Post by ChristinaC2323 in Lekta - language puzzle comments

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I've tried now 6 times. I find understanding the languages very easy, but for whatever reason the ingredients in the bowl always results in death. I do them in the order they appear (and exclude the negative one), and I've been doing two for any that are plural. It's unclear which mushroom to choose (fronded or not) when called for, but I have plenty of lives so I try both. I've had games where no mushroom is needed, but still it always results in death. Is there some secret to this test I am missing? Or is it just broken? I've even looked at the tips and there is nothing there beyond what I already knew.

Also, the game crashes any time you press the letter 'r'.

pandateam115 days ago

Re the mushrooms - on the charcoal art page it says which of fronded/frondless mushrooms are dangerous - but if you've tried multiple times it sounds like there could well be a bug (especially as you've clearly worked out plurality and negation). Thanks for letting me know - I'll do testing and add an update if needed (and if you've got a save at that point it should work on a new version). I'll take the current build down for the previous one while I test (I'm busy this weekend so it might not be for a little while). Thanks again - and apologies for it being frustrating

ChristinaC2323115 days ago (2 edits)

Yes, I figured it was the safe mushroom based on that text, but did not have success with either.

While you are fixing the bug, there is another bug (unless there is a reason for it that I missed):
The list of dangers always includes the word 'small mountain' on the list, but without obeying the typical spacing rules (always no space, even if language typically has spaces).

Another more major bug, if you ever reload a save, then it remembers the vocabulary words but not the grammar. Spaces between morphemes disappear and the pluralization system changes.

(EDIT):I just remembered another bug - the text that is a tool catalog sometimes the text overlaps or is cut off in the top left if the words are longer. The word 'tool' can cover the words for the colors, which in turn can run off the page.

ChristinaC2323115 days ago (1 edit)

I have some more comments/ideas for improvement.

1. For plurals, I recommend adding reduplication (lak x2 = laklak). It's possible it's already there and I just never saw it.

2. For prefixes and suffixes I recommend adding vowel harmony as a possibility. (lak -> lakwa, fig -> figwe) I saw one instance of something similar with consonants (shiks in plural was zhikz), and that was interesting.

3. The words for 'black' and 'white' (and the negative) are boring because they always fit the pattern "rV". I would recommend removing that constraint and letting them be more random.

4. Negation seems to always work the same way. I would recommend making it more like plurals with a variety of forms. (e.g. lak 'frond', zamu 'plural', o 'negator' -> lakozamu, olakzamu, zamuolak, zamulako, lakolak, olaklak, etc. etc.)

5. The word order for 'antidote' (neg-death death-poison-water) is always the same. Why not mix it up for each language? Similarly the word order in the titles of certain other texts.

6. The wording "Shovel! Dig!" on that text confused me a bit. Maybe something more ambitious like 'Dig herbs and potatoes with shovel!' - more fun to work out :)

Hope these are interesting and/or helpful!

pandateam114 days ago

This is genuinely very useful feedback, thank-you! (Incredibly precise, and you absolutely understand how it all works, so it's well-informed). I'm going to implement some of those immediately (e.g. you're right about white/black - and that's easy to fix. Adding the grammer settings to the saves is pretty simple, too). Some would magnify the complexity a lot - in a perfect world I'd like it to randomise SVO each time but that'll need some thinking about. It actually is set up to generate different possible styles of intensifier, with reduplication as one option, but I haven't used that in a puzzle yet - the problem with it for things like plurals is how hard that then makes fitting everything on the texts (if it generates heavy syllables and then they're reduplicated on top the text could be 3x as wide as its minimum version). I like the idea of vowel harmony - I haven't done things like that because I want it to be fun for people without linguistics backgrounds but I could always put behind the 'full' setting.

I've tested a bit (I need to do more) and it does sometimes generate a recipe with one of the ingredients undefined, so I will fix that and put a new build up (though it might be a while). One thing I think might be affecting its trickiness here is that on that build it generates a new recipe every time the player loses a life (so that people couldn't just brute force it) but on reflection that's quite unfair, especially given the game doesn't tell the player that (& it'd make sense someone with notes on the recipe would assume it hadn't changed before trying again). I'll change it on the next build. I did manage to complete it but it *was* inconsistent and I understand it being very frustrating after it takes time to decode everything, so I will get to fixing it..

Again - this is genuinely very helpful -> I have 2 friends who test builds for me, but they're busy people and can't always do it immediately, so hearing about things that've broken in detail like this is very handy, thanks :)

ChristinaC2323113 days ago

Ha - well you're right, I definitely didn't notice it changing after each loss of life. They way I played was always to have powerpoint open on the right half of my screen and take screenshots of all of the texts and put them up on the right. So I never looked at them again in-game.

ChristinaC2323113 days ago (2 edits)

Also I hinted at this in my suggestions but just to say it more explicitly I think it would be nice to allow vowel-only syllables or morphemes. Although I'm guessing you can't allow that for nouns because of certain styles of pluralization that require a voiced/voiceless consonant contrast. Maybe the contrast could be '' versus 'h' for those words?

ChristinaC2323113 days ago

One idea that would be fun (for me at least) is if you win/etc. that you unlock a 'quiz' or something where you are prompted with English (e.g. 'black flowers') and have to type in the translation. This would allow you to have fun actually producing text in the language!

pandateam108 days ago

OKAY I've updated it. In testing, the recipe was behaving itself (I tried re-rolling it lots of times in debug and it was working okay) and tried a complete run, so it *should* be fine now. I couldn't make it so saves work so you might have to start again if you're not sick of trying it. I fixed high-frequency things always being R+vowel

Good idea re ppt; makes sense 👍

I like the vowel-only + h idea - I'll do that when I have time to properly add new things. That quiz gives me an idea for something a bit like the end of Obra Dinn, I'll think about it... Again, thanks for the feedback, it's very useful to know how people are actually tackling it and what they like/don't

pandateam80 days ago

Would you be okay if I put your name in the credits? (It's been very useful having such specific info on what was breaking!)

ChristinaC232362 days ago (1 edit)

Yes, feel free! I also still intend to come back to it when I find the time and experience all your improvements :)

And something a bit like the end of Obra Dinn sounds great!

pandateam60 days ago

Great, I'll add that immediately :) I really do appreciate getting constructive feedback when it would have been uderstandable if you'd just got annoyed and deleted it forever, so: thanks

I've nearly finished the new endgame thing - it definitely won't be as polished as Obra Dinn, but I had some fun ideas..

itch.io

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