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[AD1337]

This is looking great. Awesome graphics and feeling, excellent theme. Sorry I'm not adding much to the discussion, I just had to say it.

[andypaxo]

As many have already said, this is incredibly original. Love the aesthetic as well.

There were a couple of things that I really didn't catch on to when starting to play
- How to enable the deny stamp. This is in the rules below the game, but why not add it to the rulebook?
- Nothing made sense before realizing that there is a rulebook. How about drawing the player's attention to it early in the game
- I didn't know that you could actually highlight rules in the rulebook to get a denial until reading this thread. No idea whatsoever.

Maybe don't take these suggestions too seriously. This is kind of a puzzle game, and part of the enjoyment is figuring stuff out.

Either which way - huge kudos for implementing visa stamping as a game and making it fun. Never seen anything quite like this.

[herror]

Haven't decided if the nude bits will be censored.

Uncensored. Unless you have a supervisor that censors the photos, that would be acceptable.

[randomshade]

I love this, awesome concept and nice execution. Sometimes it is hard to figure out how to get a denial approved even if you know the discrepancy, and as a previous poster said, that's ok since this is a puzzle game. I'd say that it's ok, but that it should always be logical/support all logical methods of realizing the discrepancy.

Here are two examples that baffled me for a bit:
1: A lady with a passport but no entry permit. Highlighting "must have entry permit" in the rule book and then clicking the table area resulted in "no correlation" even though when a person has neither passport nor entry permit, highlighting "must have a passport" and clicking the table area discovers the discrepancy. I actually never figured out how to get this lady rejected and just let her pass on since I wanted to see more

2: When a person has a passport with an invalid issuing district, finding the issuing district in the rule book and then trying to connect that with the passport/passport nation doesn't work. You have to selected the issuing city in the passport and then select the valid ISS's in the passport nation in the rule book. To me, both of those actions make sense and should be accepted.

But yah, this is really cool and I'm excited to play it as you make new versions. Well done  

[pluckyporcupine]

The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s 'Cold War' vibe I was getting off of this thing.  Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?

I concur with this.

But I'm interested in trying the new build. Looks like a lot has gotten done since 12/15!

[dukope]

The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s 'Cold War' vibe I was getting off of this thing.  Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?

Yup, you're right. The game is set in the alternate 1980's so it does (barely) fit the technical level. But we're talking communist 80's and anyways it doesn't fit the aesthetic. I'm changing it to something more low-tech. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try to post about the new (old) fingerprint system later today.

There were a couple of things that I really didn't catch on to when starting to play
- How to enable the deny stamp. This is in the rules below the game, but why not add it to the rulebook?
- Nothing made sense before realizing that there is a rulebook. How about drawing the player's attention to it early in the game
- I didn't know that you could actually highlight rules in the rulebook to get a denial until reading this thread. No idea whatsoever.

There's a bit of text below the .swf that covers these issues. They're all legit comments though and will be addressed properly in-game in later builds.

1: A lady with a passport but no entry permit. Highlighting "must have entry permit" in the rule book and then clicking the table area resulted in "no correlation" even though when a person has neither passport nor entry permit, highlighting "must have a passport" and clicking the table area discovers the discrepancy. I actually never figured out how to get this lady rejected and just let her pass on since I wanted to see more

Arstotzkan citizens don't need an entry permit so maybe that's what was happening? Actually it just sounds like a crazy bug. I've changed a bunch of stuff about the underlying logic so hopefully it doesn't happen again.

2: When a person has a passport with an invalid issuing district, finding the issuing district in the rule book and then trying to connect that with the passport/passport nation doesn't work. You have to selected the issuing city in the passport and then select the valid ISS's in the passport nation in the rule book. To me, both of those actions make sense and should be accepted.

Good idea. It's a lot easier to go to the correct nation and highlight the correct issuing cities + wrong passport but I agree that all logical methods of marking a discrepancy should work. Will fix.

But I'm interested in trying the new build. Looks like a lot has gotten done since 12/15!

A lot of stuff is in mid-being-done right now so it'll probably be a week or so before I can get a new build up. This devlog has kept me pretty on-point with the scheduling though so I'm grateful for that.

Thanks to everybody for playing and helping me improve things.

[dukope]

Revised Fingerprint System



The top sheet is collected from the applicant in the booth. The bottom identity record is printed out based on their passport name. Multiple records may exist for the same name and each record may include an alias. This can be used to verify discrepant names on the different documents.

[Taber]

Nice solution to the fingerprint problem. I especially like the broken scanline on the document!

As to the strip search, why not just defer that to some guards in a back room or something? Calling for a search is a pretty extreme measure and I'm not sure how much fun it is to just see some naked person who had a bomb taped to their leg. Not much of a puzzle there. If they find something, great, if not, well you just violated someone's decency on a hunch, nice going!

[randomshade]

1: A lady with a passport but no entry permit. Highlighting "must have entry permit" in the rule book and then clicking the table area resulted in "no correlation" even though when a person has neither passport nor entry permit, highlighting "must have a passport" and clicking the table area discovers the discrepancy. I actually never figured out how to get this lady rejected and just let her pass on since I wanted to see more

Arstotzkan citizens don't need an entry permit so maybe that's what was happening? Actually it just sounds like a crazy bug. I've changed a bunch of stuff about the underlying logic so hopefully it doesn't happen again.

That totally could have been it -- I thought everyone in the build had at least one flaw so I didn't even check for legit citizens.

