itch.io

Thank you for playing my game. I am both happy to hear that your experience resonated with it, and very sad that you had to go through this. I wish you well and hope your mental health will recover. Take care of yourself and your loved ones!

Hey Adam!

Thanks for reaching out! I've got your email but didn't have the chance to give it proper attention and write an answer. My schedule is quite dense lately, so sorry for the long silence. I'll answer to you as soon as I can.

Thank you!

I'm glad you've found the routine subversion part compelling, it was intentional. 

What parts of the game have you found too straightforward and on the nose? I have my ideas, of course, but I'm genuinely curious about what you have to say.

Без сумніву, одна з найкращих візуальних новел в які я грав. Захоплююся вашим технічним професіоналізмом та майстерністю оповідання. Дякую за вашу творчу щедрість повагу до гравця. Для такої невеличкої команди робота пророблена просто колосальна. Наснаги вам і успіхів у майбутніх проєктах! 

Без сумніву, одна з найкращих візуальних новел в які я грав. Захоплююся вашим технічним професіоналізмом та майстерністю оповідання. Дякую за вашу творчу щедрість повагу до гравця. Для такої невеличкої команди робота пророблена просто колосальна. Наснаги вам і успіхів у майбутніх проєктах! 

Thank you for reaching out and for your kind words! I've sent you a letter in the email you've provided. In case it won't reach you, here's my email too: petrovvalery88@gmail.com

Please accept my sincere condolences about the tragedy that has befallen you. Living in a country ravaged by a brutal war, that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of human and non-human lives and did immeasurable damage to nature, I am especially torn by the images of burned-down houses and habitats being destroyed. This is all too close to my heart. However, as my experience in Ukraine has taught me, it is in moments of despair like this that acts of human kindness, selflessness, and solidarity - your game being one of them - shine the most.

Unfortunately, I am currently in no financial position to donate to your cause. But I will do my best to spread the word about your plight and get as many people to know about your game as I can.

Thank you for doing what you are doing. I wish all the strength and resilience to your close ones who suffered from the disaster.

Надзвичайно вражений сміливістю експеримента з формою. Дуже вражаючий інтенсивний досвід, перша візуальна новела з багатьох, в яку мені було по справжньому страшно грати. Використання відео та змінених фотографій дуже додало до відчуття хорору. Граючи у гру згадав, як налякала мене свого часу "Відьма з Блер" ) 

Дуже крутий і незвичайний проект, мої вітання!

Надзвичайно вражений сміливістю експеримента з формою. Дуже вражаючий інтенсивний досвід, перша візуальна новела з багатьох, в яку мені було по справжньому страшно грати. Використання відео та змінених фотографій дуже додало до відчуття хорору. Граючи у гру згадав, як налякала мене свого часу "Відьма з Блер" ) 

Дуже крутий і незвичайний проект, мої вітання!

Це комедійний шедевр, на мій погляд ) Сподобався ваш простий і дотепний гумор, щира і незлоблива іронія і живі персонажі ;) Дуже розвеселили мене сцени з "трагічною передисторією" і зі змінами стилів відмальовки ))

Окрема подяка за загдку нашої гри! Ми завжди знали, що котики - це вірний шлях до успіху )

Це комедійний шедевр, на мій погляд ) Сподобався ваш простий і дотепний гумор, щира і незлоблива іронія і живі персонажі ;) Дуже розвеселили мене сцени з "трагічною передисторією" і зі змінами стилів відмальовки ))

Окрема подяка за загдку нашої гри! Ми завжди знали, що котики - це вірний шлях до успіху )

Your welcome )

Actually, I've just recently discussed this issue with Yahil, and they suggested quite an easy solution that they've used in their recent game: https://itch.io/t/3480251/pokemon-ant-war-game#post-9365418

Oh cool, thank you for this easy hack! I'll try using it in one of my next games

Hey, I've given your game a go and I really enjoyed it! 

Very curious to know what kind of dark magic you used to make music not stop while in dialog! As I understand, there were some sort of hackery involved?

