SOTW 0.79 - First Act Beta preview!

[Troyen]

I'll answer this first, then get to the older posts:

The checkmarks in the shop screen that indicate if a character can equip an item only update for store items. If I'm in the healer shop and select a staff for my druid, then go to unequip some chain boots from my ranger, the healer is still showing a green checkmark. Actually, none of the items in my inventory show the checkmark stuff - I have to keep going into the slot to check the "available items" section.

The checkmarks aren't supposed to show on items indeed. If you can equip an item, has a green background. If you can't because your class can't, is red. If you can't because of level, is orange. Of course I forgot to put a help text for this

To clarify: the checkmarks are on the people. But they only show up for people when I click on items. Items have that strange background - sometimes green, sometimes red, sometimes none at all.

Also, it's a little cumbersome to compare weapons at the store with my off-hand. I can swap it to my main-hand first, but it's an extra step not used on any other slot.

The auto-save seems to save and clear slots at weird times. I guess it's every time there's some dialog choice (even if it's "continue")? It's been fairly handy so far, just strange to see it emptying out slots instead of just overwriting them.

Well that depends on Ren'Py so can't change it

Hmm, I don't recall the other Ren'Py games (including yours) doing this (usually they'd have all six slots and overwrite in order 1->2->3->4->5->6->1 whereas I'm seeing up to five blank slots and one auto-save sometimes), but it's not that big of a deal.

Almost forgot to mention. If I talk to the bandits with the super-powerful recipe and offer to buy it for 50 gold, it doesn't actually charge me 50 gold. I had 41 gold in my inventory at the time.

[jack1974]

[*]This game is eating my laptop's battery, even when it's in the background. I think Loren wasn't quite as power-hungry, but it's been a while since I tested 100%->0%. Might be a RenPy issue.

Yes, this game is much more power hungry, has much bigger screen size and also uses particles+alpha blending, so definitely another thing vs Loren, but should also look better

[*]Clicking "Back" from the class selection page goes to the difficulty selection page instead of to the Althea/Shea selection page (and if you say that's because the Althea/Shea page has no back button, well, the difficulty selection page doesn't either! Not that it needs one.).

Fixed
Lag is because of the screen size/more demanding game (and ren'py slowness on this case too )

[*]Aside: It's kind of hard to gauge the value of some of these stats on the opening screen. I do like how I can see my HP/SP change with allocation, but I lack a frame of reference for the other stats. For example, I'm sure speed will be super-important like in PS/Loren, but I don't know what 107 means (is that good? average?) nor how adding two points will make that better. I also can't see the secondary stats like critical hit chance, or resistance, etc probably because they would over-clutter the screen. I guess I can calculate them based off my current attribute values, but when I get gear there might be additional modifiers. I guess I'll see when I get to the game.

Yes considering you get a lot of attributes every time you level up, the initial choice doesn't have a big impact. Not like AD&D games for sure

[*]Typo: The title says "Choose Althea Attributes" when I'm picking for Shea, after picking Althea's. I presume the opposite would be true as well ("Choose Shea Attributes" for Althea when selecting Shea.) The trait selection pages do this correctly.[/list]

Fixed

[*]I thought I saw someone else mention this, but Morran is mentioned as Althea's father and all the pronouns refer to Morran as "she". "'One day,' he said" and "...his words would become true."
[*]Fighting goblin hunters trait: "Althea was able to overcome her fear..." Also, either "from the beating they had gotten" or "from the beating they received".
[*]Fighting goblin hunters trait: "That day, she was discovered to have" or "That day, she discovered she had".
[*]Fighting goblin hunters trait: I think "mental conditions" sounds a little better, though "mind conditions" isn't wrong.

Fixed all

[*]As a general comment, the use of "the" is inconsistent between skill descriptions. Sometimes it's missing, sometimes it's there, so I'm not sure if you were trying to go for brevity. I'll assume not in these remarks.

I'll probably need to send the skill description texts to be checked all, but I'm waiting for now during beta since I might change them a bit

[*]When I pick my skill, shouldn't it automatically go to the next page for me?

This was done with a bit of hack, so while possible to do this, for now I'll put it as "secondary fixes"

[*]There's a small skip in the music when I click a skill.

