Post by danielnixon in The Machine comments

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Hi Ben,

Great game. I managed to cause a game-breaking bug. Mild spoilers below. The recollections below might be wrong or out of order. I'm working on nailing down the steps to reproduce.

Chapter 2, after joining the commune. I was living in the slum, had interacted with the commune a bit, ratted out Art when walking past the druggy house immediately east of the commune (police spontaneously arrived as I was walking past). I had taken Duo's pill myself and not delivered it to the arcade. I got myself hooked and kicked out of the slum. Duo _was not_ waiting outside to apologize for making me homeless. As a result, I had no home (the tent had someone else in it). No home means no bed means no advancing to the next day. Evol was blocking the commune telling me to go inside because something was about to go down.

On an earlier run I had discovered the secret behind the railway track. So naturally I experimented with assigning myself to the tent and advancing the day using the debug tools.

I couldn't get this to work, I think (perhaps in part) because no matter what I adjusted I couldn't unset the addicted flag.

I ended up throwing away my save.

Hopefully there are enough clues here for you to be able to reproduce the issue.

I've also noticed a small town/down typo elsewhere.

Thanks for the great game.

BenJelter1 year ago

Hey thanks so much for reporting the bug! I will try to find it in the game. In case this happened I did include a failsafe mechanism to restart the game without losing your achievements. You input the Konami code on the map screen and you can jump to the start of the game without losing them.

danielnixon1 year ago(+1)

Ha! I should have tried that.

Moshugan1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hi! Thanks for the most aweinspiring experience the little Game Boy has ever had! :D

But alas, I have to report a bug. And this bug wasn't resolved with the Konami code reset. It seems that despite resetting, not all variables or switches are reset. For example the railroad chains are permanently cut in my game, even after a restart. And for some reason Art won't remove the ethics chip no matter how much I tell him to do it. He gives the normal dialogue which implies that he did it if I tell him to remove the chip. But once I'm in prison he will not come to save me anymore... He is not in the prison but the news says that the police apprehended him BECAUSE he was equipped with an ethics chip. (If I tell him to keep it, he will be in the prison)

I should add that this was probably caused by me tinkering with the options found in the secret lab.

BenJelter1 year ago

Hey thanks for the high praise! I really appreciate it! And thanks for playing!

Basically bugs should be expected at any point in your game if you have used the computers. They're to mess around with the game but in a game breaking way. If you start a fresh playthrough from the beginning and you still find this issue it could be something for me to look into but what you are describing doesn't seem possible without using the computers. That variable definitely gets cleared. I will comb through the code though. Do you have a digital or physical copy?

If you found the secret room it is stored across playthroughs so that you can easily access it. I did that intentionally so that if you wanted to use the computers you wouldn't have to go through that process every time.

Moshugan1 year ago

Thanks for the reply. Your avatar in the game did clearly warn me of messing up with the game, but I didn't take it seriously. :D I was time traveling a lot because I tried to win the lottery. Well, I guess I'll make a backup of the old save and start afresh. It's okay, I understand the risk involved with wantonly messing up with the settings.

I haven't encountered any bugs before using the computers, so I don't think you need to comb the code for now. I have the digital copy which I'm playing on a Super Famicom through SD2SNES flash cartridge. It has Super Game Boy functionality so I can play GB games on the TV. :D

BenJelter1 year ago

What a cool way to play! I think my games made in the future with GB Studio 3.0 are going to have pretty nice SGB support. It's kind of somewhere in between an original Gameboy and a Gameboy Color. What palette are you using for the game?

Moshugan1 year ago

I tried playing with gray scale palette with black borders, but the contrast between the different hues wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I ended up using the default palette which is white, lighter and darker orange, and dark blue.

I actually thought you had implemented some SGB features, because the first time I read Yoki's logs in Room 3 the GB border turned from gray to pink! I haven't managed to reproduce it, so it was definitely buggy. :D

Here's some screenshots, kinda hard to capture on a phone camera how good it actually looks:
(the border in these photos look like different hue due to how the camera works)

BenJelter1 year ago

That's a great palette! I actually started the project in GB Studio 1.2 so I planned the game to have one palette throughout at first. It was similar. It was a white, a mustard, a desaturated purple, and black. I think the only major difference with the one you used is that it's more saturated.

itch.io

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