Cool game!

Not the kind of thing I've expected from the Pokemon-like game, but it deferred from my expectations in a good way. Loved your inventiveness with the Bitsy, especially the 'combat' interface. 

Nice work!

I've been dealing with the same issue. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no way to avoid it without hacking the game in some way (

Тема - вогонь, подача - підливає масла ) Чекатиму з нетерпінням на вашу гру!

Solidarity forever! Glad you've loved my game and thanks for posting this comment :)

Вельме дякую за привітний коментар!

Дуже радий, що Вам сподобалась гра і мої скромні гумористичні потуги ) Всі ці історії, нажаль, надихалися реальним студентським життям, тому мені, коли робив ці жарти, було і весело і сумно водночас...

Щодо таблички - гарне зауваження, спробую це виправити.

Жаль, що Вам не сподобались мої неперевершені музичні композиції... жартую, музика справді спецефічна і робилась не професійними музикантами, тому розумію, що деяким людям може бути зовсім не до вподоби.

Ще раз дякую за відгук і за гарні побажання! Вам теж бажаю зустрічати у житті більше цікавих політичних ігор )

Thank you for adapting this great game! It is as enjoyable in digital format, as it is in paper.

Thank you for answering!

Sent you an email :)

Wow, cool technique! Gives me some ideas for new games instantly :)

Really appreciate your wiki, btw. I think it's a really good way to organize knowledge on different Bitsy tricks. Do you consider accepting contributions from other people? I would gladly share some of the techniques I've developed for my games!

I would have done it with exits: create an exit and set it to locked (room actions -> lock/unlock), then add a dialog to it and place where you want. You can even make it teleport the player to the previous tile, so it will appear as if the player steps back automatically when touching the water. For this just add a room action -> exit to the required tile

I've noticed that the Ukrainian loc for Bitsy has not been updated for a while. Is there a way I can help with updating it?

Also, I can translate Bitsy documentation (which I didn't know existed till recently :).

As I see it, it depends on whether you would like to make it real-time or not. If we're talking about Adventure's level of simplicity, you can go the easy way and just check when the player approaches the monster if they have a weapon or not. You can even add some probability to determining whether the strike will hit or miss, and make a simple hit points system. However, it might get a bit more complicated and messy, as you will be dealing with a lot of branching lists within branching lists.

I would say that if you want to use any autonomous movement to the NPC, you will have to use hacks.

Hello!

We had a similar conversation here: https://itch.io/t/2839532/how-does-one-roguelike-a-bitsy.

I think that Bitsy is quite suitable for making simple dungeon-crawling games. It all depends on your particular design vision and the scope of your ambitions, of course. Like, it's pretty easy to make room-to-room movement and even some sort of randomization, but I don't see how you can make combat or inventory management without some extensive hacking.

Hey, nice touch with "hiding" the character behind the tree. Will be borrowing that in my future games!

Hey, thanks for your kind words! I'm not used to thinking of myself as someone very knowledgeable in Bitsy, but from time to time I'm being reminded by other people that a lot of stuff I know is not that obvious and can be helpful if shared with others. I wish I had more time to talk more explicitly about the techniques I use to create my games; maybe in time, I'll make an advanced tutorial or something. Meanwhile, if you have any particular questions about how things work in my games, feel free to ask, and I'll gladly share any knowledge I have with you :)

Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention that the first thing you should do with this method is disable the exit with the lock/unlock function. This basically makes an exit functional as a trigger that would execute any code you want, as you've said. Thanks for bringing this up!

Hey!

So as far as I know, vanilla Bitsy doesn't contain a function to store rooms' IDs as variables. However, you can do some roundabouts to achieve kind of similar results. My way of doing it was through a bunch of branching lists. For example, in this game, the player is sent to a random room each time they go through an exit, but some conditions determine what room they will appear in.

