i try your game again. do not give up, but your map is still terrible. many doors that go nowhere, stairs that go nowhere.
you making a game, but a game is about things player can do.
I have to guess about what I can interact with. Some items can be used and some can not. It is not predictable.
I have to guess about where I can go. Some doors work, some doors do not. Doors that work much of the time go to places that mean nothing.
This is not fun for the player, it wasting time and kills the enjoyment.
I still want you doing best at this, your game is very interesting
but please make your map not a confusing huge mess.
huge is fine, but player should not needing to learn complicated structure just to play basic game loop.
add interaction indicators everywhere (sparkles) that actually mean something if you do not want to make map smaller.
i understand you want big confusing magical school, but big confusing magical school needs MANY MANY MANY random magical interaction to make map fun or it is just big maze player spends too much time walking around.
I know you are not big game studio, so I say adding sparkles indicator is your easiest option. It is okay if it is not perfect, but it should not frustrating player.
I think the map size is currently good, but the problem of the maps being empty is for sure an issue.
Navigation will be made easier with map menu changes coming in a bit now that I learned RPGmaker's plugin systems properly (a nice interactive map is planned with your current location displayed as well as clickable areas to get info on them!)
Part of the problem there is that the map was expanded early on but I didn't fill it in properly yet with interactions. That was, at least in part, why I spent time making the random standing/walking students, but that's not enough, not on its own at least.
There will be changes made in the future, but it's going to be less "MAPS SMALLER" and more "Map Content". Stuff like being able to see interesting, cute events playing out in empty rooms (random students doing it? Might be cool! Little talking scenes with groups or romantic dates you can peek in on! Quests you can start by talking to random students. Fun little H-Scenes you can get yourself into by sticking your nose somewhere you shouldn't! Holliday festivals that make use of the space in new and interesting ways!
In addition, larger events are planned to be implemented, mostly focused around the existing systems like jobs and clubs. An example would be a dueling club, which could meet in a classroom currently unused, or teaching assistant jobs that could place you into a variety of rooms. More rooms will be repurposed into classrooms later on as well, and there's some interesting interactions planned with summoning, familiars, and other supernatural entities (vampires in particular, but also more!) that need rooms to take place in. Even another dungeon or two will start in the school eventually!
A big problem right now is actually development resources for all of this! I want to go in get a ton done, but my dayjob currently limits my time a lot and the current priority has to be on fixing massive UI issues(revamps of the skills, stats, and map screens), the Class system (which still glitches and is annoying to use so needs new UI) and the main storyline (which needs to be implemented to give structure to the game before I can continue developing the sandbox aspect, and requires revamps to basically every single dungeon in the game)
This is all a lot to do on limited time, unfortunately. The map is currently empty and a little glitchy with a few broken sections (the staircase at the church's area being a prime example) but it's navigatable for the most part. Things like the recommendations system (designed to funnel players into the areas of the game that have the most content) are a temporary alleviation of the main problem until I can devoted further resources into the rest of it.
I will see about going and cataloging interactable items and making them more consistent/easy to see later though! It should be fairly consistent, I think only a few exceptions exist like that staircase in the church wing, so I'll go search them out and try to make it easier to see.
I also noticed that the 0.41 version doesn't show the baby slime birthing scene like it did in the previous versions, this is intentional, right?
It actually wasn't planned, at least not yet!
It might have gotten messed up when I was doing the slimes portion of the new body stats page. I couldn't remember the variables I had called for the stages of slime pregnancy so I went and got them from the PregnancyProcessing and Birth events that are scheduled to run then, and something might have gotten changed when I was checking it somehow.
I'll try to see what I did there and get it fixed up. The new scenes will be using the same birthing triggers, I usually just replace the art files so I don't have to go and redo every instance of the scene!
