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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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 Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:13 am Post subject: Okay, I'm officially releasing my entry for review. |
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Okay, I'm officially releasing my entry for review.
http://www.ccpssolutions.com/rmarks/WiTCHHUNT/demo/WHDemo03-10-2007_185945.zip
One thing to know:
you can save your game, but cannot reload it yet.
I have things that have to be taken care of (family first) so, I was unable to finish the game loader in time. But...keep your save games, and I will have a loader written as soon as I can get back to the code.
Please, enjoy. and review my game.
One tip: the shed is west of the player's starting position.
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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:14 am Post subject: |
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I'm downloading it now - I'll give you my first impressions when I have them.
Congratulations on finishing!
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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:23 am Post subject: |
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I think I've found an error right at the start...
[edit: I've got it working. Am I right in thinking that you have to type n,s,e,w for every step you have to take? That's going to get old fast - it would be a lot better if you could use the arrow keys...]
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BadMrBox
Bringer of Apocalypse
Joined: 26 Jun 2002
Posts: 1022
Location: Dark Forest's of Sweden
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:53 am Post subject: |
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I'm downloading it now.
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:59 am Post subject: |
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| Echo wrote: | | Am I right in thinking that you have to type n,s,e,w for every step you have to take? That's going to get old fast - it would be a lot better if you could use the arrow keys... |
Yes, that was one design decision that we ended up making. WHile I know that its not the best, it was the fastest implementation that I could think of, and it meant more to have it finished, than to spend the majority of the contest building an engine that was "superb" I focused on content and added as many features as I could think of, and then saw the deadline approaching, and had to say "okay no more code changes, only content & bug fixes.".
As for that bug you had......that was quite odd, I've never seen that. Can you reproduce the error? Can you tell me what you did, and what environment you ran it from?. Whatever you can tell me, so that I can take some extra steps to ensure that the full-version of the game does not have those bugs.
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DeveloperX
202192397
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Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:25 am Post subject: |
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almost forgot....(I'll add this info to the Manual.txt file later)
You need to press TAB to get a prompt for the Action:
where all old commands are still valid.
ESC quits.
Have fun!
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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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| DeveloperX wrote: | | Echo wrote: | | Am I right in thinking that you have to type n,s,e,w for every step you have to take? That's going to get old fast - it would be a lot better if you could use the arrow keys... |
Yes, that was one design decision that we ended up making. WHile I know that its not the best, it was the fastest implementation that I could think of, and it meant more to have it finished, than to spend the majority of the contest building an engine that was "superb" I focused on content and added as many features as I could think of, and then saw the deadline approaching, and had to say "okay no more code changes, only content & bug fixes.". |
The new version with directional movement is a hundred times better already - it's a whole lot less frustrating when you don't have to fight with the keyboard just to move about :)
I can't say much about the actual content yet, since I haven't gotten too far. Now that you've got an extra week though, you should probably think about taking a little time to polish the engine a bit - even fixing the little annoyances would make the game a lot more playable. Off the top of my head, here are a few suggestions:
* Some way to speed up the cutscenes would be useful for me - I'm a fast reader and it gets a little annoying waiting for the engine to catch up. Also, if you press enter while the text is displaying, once it gets to the end it just skips directly to the next screen. I don't know about anyone else, but a little fix here would make the game a lot more enjoyable for me anyway. :)
* When you press tab to bring up the action prompt, it would be cool if there was a little reminder somewhere on the screen of all the valid commands. There's a lot of empty space on the right hand side that would work, I guess. For that matter, now that you're using directional movement, do you need an action prompt at all? (How often do you need to move diagonally?) Maybe a menu button would be more effective here - pressing tab and selecting 1 to bring up the first menu is a lot better than pressing tab and typing "lista", I think.
* Given the scale of the game, you really need to get that load feature working, heh.
* A bigger view area would be cool, if possible - it would mean less aimless wandering into empty rooms if you could see their contents from a distance.
* You mention this briefly in the readme, but I think you might be ignoring a potential problem - given the view size and the scale of the game, it's probably very easy to get lost. A simple "you are here and you need to go there" function in the menu would put a stop to that, something like what Baldur's Gate does with the quest journal.
* The number one annoyance: having to type the name of the action that you want to use. Give them a number or something, heh.
