testers Needed for 'Escape from Puzzlegate' [DONE, THANKS]

[Mole-chan]

Hello!
I need some players who would be willing to test 'Escape from Puzzlegate'. Here is it's wip page, if you want more information.

Anything is greatly appreciated. Even just confirming to me that it runs without issue.


Here are the links, thank you!

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux
• All

[feathersnake]

Hmm. How long do things take to load after the transitions? So far I've tried playing twice, once where I went to the plains and once where I went to the lake. Everything works great until I see the feather or bubble transitions. Then all I get is a black screen. The sliding puzzle on the door worked fine though. (And darn it, I got it half-way solved before the timer ran out! XD )

I'm on linux by the way. I have the most recent version of Ren'py too. My computer is also kind of a wimp to be honest.

I've also tried it in the ren'py launcher once, but it gives me errors for any minigame there and if I hit ignore for both it just takes me to the next scene. For both the door puzzle and the minigame in the plains the errors I get in the launcher are:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in script
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in <module>
error: font not initialized

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in script
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/ast.py", line 756, in execute
renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/python.py", line 1382, in py_exec_bytecode
exec bytecode in globals, locals
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in <module>
File "tilepuzzle.py", line 99, in main
File "renpygame/font.py", line 39, in Font
error: font not initialized

And the second error if I hit "ignore":

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in script
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in <module>
NameError: name 'won' is not defined

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in script
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/ast.py", line 1545, in execute
if renpy.python.py_eval(condition):
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/python.py", line 1416, in py_eval
return eval(py_compile(source, 'eval'), globals, locals)
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in <module>
NameError: name 'won' is not defined

What I've seen so far is really awesome though! Everything looks great, and I love how you did partial voicing.

*edit*
So, uh, I finished the game by solving the sliding puzzle on time. XD The game was on easy though. The final puzzle worked fine for me too, so everything at the end works for me! The music for the final puzzle stayed all the way into the ending credits though. o_o;

[Mole-chan]

Hmm. How long do things take to load after the transitions? So far I've tried playing twice, once where I went to the plains and once where I went to the lake. Everything works great until I see the feather or bubble transitions. Then all I get is a black screen. The sliding puzzle on the door worked fine though. (And darn it, I got it half-way solved before the timer ran out! XD )

I'm on linux by the way. I have the most recent version of Ren'py too. My computer is also kind of a wimp to be honest.

I've also tried it in the ren'py launcher once, but it gives me errors for any minigame there and if I hit ignore for both it just takes me to the next scene. For both the door puzzle and the minigame in the plains the errors I get in the launcher are:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in script
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in <module>
error: font not initialized

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in script
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/ast.py", line 756, in execute
renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/python.py", line 1382, in py_exec_bytecode
exec bytecode in globals, locals
File "game/script.rpy", line 213, in <module>
File "tilepuzzle.py", line 99, in main
File "renpygame/font.py", line 39, in Font
error: font not initialized

And the second error if I hit "ignore":

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in script
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in <module>
NameError: name 'won' is not defined

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in script
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/ast.py", line 1545, in execute
if renpy.python.py_eval(condition):
File "/home/Feathersnake/VNs/renpy-6.17.7-sdk/renpy/python.py", line 1416, in py_eval
return eval(py_compile(source, 'eval'), globals, locals)
File "game/script.rpy", line 214, in <module>
NameError: name 'won' is not defined

What I've seen so far is really awesome though! Everything looks great, and I love how you did partial voicing.

*edit*
So, uh, I finished the game by solving the sliding puzzle on time. XD The game was on easy though. The final puzzle worked fine for me too, so everything at the end works for me! The music for the final puzzle stayed all the way into the ending credits though. o_o;

Thanks for the tip! I'll have to look into that, but here's the stuff I know off hand.

The transitions should only pause for the duration of the transition itself, so about a second. I'll add something in preferences to disable them for wimpy computers. Thanks for pointing that out!

I'm really not sure about that first error. It looks like the font module isn't initiating, but it should initiate as a part of pygame.init(). I can call it twice, I suppose, as a precaution. But it really shouldn't be necessary.
I know the second error with "won" not being defined is because you skipped the game, and this value was never returned. I'll set it to false before launching the minigame, as a failsafe.