So, as I see it, you can use a branching list as a 'variable' of sorts, that will contain all your rooms, with different conditions attached to each of them. Then when the exit is triggered, the game will run through all of the conditions and determine which room to send a player into. This is super cumbersome, though, and may even make Bitsy lag and crash, so based on my personal experience, I would say do it at your own risk. 

Hello!

Sure, write me at petrovvalery88@gmail.com.

Дякую за відгук! Радий, що Вам сподобалось. Намагатимусь тримати марку )

This game captured perfectly the strange feeling of being alone in a store early morning with overworked staff waiting for the last minutes of their night shift. Nice sketch!

I'm glad you've found my feedback inspiring! It was my pleasure.

As for the audio, have you been following the Bitsy Muse instructions and added all of the soundtracks into the folder? Also, there's an 'add bitsy audio' tool, don't know if you've used it. I didn't work for me, but maybe you'll have better luck. Unfortunately, Bitsy Muse have not been supported for some time now, as far as I understand, hence the compatibility problems with newer versions of Bitsy.

Hey, your game is splendid! Wrote a small feedback on the game page, hope you'll find it helpful.

Also, no idea how to help you with the bug :( What version of Bitsy were you using for this game? It is possible that since you've made it some updates have come up and your older version has some conflicts with them. But that's just my wild guess.

Thank you for the game!

For me, this game is a testament to why game engines like Bitsy should exist, among other things: to give voices to obscure historical narratives and bring into the light both their universal humanistic values and bizarre idiosyncratic charm. I really admire the way you've presented Guaman Poma's figure and his work: without handholdings and simplifications, with all the unique contradictions of his time and his character. I liked the kind of dialogism that Maqui brings into the picture, introducing this kind of Hamletian self-doubt, so characteristic of early modern European worldview. And it fits here perfectly since Guaman has received a European education and thus was very likely to have these kinds of thoughts when he was writing his letter. So it's interesting how this game reflects this sort of duality of traditionalism and modern thinking, which was probably characteristic of Guaman and his writings.

I also want to compliment the visual style of the game. It's one of the most lush and vibrant Bitsy games I've played, with some of the wildest color palettes and some of the most intricate and rich tilework. I especially liked traditional patterns interwoven into the spaces of the game, further enhancing the feeling of a blend between the reality of reason and the reality of myth. I liked how one of the main ideas in the story - that of weaving as a form of traditional storytelling - is consistently visualized through the images of Qipus and traditional tapestry.

Overall, this is a helluva impressive achievement for the first Bisy game :) Really glad you've made this game and shared it with the world!

Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you've found this game interesting, it is a classic worth of more attention.

Great notices, I'll definitely put them in the next update.

Oh wow, I never thought somebody would look into my shitty code. I appreciate you going the extra mile to look into it. To make it work I actually copied and pasted it into the notepad, then edited it, then copied and pasted it back in the hope that it would work fine. It was a hell of a job and quite a stressful one too. 

That 'icing on the top' metaphor is spot on. Looking back, I really feel like these quests were more of an afterthought, which, considering their heavy subjects, probably have not reflected well on their quality. But I'm glad that some people played them and find them interesting still.

Thank you for your kind words, this means a lot!

Interesting thoughts on the subject of the refugees' quest. It was actually partially inspired by my real-life experience at the beginning of the war in Ukraine (we were hiding in an underground art gallery for several days while the city was bombed). Luckily, there were no evil critics and security guards to shy us away :)

I feel like I understand what you saying regarding the resolution of the quest. Truly, the scope of my project at some point has become its curse (it never happened before, and now it happened again, haha). Creating the museum and art objects took a lot of time and effort, and when it was time to make the quests, I was already a bit jaded. Also quest creation process itself was a bit junky, due to how much code the game already had (it is worth noting, that very long scripts may make Bitsy lag and even crash from time to time). Dealing with all those technical problems made me somewhat lose the bigger picture, and this is probably why the refugees' quest resolution may feel less thematically resonant than the one of the living statue. 

In any case, thank you very much for playing the game and providing your feedback!