itch.io

Cool, thanks!

Sorry for the slow reply, I had a vague memory of deciding not to go Creative Commons, but after some thought I think it's better to make them creative commons after all. So I just uploaded a new version with a license.

I think if you're making a jam about disability it's really important to encourage developers to make their games accessible, so disabled people can actually play them. There's various guides to game accessibility around the place, here's one I wrote about VNs specifically https://spiralatlas.github.io/making-your-visual-novel-accessible/

Not every game can be accessible to every person, and "accessibility" isn't a clearcut thing, so I'm not saying you should make it compulsory. But you should suggest that developers seriously consider making their games as accessible as they can.

I'd also suggest clarifying what exactly you mean by "content warning", since that is also not clearcut. The number of things people CAN warn for is endless, what specifically do you consider necessary to warn for? One I'd suggest is flashing lights, which is a major accessibility issue.

Ahh, thank you, that's so lovely to hear, I'm really glad you enjoyed it :)

It is not, sorry.

Your post is well timed, because I just made a tutorial and then forgot to add a link! So thanks :) https://spiralatlas.github.io/tutorial:-making-a-toon-shaded-background/

Thank you!

Ha, nicely done :)

Thank you!

It's been released. I was originally planning on adding more features but decided to leave it as is, so there's some sideplots which didn't get fleshed out but the main storyline is fully complete.

It is intended to be accessible to blind players, and I had some blind people test a similar game and they said it seemed ok. Specifically, there's a self voicing feature which reads out the dialogue and text on user interface things like buttons, and the game starts with the option to add extra image descriptions for things like character sprites, music, and backgrounds. I included a general guide to the controls in the main folder. If you press v it will activate self voicing.

That said, I haven't had any feedback from blind players on this specific game, so if you hit any issues or just have general suggestions please let me know! I'm disabled myself, though not in a way which affects my vision, so accessibility is very important to me, but I also know how easy it is for people to miss things. One obvious thing I'd have liked to do if I'd had the energy is add more descriptions of character expressions, but hopefully you can extrapolate most of them from the dialogue.

I really hope you are able to play and enjoy the game!

https://github.com/spiralatlas/misc/blob/main/void.html I'll take this down once I know you've downloaded it.

I love how this game plays with the tropes and expectations of a personality quiz. A friend without an itchio account asked me to let you know they found a bug in the code making it impossible to ever see the melancholy end, they did up a bugfix I can link if it would be useful.

This is great fun, thanks for making it! The one thing that would improve it would be the option to mark which squares are definitely *not* filled, but it's also great as is :)

Definitely :)

Yeah, for Pride or Prejudice I decided not to be so restrictive.

This is an interesting idea, and a cool fact! I've turned off custom honorifics for now because a beta player said they found them too confusing, but will think about the potential of 'friend'. 

Hi! Sorry for the slow reply, I was having trouble grasping what you were describing and thought it might be clearer if I waited a little but I'm still not quite getting it. However, I am indeed very interested to see your code, and am sure I'll understand it better once I experiment with it. Thank you for going to so much effort! 

I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know if you have any issues.

I don't know if you saw but I was inspired to add the option to remove some gender restrictions so thank you :)

I must admit that I haven't looked at the Northanger Abbey code in so long that I don't entirely trust my ability to interpret it, but I think it tests whether the main character is a cis woman. Which is pretty narrow! I've actually been thinking of adding the ability to skip all the gender restrictions, they seemed like a good idea when I made the game but have ended up impacting the enjoyment of a lot of players. So you've given me an extra push in that direction!

Thank you, that's great to hear :)

:D

Good luck! Also if you're changing pronouns in text I found this useful: https://npckc.itch.io/pronoun-tool

Ah, thank you, it feels nice to have all those little details appreciated! I do intend on writing things up as I go when I'm sure I have a technique locked down, if only for my own future reference. Currently my posts don't cover the things you've listed but I will hopefully get there eventually. I post any tutorials on https://spiral-atlas.dreamwidth.org/, and link to them on my twitter https://twitter.com/spiral_atlas

I have written two games that do things like that: Pride or Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, and you are welcome to use the code if you can untangle the mess. But unfortunately I can't easily make an example game with this sort of functionality using Sprite Maker code.

Sprite Maker uses layeredimages, because they make the code relatively easy to read. But I couldn't figure out how to get a layeredimage to do all the things I wanted, such as changing based on a gender toggle. So Northanger Abbey, Pride or Prejudice, and the dollmaker within Sprite Maker, all use DynamicDisplayables instead of layeredimages.

You could turn a Sprite Maker sprite into a DynamicDisplayable but it would be a bit fiddly, and the final code would end up looking pretty different. I should probably write that up, along with how I use DynamicDisplayables in general, since some people might find it useful.

It's quite possible that there is a way to do things like this with layeredimages, I just don't know it myself.

The problem isn't the randomisation, it's that the various dollmaker variables are elements of an array, which Renpy doesn't store in save files. I finally figured out how to store dollmaker variables in a way Renpy will save for Pride or Prejudice, and have been meaning to edit this project to use the same technique, but hadn't gotten around to it. It'll require some fiddly editing so may take me a little while to edit in and then test, but it's definitely on my to do list!

Oh wow using examples in the title screen is such a good idea, I can't believe I didn't think of it! I did this in the version I just uploaded. 

I'll poke at making the examples only show up on a first playthrough. 

The example sprites are intended as, well, examples, since they use dollmaker output and you can see how they're called in script.rpy. But I guess some people could find the fact that there's also code to run the dollmaker in there confusing/intimidating, and it wouldn't be too hard to make a little example project. I'll see if I can make something that feels useful.

Thanks for the great suggestions!

Thanks for this! After poking my code I remembered that I actually fixed this months ago but forgot to upload the fixed version, so I'm grateful you pointed it out.  It should work now.

Thank you :)

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Ah, that's great to hear! Whenever I test the feature I keep seeing characters I can imagine having fun stories written about them :)

Oh sorry about that! I've fixed it. Thanks for your other suggestions, too, those'll require some more thought but I am definitely going to poke at them.

Thanks, I hope it's helpful!

Thank you so much, it's great to hear people like what I have so far!

Thanks!

A supernatural romance, maybe :D

Yeah, it's the start being the same that gives me an unpleasant jolt of "Oh no I screwed up", I realise that's not the case pretty quickly because of the visuals and sound but that doesn't make the jolt less unpleasant.

This is a lot of fun, I really like that a mis-click only slows you down instead of causing the game to stop like in most Minesweeper clones. One simple suggestion: have the correct click sound more different to the incorrect click one, I kept getting an unpleasant jolt of "oh no I broke a fossil!" when I hadn't. 

I would be interested to see it, yes! My email address is fractalbestiary at gmail.