GUI development has started. This will be fun. The interface will be like a(n optional) game in itself.
One custom background / main menu screen has been sketched up digitally.
The colors on the sprites’ uniforms are giving me trouble. I’m digging into books and public domain websites for better references.
Story writing is on hold, too, while I research potential scenarios and terminology.
This period in US history is often ignored. Many of the best known authors were gay men, married women at least as famous as their husbands, Black (by today’s definitions), and/or freed from enslavement. Drag balls and dances were kind of frequent in the military, Washington, D.C.; vaudeville, and the Wild West. Quite a few notable photographers, painters, and performers were openly queer or associated with famous queer groups. Oscar Wilde was setting trends from oversees (while his noble mom was advocating for Irish culture through children’s books of folklore?); and before the massive chilling effect of some legal trials, there seemed to be considerable hope for progress between the deepest horrors of the country. But because it was relatively peaceful, the end of the 19th Century is something of a burned out hole.
The records exist. Finding them without the AI corruption or entirely lost context during this period of censorship is trickier than I feel it should be with access to the internet, historic museums, and a big library system.
Making up details from imagination when there’s a chance of including actual history that’s on the verge of being lost would make me feel bad.