Sorry if that sounds a little critical, because it isn't meant to be. I'm sure there's a good game here, but right now all these little things are keeping it from being enjoyable to play, and it doesn't seem like it would be a big deal to fix them up.
I dunno though. It's your game :)
| DeveloperX wrote: | | As for that bug you had......that was quite odd, I've never seen that. Can you reproduce the error? Can you tell me what you did, and what environment you ran it from?. Whatever you can tell me, so that I can take some extra steps to ensure that the full-version of the game does not have those bugs. |
The first time I ran the game, I opened a dos window, cd-ed to the directory and ran the shortcut from the prompt. I don't know why it happened, but it doesn't happen when I simply run the shortcut from windows. Anyway, it's no big deal :)
Oh, one more thing - this doesn't work in DosBOX. First I tried running the shortcut, but that didn't work, so then I went into the bin directory and tried running the exes, but I got a "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." error. So I guess it's windows only for the moment...
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Echo wrote: |
The new version with directional movement is a hundred times better already - it's a whole lot less frustrating when you don't have to fight with the keyboard just to move about :)
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That is why I added it. Wish I had the knowledge beforehand so you didn't even have to see the old implementation. :P
| Quote: |
I can't say much about the actual content yet, since I haven't gotten too far. Now that you've got an extra week though, you should probably think about taking a little time to polish the engine a bit - even fixing the little annoyances would make the game a lot more playable.
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Theres been another extension??? Heh...guess I could do a _little_ more to it...gotta be sure not to feature creep though.
| Quote: |
* Some way to speed up the cutscenes would be useful for me - I'm a fast reader and it gets a little annoying waiting for the engine to catch up. Also, if you press enter while the text is displaying, once it gets to the end it just skips directly to the next screen. I don't know about anyone else, but a little fix here would make the game a lot more enjoyable for me anyway. :)
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Figures that that would be a bother....heh I'll look into a fix.
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* When you press tab to bring up the action prompt, it would be cool if there was a little reminder somewhere on the screen of all the valid commands. There's a lot of empty space on the right hand side that would work, I guess. For that matter, now that you're using directional movement, do you need an action prompt at all? (How often do you need to move diagonally?) Maybe a menu button would be more effective here - pressing tab and selecting 1 to bring up the first menu is a lot better than pressing tab and typing "lista", I think.
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I wanted to release a version with the arrow keys as soon as I could, but I intend to make the menus arrow-key driven.
The valid commands are viewed from the HELP command. :P
btw, hit TAB, then type MENU, you will have a list of options.
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* Given the scale of the game, you really need to get that load feature working, heh.
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working on it......I've rewritten the loader 40+ times, to no avail.
[quote]
* A bigger view area would be cool, if possible - it would mean less aimless wandering into empty rooms if you could see their contents from a distance.
/quote]
I was thinking the same thing. I didnt write the display code...I was working on other things at that time. Perhaps we'll enlarge the display. Can't say. Not sure now hardcoded (I know bad idea) it is.
A price to pay when you're not the only programmer.
| Quote: |
* You mention this briefly in the readme, but I think you might be ignoring a potential problem - given the view size and the scale of the game, it's probably very easy to get lost. A simple "you are here and you need to go there" function in the menu would put a stop to that, something like what Baldur's Gate does with the quest journal.
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I have 2 ideas to solve the "I'm lost" problem, just need to figure out an implementation......honestly this demo was just a goal for me to finally feel like I've accomplished something great. I still intend to finish the whole game. The storyline is 8 chapters. The demo is a little less than 1 chapter long.
| Quote: |
* The number one annoyance: having to type the name of the action that you want to use. Give them a number or something, heh.
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Again, now that I've written my KEYDRIVER class, I'll rewrite the battle engine to be more intuitive. Just might take a little while longer, depending on what else I have to change (did not write the entire current battle engine).
| Quote: |
Sorry if that sounds a little critical, because it isn't meant to be. I'm sure there's a good game here, but right now all these little things are keeping it from being enjoyable to play, and it doesn't seem like it would be a big deal to fix them up.
