MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

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Dream9
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MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#1 Post by Dream9 »

Image

DOWNLOAD WINDOWS HERE: http://nickel-buckle-9.deviantart.com/a ... -208727114
DOWNLOAD MAC HERE: http://nickel-buckle-9.deviantart.com/a ... -208731502

My game is finally done! Version 2.0 is currently up, and it fixed a lot of the issues in the first one. It is now easier and quicker to raise stats and beat the game (an "Auto Mix" button was added), the font is darker, the persistent data is now up and running, and Dress Up items remain on the Bots as they grow up. Also, I was able to beat the game in 18 generations, so it is possible to be a fairly quick play. Oh! And a yes/no menu has been added to the main menu button, so no more accidentally loosing your game!

I'm looking for people to test my game and let me know how many generation it take you to merge watts with the MegaBot. Also, please let me know if you find anything wrong with the game or if something does not work right.

Image

As you can see, MiniBot is a game where you are trying to become the most powerful robot alive. There are over 60 Dress up items, 3 robot stages per generation, unlimited generations, an orchard to grow fruit, a blender that makes 11 different types of smoothies, and 8 characters to explore. Raise your reputation, brain, and body points to give yourself a better chance of merging watts with other robots!

If you merge watts with the MegaBot, you win!
Last edited by Dream9 on Sat May 14, 2011 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

10kNing
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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#2 Post by 10kNing »

It's a great game, and really cute~! Befriending the other bots was fun. Zippy is cute. There's a little of a problem when I try to merge watts, though. It's fine when I enter the small house and then the pink one or vice versa, but entering the tallest building after visiting either results in the same stats no matter how many times I enter. It changes once I come back after attempting to merge watts with MegaBot but that's sort of defeating the purpose, I think ^^; I'm not sure whether or not this is only a problem with my computer. The problem remains when I close and reopen the program or when I move up a generation (on 23rd now, by the way, with all stats save for watts slightly above 100).

Overall, really nice! The music fits, too, and I think the dress-up items are adorable! It was really enjoyable!

Dream9
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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#3 Post by Dream9 »

10kNing wrote:It's a great game, and really cute~! Befriending the other bots was fun. Zippy is cute. There's a little of a problem when I try to merge watts, though. It's fine when I enter the small house and then the pink one or vice versa, but entering the tallest building after visiting either results in the same stats no matter how many times I enter. It changes once I come back after attempting to merge watts with MegaBot but that's sort of defeating the purpose, I think ^^; I'm not sure whether or not this is only a problem with my computer. The problem remains when I close and reopen the program or when I move up a generation (on 23rd now, by the way, with all stats save for watts slightly above 100).

Overall, really nice! The music fits, too, and I think the dress-up items are adorable! It was really enjoyable!
Yay! Thank you for the feedback! I'm really glad you like it, at least a little haha. It can get kinda repetitive, so I might lower the standards for the MegaBot... do you think I should?

As for the tower issue, I'm honestly not sure why it does that. It was doing that for me for the middle sized house, but then stopped the next time I played it... so I'm not really sure. o.O

I've also heard that I should make the font on the menus darker (I know this was light, but I've been trying to figure out how to change the font color) >_> and I should make a yes or no choice for when the main menu button is clicked, since people have accidentally clicked on it and lost their game...

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#4 Post by Eulu »

This game is really interesting, different and adorable; it's the perfect time killer, haha. C:
While I haven't finished the game just yet, I do have one suggestion: maybe play around with the placement of the "main menu" button? It's placed in the exact same location as the "Back" button on other screens, and I've had to restart the game from my last save multiple times because I would accidentally tap that section of the screen twice, haha.

Otherwise, so far, I love this. I've been lurking these forums for a long time now, and I don't think I've played anything quite like this game. C':

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rinrin
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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#5 Post by rinrin »

Very nice game! But I find the text on menus (superlight gray on light gray) extremely hard to read.

Edit:
I only noticed this now, sorry:
Dream9 wrote: I've also heard that I should make the font on the menus darker (I know this was light, but I've been trying to figure out how to change the font color) >_>
I think this should work:

Code: Select all

style.menu_choice.color = "#000000"
Last edited by rinrin on Sat May 14, 2011 3:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#6 Post by PyTom »

So, I - kinda - beat this game.

The things I liked were the minibots - all three generations of them. The designs were cute, which I think it's what was going for. Although it's hard to really associate much of a personality with the characters, and some of their dialogue was a bit random, it was always fun to encounter them.

I really like the way you generate the minibots - it really makes each generation seem different from the last.
The downside is that there's a really long time in which you've exhausted all the characters' trees, but haven't come close to the end. In fact, I actually would up going in and tweaking the code to lower the win condition, so I could - kinda - get the ending. I think the game would be improved if the minibots' dialogues ran longer, and if you could only advance the trees one or two steps per generation.
In several places, there's a logic bug that makes the game harder than it was intended to be. You have code like:

Code: Select all

        if watts < 25:
               ...       
        if watts >= 40:
               ...
There's actually a gap in the condition coverage, such that if watts are between 25 and 39, no code runs, and the game uses the parameters of the previously generated robot. That shows up in a couple of places. When you have ranges like this, you probably want to use an if-elif-else structure, and always keep the sign the same. For example:

Code: Select all

    if watts < 60:
        ...
    elif watts < 80:
        ...
    elif watts < 100:
        ...
    else:
        ...
This will prevent the bug 10kNing reported.
Something of an issue with the game is that the speed of the game doesn't increase as the player levels up, so it kind of drags. I'd consider, perhaps, increasing garden productivity as the robot's energy (or something) increases, and allowing the robot to make more than one smoothie at a time if he has the energy for it. Right now, watts don't really do all that much, outside of the early game - fairly quickly, I became limited by the speed at which I could acquire fruit.

