WIP - Planet Stronghold, a light-RPG in space

[jack_norton]

gekiganwing: it's a problem of Renpy, I have the same but on netbook+W7. I think the problem is the netbook supersmall VRAM that aren't enough to run a BIG game like PS. I really am not doing anything special except using lot of sprites, sounds, etc. Maybe pytom can fix that somehow, but honestly I don't know what it is I know I have a macmini which is pretty low specs (512mb, 16mb VRAM) and there works fine. So it seems something specific of netbooks!

lemuel: thanks, getting your PMs.

[lemuel]

I am glad to be helping others.

[jack_norton]

gekiganwing: I have spoken with pytom and updated the game (same download link). Now on my W7 netbook the game starts, I was able to finish the first fight, but when I tried to save it crashed. Perhaps netbooks have insufficient HW to run such a complex game (I am able to play the alpha of Love & Order on it for example).

[gekiganwing]

I read your replies, Jack_norton. Thank you for looking into this. This situation seems peculiar, since I've had no difficulty using most other Renpy games/VNs on my netbook. (I might think about installing more RAM on my desktop.)

[jack_norton]

Yes, I really think it's a HW problem. Unfortunately those devices are OK to run small/simple VNs, but with a complex game like PS seems that they cannot make it Obviously I invite everyone to play the full demo before buying it. If the demo works, there won't be problems since it's pretty long.

edit:I gave it another try, and this time I was able to play for about 1h! I really don't know, it seems that it MIGHT work especially if you play it slowly (not skip forward too fast), but I am not officially supporting it since I'm not 100% sure it can work in all cases

[gekiganwing]

Thanks for your continued help, Jack_norton.

I have now tried Alpha 0.8 and Alpha 0.85 of Planet Stronghold on my netbook. Unfortunately, both versions crashed just seconds after starting up. Just after the game's window was going to be the resolution of my screen (800 x 600, I believe), the same traceback error appeared both times. Perhaps I should try an earlier version next.

Also, please let me know the recommended system requirements for your game. I didn't see them on your blog, forum, or the official Planet Stronghold site... My netbook is running Windows XP with service pack 3. Its processor runs at 1.6 GHz. It has 1 GB of RAM. Not sure about the graphics card, but it's almost certainly a cheap one...

[jack_norton]

Well your netbook should work. I have someone playing it with a much lower config:
"IBM Thinkpad with an 896 MHz Intel Celeron processor and 312 MB of RAM, running on Windows XP Home edition"
and on his one doesn't crash. I'm thinking at this point that the videocard is really the culprit. I am willing to bet you have a Intel videocard (worst card ever created, has lots of problems even in DX).
Try doing this, install the 0.85 in another folder (or completely delete the existing one to be sure), and start the game in compatibility mode (hold shift down while starting it and you should see a choice to pick GL / software rendered). Use SW renderer, maybe it could work this way (if does let me know please

The reason why I haven't put any specs is because I am not sure yet, I'm collecting data from people. Renpy games should run even on netbooks, but this one is not really a standard VN (maybe I also coded it badly, I have no clue honestly since I'm doing lots of uncommon stuff with Renpy lol). So far only people with netbooks reported problems so my guess is that the problem is the videocard.

[gekiganwing]

Try doing this, install the 0.85 in another folder (or completely delete the existing one to be sure), and start the game in compatibility mode (hold shift down while starting it and you should see a choice to pick GL / software rendered). Use SW renderer, maybe it could work this way (if does let me know please

I'll uninstall the alpha demos later today, reinstall 0.85, and try your recommended steps. Thanks for your help and patience.

Also, I used to have a Thinkpad with modest specs, but it became almost useless after its battery died.

EDIT on January 22 -- I got version 0.85 of Planet Stronghold to work on my old desktop. (This Windows XP computer has "3200+" processing speed, but perhaps because of its 512 MB RAM, it is painfully slow.) Soon I'll try it on another computer. Thanks for your patience.

[jack_norton]

Speaking with PyTom in twitter, it seems might have been my fault for using cache_pin (which won't even be needed in next version of renpy). I have disabled it and noticed a good improvement on my macmini (really a very low-spec test machine, 1,5Gghz CPU and 512mb RAM only!!).
At this point next update (0.9) which should be out before end of month I'll disable it and maybe will work fine even on your netbook

[jack_norton]

I've been adding lots of stuff based on users feedback:
- Heal now always works, but has a range of 75%-100% healing power. Example, before you'd always heal for 100HP, now you can heal for 75-100HP (but never miss)
- Protect and Cure now only consume half PP when they fail
- Psionics and Survival Skills now display in the character sheet the amount of HP/PP they regenerate during combat when using Defend option
- When you level up because of a quest, you'll see in the dialog window each character increase of HP/PP

- Each class has now "tag" skills, which means they get a bonus when they assign skillpoints to that skill, based on this chart:

The new changes when distributing Skill Points are:
PRIMARY= each skill point advances +3
SECONDARY=each skill point advances +2
NORMAL=each skill point advances +1

I've also continued writing a bit of the plot but mostly I was busy adding stuff/fixing bugs!

[Riviera]

Awesome! Always got a bit of an "AGGGGH!" feeling when the healing spells missed.. XD

And the skills change should help raise those skills a lot.. always conflicted on whether to raise plot skills or battle ones.

