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[Jordgubben]

Please jump to here (preferably without reading the preceding posts):
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=53796.msg1293720#msg1293720


So, I have made (an early prototype for) a new game. I would like to tell you all about it, but I should probably abstain from that.

You see I'm not really trying to answer the question 'Is this fun?' just yet, but rather I want to know 'Is this even comprehensible?'. If I were to tell you what kind of game it is I will not get your untainted first impression.

Here is what I need your help with:

• Play the game (Try to at least get to the "Town square")
• Do not any other posts after this one
• Write down how you think the "conflict mechanic" works and post that

(All rules are made to be broken. If you do not want follow the above instructions then that is fine to. Just mention it in your feedback comment in some creative way)


Now go!

System requirements:
It is a html5 game, so since your reading this chances are high you can also play it.
(But IE users be warned)

Full game url (build of post):
http://superattack.se/games/nom-r6/

Full game url (always latest build):
http://superattack.se/games/nom/


(Also, I'm an undiagnosed dyslectic and the English language is not my native tongue. If you are the type starts to sparkle with glee at the though of correcting spelling and grammar, then this game may prove to be an inexhaustible source of merry joy for you. This kind of feedback is off course appreciated, but please use a PM and not the thread for this. Otherwise the sheer volume it will most likely bloat the thread. K' Thx. Yay.)

[buto]

Hi,

I liked the general setting and flow.
Unfortunately some button-clicks did not respond (e.g. old hag, stables, ...).

The fighting system was nice, I think I roughly got it. However, it's easy to start with the wrong strategy (pure luck, I guess) and choosing the right attack felt a bit like guessing, too. Even though once you're in the flow it is nice to follow up an attack with a brief addon-attack etc. All in all I felt like I had to guess what the writer (you) was expecting as correct attacks for the individual opponent, without much indication or leads on the character of that opponent.

I probably didn't play it long enough. I wasn't completely sure whether the attack-patterns of your enemies said anything about their weak spots. I had 4 encounters, lost only one (to the toilet cleaner). One fight was ended in my favor after only one argument without reaching full credibility (vs. old hag).

I didn't get the meaning/use of the number next to the stars-icon next to the character name...

I stopped playing after being sent to 'town lockup' from the stables. The game didn't really respond at that point, until some guy at the stables got angry and I was arrested. This happened after I've been clicking a button multiple times without response.


Actually I think this is a good start! Exploring and character interaction seem like a good fit. The "fights" were a little impersonal (except for the introduction/outcome), still it felt good to convince somebody.
I missed some kind of map or progress graph. Remebering the names of the different locations is a little hard.

So yeah, I think it makes sense!

Hope the feedback is of some use to you,
regards,
Sebastian

[buto]

Just wanted to add: What works nicely is that after a fight you get a good idea of the character of your enemy as a consequence of what worked against him and what he tried to do to win. I really liked that. Although, of course, after an encounter this isn't of much immediate use, gameplay-wise. However, if you plan on having multiple encounters with the same characters in different situations, it could work really well. In that case one wouldn't have to guess the best attack patterns but could use what you already know about your counterpart.

Regards,
Sebastian.

[Jordgubben]

Thanks. Glad to hear your liking it, and your feedback also illuminated several smaller unclarities.

It also sound like your experiencing some bug(s) that I'm not able to reproduce. What web browser (& OS) did you play on?

I didn't get the meaning/use of the number next to the stars-icon next to the character name...

The stars are action points. But your not the first tester to have trouble with this. How to represent time is something I'm still tinkering a lot with. Tester feedback is extra helpful here since it's very easy to make something that works in theory, but is completely incomprehensible to new players.

Exploring and character interaction seem like a good fit. The "fights" were a little impersonal (except for the introduction/outcome), still it felt good to convince somebody.

Currently opponents mostly have a subset the same arguments that the main character uses. I agree that using argument sets (and AI) to express different personalities through mechanics has potential that requires deeper exploration.

[Vallar]

Hello,

I tried your game out and here is my feedback in no particular order -- I haven't read any of the feedback written before mine:

- Your drawings seem to be nice I am guessing this would look cool when you are done with drawing and coloring it.

- The first paragraph in the first scene has "Is is", I think it should be "It is".

- At first I thought the dialogue was dynamic and I choose what to say but then I realized that it is like a story that you read. It is a nice different way to show information but I think it might be presented better if you put a speaker on one side of the screen and the other on the opposite side of the screen.

- I liked the idea of the button highlighting when I move across it at the end of the screen. Although there is a bug where it is already highlighted in the next seen even without hovering over it before.

- I didn't know what is going on with the little girl. After she showed me the horse I hit the button to continue and suddenly the next picture had something like "The argument misses and fails to make sense." Which I didn't know what is that or how it came to be. I can guess I didn't make a stat check but you didn't forewarn me or anything. It is like it came out of nowhere. I'd suggest at least explain what is going on the player before he would do something. That said, there was no option but the three arrows so I it isn't like I had an option not to miss or fail it.

