Post by HeyMarmalade in A tale 4 millions b.c. comments

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I'm not ashamed to admit that I had a dictionary open the entire time. I did learn quite a few things from that period now though.

The music choice was nice, made you feel in the moment. Inane Cat already talked about the same feedback I had, that the repeat was quite startling.

I admit (again) I don't know much about this time frame, but everything sounded accurate and realistic to me.

I actually really like the fact you chose this idea and location, you never see much games or stories based on this period. I ended up getting the Story teller for my conclusion.

I didn't run into any bugs and I didn't see any spelling/grammatical issues myself, and I think a certain yellow someone will love the epilogue.

Even the small DnD jokes, and the sheer exasperation of the player on another attack was funny.

The only suggestion I have is adding in a encyclopedia, if the player can click on the word like "Deinotherium" and learn about it in game, then it keeps their submersion.

On that note, how did you like working with Quest? I thought about it for mine, but went with Twine instead.

Great job though, and congratulations on the submission! I'll have to try out the rest of the choices.

bingus5 years ago (1 edit)

I'm glad you enjoyed it! For me it was the contrary, I started with Twine, gave up (curse you, audio problems) and moved to Quest.

Quest has its ups and downs: it is simple to write, add images and music, and there is a dedicated community of devs using the platform, but it is very easy to get lost while writing (unlike Twine), you can only install the application on Windows (hence the upper link I gave for the Mac users), and there is little assistance on the web when it comes to coding duo of it being overshadowed by other engines such as Twine, Unity, etc. (all which are good on their own).

In other words, in both engines you can make great games, but it takes time and effort to get used to each individually.

Ironically, the hardest parts of the progress of making this game was not writing it, but adding the music and publishing it, duo for the engine's limitations.

Don't feel guilty about having to gaze at a dictionary, or having to look at Wikipedia each 15 seconds to know what is the difference between a "Deinotherium" or a "Homotherium". Scientists are not the best when it comes to naming. :/

I'm interested on your idea of adding an encyclopedia in-game, of course in order to do that I would need to find how to code it, and again there is not much help on the web.

Still, thanks for putting time on my game and review. It really means to me, as cheesy as it sounds.

HeyMarmalade5 years ago

I see your point. I took a quick look at it again after our conversation. Gives you more guidance on what you can do, but doesn't quite have that same visual picture to keep everything organized. It looks like it uses JavaScript, is that right? I'll have to try it out sometime.

Plus, it probably doesn't help all sorts of companies use Quest as a name. I tried looking up something, using "Quest Engine..." And I got a few company pages.

I think the CSS absolutely destroyed me in mine, so I hear you about the music.

To answer your question, I saw something similar in a few other submissions. When clicking on a word they lead you to a new page to explain what it means, then another button to take you back to your original page, I was looking into it with Twine myself. I think a pop-up would be just as good though too. Players could read the pop-up and close it without any affect to the story. Kind of like this?

If you are feeling fancy though, a hover-over could work as well! I would suggest a journal as well, but I'm not sure if it'll fit into the theme of the game.

bingus5 years ago (1 edit)

Thanks for the tips, I will try your recommendations soon enough. It is still rather confusing (I have no coding skills, aside for copy and pasting) to comprehend the steps, yet I will give it a shot. A journal could work, but you will need to show how it would be done.

Also, since you also had problems with adding music to your game, here's the code I used on Quest to put in the music:

It is very simple, at the cost of each time the player clicks a game link, it will repeat back from the beginning, causing the minor audio problems I had at my game.

Now that I think of it, since we both are looking to adding the same features in our games, and your game is still in W.I.P., you could trade me tips as you continue on to finish your game while I add those on mine as well. Just saying...

HeyMarmalade5 years ago

Don't be afraid to reach out to me or anyone else with any coding questions! That's how most of us learn is through forums, youtube, others, and breaking the engine with some testing code and trying desperately to fix it.

The journal idea is just how in other games have a quest log or journal to keep hold of information. You'll have to make a inventory, or character screen, to hold it and then set it to record certain events when they happen. You'll have to get it to go back to whatever screen the player was on before. It's mostly just a List.

Oo, quest code is different. The clicking might be causing some of the issue. It sounds like it's restarting again each time a player clicks the continue. You'll probably have to make the song play without player interference, or if you wanted different songs, the first song only starting up on one player click and playing throughout the next pages without being attached. You could get it set on a certain page too. Like "Music starts when player hits this page". But, without more knowledge in quest, I couldn't say how to go about it yet.

Of course! I don't mind trading tips, and if you ever need a playtester just send me out a message. You have experience in Quest now, and given the chance, I'll probably start asking for tips myself, plus you write so well! I have experience in coding too, so if you ever have a question I could help or at least point you in the right direction.

itch.io

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