WIP - Planet Stronghold, a light-RPG in space

[Aleema]

Really neat stuff, Jack! Here's my thoughts after playing your Alpha:

- An update system!?!?!?! >_> Seeing as you're going commercial, I guess you'll keep how you did this as a well-kept secret? Because that would help game developers and players alike everywhere for forever. >_>
- I like that you can choose male or female! Only got to meet one guy in an entire military facility, but I don't blame you for catering to your own gender more. Michelle was cool.
- Battle is definitely up there and almost ready for release. For a "light" RPG, you sure succeeded in confusing me about different types of damages, concentration levels, and such. What I'm saying is: THIS IS NOT "LIGHT" BY ANY MEANS. It's the most complex RPG system I've seen implemented in Ren'Py thus far. And in some case, more complicated than some full-fledged RPGs.
- Battle still needs some polishing (obviously), but the basics are all there. I would love to see some sort of animation (even if it's the same for all actions), so I can visually see what's happening and to who. And perhaps showing the amount of damage done to enemy on the enemy itself (or it's bars)? When nothing happens, I have to catch the info screen in the couple seconds it's up there and find out why -- but then it's gone. So I think a more intuitive way of communicating damages and absorption should be looked into ...
- And think about getting two different sound effects for selecting an action and then doing it. Hearing the attack SFX twice in a row each time was really confusing/less impactful. In general, I felt the SFX could use some bettering, because the noise that happens when you get a new quest was really jarring, and I was expecting something more sci-fi, like an achievement beep. I liked the enemy info screen.
- I love the battle map, though the locations are so smallll. I assume the whole thing will be full of markers? That's really intimidating! Quite a large game you have setup. ^^ What would you think about making the main, main locations (like your room) a different color or bigger? That way it's easier to find them.
- I did get a small, silly bug, where the battle portraits (2nd battle) for my party stayed on screen until the demo ended. But I think that was my fault because I was skipping through the battle and I guess it ended suddenly? It generated an error about not finding "showbar" or something. >_> I closed it without copying it, sorry. I'm no help. I do remember that I lost that fight, if that helps ...

[jack_norton]

Thanks About your points:
1) hmm no actually I plan to show how I did. It's nothing really special, and probably could be improved. A reason I want to release it is so that better coders than me could tweak and improve it (and maybe find if there are some bugs). I haven't posted it yet because I don't have time to SUPPORT it. So if I get lots of questions asking how to use it, I can't reply (too much things going on right now in my life). But I want to post it
2) In the final game there are 4 males and female characters, of which 3 of them "dateable" (you can have romance option). Each romance will have a unique bonus pic (so total of 6 gallery pics)
3) yeah things got out of hands it can't be called no longer light RPG indeed haha
4) yes I have added some floating numbers displaying the damages right now, I'm doing some tests to find out what is the best way. Adding ANIMATIONS on monsters unfortunately don't think won't be possible for budget reasons... but could add explosions and some general SFX. I watched some movies of popular RPGMaker games and mostly have very small characters, or no animations at all. My goal for now is to match those games
5) about the map, indeed I think I made the icons a bit too small indeed I probably need to enlarge them. I don't really want to have SO MANY locs, like in Dragon Age, the map doesn't scroll and there are 10-12 locations overall (but within them you can move in several "sub-maps"). I think will do something like that
6) ah I think I know about the bug, it should happen only if you lose indeed. Will check that thanks!

[Qookies]

Yes the bug happened to me too. I was Lisa, I lost and the enemies' bars and yours stayed on the screen.

[jack_norton]

Yes, got another user from another forum with same bug! It seems that battle is hard

[Aashtarsrain]

Downloaded, installed, got the update (on second install), rushed through with excitement, won the battles and played till the end !!!!!!! Not bad for an alpha !!!!
1) Art style choices, gameplay mechanics, routines (from previous games), general mood, dialogue flavor, this is definitely that unique style of yours and I LOVE it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) I'm used to Japanese and Western RPGs and these menus here are challenging and delightfully complex and with the SFX planned, it's gonna be a real treat !!! Indeed the second one was harder but with the usual strategy (use both attackers to take the ennemies down one by one) worked perfectly with healing once only.
3) The inventory system makes my day and slightly reminds me of my favorite ever (in KOTOR actually).
4) During the second battle, the lifebar of the first ennemy I had got rid of stayed on with a negative value, which of course doesn't matter to me, but I prefer reporting it anyway.
5) When I click on the icon on my desk (now that it's installed), a window appears and... closes immediately without letting me see anything (no winterwolves screen, no menu), so I have to re-install it from the downmoaded file every time I want to play. Is it supposed to be that way ?
6) The world map is promising : I can already imagine myself exploring for hours and unlocking new destinations !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7) Thanks for this public alpha testing : I'm gonna play more and test it every way I can !

[jack_norton]

Thanks for the compliments, and :

5) When I click on the icon on my desk (now that it's installed), a window appears and... closes immediately without letting me see anything (no winterwolves screen, no menu), so I have to re-install it from the downmoaded file every time I want to play. Is it supposed to be that way ?