Revised Fingerprint System

More love 

[Quarry]

I hope you revise the object shadows

[Lynx]

The new computer printout fingerprint stuff looks thoroughly awesome.  Perfect! ^_^

[dukope]

Not much new to see at the moment. Been working on straightening out the underlying error-generating logic so I can script the story elements. Also worked out the basic story premise. I'm not sure how much of that I'll share here since it doesn't really affect the gameplay and some may prefer it to be a surprise.

Goodbye Old Fingerprints
I captured this before deleting the code for the old fingerprint system:

Looks ok but it's pretty pointless and as mentioned doesn't fit the theme. Posted here for posterity.

Nightly Stats
Some story-related stuff:


Whereas your performance as an inspector is reported each morning via letters from the Ministry, your home life is reported on nightly screens like this. As you go about your daily work you'll be responsible for your family's welfare. Like a proper communist state, you live together in a small apartment; dogged by rent, heating, food, health, and other various costs. Your small salary as an inspector is barely enough to squeak by so you'll have some tough choices to make about how to spend your money.

If you do your job well you'll be entitled to raises and other perks. On the other hand many applicants are desperate to enter Arstotzka and a few pocketed bribes might go unnoticed.

[Lynx]

That is a rather bleak screen!

What if instead of just writing out text, you handled it in a visual novel fashion: at the end of the day, you return home, you are greeted with character portraits of your wife welcoming you, your relatives giving you short updates on what's new with them, i.e. your uncle coughs and maybe tries to look like he's manning up through it.

Then your pay appears in the form of paper money that you can click and drag to the optional spending.  Maybe at home you're challenged to guess whether your uncle is really sick or if he's shamming it in order to get money for alcohol...

That's obviously a lot more work.  You could present it as a series of choices.  As you leave the door, your saved money is shown, then your pay is added on top of it in stacks of bills.  This could be narrated in a comic fashion with your (silhouetted) inspector leaving the customs checkpoint.  Then you get home, and maybe you're presented with the option of upgrading to a fancier house, or downgrading to a smaller, more squalid one.  You opt to stick with what you've got (big downpayment needed to switch?) and go in the door...

Then each relative comes up and gives his or her story for the day and you have the option of throwing them some money or keeping it, affecting your relationship with them.  If you give them money, they might reward you with clues and information, like maybe the drunkard uncle knows some people in the mafia who are planning to make a major guns shipment, and they'd surely pay you well to be allowed through with few questions...

[DustyDrake]

The above.
Do as much of it as you can.
Please?

[dukope]

What if ...

I appreciate the detailed suggestion but there's a couple reasons why I don't think this is best.

I hate work as much as the next guy but in this case I'm not just being lazy . I intentionally designed this part of the game to be stark and simple. Basically, I want to add another facet to the primary (daytime) gameplay without too much distraction for the player.

My plan is to expand on a similar technique I used in Republia Times. In that case there was only a single sentence about the family each day but it served to humanize the player and make their daily decisions more difficult. I want to take that same effect and give it more weight. Not by defining the family more, but by providing more fine-grained influence over their wellbeing.

Although a single night screen from one day looks pretty stark, your family's status will change and progress throughout the game. If your uncle is sick too long without medicine he'll die. Or his medicine costs will go up each day. Or maybe your son's birthday is coming up and he wants a new toy. Skip your uncle's medicine for a day and you can afford the toy. Or, as you mention, a new apartment with lower rent/heating costs is available for a fee. The choices you make on this screen will have lasting effects and you'll need to be careful about how you spend your money.

About the hints from family members, there will be plenty of story and flavor elements coming from the immigrants themselves. I prefer to keep that stuff wed closely to the daily gameplay as opposed to putting it in the separate night screens.

Having said all that business, I'm not completely against more involved nightly updates. At this point I'm moving forward with this simple implementation. Later down the line it may become clear that something more complicated would benefit the game.

[lpmaurice]

I like the direction you're taking with this. The game is already fun, but simulating the decisions you might need to take as a purveyor humanizes the subject matter in a good (or evil!) way.

Also:

...
At this point I'm moving forward with this simple implementation. Later down the line it may become clear that something more complicated would benefit the game.

  This is always the best way to develop a game. Do the minimum and iterate if you're not satisfied.

[Lynx]

Fair enough!  I just find the all-text (practically) screen jarring.

[Taber]

This is always the best way to develop a game. Do the minimum and iterate if you're not satisfied.

Agreed, though those suggestions by Lynx were quite intriguing!

You're also toying with a quality of imagination which I think will end up drawing the player in. Whereas showing an actual family would objectify them somewhat, merely mentioning them forces you to imagine your family, or at least a family you tailor to the story.

Also just FYI, I teach a college level Intro to Game Design class and used your project as an example of an engaging game in development. They were all quite impressed at this early stage. Keep up the great work!

[Panurge]

I agree that the 'home' segments will probably work best as they are - kept simple and leaving much to the imagination. That black screen does look a little boring, though, and doesn't seem to fit the style of the rest of the game. Perhaps you could make it look as if it has been handwritten on lined paper, so the effect is of the player keeping his own accounts in order to balance his finances and look after his family. It might add an extra note of pathos.

I still love everything you're doing here.

[dukope]

Also just FYI, I teach a college level Intro to Game Design class and used your project as an example of an engaging game in development. They were all quite impressed at this early stage. Keep up the great work!

Well damn, that's pretty encouraging!

Theme Song
Composed a brief musical theme for the game and hooked it up to the title screen (YouTube link):

The game'll have music for the title, intro, night, and end-game screens, but not during the main day gameplay bits.

Slow Progress
At the moment I'm also putting together new inspectable documents and adding features as I need them. This part's a little slow with not much to show. I'm working to get a build out that has the basic gameplay progression divided into days, but without the night-time/family management yet.