Ren'Py feature
Thanks for all the other typos/text suggestion, I've checked them all. Phew, now on the next post in the queue...!

[Troyen]

[*]Aside: It's kind of hard to gauge the value of some of these stats on the opening screen. I do like how I can see my HP/SP change with allocation, but I lack a frame of reference for the other stats. For example, I'm sure speed will be super-important like in PS/Loren, but I don't know what 107 means (is that good? average?) nor how adding two points will make that better. I also can't see the secondary stats like critical hit chance, or resistance, etc probably because they would over-clutter the screen. I guess I can calculate them based off my current attribute values, but when I get gear there might be additional modifiers. I guess I'll see when I get to the game.

Yes considering you get a lot of attributes every time you level up, the initial choice doesn't have a big impact. Not like AD&D games for sure

Actually, I'm finding out that dumping them all into Con for your front row character makes the difference on the higher difficulties (or +SP for your druid since there's no early-game regen). The rest don't seem to have had as big of an effect as +25 HP, at least not in the first chapter.

Some of the skills are kind of "new player traps" too - like picking the ones that require dual wielding or a shield before you have the required items or the gold to buy them. It's way better to have at least one healing skill at the beginning.

[jack1974]

-The map is WAY more responsive now--no lag issues at all anymore, even with transitions left on. Still seeing slight blurring with the sprites (as expected, since it didn't sound like you've changed that code at all). I've played a lot of Ren'Py games on this laptop in the past without seeing anything similar, so it seems odd that I'd need to turn transitions off for this game. It's also way more pronounced in the scene with Riley than it is later in the game.

Yes but you never played any Ren'Py game with so much stuff going on, I'm sure of it
Regarding the blur: is because I have my sprite done at HIGH resolution, and then I scale down when are displayed, the technical explanation was this:

I don't think Ren'Py renders to a fixed-size buffer (yet), instead it scales each sprite as it's drawn to the screen. Under those circumstances, if your window size is larger than your game's resolution and your sprites normally downscaled, your sprites actually take advantage of the larger resolution used by the window and will appear sharper than other images.

Some special effects require an intermediate rendering step to a separate off-screen buffer (I think dissolve is implemented in this way). If the buffer size is based on the game resolution rather than the current window resolution, the extra detail from using oversized sprites in an upscaled window disappear.

Now you might wonder WHY I used higher res sprites? because if you play in fullscreen, the game scales up the resolution to the screen max, in my case 1920x1200, and the sprite show all the details. If you have a screen resolution powerful enough (a desktop computer mainly) the quality difference is very noticeable.
Check this for example:
(screenshot taken at 1280x720 default res)
(second higher res, the sprites aren't just zoomed but have more details)
Hopefully Ren'Py will get the rendering improvement that coder talks about (I admit is a bit hard to understand also for me )

-The item tabs on the merchant's inventory are a big improvement--but I still think the Sell button is too far away from your inventory. You can't double-click to sell things (which makes sense, since it's also an inventory screen), so there's a lot of extra mouse movement involved in selling multiple items.

To sell multiple items, you know about the "sell all items" right? I am thinking where else I could place the button, but I don't see an easy solution...

-The addition of checkmarks for party members who can use an item makes it much more obvious. However, I noticed that the green/red highlighting on the merchant's inventory indicating whether the selected party member can use each item seemed bugged. Often some pieces of equipment wouldn't have a highlight, and I think there may have been a couple times where an item the selected character could use was highlighted in red or vice-versa.

Sorry my bad. The actual rule is:
- red = can't use the item (ever)
- orange = can't use the item but only because of the level required
- no background = can use the item, but is NOT better than the one already equipped
- green = can use the item and is better (the sum of the stats is better) than the one equipped in that slot
I need to add a help button in the vendor to tell the player this info

-The text for checking the traps is much more natural now, but sometimes it jumps right to "select your party" without any text. Is that intentional? (It feels perfectly natural from a gameplay perspective, but I wanted to confirm that it's not a bug where an attack alternate dialogue never plays.)

Yes, 1 out of 4 won't say anything and they'll just get attacked

-The first time I tried to leave the city with Vaelis, I got a scene where he warned us that we might want to rest first because we were so weak--but my party's HP/SP totals were around 60%/100%, 95%/100%, 100%/40%.

