depends really on how sane our resident dragon mistress is, after coding bess/ben I believe Gedan had a mental meltdown and went insane for a time.
Yes. Nobody will write more for it, if they did Gedan would refuse to code it. It's done. You got your incredibly complex and layered crewmate who could be anything you wanted, this is the consequence.
Taking off my sarcasm hat for a moment...
I liked the
idea of Bess- the problem was how much got put together before anybody had a proper chance to look through it and give any sensible
technical feedback about what had been written. I'm all for massively involved characters, providing that they are well structured and thought out, such that their documents explain their content (and how it all interacts) in a concise manner
and that they've been approached with the idea of "a bit at a time" in mind.
Bess was
literally 4 documents that pretty much had to happen all at once- it wasn't Jims intention for that to happen, but splitting the 4 documents into 4 separate rounds of Bess additions over time would have easily doubled the work because each document in turn had me going back to rework bits and pieces that I'd already coded- with that work fresh-in-mind, it goes a lot easier. So, the options were to throw, what, 4-6 weeks into the well of coding Bess, or throw 2-3 weeks at it in 4 sessions, each of which makes it look like I'd done nothing because I would have left the character disabled until all 4 were in.
I don't want to make this sound like a poke at Jim; it isn't at all. If I didn't think it
worth the effort expended for the character, I wouldn't have done it which should give some measure of clarity... but by the end of coding it, I'd burned myself out
hard and it's been a fucking struggle to keep pace with what I know I
can do until a few weeks ago.
At some fucking point I'll be able to justify actually writing what
I want to see going on for (a) "large" character(s). What I have in mind could easily outstrip Bess in terms of complexity and scale, but I fully intend to approach it as a series of steps rather than one giant fuckyouuuuu pile of documents.
As it is, I stuck it out with Bess so I could hold it up as an example of something I absolutely, positively will not code if somebody tries that again. I did it because Jim couldn't really have known how much of a problem he was creating, and it's not his fault- not really for the size and number of documents, or the effective capitulation to adding more and more requested stuff.
Bess is an example of a good, well written idea, that was badly organised both in terms of what the content
did (ie
everything-including-the-kitchen-sink) and expansionism (ie there were no good natural breaking points between the 4 documents where existing logic would have to be heavily modified to support the next).