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hythrain9 days ago(+1)

Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!

So fun fact: I hate fishing mini games in other games. The reason why is because these games are typically a lot more fast paced, and the fishing mini games slow that right down. I don't have this problem when it's just a fishing game, though, because then I'm set to take my time. That said, the design and speed of this would be perfect as a mini game for some larger game.

So here are the things I noted while playing that I felt could be adjusted...

First, I feel like the environment shouldn't reset and freeze every time you start to catch a fish. I noticed this a lot, where I'd see something cute in the background then the moment I had to do the ring timing it would disappear and the rest of the game would just stop. I'd say just let things keep going.

Second, despite what I said a moment ago about how I view fishing mini games, there's one thing that other games do that this one doesn't: the moment the player is informed of a bite, the action to catch it begins. In your game, there's a pause before you begin. This feels awkward, as I'm always primed to start right away and have to remind myself to wait. I think it would be better if the moment you get the notification of the fish bite, the ring starts up.

I also felt like if I messed up and reeled in too early, it should pull the reel out so I only need to click twice: once to prepare for the next cast and then another to do the cast. Right now, you have to do three clicks which isn't how the rest of the game works. Even being late to reel in has you only need to click twice to go again.

When I noticed the "Next page" button, I began exploring the other pages to see what variety it had. When I went to go back, though, I noticed that the button to do so says "First page" instead of "Previous page," which is what it should say as it goes back one page at a time.

Lastly, I noticed some rather big lag spikes at time in the game. While this could be because of playing on browser, it could also be a problem in the code. I would suspect it's more code related as I only ever noticed it when I was trying to catch a fish with the Slippery ring.

While this is the end of my notes... I need to ask a question. You have this game listed as "Mostly AI." Looking at what there is in the game, I feel like this could've easily been made without any AI. I've not programmed in a long time, but I know that this is some pretty basic stuff here. I don't mean to judge but I feel like you should try to remake this game without the use of AI. It would be a great way to learn how to program!

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hf-doodle-studio8 days ago

Thank you so much for playing it live and for writing all of this down — this is the most

detailed feedback I've ever had on anything I've made. And yes please, I'd love the VOD link

when it's up!

Also, my views jumped to 52 on September 2nd, which is by far the most this game has ever had

in a single day. Was that the day you played it?

Your notes were specific enough that I could go find the causes in the code, so I fixed all

five and just uploaded the new build.

1. The pause after the bite — you were exactly right, and it was literally a "+ 500" sitting

in the code. Half a second between "Bite!" and the ring appearing. The ring now starts the

moment the bite appears. The ring's own timing is unchanged, so the difficulty is the same.

2. The background freezing — I'd frozen it on purpose, because redrawing it costs 18ms and a

frame is only 16.7ms, so it stuttered every 0.7 seconds. But looking again, when the three

background frames are pre-baked, swapping them costs 0ms. So the background keeps living now,

and a critter already walking past finishes its walk.

3. The extra click after reeling in too early — I found why. When you're late, the game ends

the round by itself. When you're early, your click is what ends it, so it cost one more press.

Same mistake, more work. They're the same now.

4. "First page" — a plain mistake, and only in the English text. Korean, Japanese and Chinese

all said "Previous page" already. Fixed.

5. The lag on Slippery — this one turned out to be the most interesting, because it wasn't lag.

Slippery is a fish trait where the shrinking ring drops to 30% speed partway through. And you

weren't the first person to call it lag: someone else said the exact same thing a while back.

When two people who've never met read it the same way, the effect isn't communicating. The

problem was never the speed — it was that nothing said it was on purpose, because a frame drop

and a deliberate slowdown look identical on screen. So now the crayon line shivers while the

ring is crawling. Lag freezes; a shivering line doesn't.

I wrote a devlog about all five if you're curious.

About the AI question — that's a fair thing to ask. The design, the fish, the rhythms and every

decision are mine; the code was written with AI. I'm still learning to program, and I've bounced

off it before, so hearing "you could make this yourself" from someone who actually played it

means a lot. It's something I want to work toward.

Thank you again — genuinely. Number 5 especially, I only found because you narrowed it down to

"only with the Slippery ring."

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