Magical Boutique II [MB1 spoilers!]

[monele]

Um... what?

Mini-polls time!

- Would you rather be able to choose the look of the manager or have him predefined and more fleshed out?
(along with this, do you want to still be able to change the hero's name and the shop's name?)

- Would you rather keep the full body pictures during events or have smaller thumbnails with various expressions?

And the killer question :
- Would you like more emphasis on the gameplay or on the events/quests?

[DaFool]

Check out the webpage:
http://magbou.visualnews.net/

Hmmm...I am keeping my hands off for a while...

...I have a feeling the new version planned might require a full soundtrack and gazillions of backgrounds

Plan away!

[Sailor Kitty]

I want more events and happenings.

[Taleweaver]

More gameplay. Gameplay makes for replay value. I mean, I can't count how many instances of "Princess Maker 2" I have already played. If it had been only for the quests, the number would probably below ten.

As for the main character: don't care. He's a means to an end.

Oh, and emotion/expression thumbs all the way. Better than full-body.

[mugenjohncel]

OK... first and foremost... please don't hate me for I have used and abused the little glitch PyTom discovered a while back on MB1.

I suggest to put more emphasis on story like this...

On day random the town mayor suddenly pops up out of nowhere and is currently requesting and begging for you to produce X quantity of potion X urgently and save them since the town is currently being plaugued by an unknown sickness.

The challange now is to produce X quantity of chemical... ehem potion X at the end of the day under your current circumstances... things will definitelly get difficult if your staff happened to be overworked or on a vacation and ingridients are running low (Hah! How's that for a situation plot)

And if you did manage to produce the requested amount and save the town and it's people your reputation will go up and word will spread about you and more customers will go to your shop (with more difficult demands and when you least expect them).

[DaFool]

random... plaugue

Somehow my wicked mind endorses this idea

Insider info

New more Quest-Oriented System will focus on meeting specific goals, travelling to exotic towns and discovering new methods, and less on daily maintenance (in fact there could be a chance daily maintenance might get dropped altogether). New characters to be included which monele already drew up, which didn't make the cut in this version. Plus...possibilities of DATING and even MARRYING

[PyTom]

Plus...possibilities of DATING and even MARRYING

That's great! You can have two gatherers marry, and then 9 months later you'll get an even better gatherer!

[Jake]

That's great! You can have two gatherers marry, and then 9 months later you'll get an even better gatherer!
[/spoiler]

An even better gatherer and a five-year prison sentence for exploitation of child labour?

[monele]

Your spoiler hiding skills made a critical failure

OK... first and foremost... please don't hate me for I have used and abused the little glitch PyTom discovered a while back on MB1.

Umm.. which one? The rollback one? ô_o.
And I don't mind, really... if you enjoyed the game better by using this, good for you


As for suggestions :

- More happenings : yes, definitely, that's the goal.
- More gameplay : ... oy, oy, conflicting already? XD. But yah... at least more *variation* in gameplay is planned. Just "gather/brew" is boring. I want to add "study" and "research" or something similar. I don't want to overwhelm players but to make things less repetitive.
- "Make X potions" : that's pretty much what we had already and I'll sum this up as "quests", in opposition to "events". Obviously, there should be more of these too... although I'll try to keep the randomness to a minimum to avoid bombing some games while having others be a breeze. We'll see.

Somehow my wicked mind endorses this idea

Of course, you've suggested it! XD... What is it with people and plagues? XD...

As for what DaFool said, that was pretty much the plan. I just don't have a clear vision of how it will play though. I thought of going "just story" but I feel I won't have enough imagination to make a long enough game... but I also notice that quests, with the current game system, can only be "make X potions", as mugenjohncel stated... which might get a bit boring after a while? (I mean... it's just new ingredients, for new potions... always the same *mechanics* involved, just different stats... maybe there could be something more).

PyTom : Yes... yes;.. that's for my other project involving a game taking place over multiple generations, your offspring meeting with your previous friends, forming new teams of their own, etc...

