YYYY-MM-DD
2018-05-18: Succumbed to the fanfic-writing void.
2018-09-30: First comprehensive outline of postgame fic. Consisted of 6 days and sendoff letters to the reader.
2018-12-16: Started entertaining the idea of an “original” offshoot, with a defined postgame goal of making a game—which doubles as filling out their world. By the end of the month this is becoming a full-fledged Thing™.
2018-12-25: Characters assigned card suit motifs based on hierarchy and, to a lesser extent, the Bartle taxonomy of player types. The main character as “joker” and the game-within-a-game being card-based followed.
By the end of 2018, most if not all core game changes had been established, including character names and designs.
There’s a lot of magic behind-the-scenes Write The Rest Of The Fucking Story stuff that goes on in 2019–2020. Some landmarks:
2019-01-16: Coded a page test using the day2 bonus + context.
2019-03-06: songwall.html
[some point between 06-23 and 07-07]: Initial concepts for the “bot arc.”
2019-07-14: Sibling comix saga, the first.
2019-07-18: Sketch for the “menu” art.
2019-08-04: hello-world repository gets overhauled, with a placeholder icon.
2019-08-13: First sketches for the segment that will eventually become debug.
It’s hard to say what parts of the story came about when, at least without digging through hundreds of thousands of note-words, but approximating from the sketch archive is a safe bet. I think most if not all major events had been defined by this point.
2019-12-05: 404.mp3 (alternate version of the song page)
2020-04-04: Story goes live.
2020-03-12: Started/finished(?) spritework for the display:block sequences.
2020-04-11/12: walkcycles.html
2021-04-04: “sibling comix” debuts in the narrative proper.
By late 2020 development was slowing down, culminating in this:
2021-12-22: >claims I’m going to stop letting the story “haunt me” >it immediately starts haunting me again
Major updates from here will be noted on the blog.