Posted July 15, 2022 by QuentinWH
Another large and pretty important update. This one will be very important for new players. There is a lot to cover so be ready for quite a few words.
I recently submited Sinathir to AGDG demo day and I got quite a lot of feedback. Be it dirrect or indirect. Quite a few big problems with the game became apparent. Some were just said out loud, but some are just observations on my end. The biggest problems were:
This is pretty self explanatory. I adressed this issue in previous patch without having to change the way maps look in a drastic way.
Sinathir just kinda... Starts. You get the main quest, play through simple optional tutorial and that's it. I decided to add one new NPC right next to your hideout. He will give you a set of very simple tasks together with an entry to your quest log. Goals are as follows:
This goals are given to you once you finish the previous one. This is quite a good way to give new players some simple goals and teach them about the game. I also "forced" Billy to be at his house for the first two weeks (one if you play the tutorial). This should make things much easier too, since hints tell you to visit him, but there was a chance he was not there.
This problem can't be fully fixed, because some people can't read, or just assume too much. They don't read the main page at all, see game in rpg maker and assume it is just a random linear rpg where you kill everything you see and grind levels (Or that it is a porn game because there is a anime girl on the pictures and there are stats like weight and so on). Then they die to the first scavenger, get lost in the open world and don't bother learning the game. This doesn't apply to everyone. I'm sure many of you did the same things, but you stopped and realised that this is different than your everyday final fantasy clone and you adapted and tried again.
I don't want to dumb down the game so everyone can play it. I just want to make the initial minutes of the game explain things better and more so you can have easier time learning it if you are willing. The rest is up to the player. That's why I added the above NPC and added the hint system. If you are interested in the game and willing to learn it, these will help you out and make the process easier. If you already know how the game works, you can turn the tips off and skip the tutorial and none of your time is wasted. If you are a new player, skip the tutorial and ignore the hints and then you have no idea what to do, then you have only your self to blame. Sorry for being slightly salty here. I play games like CataclysmDDA quite often so experimenting and learning the game by my self is normal to me. This just made me realise that most people don't like doing that, which I understand. Now you should have easier time learning the game.
This is completely understandable. I wrote more about this and why I can't just load vector fonts into memory in previous posts. It's not because I'm a bad programmer (I am a bad programmer), but there is a "bug" in the game exe, that can't be worked around unless you decompile it or reverse engineer it, which, one, not exactly legal and, two, way above my skill level.
Quite a few people didn't even play the game because they were asked to install custom fonts. Completely understandable. This kind of thing was accepted maybe in 2002, not now. So I solved this problem by getting rid of fonts all together.
More precisely, I started using bitmaps as fonts. This means that all letters are basicaly pictures that are packed in the game files, so now you don't have to install anything and as a bonus, the game should work slightly better on different systems (You still have to use some kind of emulation to make the game run on linux or mac)
Bear in mind that this is still quite an early version. All screens should work alright, but there might be some text cutting off, missing colors and other weirdness, but nothing game breaking. I will be working on fixing this in upcoming updates.
Another thing that the improved beginning section should improve to some degree. Added new hints, changed graphics of some stations so you can tell what they are by glance,... There is still more I can do but I don't want to bloat the tutorialisation too much. I want some things for the player to figure out.
And those were the main things I focused on this month. I also added more weapons, fixed some bugs, made the text window smaller and did other minor alterations, but improving the tutorial and converting the text was my focus.
This version should be compatible with previous versions, but if you come across some error, then you can just play through the old version and transfer the unlocks file to new version once you are done.
Full changelog:
I might release another version this month, but it is quite possible that I will be late with the main goal, adding another hangout option. I don't think this is that bad when you look at all the other things I did this month though.
As always. If you find a bug, report it here, or send me an e-mail. Can't fix it if I don't know about it.