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[Eigen]

It's that great moment again when I can announce a new build's been released.

It features a simple tutorial mode along with an even simpler intro sequence, introduction to a story of sorts plus a lot of fixes and improvements along with new developments like heightmaps, new campsite and ship screens, Lua support for quests, a couple of new tunes, a new UI style for windows and buttons and a lot more than I can remember right now.

The exploration mode was also changed. Instead of a collective uncovering of a map, each member of the party explores on his own. Eventually this will fit into the cartography part where different notes and maps are merged into one. You can remember what you've explored for only so long and over time you forget and those areas are blacked out eventually. The higher the intellect attribute, the longer you can keep track of the map. You have small markers you can place in order not to get completely lost. You get more markers the more you explore. Eventually native people might pick up your marker on their way by. I did once manage to lose track of my ship only to find it was pretty much around the corner. I only barely made it back alive.



Latest build (Build 5, February 25 2013)

Download for Windows
Download for OS X







I do hope you enjoy this

[jO]

Awesome news!
Downloaded and will play it right now, I'll post some feedback later.

[vlaube]

I love what you are doing with this game.
Gave the new build a try, but unfortunately had a crash when picking berries from the bush in the tutorial.

Here is the crash report.

[Eigen]

Thanks

Too bad it's a release build and all debug symbols have been stripped ... if I uploaded a version with the symbols intact tomorrow, could you try it again? Btw, what was the precise action? Did you simply click the "backpack+" icon and it crashed or did you get to specify how much you want to take and it then crashed?

[Joshua]

Out of curiosity, did it crash when you clicked the berry icon? Or when you clicked add to backpack?

[editmode]

Really cool. Am going to download and give you some feedback. I love the idea of the map being forgotten over time, creates some cool tension and decision making points. Between that and the symbolic language you need to learn, there's that old school feel of needing to write stuff down, I miss that. If you can balance that depth with a streamlined, easy to use UX this could really be something amazing.

[editmode]

Here's some feedback around the tutorial:

- When you hit a point where the game needs player input to continue, flashing/pulsing highlights for these buttons (pick up, end turn, arrow button next to end turn etc) to draw the player's attention to them would be really helpful
- No explanation of the four bars and icons in the top right corner. I was able to infer what three of them were, but I couldn't figure out what the one in top right meant
- You can die during the tutorial (I don't think this should be able to happen, a dialog should come up before death explaining to the player what they need to do to prevent it e.g. rest, eat, drink)
- There isn't any indication that you can click individual quest goals to expand them for more details

I'll play some more later and try to take more notes 

[jonyfries]

So I was told to check out the game and downloaded it without really any idea what it was. I played through the tutorial and ran into a couple issues with my ability to figure things out:

1. The text went away before I was able to read it all several times.
2. I didn't realize it was turn based so got confused when my character stopped moving.
3. I didn't notice the ramps when I went to avoid the wolf and got stuck for a bit.
4. I'm not sure if I missed an easy way to use food/drink but it was a bit cumbersome.

I love the music! Very well done, with everything so far and I look forward to playing through the game!

[vlaube]

Thanks

Too bad it's a release build and all debug symbols have been stripped ... if I uploaded a version with the symbols intact tomorrow, could you try it again? Btw, what was the precise action? Did you simply click the "backpack+" icon and it crashed or did you get to specify how much you want to take and it then crashed?

It just crashed again, this time at the camp site. I was mashing the "backpack+" button while it happened.
I believe that you can reproduce it by clicking the "backpack+" button when the dialog to select the amount is already displayed. This should probably do nothing but somehow leads to a crash.
If you have trouble reproducing the crash I would be happy to try a debug build.

[Eigen]

It just crashed again, this time at the camp site. I was mashing the "backpack+" button while it happened.
I believe that you can reproduce it by clicking the "backpack+" button when the dialog to select the amount is already displayed. This should probably do nothing but somehow leads to a crash.
If you have trouble reproducing the crash I would be happy to try a debug build.

Excellent find, that is fixed now. Feel free to download it again. I admit, during testing it didn't occur to me to try such a thing. I clicked the button, saw that it works, I could pick stuff up and close the window again without any problem. I guess when you're just getting familiar with the game you tend to click click around more just to see what each button does and I don't do that. I wish I could toggle a mode where I have never seen my game before


editmode and jonyfries, thank you so much. That is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for

When you hit a point where the game needs player input to continue, flashing/pulsing highlights for these buttons (pick up, end turn, arrow button next to end turn etc) to draw the player's attention to them would be really helpful

Agreed.

There isn't any indication that you can click individual quest goals to expand them for more details

When you first open the Objectives page a message box tells you that clicking on the individual objectives tells you more information, but I see how that's easy to miss.

You can die during the tutorial (I don't think this should be able to happen, a dialog should come up before death explaining to the player what they need to do to prevent it e.g. rest, eat, drink)

Hmm, yeah. Did you run out of energy? I'll add some sort of indication of that soon.

No explanation of the four bars and icons in the top right corner. I was able to infer what three of them were, but I couldn't figure out what the one in top right meant

Agreed. These are:
Health <> Energy
Hunger <> Thirst.

I didn't notice the ramps when I went to avoid the wolf and got stuck for a bit.

Yeah, they are pretty subtle but I didn't want to make them look like roads or steps leading up a hill, these are more like natural pathways anyway. That's part of the whole exploration side. It's supposed to be about getting stuck for a bit and finding a way around not just walking in a straight line.

