Myscra
Thanks as always for update and continued development. Eagerly awaiting next update.
Thanks!
I've been wondering: is this The Incredibles or The Venture Brothers?
That's a good question. I'm a big fan of both so probably a mixture. Some of the bad guys definitely fall into the more venture brothers side of things.
trying to do blaire's lvl 5 dream, i got the key from the men's locker but i cant seem to find how to get to the coach's office, any help?
NVM i found it by going through the girl's locker room? from the description when you first enter the field house it makes it sound like you go to the weights room to go upstairs to the team administration offices, not the gym room -> girl's locker -> coach office
does going dedicated with blaire put and end to the others, or can it progress to a more harem-like mindset for her? or do i go FWB for her to be accepting of MC sleeping arround? i want to keep her but dont want her sleeping around unless MC is involved
The next update gives a bit more insight into this for Blaire (I'm adding dialogue options for her).
Myscra: Any intent to allow any kind of branching in the MC's behavior? So far, it seems like he's more or less a good guy and he's upset at the corruption of the 'superheroes' society. Are you planning to have a route where he basically just abandons morality and becomes a full on "break their wills no matter what they want" supervillain, or will he remain largely an anti-hero?
Pretty much as is. Maybe a bit more cynical as he grows in power but he is a fundamentally nice guy.
I'll take these point by point.
I enjoyed the game very much so I decided to share the things I didn't like, in hope that the game can become even better:
I.
When I read I often tend to go back a few pages. Sometimes it's because of the reincorporation of some details, other times its because I just skip the text I thought I read and then I go back when I realize that I was wrong. When that happens and I use the arrows on the top left to go back, random events tend to get re-rolled and so I can't read what I wanted to read ("Wait and Observe" and work events) I don't know HTML too well, but it seems easy enough to fix by changing how you pick the random numbers.
I played around a lot with this and there are no perfect solutions, unfortunately. Take the wait and observe events for example, if I set the randomness to when you enter the area, you would have to leave and reenter to get a different event.
II.
Some random events should happen only once; the main character shouldn't be surprised multiple times that the old man can see him, or scenes like Kiara dancing while invisible at Mel's: at least have her acknowledge that she is not doing this for the first time.
It actually bothers me too so I'll admit that this is pure laziness. I would have to go through and make two versions of each event.
III.
I must have missed hanging out with Blaire at the earlier connection level so when the text mentions that Mary and Inami are "not as outwardly hostile as before" it is wrong because it is my first time meeting them. I know it would be hard to cover every edge case like that and I do not expect you to but it would greatly add to the immersion.
This is similar to number 2, just laziness on my part. One day I'll go back and clean these up.
IV.
Since there is no back button in the main "Events" menu going into any of the sub-menus and then pressing back only adds to the stack related to Top-Left arrows. I can think of a few easy ways to fix that and I am pretty sure you do too. I know it's a small issue and that menu is supposed to be for developer mode so it's even smaller but I am a perfectionist.
Ah yeah, I get that one. I'll add in a back button for the man events. Your right that I've generally ignored it since it's a dev thing
V.
If you go into the variables menu, then press the "Spacetime portal" button and the keep pressing "back" you get stuck in a loop. This is again a not a big problem, but I know from experience that it can lead to some. Try to reuse code, it will help with bugs.
Similar to above. I'll add in a button to bring you out. The return was just the easiest option at the time.
VI.
I find Prisms text hard to read. It's partly my fault - I changed the passage color to black, but I would appreciate the option to change her color or to simply turn off those fonts with borders.
I'll look into it and see what I can do.
VII.
At the beginning when Cerebralite's text is very small I tried a combination of Ctrl and scrolling to actually read that, and the screen falls apart for me at 250% zoom. This is again something small enough that I am not actually expecting you to fix that, especially that there are other way to read what he says.
That's on purpose.
VIII.
The city feels empty. It feels nice when I "bump" into someone when I am just walking through, but I feel it happens too rarely. I guess this will change as you add more Npc's, but this is the main reason I felt like "shelfing" this game to check on it in two years or so, btw I really hope you will hold on making this game until then. Also the gym could use some utility, outside meeting with Blaire.
I agree and it is on my list of things to do. I'm setting up a template for NPC's and will be adding a few each update. I plan on sticking with this as long as I can. It's good stress relief.
IX.
Paycheck differences. I am getting payed 6 times more at the library than at La lune. It might be that faster money gain I checked on is applied inconsistently (then you can treat that as a bug), but even if not, it discourages working at La Lune and by this makes you miss many events even though it takes equally no effort to get both jobs.
I have rebalancing money on my list. I will also add in events and NPC's tied with each job.
X.
When starting the game I checked "Include debug menus" even though I was not planning to use them, cause why not, and because of that I encountered the bug like #V. You could separate or label the debug menus to make it more obvious which ones are they. Saves, setting and restart are already in their own little box so you could create a box like that for debug menus.
That's not a bad idea. I might add in another box under the phone to put them in. I'll see what looks best.
XI.
You could add a warning in the settings that the text will be invisible when the user tries to make it the same color as the background.
I rarely speak or write so I am sorry if this reads a little strange. I am still working on sounding like a real human being.
Writing this many problems I realize that it may sound like I didn't like your work and I want to make it clear this is not the case. I deeply enjoy your writing and because of that I want to end this post with a Thank You.
For what it's worth, I didn't notice anything strange about your writing. Also, thanks for the ideas. I can't make the game better if people don't share with me what they like and dislike. I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to even care for it improving.
I disagree with the back arrow. That shouldn't be used as a text log - it's going back in passage history, and recalculating things - as it should. Yes, you can mitigate the random event effect (as an example), but if you go far enough back you'll recreate the issue. And it can be equally as valuable for other playes to use it to get a different outcome, or to circumvent a bug that might be in one random event and not in another.
If a log is desired that should be done through adding a text log, not through mucking with the passage history. But that sounds like way too much.
Also, on the navigation stuff; that I agree with generally (at least that you definitely should not end up in a loop), but it's also a pain in the arse to handle, so it's easier said than done.
Details, yeah, ideally everything would be perfect but it's also so easy to get bogged down in those trivial details instead of making proper progress ...
The Cerebralite text in the beginning I'm fairly sure is not supposed to be actually read ^^;
As for the "empty" town and the jobs ... yeah, kinda agree with those, but not a big priority in my opinion.
A lot of the issues stem from A) me being lazy, B) me having limited time to write so I have to prioritize, C) hold over's from when I had even less coding knowledge than I do now.