[DaFool]

If you noticed in MB1, it was just the bare minimum of events necessary to experience something

ONE customer event - brew X regular potions
ONE sick event - you get to consume regular potion
ONE advertising event - Fram gets locked out of action for specified time
ONE taxcollector event - Pom gets locked out of action for specified time
ONE captain's event - brew X special potions (using special ingredients) in specified amount of time AS WELL AS
- Dalmaryon gets locked out of action for specified time

By deductive logic, the only thing is missing is

you get to consume special potion

Did I miss anything? It seems pretty simple.
Everything else is pretty much enabling something new one at a time.

Thus, I actually recommend using a similar strategy for MB2...use only ONE instance of a particular quest...any more and it might seem repetitive. The trick will be to expand the basic gameplay so that there is enough variation in between these events.

[monele]

Mmm... yes, true. I never even tried to bring these to their simplest elements ^^;...

Well, we could also combine elements, or concatenate them maybe.

The last quest does the concatenation thing since it's in multiple parts with a goal for each. Was this fun to play? Did it feel more challenging than the other "make X potions" quests? More interesting?

As for events :

Are events such as the tax collector, which don't really bring anything new to the table, interesting? Would it be better if it was mixed with quests instead?

[musical74]

Well outside of that screwball problem with lack of potion space...

I really enjoyed the whole experience. The final challenge of saving the Captain's men is just that: a challenge. It's a good challenge, tho, and I could sense the Captain's urgency. Therefore it made for a challenging endgame quest...which was good, given everything.

Events that don't really add anything NEW are still OK. In the case of the *tax collector* you learn more about Pom, so that was worthwhile. If there was a event that had no impact at all, AND you didn't learn anything about any of the characters...not sure what the point of having it would be. The tax collector you get more info about Pom, and you have a laugh or 3 or 4 because the writing's so well done. If it was *hmmmmmm what was the point of that?!*, that's filler text, and I would advise against that whenever possible.

[monele]

Okay ^^. Well I'm working on this again, trying to organize my thoughts... seeing what's needed and what could be added.

A new question arises : what if the location map disappears and is replaced with a button list? Kinda like the staff list, with icons.

[PyTom]

I think, in general, you may want to try to streamline MBII, in terms of the amount of clicking that the user has to do. I like the map screen, but it might be nice if the icons for the various gatherables were placed where the flags are... so you can pick a location and an item in a single click.

I think I mentioned it before, but I'd probably have it go back to the person-selection screen once the item to gather or brew has been selected, rather than jumping to the person's screen.

I'd also add in "Rest everyone" and "Work everyone" buttons. The rest everyone would give everyone the day off, while the work everyone button would assign all resting people the last non-rest assignment they had. The idea is that you could rest everyone on saturday and sunday, and then easily throw them back into the grind.

You should call renpy.choice_for_skipping() when you get to the selection menu, so that skipping stops.

[monele]

I do plan to make the interface better. I'll also clean up the code but that should be transparent to the user .
My plans for the interface are as follow :
- Lists (ingredients, potions) will display the item icon and quantity. No more name (takes so much room!). To compensate, hovering over each item will show the name, as it does on the map.
- Task selection : this one is just an idea for now... I plan to have a one-screen task assignment. Characters on the left, in column (all icons, no text). Clicking on one of them makes a new column appear with possible tasks (again, I'll try to have icons!). Picking a task will add its parameters on what's left of the screen (brew will have a list of potions, gather a list of locations *and* ingredients).
This would simply remove the "Go back" button and allow to quickly switch between characters and immediately see the whole list of parameters in one click.

Rest everyone, I thought about at some point ^^. It *is* annoying after a while XD. Will surely add it . Work everyone, I didn't think about, but it's a good idea, so... ^^
I'll also change "None" to "Rest" for the task name.

Mm... does the skipping break something right now? ô_o... Using Ctrl-skip always stopped at the main menu for me ô_o. Or is it when you toggle Skip?