OK will lower a bit the requirements for the warning!

-Even if you choose to talk to the ratman rather than attacking, everyone will talk as if you fought when he invites you to return.

Ok fixing it

-I still think the "Click to Continue" button after a battle could benefit from the application of some responsive design principles--make it taller when there's space!

Haha the problem is that when you get the loot, the item description is displayed in that fixed position at the bottom. So if I move that button up, if you examine a item would go over it. I could check how many items you looted but would be a bit of a mess coding-wise I'll try to see if I can come up with a workaround.

[jack1974]

Almost forgot to mention. If I talk to the bandits with the super-powerful recipe and offer to buy it for 50 gold, it doesn't actually charge me 50 gold. I had 41 gold in my inventory at the time.

Fixed this, thanks (make sure that option is available only if player has at least 50 gold).

Some of the skills are kind of "new player traps" too - like picking the ones that require dual wielding or a shield before you have the required items or the gold to buy them. It's way better to have at least one healing skill at the beginning.

I blame yayswords for this!!!
Before I had fixed skill (no choice at the beginning) with a healing spell/skill by default. OK I'll add a hint text saying that is better if you equip a healing skills for the new players

[jack1974]

Already did a ton of fixes and now I'm working on this:

doing a in-game help for the vendor screen. Writing this myself, so probably will need to be checked

[Troyen]

By the way, if I get ambushed at a trap and I don't have the health to handle it, I can just scroll back through the text and it'll let me go back to the overworld map (which saves me a save and reload). Not sure if that's intentional, but it let me safely game some early gold pelts once I figured it out, which let me buy items before going back and fighting those "ambushes".

[jack1974]

Yes for now I won't change that since is useful for testing, but in the final version will probably block rollback in such situations

[Troyen]

Some quick notes about Chapter 2 before I go to bed:

• The puppy noise seems like it should move one text block earlier so it plays while the MC is saying "Aww...now it's laying down and making big puppy eyes." Currently it plays on the line afterwards.
• When Vaelis returns it's a little weird for him to appear back in the camp but then they walk outside mid-conversation (right between "What do you mean nothing happened?" and "What on...")
• Why does the text box sometimes disappear and come back? For example, after "What, were you sleeping?" it goes away and then quickly comes back with Althea's reply. This happens quite frequently throughout the act and makes it seem like the text box is flickering. At other times (like when their dad's is being treated) it is consistently on-screen and doesn't "flicker".
• I can scroll back and "repick" the items in the camp until I get something I'm happy with.
• Chapter 2 doesn't really feel like a chapter, it's kinda the capstone for Chapter 1. Over very fast.

And a random note about chapter 1 I forgot to add - I sometimes have an attack go off that I didn't intend (like Cripple twice when my ranger somehow went twice in a row). I think this is the "double click to repeat your last action". I don't really use that feature anyway, but someone else might, but it's kind of annoying to lose SP from that. Especially if I'm playing on a touchpad.

[jack1974]

[*]When Vaelis returns it's a little weird for him to appear back in the camp but then they walk outside mid-conversation (right between "What do you mean nothing happened?" and "What on...")

Because they go outside the camp where there was supposed to be the big wolf corpse. I've changed Vaelis sentence in "What do you mean, nothing happened? Follow me outside."

[*]Why does the text box sometimes disappear and come back? For example, after "What, were you sleeping?" it goes away and then quickly comes back with Althea's reply. This happens quite frequently throughout the act and makes it seem like the text box is flickering. At other times (like when their dad's is being treated) it is consistently on-screen and doesn't "flicker".

The textbox "flickers" when there's a transition (like a character changing facial expression or hiding/showing). In other cases the transition isn't there in the code (dissolve). I might remove that completely though!

And a random note about chapter 1 I forgot to add - I sometimes have an attack go off that I didn't intend (like Cripple twice when my ranger somehow went twice in a row). I think this is the "double click to repeat your last action". I don't really use that feature anyway, but someone else might, but it's kind of annoying to lose SP from that. Especially if I'm playing on a touchpad.

Yes is probably that, though is strange since should happen only if you click twice (double click-tap) and shouldn't be easy to trigger it accidentally!