Goldenflame Dragon has, as you might expect, been hard at work on The Dark Unknown, and in fact believes he has just turned the corner on an important element of the game’s plot:

I’ve been having trouble figuring out how to get certain bits of information to the player for the back half of Act 2. (Wow. I’m working on the back half of Act 2, aren’t I? That’s cool.) One of the things that I am pleased by doing is, when the rebellion ends after Act 1, a couple new NPCs joins each town- soldiers who are no longer in the field, waiting to see if they need to fight. I figured, this gives me people who can give Act 2 info that can’t tell you something before you’re ready.

The problem, however, is NPC schedules. It is just _too difficult_ to enter a town where the NPCs are wandering around, look around, and know if you’ve seen everyone. It’s just too possible to make a good faith effort to keep abreast of who is around and miss a new NPC. And therefore, I can’t rely on one of these new NPCs being a point source for information. Someone sends you to talk to them, fine. But it can’t start with them.

Unfortunately, there’s one incredibly important plot bit that I was originally planning to have get to the player that way, and I’ve been hemming and hawing for a couple days trying to decide how to better do it. Tonight I thought of rearranging the order that a whole batch of things comes at you, in a way that makes sense and lets me slot in the things that I’ve been having trouble with. I’m still polishing the rough edges, but I think it’s a good plan.

Meanwhile, I discovered that I added those new NPCs to towns but haven’t given them dialog yet (not too surprising, since, as noted above, I’m not sure what I need them to say!) but also haven’t given them schedules yet, so I’ve started in on that, too.

The complexities introduced by having scheduled NPCs that cannot be relied upon to remain in any one place within the game’s world is something that has stymied and frustrated many a developer over the years, and in some cases this has led to developers choosing to excise NPC schedules from their games entirely. Fortunately, that’s not the case here!