I dunno though. It's your game :)
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I asked you to be critical. I appreciate the suggestions, and your time to play my game.
| Quote: |
The first time I ran the game, I opened a dos window, cd-ed to the directory and ran the shortcut from the prompt. I don't know why it happened, but it doesn't happen when I simply run the shortcut from windows. Anyway, it's no big deal :)
Oh, one more thing - this doesn't work in DosBOX. First I tried running the shortcut, but that didn't work, so then I went into the bin directory and tried running the exes, but I got a "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." error. So I guess it's windows only for the moment... |
woah...interesting. Perhaps its cause I used the mingw compiler to build the exe. I don't know. well, I'll update the Manual to say sysreq Windows :P
Again, thanks for playing.
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Bjorn
Demon Hunter
Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1425
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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Since my experience with Wine seems less than optimal, would you consider releasing the source? If you think a native Linux version would be possible?
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:43 am Post subject: |
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Okay, I saved & loaded about 50 times to test the new load game functions, and it all seemed to work fine. I make no claims of it working 100% for you. You will need to try it and see.
This is the last that I'm doing for this project as far as the contest goes.
Download the newest game (with a nice installer to make it easy to get to playing the game as a few people pointed out that its difficult to get running.)
http://www.ccpssolutions.com/rmarks/WiTCHHUNT/demo/WHDemo03-18-2007_052742.exe
After the contest, possibly next month I'll begin fixing the major 'turnoffs' such as the battle engine's annoying requirement to type in case sensitive ability & item names, and the slow storyline.
Anyway...goodnight guys. I've a long day tomorrow. :P erm today...shit its 6am......I should have been asleep 4 hours ago....man time passes fast when coding......goodnight,.
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Unknown
Moira's Silly Little Slave Bitch
Joined: 19 Jul 2005
Posts: 82
Location: Behind you...
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 3:40 am Post subject: |
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Visit http://www.shadowland.cc/WiTCHHUNT for the Games Webpage...
LaterZ...
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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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When you say eight hours...
I've just got through the desert on the way to the priest's house. Roughly what percentage of the game have I completed?
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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How far has everyone played through my entry?
Anyone have any comments (besides wanting the battle system to be menu driven and other code change requests) ?
:D ...sorry, I really want to get some feedback on this.
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js71
Wandering DJ
Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 815
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 4:05 am Post subject: |
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I've encountered a few bugs so far...
Once, when I tried to load my game, the = 'tiles' (people/warps/etc) wouldn't work no matter what I tried. Had to quit and reload.
Are the player's stats saved when you save the game? I know it's an odd question, but combat felt strangely like I was rather weak again when I loaded my game. There's not really a way to tell for certain, but enemies I could've sworn I was able to kill on my first playing session suddenly seemed to take far more of a beating. Might just be me though.
I'm not sure about this one, but I'm fairly sure that the number of Bandages I had (oh look, the case sensitivity has me capitalizing that word everywhere :p) didn't decrease when I used one once. Also, for some reason when my bandages reached 18 (from 20), it moved down the list of items one slot.
And just some general things I found a bit annoying:
Of course, the typing commands in battle-- That's already been mentioned though, so I won't heckle you about that. It would be much easier for the player to just have the basic actions on the first 'level' of the menu, though; eg. Attack, Run, Item, etc. The current setup is a bit convoluted and sort of has you memorizing this arduous routine of keypresses for navigating battles.
The encounter rates seem to be completely random, instead of randomized between several set numbers of steps (if that makes sense). I've often gotten into two battles in a row with only a single step between them.
I'm not too fond of the excessively maze-like layout of the maps, though this could be due in part to the very small play area the game has. I'm aware it's partly personal preference as well, but personally navigating endless mazes and stumbling upon countless dead-ends just frustrates and bores me after awhile. Coupled with the high encounter rate, it gets fairly annoying pretty quickly.
Some better hints on where to go next would help. The intro clearly defined what happened, but it doesn't really give the player any direct goal or idea of where to go next. I've just made it through the desert after ages of wandering blindly and getting my ass kicked by enemies, and now I'm in some apparently empty town with no idea on where to go next, apart from the somewhat uninviting prospect of another dungeon-- that forest to the east.
The 'heal' ability is pretty much useless. It heals such a small amount of HP that the inevitable strike from the enemy that turn completely negates its purpose.
Those are just from what I can remember on my second playing session... Despite those criticisms, I did quite enjoy what I played. It has this sort of old-school charm that I really liked, ASCII graphics and all. It has a nice solid feel to it, and I think it could be a really enjoyable game with some improvements. Of course, taking into consideration the limitations of the compo, I think it's quite a good effort. :)
~Josiah
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