Tomorrow's the last day for voting for the first bonus village! Magic school is in the lead, but not by much. In sad news, the PieWife didn't get the job. So we're still kind of hoping that people who enjoy playing the game enjoy it enough to throw us a crust - if everyone who's downloaded it so far threw us just a dollar, we'd be sorted. I know it's not always possible to be able to give money - believe me, we're learning that pretty hard right now - but if you can, please consider it. If not, we dig, and enjoy the game! Still having a blast working on it.
No update tonight because I've spent a good third of today sneezing and blowing my nose, but I've been working on graphics for the wind-element quest and some random event mini dungeons, so hopefully I'll have a fun new build up for tomorrow night. I've got a few questions too ,if you'll indulge me -
1) When playing with the new combat system, I realised I'm really going to have to tackle wether I make bisexuality universal. There's a few ways I can go - give players the choice at the character creation stage and disable genders of enemies they don't like, do the same and just have those attacks from enemies of the "wrong gender" not affect them, or maybe introduce health attacks and have "wrong gender" enemies perform those attacks instead. Adding health attacks would allow non sexual combat for some situations too. It'd add complexity, and I'm not sure if that's a pro or a con.
2) Was adding some dialouge and realised that I use phoneticly rendered accents a fair bit. Since quite a proportion of the games audience seems - according tot he blogger analytics, anyway - to be from non native english speaking countries, I want to ask - how hard is it to understand the dialouge when I do that? The Wild Women are probably the biggest example so far. I like doing it, and think it adds character, but if it makes the dialouge indechipherable to non brits or americans, I will drop it.
3) (EDIT - forgot this one) I'm currently working on some little farmhouses that're random encounters between the towns in the main area. They were going to be random as to which one you get, but it'd make more sense for it to be the same on ein each area. I think random would be more fun from a gameplay standpoint - never knowing what you'll get - but it'd make more sense for the same farm to be in the same place each time. What do you think'd work best?
Okay, thanks guys, sorry for no update today. Going to go blow my nose some more.
1) That depends on how much work adding health will take. It does seem rather odd though to have women fighting women with sex skills, and it would be odd to see the same (for me) for a guy fighting another with sex skills. I think the easiest thing would be to disable *wrong gender* fights (excepting One eyed Susie since she's a specific bandit...
ReplyDelete2) I haven't noticed a problem with it, but I'm from the US, so I get the dialouge. I don't think it's a problem unless you use specific slang that others might not get. I say I'm smelling a rat, would people know what I mean, or would they assume I actually smell a rat?
3) I like the idea of random farm in between places, but it makes more sense if you have X farm be there every time you run into it. While it would be more fun for *random farm*...UGH I'm not the right one to ask about this, I'm too much on the fence which style I like more!
Spooky village Nooo don't lose you can comeback like rocky, I guess people wants magic which is for milk drinkers. :D
ReplyDelete1. I will like health attacks, but I agree with the guy above depends on if it's too much a hassle to add health, I rather go for the option to not have content blocked off like locking out one eyed susie bounty for females. One way around I can think of is to make counterparts to non-generic things like a one eyed sam/one armed jack as the bounty for females but still it depends if its too much of a problem.
2. Never really bothered me, I can't really answer this I think it adds character but it might be problematic to others.
3. If they gonna appear in between every place random will be funny they must be rebuilding their farms every time they know you're coming or they have a few hive minded clones out there :P , you could go once a farm has landed it stays not unless destroyed by some random event burned down by fire/raided by bandits/attack by monsters may be a few options like saving the farm which it keeps it in it's place or ignore it letting it fall to it's fate which makes a new farm pop up somewhere else, I don't think I gave a good idea on the count how it sounds too repetitious and too much work though.
1. Health attacks I feel would be too much additional work on your part but if you feel up to it go for it. I am personally fine with a toggle for enemy types if that's easier.
ReplyDelete2. Native English speaker, I like it.
3. I like random farm types.
Keep going with this game!