Lol no! It means that the update process somehow failed and you have a copy running in background. I don't know if you're familiar with Windows process manager but you should find a renpy.exe running in background
Well, I probably better not use the autoupdater in the final build! Or maybe is time to post it in public so someone can help me debug it.

[Aashtarsrain]

Well, I erased everything, and redownloaded the alpha in another section of my PC ( in the file with all my winterwolves downloads ), and it must have felt at home 'cause it updated immediately this time, and when I left, I could reopen the game without any difficulty, don't ask me why lol but I guess it had someting to do with my computer again, and now it's fine !

[jack_norton]

Yes what is weird is that the other tester had same behaviour. First time didn't work, then it worked! I honestly have no clue what it might be...

[azureXtwilight]

Whenever I am not connected, this appears:

Code: Select all

I'm sorry, but an exception occured while executing your Ren'Py
script.

IndexError: tuple index out of range

While running game code:
 - script call at line 729 of renpy-6.11.0/common/00library.rpy
 - script at line 98 of C:\- indie dev -\games\renpy.new\Planet Stronghold\game/web.rpy
 - python at line 103 of C:\- indie dev -\games\renpy.new\Planet Stronghold\game/web.rpy.

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

  File "D:\Program Files\Planet Stronghold Alpha\renpy\bootstrap.py", line 251, in bootstrap
  File "D:\Program Files\Planet Stronghold Alpha\renpy\main.py", line 309, in main
  File "D:\Program Files\Planet Stronghold Alpha\renpy\main.py", line 93, in run
  File "D:\Program Files\Planet Stronghold Alpha\renpy\execution.py", line 243, in run
  File "D:\Program Files\Planet Stronghold Alpha\renpy\ast.py", line 566, in execute
  File "D:\Program Files\Planet Stronghold Alpha\renpy\python.py", line 953, in py_exec_bytecode
  File "C:\- indie dev -\games\renpy.new\Planet Stronghold\game/web.rpy", line 103, in <module>
IndexError: tuple index out of range

While running game code:
 - script call at line 729 of renpy-6.11.0/common/00library.rpy
 - script at line 98 of C:\- indie dev -\games\renpy.new\Planet Stronghold\game/web.rpy
 - python at line 103 of C:\- indie dev -\games\renpy.new\Planet Stronghold\game/web.rpy.

Ren'Py Version: Ren'Py 6.11.0c

How about making the auto-updater off? Not everyone plays with their internet onn

[jack_norton]

Heh it just needs better error handling. Spiky Caterpillar made a new version, I'm going to try that one. Actually maybe you could try it, placing that web.rpy in game folder, deleting the old web.rpyc ?

[jack_norton]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjiKsjQrgZw&hd=1
adding new SFX and feedback (floating number showing damage done). I am unsure if to add the effects based on the weapon damage type, or the enemy type ? probably better the first idea so people have an additional clue which kind of bullets your weapon is firing.

[sake-bento]

That was a lot of fun~


Issues:
I'm getting the same behavior that Aashtarsrain got with the opening and closing down immediately.

At the end of the training session, I got an error that shut the game down. I was playing the male character as a psyonic, two ants and been defeated, and I thought I was about to beat the last one. traceback.txt is attached.

When you select which enemy to attack, that enemy's tab doesn't light up. It made me think that the game was forcing me to attack the enemies in order.

In the inventory, if you have two first aid kids already, and you want to equip the two first aid kids you got, equipping just swaps the two you have equipped with the two that you want to equip. Is there any way to equip all four first aid kits at the same time?


Misc:
The interface is really easy to figure out. I speed read through the tutorials and tried to mess around with the controls to see if I could pick it up on my own, and it was fairly simple. Introducing all the different types of damage and skills from the very start is actually a little overwhelming. I thought I'd have to memorize all the icons and other things right away. When I was playing, it turned out to be a lot simpler, and much more fun.

[jack_norton]

For the autoupdater, probably spiky caterpillar's modified one would be a better test since he added more error handling, haven't been able to try it yet (today was insane heat here so didn't work much argh).

Your bug is new, did it crash in the battle or you defeated last enemy? (I somehow do a divide by zero but don't understand if was in battle, or while displaying the statistics screen after battle).

Yes the enemy click doesn't work really well - originally I was using imagebuttons so you could click directly on the enemy, then had to change it, but now since the whole battle is a screen (using the new powerful screen language) I think I might be able to put taht back. Clicking on the target picture directly is much more intuitive. You can also use TAB key to cycle through the target, I put a tooltip but is possible to miss it

Your first aid question if I understood correctly is if you can merge all the kits together? like you have 3 kits of variable quantity but merge all so they fit one single slot? If so, I need to add that yet

I'm overall happy since there seems to be less bug than I thought (for an alpha version!) and everyone says it's very simple/intuitive to use and that was important for me

[sake-bento]

I think the crash came before I defeated the enemy, but I'm not sure. I was firing what I assumed would be the killing shot, and then it crashed.

Yeah, I think it would be cool to merge the kits together. It'll save more inventory space that way, too, I think.

[jack_norton]

Cool then must be in statistics screen
And yes, all items of similar type will merge together, the way I coded the inventory is quite simple to do that (a bidimensional array with item id, and quantity value).