I’ve got a few of the mechanics working in my story, and a limited area with some things that happen. I’d like some feedback. Anyone interested?
I appear to be completely and irrevocably stuck here.
The King awaits his entourage.
The King awaits in the center of the Grand Hall for breakfast to be ready.
There is no way out and no way forward.
You may want to add an option to restart at will, since it is a testing sort of thing.
Draw sometimes cards, and eventually your brothers will come downstairs. I’m not sure how you got in, because getting past the first storylet requires the key that gives you tools to restart! No big though.
Actually, I couldn’t draw cards either. 100% stuck there!
Bugs found on restart: I drew Sometimes cards during breakfast by misclick. Butler comes in. I ask about clothes. HE takes me to the bath/dressing room for clothes. I don’t think I was supposed to be able to do this. Hilariously, it showed that my ENTIRE family was still in the room, too. GOing back to the dining room, my brothers someow vanished but the king didn’t. Whoops,
I seem to have run into a problem at dinner.
The King addresses the assembly formally.
“Good morning, everyone!” the King says, standing on his chair so that even you can see him over the candelabras on the table. “Let’s see…any news? Hmnnn…”
Once again, no way to draw cards, no way to continue. It’s like an autofire card that just won’t give me an option to move on.
EDIT: Morning Panto is several flavors of broken. It doesn’t seem to realize that I am, in fact, not observed at all. Once I get out of bed, it says that I have to be in bed to play it but will let me play it anyway.
edited by MidnightVoyager on 12/20/2012
Actually - are you running out of actions? The bottom of the passkey has a “refresh actions” branch that doesn’t cost an action to play and should let you use it.
Awesome, thank you for finding that Walter can kidnap you during breakfast! Should be fixed. You can’t draw his card when you’re at breakfast. That’s his nap time.
OH duh. You said dinner. I had forgotten you could even get to dinner! Right. I don’t have dinner programmed to continue. If I unlock that and make sleep work, you can actually get around the time carousel.
I need to drop the King out when entering the North Wing/Dining room.
I seem to work up a sweat at Fatigued 4, but I cannot shower to remove my fatigue until Fatigued 5. The end result is that I shower to remove the sweat and immediately regain it.
Fixed, now it sets to 3 if your fatigue >=4. Thank you!
Thank you for intrepidly testing the construction site that is the game. My next goal is to get the dinner phase working so someone can complete an entire day.
Oh - regarding morning Panto…that’s a weird bug. Its limited to the bed area and can only be drawn there and is supposed to be unplayable per the documentation and the tool tip if you’re somewhere else. I had posted about this misleading message…but it actually works better if you can play it out of bed instead of being stuck with the card. I should email support about that message if that’s not functioning as intended.
This is a bit more of a feel thing, but it seems my hand gets filled up with time cards frequently. While waiting for breakfast, this is actively hindering and makes you late. It kinda discourages using the opp cards.
EDIT: Also when you get … uh, when your brain gets fizzy, you don’t lose knowledge of the dirt in the windowsill.
edited by MidnightVoyager on 12/21/2012
That happens and is partly a game play mechanic. It should decrease when I start adding more atmosphere cards. Thanks for noticing though. I do have a way to alter it if its still too frequent when the game is more fleshed out.
There is a spell that will become available later that allows you to “hold time” and discard an hourglass. Ill see if I can get it on the passkey for you,or if its really annoying I can tweak you key of dreams which will allow you to play a discard branch on the hourglass cards.
Thank you for testing! I know there’s not much in yet, but does the world seem interesting at least? When I get the full day carousel and dinner working the intention is you can just wait for things to recur if you miss them on one go round.
Right! The brain fizzy card has a huge list of stuff it affects and I’ve not added to it lately. On the list!
[quote=HanonO]That happens and is partly a game play mechanic. It should decrease when I start adding more atmosphere cards. Thanks for noticing though. I do have a way to alter it if its still too frequent when the game is more fleshed out.
There is a spell that will become available later that allows you to “hold time” and discard an hourglass. Ill see if I can get it on the passkey for you,or if its really annoying I can tweak you key of dreams which will allow you to play a discard branch on the hourglass cards.
Thank you for testing! I know there’s not much in yet, but does the world seem interesting at least? When I get the full day carousel and dinner working the intention is you can just wait for things to recur if you miss them on one go round.[/quote]
Oh, I’m definitely interested! And I felt rather accomplished when I bumbled into how to get to the other tower.
Hooray! The other tower! I’m very curious of how that flows. Does it seem like a deliberate puzzle to get there? You said “bumbled” which is awesome because I’m hoping that most people will miss initial stuff and keep finding more depth. You just tried stuff and it eventually happened and surprised you?
edited by HanonO on 12/22/2012
Another specific question: My game starts a lot differently than most SN stories in that usually you get a lot of background information and choose a character or grind to it. I just toss the player in and throw all kinds of random qualities and stuff at you with little instruction. I’m hoping this isn’t annoying but that it amplifies the “WTF?” when the “fizz” happens. I do give a few minor pointers in certain places, but do you feel like it’s difficult to figure out what you’re doing? (In a small way that’s part of the effect I’m going for, and hopefully when I get the routine of the entire day all set up and that can all repeat it will make more sense.)
Have you figured out how the bear works?
Have you had the trauma deck appear, and did the effects seem to work properly?
[quote=HanonO]Hooray! The other tower! I’m very curious of how that flows. Does it seem like a deliberate puzzle to get there? You said “bumbled” which is awesome because I’m hoping that most people will miss initial stuff and keep finding more depth. You just tried stuff and it eventually happened and surprised you?
edited by HanonO on 12/22/2012[/quote]
This is exactly what happened to me. Also I figured out the bear, but it’s a bit difficult to get the moments of confidence to use it. The trauma deck appeared and seems to work fine.
I’m not sure if it’s properly set up yet, but I just got through dinner and it erased some… unusual things. Like the hole I made in the door and the knowledge of the tower. (Which I can’t get back even after going there.) I have to re-break the wall and re-take the painting.
I JUST stumbled across something in the tower, though! The box is interesting. It might be good to make it clearer when there’s nothing further interesting in the box and papers. It seems like newer content, though, so I assume you’re not done with it.
Oh shucks…right. I forgot I tied the knowledge of the tower into the status of the door. I will need to fix that.
Good idea. The spiders are quite fierce in that tower, but would it help if the text just mentioned something like “There’s so many things here, you might not find it all, even if you searched for a while.” ?
Dinner should work a bit better now; I hadn’t written out all the War Report branches which is what was stalling you on that card…and I have to get the final one which triggers major stuff.
Oh, and a secret trick if you want to stockpile some confidence in the bear at the beginning of the game:
Go up to the beam and draw sometimes cards. Walk like an acrobat and collect confidence. Draw till you get three breakage cards, then instead of selecting them, go back down to the floor. That will clear your hand and you can load M.T.R. up with confidence.
I haven’t decided if this is an exploit or not, but I guess if a player figures that out it’s not a bad thing right at the beginning since they have to break the beam eventually and it takes lots of action to grind confidence that way. I may eventually use a counter so the beam will break without player intervention if it seems too easy. Losing humiliation isn’t so useful as using Mind over Matter to dispel phobias and manias directly once you get that.
edited by HanonO on 12/23/2012