It's going on my list with CoC and Nimin :)
Regarding the farms... what if there were a small number of options in each region for the farm you encounter?
ReplyDeleteSay, a generic farm on all paths, but in the bogs, say there are 2 other farms that are unique to the region. Like, mushroom & cranberries in the bog. Orchards in the forest, etc.
It might be random which one you stumble across, but it will only be 1 of 3 perhaps. Or, once you discover a farm, you can choose to stop at it specifically on your way through.
Just a thought. Love what you're doing with both this game and MMM. As soon as I find some crust I'll send it your way. :)
Adding health attacks shouldn't be *too* hard, just adding an additional stat and combat cycle, I think.
ReplyDeleteI guess the three ways the farms might work basically boil down to -
1)You're traveling from boff to branston. You see a farm! It's the farm run by Paris Hilton and Beth Ditko. It will always be this farm you find here.
2)You're traveling from boff to branston. You see a farm! It could be one of any of the six possible farms on the random farms list - and might be a different one every time.
3)You're traveling from boff to branston. You see a farm! It could be one of any of the six possible farms on the random farms list - but it will be the same one if you visit again IN THIS GAME - start over and it might be different.
question will the farms have side-quests attached to them? if they do in my opinion 3 is the best choice, as this will give a novelty with the farms but not make them aggravating to complete their quest.
DeleteCould you make the game remember which random items you've come up with in the past? Ala Nethack and item descriptions.
ReplyDeleteThat way we wouldn't always know to look for what between which towns...
A mechanic I liked the idea of but didn't like the implementation was searching or hunting in Flexible Survival single-player. I did like that idea of being able to up the encounter rate for a random item when you know it's there (but it turned into you had to now and remember where all these were with little other chance of getting to see them in game).
Delete1. No, not a health mechanic, I don't like that. Switching certain enemy types on and off sounds better in my opinion. HOWEVER, you should consider what this could mean for story and boss characters if you do that, so you probably would need to make a female and a male version for all the audiences.
ReplyDelete2. I'm a non native Speaker of English. I can understand it pretty well, although I don't get why this kind of writing in English prose is so common. After all, there is no dialect-free way to speak English. So it doesn't make sense to write like that, but I don't really mind it. (If you don't believe that thing with dialect-free way to speak English, compare British and American English - both sides could argue the other one is a dialect).
3. Random all the time. So if there are certain strategies to tackle a distinct farm, you never know if you're prepared right or not. That adds tension and thus fun. (Think about what Dwarf Fortress taught us about fun).
In regard to the farms, if you are travelling 4-7 days between places there are a lot of questions to consider (not necessarily answer).
ReplyDeleteFirst, are there roads? Because if there are roads, there will be stopping places (roadside inns) between the towns. There would also likely be scattered farmhouses.
This doesn't mean you need to create all the inns or farmhouses, but you can justify a certain randomness. After all, if you are travelling between two towns, it is very likely that you will be moving at a different rates every time you make the trip and this may be stopping at a different farm or inn each night. Further, since you have four or more nights on the road, and probably only one encounter, even if you stop at the same inns each night, there will be four different places for an encounter to happen.
Now, if there are no roads, and there are only the occasional scattered farmhouses, you can justify random farms because the farms will have some pathways to the market somehow, and the player may well take different paths on every trip. (And again, if they are stopping at different places each night, but have only one encounter during the trip, the will be a little bit of randomness built in.
Now, if you want to get a little sneaky, you could query the player when they leave a town, asking them if they want to take the same path as the last time. This would give them a greater chance of finding a farm they might already have found. So if there is a farm which, for example, raised beets which turned your skin color red, but can also be used as an ingredient for potions, and you want to find it again, you would have an increased chance of doing so.
But that might take a little more coding.
BTW, I've been getting an error where the program locks up when you encounter 3 enemies. Looking over the code in the battlescript, it looks like there is an extra "jump ego" in the label ego section, under the "if ecount == 3".
Mind you, I count be wrong. I haven't done any programming in years and I haven't tried to follow your logic through.