- After the above incident I hit the three arrows only to see this:


I honestly didn't know what that is so, I am guessing this is a bug. So I hit the three arrows and I got the below:


I guess the second screenshot should have happened before I met the girl with the horse?

- So I picked the likeable option to see what happens and I got an increase in Credability for Elin. Again, I am not sure exactly what is going on here or what am I supposed to do or what would Credibility affect me in anyway.

- However, after that the same screen as the last screenshot appeared again. So I kept pressing the Likeable button until I found another one that appeared and then clicked on it. Then the girl complained I don't want to enchant her horse when I enchanted stuff before. Again... total loss.

- I continued clicking on all the back alleys I could until I hit a stinking man and here I couldn't really do anything against him.


I have to say, if my guess is right, you are trying to create a text based game (or at least the prototype is) where your "combat" is arguments between people and you hold stats that you increase/decrease dependent on choices and win/lose situation. It is a very interesting idea. However, I don't know how to play this. I am not sure what am I supposed to do, how to do it and why am I getting the results I am getting.
I feel that this might be fun to be honest, but it is held back by the few bugs mentioned above and the way I am lost and I am not sure what to do here.

I am guessing (and I could totally be wrong here) that you are using Construct 2? Or something similar? Why not try something like Twine or Inklewriter or perhaps Yarn even for test. It is much easier to setup and create text based prototypes/games with it.


Hope that helps in anyway.

[buto]

It also sound like your experiencing some bug(s) that I'm not able to reproduce. What web browser (& OS) did you play on?

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. It was either Win7 or Ubuntu 14.04 both with Firefox. I think it was Win7. Like Vallar too, I experienced situations in which I clicked a button and seemingly a second action was carried out even though I didn't click anything.

Regards,
Sebastian

[valrus]

- I didn't know what is going on with the little girl. After she showed me the horse I hit the button to continue and suddenly the next picture had something like "The argument misses and fails to make sense."

This happened to me, too; Ubuntu 14.04 with Firefox.

[AutumnPioneer]

I might help you out and test this, but i'm sorry, could you change the font to something different? At the moment it looks like impact, and its a pain to read, especially with that kerning and size. Just go for something simple, especially for the body text.

[Crysball]

I'm not sure how the actions cost affects the outcome but it felt like i could just ignore it with no consequence

and because i had no previous introduction to the efectiveness of different kind of arguments on different kinds of people o actitudes it felt kind like guessing

[Quicksand-S]

Does this make sense? Sort of.

I have no idea what the "Credibility" rating is, but I guess I need to get it to max in order to win an argument. I don't understand why it goes up even when arguments are ineffective, though.

I also found it weird that something "super effective" could end up failing... It's a strange setup, just because once something is effective, you kinda just keep clicking it until you win. There's nothing fun or dynamic about it, and a random miss isn't ideal. I'd rather fail because the situation changed due to my previous actions. For example, "Peet the stinker starts to look confused. Rational arguments will obviously not work now," was great. I liked that it changed noticeably instead of just having me fail randomly that time.

It was nice to see Doriane actually say something when I won the argument with her. I hope other characters will do the same later.

The Old Hag argument seemed broken. She argued with me before even letting me know she was there, then most of the dialogue options wouldn't work. One did, and the argument was suddenly over.

Anyway, I got to the Town Square. I like the idea of this game, and it does mostly make sense, although I don't know where action points and things come into play. I think my biggest issue right now, though, is just that it's repetitive: walk, walk, argue, walk, walk, argue...and arguing just consists of clicking a bit randomly without much to go on. It's better when it opens up a bit at the Town Square, though. I liked having more options and different pacing.

I encountered the Stable Man, who confused me a lot with "Regenerating Confidence" and my character getting "Angry Lvl 2". No idea what that is, or how it affects anything. I also don't know what posture does. My argument with him went about the same way as the one with the Hag (ie. it was a bit weird and broken-feeling).

I also noticed a slight bug. When I came back to the town from the stable yard, my movement options said "Return to Town Lockup" even though I'd never been there.

Anyway, it's an intriguing game. I think a bit more direction would help make me feel like what I'm doing has a point. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

[Jordgubben]

When I posted the OP I was expecting players to get the basics (action points, credibility, sympathy and posture) and have problems with the more intricate details (argument chains and retorts). As far as I can tell it sounds like it's the other way around.

This is very important feedback.

As you can probably understand I won't explain how it really work in this thread, at least not now. I'm going to change thing and see if I can have it make more sense, then I will return and ask for feedback on a new release. Rinse and repeat until it makes sense for most players.

