Hey thanks for the comment, and of course the video feedback! That's actually super valuable, so thank you for taking the time to record and share. I'll dig into the softlock that ended the vid - I don't know why that would have hung the turns, but I did spend a ton of time in the 48 hour grace period fixing race conditions and state machine issues that caused softlocks like you encountered. But I must not have gotten everything :)
The feedback you gave here and in the video is very accurate. I think the big thing is being more clear about "what" is happening on the screen, who's turn it is , etc. I think there should also be a lot more excitement given to bluffing and calling bluffs. The game just kinda plods along now, and even when you figured out what was happening in the game, the excitement and fun were sapped out.
I like your suggestions about giving Abe some voice lines and other animations - I agree! That would add so much and make him more fun to play against. And good feedback about the end animation too
To your point about Abe "cheating" - the CPU player has a decision algorithm for its turn that knows the dice in the pool, the dice it rolled, and how many times you rerolled. It has no knowledge of your dice faces. It has a precalculated odds table based on the pool dice to evaluate how "likely" the hand you claim is - since there are only 2/5 dice unknown, there is only a limited set of combinations left, so I could make Abe seem really smart :) However, his decision making is static and can be manipulated or guessed after a bit
It's gratifying to hear it felt like he knew what he was doing - I worked pretty hard on the decision tree. But I think I made him too "strong" a player.
- I think it would be a fun opportunity for the human player to catch when he makes an obvious error like claiming a hand that isn't possible
- I think he should also be more trusting, or at least dubious, where he tries a few times to get a feel for the odds before calling a player bluff
Also, while watching you play, I realized that Abe bluffs WAAAY more than I gave him credit for. You caught him on bluffs that I would have totally believed.
Thanks again for taking the time to play and give feedback.