In the tips, it says "Selling Smoothies is the most efficient way to make money." I don't think that's the case - I found it far easier to raise money by selling fruit. Sure, smoothies sell for more - but raising fruit is far easier, at least when it comes to the number of clicks I have to do to raise them. Once I did that, my money increased quickly.

I really liked the dressup-system, but looking at the code, it seems (with one notable exception) that it didn't really do all that much. It would be interesting if you could have the clothes control the outcome - like when wearing a top hat and monocle, the price of everything (both what it costs and sells for) doubles. That would encourage people to use the system more - after a while, I started ignoring it.
I didn't read the introduction - I think I actually enjoyed the game better that way. It was actually kind of fun to try and figure out what the rules were. And that's the thing - I did have fun, at least through the early and mid-game. I wanted to see the ending - enough that I cheated to get it, since I didn't want to spend the grinding time required. If you want to tune this (I'm not sure how open you are to making changes at this point), I'd try to figure out how to make the endgame have some events, and to feel less like grinding.
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Dream9
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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#7 Post by Dream9 »

Eulu wrote:This game is really interesting, different and adorable; it's the perfect time killer, haha. C:
While I haven't finished the game just yet, I do have one suggestion: maybe play around with the placement of the "main menu" button? It's placed in the exact same location as the "Back" button on other screens, and I've had to restart the game from my last save multiple times because I would accidentally tap that section of the screen twice, haha.

Otherwise, so far, I love this. I've been lurking these forums for a long time now, and I don't think I've played anything quite like this game. C':
Thanks for playing it! I'm really glad you like it, haha... and yeah... I've even restarted my game once or twice. I'm going to fix that right now, among other things, and reupload it with the changes ^_^

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#8 Post by Dream9 »

rinrin wrote:Very nice game! But I find the text on menus (superlight gray on light gray) extremely hard to read.

Edit:
I only noticed this now, sorry:
Dream9 wrote: I've also heard that I should make the font on the menus darker (I know this was light, but I've been trying to figure out how to change the font color) >_>
I think this should work:

Code: Select all

style.menu_choice.color = "#000000"
Thank you so much! *_*
I've been trying to find how to do that for days now with no luck...

Dream9
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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#9 Post by Dream9 »

PyTom wrote:So, I - kinda - beat this game. (etc...)
Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

Ah... so I see that's why that glitch with the building occurred. I'll try the code you posted :)

I found your review very useful, and that's a great idea having the dress up items result in events, special effects, and other hidden things. A friend also suggested I let the robots keep items such as the top hat between recharges, because all 3 stages can wear them. Excellent ideas! I'll definitely be expanding and adding to it!

I'll also probably rewrite the scripts for the characters and make them more dynamic... some of them I kinda rushed just so I could see if my game would function as a whole.

Just as well, I'll lower the end requirements (after I take into consideration the added game time due to the characters or events), and try to make it less grinding. After all, if a game doesn't hold anyone's interest it's not worth playing :P

Thank you so much!

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#10 Post by Alex »

This bots are so cute...)) The game is looking nice and MegaBot reminds me of Balrog from Cave Story.
But I almost killed my mouse while tried to produce hundreds of smoothies...))
That was fun, thanks...;)

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#11 Post by Dream9 »

Alex wrote:This bots are so cute...)) The game is looking nice and MegaBot reminds me of Balrog from Cave Story.
But I almost killed my mouse while tried to produce hundreds of smoothies...))
That was fun, thanks...;)
Thanks! ...and I've never heard of Balrog or Cavestory... but I just googled it and it looks really cute, lol.

I just uploaded the 'fixed' version (2.0), which makes smoothies easier to make with the addition of the "Auto Mix" button. I also change a bunch of other things to make it run more smoothly and make it easier.

:]

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#12 Post by Veniae »

Hey there! Congrats on finishing your game, you must be really satisfied. =))

I will now download it and will definitely give it a shot ASAP. xD

That being said, I will edit later with my impressions. <3

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#13 Post by tuna_sushi »

This game is so cute!
very unique, too!
The girl robots always have bad rumors

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#14 Post by Erisau »

I love the cute art style and how it contrasts with the " become the most powerful robot" premise.
Also, the atmosphere of the game is awesomely creepy. The music really gets me thinking that this isn't just a cutesy game for some reason.
All the messages are cute, but the music...*shudders*. Well, I think that's a good thing!
I'll probably have more to say after I finish it.
~Eri

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Re: MiniBot! Looking for Feedback!

#15 Post by badspeler »

It's a great concept and it was fun when it started but after a while I stopped playing because it became more of a chore to harvest the plants and mix the smoothies and merge the bots. Still, the bots are so cute and I did enjoy dressing them up- I wish I didn't have to redesign him every time though... And thanks for leaving your code in it will be so educational for me...

BTW I downloaded this from deviantart before I even saw the post here, so I probably played the old version...
Games: Aris High Visual Novel (for Android), PQRS

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