I do however want to comment on a few things:

Linearity and pacing
This release is more or less one long corridor. My intent is for the final game to have a more free exploration feel, with other stuff to do than arguing. But the dispute system is the "innovative" part. That's why I want to figure it out properly before building to much of the other (relative low risk) stuff.

The Impact font?
This one is really weird. The css is set use the to font-family 'fantsy' which is supposed to be a 'generic' font. 

Code:

body {
	margin: 0;
	font-family: fantasy;
}

I get that this is not going to look the same everywhere, but 'Impact'? The MEME-font? I'd probably  better just use an embeded font for the next release, and fall back to Verdana/Helvetica on older browsers.

Random fails
So "The argument misses and fails to make sense." is just what is sounds like. There argument has a random chance of missing.

I generally think randomness has an undeserved bad reputation in game development circles. Random has it's place, but in this case it should probably be saved for special "high risk/high reward" opportunities. I've changed this code now.

Rounding up
Thank you everyone.  So reading all of your comment has sparked several new ideas to try out in the next release. Please keep the feedback coming.
(<- this is tea, not coffee)

[oahda]

So this is the second time I see Impact being considered a bad font on par with Comic Sans... I've never heard that before until one time recently.

I don't get it. It sounds like just another bandwagon that people jump on for no reason. It's a pretty normal font that might work fine under some contexts. I don't see how image macros changed that. To me it feels as if Arial would become an internet favourite to hate because it's used in silly situations, even tho it's quite neutral.

[Schoq]

It's because impact is clearly a headline font. It's ugly and not very legible as a body font.

[oahda]

It's because impact is clearly a headline font. It's ugly and not very legible as a body font.

Yeah, I guess I didn't know the context this time but the last time it was used for the title on the cover of a CD, which I didn't find weird at all. A bit impersonal, maybe, since it's a "default font", but not... weird or bad.

[RedHickory]

I ran through your game very briefly and the only thing that stands out is that the blank screens you have to just click through seem like bad design.  I don't understand the battle system, but that really doesn't matter.  The whole process of where and when you click just seems to need some optimization.  Good luck.

[Jordgubben]

The whole process of where and when you click just seems to need some optimization. 

Would you mind elaborating a bit of where the user interface is causing you friction? The UX certainly needs more work, but to fix it I must first understand what the problem is.

[Jordgubben]

New release: 2016.10

Ok. I (finally) have a new build. It took longer than I expected.

Based on your feedback I've tried to make the world more "open" to free exploration. I've also changed how time works and is expressed (because the way time works is actually really important to understand in this game). The amount of randomness has been greatly reduced (only a few argument can miss at random).

Last time I had a lot of trouble mapping feedback to actual game actions. I really wished I could sit next to each an every one of you (in a non-creapy/non-stalking way) and see what you did. This time there is a small tracker in the game that logs actions taken. If you put your forum handle in (from this forum) the Name field than it will help me out a lot.

Last note: The story is a bit of a 4:th wall joke right now, as I intend to rewrite quite a lot in upcoming releases.

Once again, here is what I need your help with:

• Play the game for a decent while (bonus points if you actually find the 'plot macguffin')
• Do not read any other posts after this one (before posting your own)
• Write down how you think the time system and the "conflict mechanic" work

(As always, rules are made to be broken.)


Now go!

(Also, I'm you find issues with the spelling or grammar in the game, then please send it in a PM and not through this thread K' Thx. Yay.)

[valrus]

Each action takes a certain amount of time, modified by your quickness stat.  The number next to the opponent's timer is how much time remains until the opponent gets another turn.  If the player and opponent are both at time 0.0, the player gets priority.

One's cred functions as the equivalent of, in other RPGs, one's opponent's health, but is expressed as a growing rather than declining number.  (Although it can decline from a few actions, like the old woman's nagging, which is the functional equivalent of "healing" in other RPGs.)  There are two elements, rational or emotional, and one can buff oneself to be temporarily immune to either or both.  Some actions open up the possibility for other actions.  Posture is a sort of MP that can be spent on powerful actions.

I don't know how regenerating confidence works.

Possible bug: Credibility is sometimes adding up wrong.  Like during an argument with a sailor, I was at ~8 cred, then scored ~4 cred, now I'm at 31 cred.  Then I increased by 1 and I'm at 40.

Possible bug: I can't go back from Main Street to the Town Main Square.

[Jordgubben]

Thank you Valrus for the through feedback. 
It sounds like you figured out most of it. Knowing this makes sense means I can move on to add more sophisticated mechanics (and AI). There are a bunch of things that can be done once the fundamentals click.

I'm not going to explain regaining confidence now. Instead I'll try to change it around a bit in a bit in a future releases to see if/when it starts to make more sense.

According to calq you managed to trigger two (2) different null pointer exceptions several times. The stack traces are a bit hard to read because of javascript minification, but this might be what's causing your experiencing with the credibility not changing correctly.