Re: Bounty
Tried it as well and Lies covered most of the bugs/bigger issues I ran into. Did have to download the game my computer though, rather than playing it in the browser (Firefox) because the browser version crashed on the third day. No crashes with the standalone client.
Other than this post, I'd received an e-mail saying that the browser version was constantly crashing after passing a day or two. I
think the update I just pushed out fixed this issue. Let me know if it's still happening, because it's difficult for me to reproduce.
Is the XP bonus from Versatility working? After finishing the first game, did a quick test on an elf without it and seemed like I got the same amounts of XP as with the human that had it. If it wasn't working and the XP from an encounter should be going from 2->3 it seems like a reasonable perk but if it was working and the 2 points of XP I was getting was the upgraded one and 1 the baseline, the perk seems a bit too strong, seeing as it doubles your XP gains. (Or maybe I'm reading it wrong and it's just supposed to be giving +1 XP once for each type of sex skill. Checked and that doesn't seem to be happening either.)
Same question on the Mastery perk. Picked it, the way it's described it should either give you a chance to choose two other perks immediately after, or on the next level up it should give you access to two otherwise restricted perks (though the latter isn't suggested by the chart on the blog). Neither of those happened.
I just realized Versatility wasn't working as intended. Base XP gained from individual encounters is 2, raised to 3 with Versatility. This XP bonus does not apply to sex-act experience, and only the base experience to unlock an additional perk. I read this post before releasing the latest version and realized that this racial trait got borked when applied to two non-elf races, and the Versatility/Mastery line should now be enabled for both races, with Mastery now giving two perks as it was supposed to. I didn't quite get Versatility running as it should.
Half Elf characters do have an built-in racial that gives them an increase in experience gained that's going to be tweaked with sub-races in the next update. Right now, it should give an additional experience in every encounter, but after the next update, it should provide an increase in all normal encounters, and a decrease in any group encounters.
I modified Mastery to increase the character level by 1, which for now, only increases the experience required to gain the next perk. I admit that this is possibly the weakest nerf in existance. I might modify humans after going through and adding the variations for locations - I'll have to see where they stand when everyone else has additional racial options.
This bring me to another issue though: Once you get high enough fame managing hygiene becomes virtually impossible, even with luxurious soaps unless you're in a holy city. Using the soap would get me to around 16 and then the day would immediately reduce it to zero again. It's just the number of encounters.
This is probably the most common thing I've heard so far, and I've been kicking around a few ideas on how to improve this in a way that's loyal to the concept but flexible to the player. Sometime in the next few weeks, I'll roll out something that will help control fame and clients a little better. It should also make clothing a bit more exciting, and scrolls of charm more tame while still being useful.
How committed are you to the one turn = one day mechanic? It might help to smooth out the text narratively if one turn would be a longer span of time, such a week. It would allow you to smooth out the curve of events a bit more. Sometimes it doesn't make sense for all of the stuff the stuff that does to happen in the span of a single day and it would make more sense for the part time jobs to hire you for more than a day at a time.
Such a change would mean problems elsewhere, granted, so just something to think about.
I'll have to think long and hard about this one. I'll have to see how things fall into place.
You have a good core of a game here, really good for an alpha. All it really needs is meat on its bones in the way of bunch of events and variations and it sounds like you're well on your way when it comes to work on that front. Keep up the good work and don't take any of what I've written as demands for immediate changes now or anything of that nature.
Thanks, I'm glad it's peaking some interest. I'm not concerned about feedback sounding demanding or harsh, because I always like hearing feedback, suggestions, and ideas. I mean, even if they're things I don't think should make it, good points get brought up that either need to be solved in a different manner, or lead to different types of improvements.
At this point in development where I have a general list of additions with a lot of planning left for the future, I feel like it's good to just have everything thrown at me, and see what sticks. Even large strange features are still possible, because they can always be sectioned off to it's own timeline or something. That's really why I wanted to drive timelines in the way I did, because they're not just simple difficulty changes as much as modes that can follow different rules. After 1.0 releases, I could up and release a timeline in a whole different setting with different races, perks, gender, endings, etc. I probably spent too much time making sure I don't get locked into a feature corner.
May have been me not understanding the exact meanings/mappings of accept/inside/resist/decline. So, accept is decline-inside, inside is accept-all, and resist is? The option page could have definitions.
I went ahead and put a reader on the options screen that explains what the choices mean to help explain what's going on. Hopefully that'll help.
Strangely only seems to happen at that phrase join? The layout everywhere else is legible though sometimes oddly hinted.
I finally found out what was doing it, and I was wrong about it being the font. In the original concept of the game back in December, I was using a function to assemble the text that was
inefficient. Later down the line, I started updating everything, but I never finished the process. Simply put, it was shoving text before the space, pushing the space to the end of the paragraph, where it was undetectable.
Now I'm playing whack-a-mole with a period that won't die.
I think a first stab could still be pretty abstract. A graph with four or five connections per node would work, you'd just want to give the player an indication of direction or goal, either just number of steps to the 'exit' or compass points with the current direction to the final city marked.
I completely misinterpreted the original thought as a fully generated map of the interior of the city, like a layout of roads and houses, with the locations being placed within, maybe rivers, natural city shapes, walls/towers, etc. Hah, it made me a bit sweaty.