[jack_norton]

I actually changed to:
PRIMARY and SECONDARY= each skill point advances +3
NORMAL=each skill point advances +2

since just +1 skill was too low

[mysterialize]

I tried playing the demo. I thought the idea of the setting was pretty cool, and art is obviously high quality, so I figured I'd give it a shot, even if I don't have the cash to get the full version.

The demo struck me as having a few problems, though. To be entirely honest, I couldn't bring myself to get past the part where you fight with the veteran guy, simply because of difficulty issues in the battle system. I just kept dying. The only reason I even beat the first tutorial battle was because the robots in that one couldn't do damage.

I think the main issue that caused this was just how low the hit rate seemed to be. According to the numbers officially displayed in the battle screen, most of the characters had a hit percentage between 40%-65%. This is pretty low as it is, even if it's early in the game, but in practice, the numbers seemed to be even lower. Over half of my attacks missed for every single character, even the higher accuracy ones. It's entirely possible that I just have really bad luck, but to me it was looking like the numbers were somewhere around 25%-40%. It got to be really frustrating after a while, especially since the enemies clearly had much better hit percentages than the party.

A lot of the mechanics did seem pretty cool, though. I like the idea of having different damage and hit types, and the game really did seem like it had potential for strategy, just as long as the accuracy issue it fixed. Unfortunately, as it is now, there's just too much randomness for it to really matter.

Also, I feel like the stat sheet for the enemies shouldn't be displayed at the beginning of battle, since it seems to pretty much determine your strategy for you. The idea is neat, but it just lays far too much out for you. Maybe have it so that you can scan the enemy with some kind of skill to get it to some up? Or maybe you can make it so that the sheet fills out as you throw different attack types at the enemy. The latter would involve a lot more programming, but it would be the best for strategy.

As for the writing, it mostly just seemed... so so. There really didn't seem to be much personality in it, and most of the setting related stuff seemed to be mostly made out of sci-fi buzzwords. I mean, I only saw up to a couple scenes past the tutorial, so it's entirely possible it picks up a bit after a while, but what I saw wasn't really that mentionable. The whole thing just felt really bland, lifeless and based around such a basic idea of sci-fi that it all just felt hollow. This got particularly bad when exposition came in.

The characters also suffered from similar issues. While they didn't seem to be routed in particularly cliche personalities, they also didn't have much depth to them, as far as I could tell. Fox is cocky and strict, Shatz (*chuckle*) is serious, but kind, and Michelle is the laid back, outgoing, friendly type. Again, a lot of my assumptions about their depth could be based around me not seeing as much of the game I originally meant to, but, going by what I did see, they just seemed to be far too straightforward about their personality traits. They pretty much flat-out stated them, sometimes. Aside from that, though, I suppose there was nothing wrong with them.

I do like the more subtle approach to the choices, though. I definitely approve of a game that doesn't flat out state what's going to make people like you.

Basically, I guess what it comes down to with the writing is that it simply didn't grab me. It wasn't bad, and was pretty much just fine on a grammatical level, but it never really did anything.

The graphics, on the other hand, still look quite nice. The uniforms are perhaps a bit... tight, but the characters were well drawn and distinct, otherwise. The backgrounds were also of a similarly high quality.

Really though, I swear the girls all had a hint of camel toe going on, and, as much as I like men and their man-parts, seeing them bulge out of their pants like that isn't quite the ideal state. Not that it's that big of a deal, but it did get really distracting on both sides, for all the wrong reasons.

I also quite liked the music, particularly in battle. It fit the setting really well, and made the otherwise grueling pace of the fights a bit more bearable.

But yeah, the demo did a few things right, but the things that went wrong really take away from the game's quality as a commercial title. I really feel like the writing would have to be significantly more spiced up to draw me in enough to buy the full version, and, if nothing else, the battles absolutely must be fixed. As it is now, the whole thing just feels incredibly slow and tedious.

[jack_norton]

Well thanks for the honest feedback! Unfortunately the writing cannot be fixed (though will be the last game I write myself, from now I'll just outsource). To be honest, I'm sure even if I outsourced I would have had still similar complaints (not by you, but there's always someone complaining about the writing even if you hire J.K. Rowling). Though if you mean the story (rather than writing), I think you stopped just before the "code red" chapter, which makes things more interesting plot-wise
About the battles accuracy seems weird to me. NOBODY else reported that problem. I don't know what to say honestly! Perhaps you were really unlucky, or ... don't know. Nobody reported accuracy as being a problem in almost 4 months of testing/open alpha.

edit: maybe I know, if you pick a Guardian, the veteran (Bellamy) becomes a Soldier (to balance the amount of classes). And the equipment is a pistol that has the lowest accuracy, so probably that's why (but you still need to have some bad luck to never hit). I probably am going to raise the accuracy though since as you were pissed off, other people could be indeed

[mysterialize]

Yeah, I went with Guardian, so that would probably explain it. It's not that I was never hitting, I was just hitting infrequently enough to put me at a serious disadvantage in battle. Anyways, yeah, just a simple accuracy boost earlier on could probably help things quite a bit.

A lot of the blandness was pretty set in the writing, rather than the story. Since I was just barely past the tutorial, I didn't really expect much out of that at that point. Anyways, I suppose it's a bit pointless to elaborate anymore on the writing issue if you can't fix it, anyways.

Even so, good luck in getting the rest of this done for a final release.