As for finishing the puzzle the first time, I was worried it might be too lenient. The difficulty doesn't actually affect that one, though.
I'll have to take a look at the music carrying over. It really shouldn't.

[feathersnake]

I think it's just the minigames themselves that my computer doesn't want to work with. All I get is a black screen when I go to the minigames section and click on one too.

Those errors are probably just because I tried playing it in the launcher. Usually the launcher is where I'm guaranteed not to get errors playing VNs and not the other way around. For this game though, it looks like I don't get problems if I just play it directly from the file aside from the minigames just giving me a black screen.

As for the sliding puzzle, I was just determined. XD It took a few tries, and I honestly would have gone to find the keys after the timer running out the first time. I only went back and tried the sliding puzzle so many times because it was the only thing that works for me, and I was curious if maybe I could be the timer if I tried hard enough. So I think it's hard enough. Haha.

Oh, I did try the other areas of the map also. So I get a black screen for all of the minigames. Maybe it's because I'm on linux? I would try it on a windows computer if I had time, but I'm going to be leaving soon today and will be having a busy week, so hopefully you get other testers.

[Mole-chan]

I think it's just the minigames themselves that my computer doesn't want to work with. All I get is a black screen when I go to the minigames section and click on one too.

Those errors are probably just because I tried playing it in the launcher. Usually the launcher is where I'm guaranteed not to get errors playing VNs and not the other way around. For this game though, it looks like I don't get problems if I just play it directly from the file aside from the minigames just giving me a black screen.

As for the sliding puzzle, I was just determined. XD It took a few tries, and I honestly would have gone to find the keys after the timer running out the first time. I only went back and tried the sliding puzzle so many times because it was the only thing that works for me, and I was curious if maybe I could be the timer if I tried hard enough. So I think it's hard enough. Haha.

Oh, I did try the other areas of the map also. So I get a black screen for all of the minigames. Maybe it's because I'm on linux? I would try it on a windows computer if I had time, but I'm going to be leaving soon today and will be having a busy week, so hopefully you get other testers.

It could be, but either way, having those redundancies to make sure everything works is still a sound strategy. so thanks for bringing it up.
It might be the launcher. I had to put the pygame module in the game folder instead of outside, where the launcher is expecting, in order for it to compile correctly. It works fine on mine, but it's still something that might be weirding the launcher out.

That's strange. I hope that's not the case. :C I'll have to set up a vm with linux to make sure. Because as a python module, pygame should be cross compatible with no issues.
Either way, I've separately initialized font and mixer, as well as individually quit mixer, on all of the minigames, as well as added an option in preferences to disable the minigame transitions.
Hopefully that will improve performance a bit.

[Duskylli]

[Mole-chan]

I can confirm they are both intended to be a hole, so it probably is just sending you the wrong result. This should definitely be fixed. However, the game should also scroll up so you can see it, before you get in range. I'll move the hole up so this isn't an issue!
The first one was intended to be a red herring, but just catches a player before they can see it. and putting it farther up just puts it directly in the dead end. So I just removed it.

In both cases, between the redirect fix and new placement, the issue should be fixed. Thanks!

I'll take a look at the other levels as well, to make sure there's no ill placed traps.

[Mole-chan]

All reported bugs have been fixed, and the distributions updated!
While I'm confident in the current state, I'd still appreciate any reports that may be left!

[Loading]

Hello.

I thought I'd play your game and see how it is, this was some time last week. To be honest, I'm not sure why I waited until now to write anything about it, but better now than never.

The game had a nice atmosphere. I'd say it's more suited for a younger audience, but it was fun to play it, nevertheless. I remember being a little confused about what I was supposed to do at the underwater palace before finding the queen. I'm not entirely sure whether that happened here, or whether it happened somewhere else, but at some point I think it skipped some tutorial text (or however I should write that) before starting a mini-game. This could have also been caused by me pressing enter though, so unless others have the same problem, I would ignore this.

Other than that, I didn't notice any problems or grammatical errors. Though, I do remember noting to myself that the game was quite short. Generally, games of the like are longer (this is speaking from my experience, I could have simply somehow managed to only play long ones before) and have a bit more detail. I don't think the fact that it was short was bad though, but making a series wouldn't be a bad idea, since people then get the illusion that they are playing for longer (this, of course, is assuming that the character is the same and just continues his journey).