I didn't realize it was turn based so got confused when my character stopped moving.

Undestood. I'll add a message saying "you're out of moves" when that happens the first time.

I'm not sure if I missed an easy way to use food/drink but it was a bit cumbersome.

If you have food and water in your inventory, the character will eat and drink automatically, it's just the levels go quite low before doing so. I can increase the limit just a tad bit but not too much. I deliberately made it so that you can get along without manually eating and drinking every 10 seconds but over time it affects health a bit. I think that's a fair balance.

The text went away before I was able to read it all several times.

I kind of feared that. I did try to work out the timings but some were clearly still too quick. I think I need to implement "click to continue" function for the text displays.

I love the music! Very well done, with everything so far and I look forward to playing through the game!

I'm really happy you like the music. Personally I'm really pleased how some of the tunes turned out. There's currently 30 minutes of soundtrack, I need to at least double that.



Regarding the tutorial there's certain balance between handholding and figuring out things on your own that's quite tricky to strike.

Cheers!

[makerimages]

Oh my, keeping up with all these new uploads is difficult, however the word bizarre is missing a z int he intro, and in the tutorial an axe shaft turned into a axe haft, I was also unable to find a path to the east, away from thw wolves. Thats all right now

[vlaube]

Excellent find, that is fixed now. Feel free to download it again. I admit, during testing it didn't occur to me to try such a thing. I clicked the button, saw that it works, I could pick stuff up and close the window again without any problem. I guess when you're just getting familiar with the game you tend to click click around more just to see what each button does and I don't do that. I wish I could toggle a mode where I have never seen my game before

Glad I could help.

I heard that artists sometime look at their work through a mirror to see it anew. Maybe you could try that too by mirroring the screen contents.

[editmode]

You're welcome!

There isn't any indication that you can click individual quest goals to expand them for more details

When you first open the Objectives page a message box tells you that clicking on the individual objectives tells you more information, but I see how that's easy to miss.

Yes I did miss that

You can die during the tutorial (I don't think this should be able to happen, a dialog should come up before death explaining to the player what they need to do to prevent it e.g. rest, eat, drink)

Hmm, yeah. Did you run out of energy? I'll add some sort of indication of that soon.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's what I happened.

No explanation of the four bars and icons in the top right corner. I was able to infer what three of them were, but I couldn't figure out what the one in top right meant

Agreed. These are:
Health <> Energy
Hunger <> Thirst.

Ah ok. Maybe changing the icon for energy to an "E" would help. I honestly couldn't make out what the current icon is, but I know energy is not the easiest thing to symbolize.

[Core Xii]

You can remember what you've explored for only so long and over time you forget and those areas are blacked out eventually. The higher the intellect attribute, the longer you can keep track of the map.

This is problematic from a game design perspective. The player can manually draw eir own map outside of the game, and it is strictly superior to do so than not, if the in-game map forgets, which means that the game promotes tedium - and that's obviously not good.

The only use for a forgetting map in a game interface is if the actual terrain changes (like in the labyrinths in Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. They also removed map forgetfulness from everywhere else due to the above).

[JobLeonard]

So you can either to in-game cartography, or real-life cartography to "cheat". I don't see the problem really?

[Eigen]

You can remember what you've explored for only so long and over time you forget and those areas are blacked out eventually. The higher the intellect attribute, the longer you can keep track of the map.

This is problematic from a game design perspective. The player can manually draw eir own map outside of the game, and it is strictly superior to do so than not, if the in-game map forgets, which means that the game promotes tedium - and that's obviously not good.

The only use for a forgetting map in a game interface is if the actual terrain changes (like in the labyrinths in Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. They also removed map forgetfulness from everywhere else due to the above).

I understand your concern but this will not affect the actual map you will be able to generate in the end, just the game renderer. The blacking out represents the characters inability to remember the surroundings forever. I know, this isn't terribly realistic because once you visit a place a few times you may even remember after a year, but that is in an urban surroundings. Go into the nature and see just how much alike everything looks and try working out if that's the tree you saw 2 hours ago and you're circling or is this a new one. You may freely draw your own map to help recognize stuff when you backtrack but that's what the markers do, too. Plus, feel free to pump all the stats into Intellect and you can enjoy seeing the map until next spring. Well, not really, but for a longer period of time for sure. So in the end you have more choices to make when putting together your party.

And really, maps aren't made on the go. You take notes and work out relative distances from visible landmarks and once you have that data, you make up the map. Until you do that, you're pretty much in the dark.

[Eigen]

Too bad the YouTube captions don't really work so I could understand what's being said. Sadly I can only recognize a few words. But the video's great! That reminds me I should also make a new video. My last YouTube gameplay video is from September ... that is so last year.

[jO]

Eigen, I think your idea behind forgetting the map is perfectly fine and will fit nicely within the fiction of your game.
I can see that some people might be put off by this, but I guess you have that with almost any decision :-)
I'd go for it and see how it turns out in playtests. 

[makerimages]

Eigen, I think your idea behind forgetting the map is perfectly fine and will fit nicely within the fiction of your game.
I can see that some people might be put off by this, but I guess you have that with almost any decision :-)
I'd go for it and see how it turns out in playtests. 

+1

[Eigen]

I thought I'd record a new video of the game.

During the playsession I found very little spices; went too far from the ship not placing a single marker and got utterly lost; didn't pay attention so one of my guys died of fatigue and the other was killed by a bear.



I think I'll try again if you don't mind.