearing, like a ring, or something distinctive about their clothes that might help you in understanding the characters better (place of origin, or class / caste).

Journal: A list of the different types of “charms” that the player has collected. Charms are what the player uses to help win the trust of their guests. Stuff like jokes, proverbs, rumors, or news. They are broken down into six different categories (there are also six provinces in the Divine Empire that is the setting for the game, and people from each province have their preferred category of charm.) Charms are collected over the course of the game. When they are “used” they are greyed out for the rest of the night (you can’t go around repeating the same joke to everyone), but they are unlocked again the next day. Basically there are 15 possible charms you may discover, and the master’s book will display those charms you have discovered in order. Clicking on them then opens up the description on the right hand side. There we have also a zoomed in view of the art, and space for some stats and such.

Supplies: The “inventory” of the inn. The player themselves has no inventory, they simply carry things one item at a time in a way that is visually represented by their sprite (holding a barrel, or a piece of wood, or a tankard). While all supplies are physically represented in the game space, you can also do a quick survey on this page of what you have. So far, no work has been done on this section, as its more useful for long term play (not so useful for the demo, or for showcasing the core loop.)

The obvious original inspiration for this design is the journal in Sunless Sea / Sunless Skies, by Failbetter.

While I’m not using any scrolling, you can see the use of images (and tabs) is quite similar. The great thing about this approach is that it lets you show a range of different things (from “inventory” to knowledge) in an integrated way. There is no fundamental difference between an icon that represents a barrel of beer you have stored in your cellar, and an icon that represents a joke stored in your mind. Both are things you have acquired, and that you can click to visually inspect in more detail. Why do I want to have an integrated approach to these two for Innkeep?

Well… RPGs often have journals that work as records of quests, giving you information on what you still need to do (who you need to bring what item to, or who you need to go kill, and where, etc.) For such systems, it makes sense to just go with text. After all, it’s really just “information” about a thing that you are gradually going to be crossing off, with entries shifting from “to be done” to “completed.” But for Innkeep, we have journal “items” rather than “entries”. It really is just a kind of inventory system of the mind. You gradually acquire more and more jokes, stories, or observations, and use these to acquire still more. Representing this rich part of the game in text would be a bit dull. After all, it’s a core part of the game (while journals in RPGs are kind of a supplement, a way to help the player to remember what they need to do.) Sunless Sea / Sunless Skies similarly has journal items function as “keys” for unlocking different things in the world. “Secrets” and such are really actually items in a way. This similarity between the games means using a similar journal system makes sense.

Well, that’s about it for today’s update. Next time I’ll dig into some of what’s going on with dialogue. 😉 There’s a few cool things in the works that I can’t wait to share more about.

As always, I want to give a special thanks to my Patreon supporters. They really help make this project possible.

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Browncoat Jayson

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You people rock!

If you’re not already, maybe you’d like to help me commission more art for the game. You can check out my Patreon page here. Sign up and gain access to blog articles earlier, as well as to a Patreon only discord sub-channel that shows extra behind the scenes screenshots and comments. If you’d like to support the game, but don’t want to sign up for Patreon, why not send me a few dollars over on Ko-fi instead?