New Game, looking for some feedback

[Goldnut1137]

I have been lurking on these forums for quite a while but just now decided to give a go at writing my own game. I picked adrift for my platform because I heard it was one of the more easy ones to manipulate... which I have no idea if is true or not, but hey.. I feel i have a decent foundation going.. so we'll see!

I am looking for a few people that may be interested in giving me some honest feedback on a game. It is my first time working with adrift (or any IF program) and just wanted to get some input. I'm not sure if this is the proper way to ask for testers or feedback, but if you are interested please let me know and i'll PM a few of you with a link to download and try it out. What I have written is not long at all, but there is a LOT more planned.

Thanks!

Mike

[fleet]

It's always great to see more folks making games. Thank you!
You might want to consider including a bit of information about the game and what type of feedback you want.
I've posted a link to one of my topics where I asked for Beta testers.
link -<http://the-new-lagoon.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3398

Very respectfully,
fleet

[Super]

I may be willing to take a look but I'd want some more info first to see if it is my kind of game/story

[redle]

Sounds as though there isn't a whole lot to your game yet, so I'd probably be willing to give you some initial feedback no matter what the content is.

That said, as the others mentioned, your first post should really talk more about the game than about who you are or why you are doing something. Not saying your backstory can't be interesting to some, but it has nothing to do with the game. The purpose of your post is to get people interested in your game, and to get a few of those interested to critique your work. Consider that your first (or 3rd, as it's already been said by the 2 posts before this) bit of feedback.

The game or the thread post, both should have some structure... The introduction is where you are going to hook people or lose them. Game or thread, give a bit of concept to the plot (the big picture), themes, etc. Give people a reason to be interested to want to help get it built, or to want to play deeper into the game.

If your story is all about vampires and someone out there feels like anyone and everyone has been talking about vampires lately and is sick of it, they don't want to look at your game, and you don't want to hear their rant about how it's a tired theme regardless of the quality of your game. Talk about the themes so the right people are more likely to be who takes a look.

[palmer_aif]

Was just about to say that this thread probably belonged in the Project's section instead of the SG category, but then a quick-headed mod moved it. Anyway, I've dabbled quite a bit with Adrift 5 and I'd be happy to help should you need it. Thank's for coming here and posting your project man! Looking forward to seeing more!

[Goldnut1137]

Thanks for the posting feed back first off.

There isn't a lot to it yet, as i'm still trying to learn the language (i do a bit of SQL and powershell scripting and this is still much different than that).

Anyway, basically the first stages are written about a guy who's wife is headed out for a trip and just some basic tasks you have to do to progress to the point you have to leave the house (mostly regarding your step-daughter, no "scenes" yet) Just getting the hang of things.

I have a nice outline for the game and where i want to go, with it (scenes at work and another apartment eventually) i just basically want to make sure i'm going about things the right way so far.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

[Goldnut1137]

@Redle, There is definitely not a lot to the game yet to give it a defined genre, and I have a lot of "story" to add for detail and such, but more over I need to know if I have any loopholes or things that just don't work right... things I may be missing that are more common, etc.

@Palmer, I would absolutely take any help or advice you could offer. I did run into a few programming issues that I "forced" my way through with programming a walk and another where i had to make a task call a task call a task to get the text to come up where I wanted (was increasing a variable based on tasks to bring a character in the room and start a conversation). I'm SURE there is a better way to do what I did, but I couldn't figure it out... and I have a feeling that I'm going to run into more of those types of issues.

There are really only two scenes currently. The first scene with your wife, and then a scene involving waking your step-daughter up for school. The only real rooms that anything is written for are the master bedroom, kitchen and Heather's bedroom, and it ends when you are ready to leave the house. it should literally take about 5-10 mins to get through to that point (or that's what it felt like to me). There is a lot left in my outline, and i expect the game to be MUCH longer than what it is currently. I tried to keep most of the commands so far pretty simple as I learned.

Thanks for taking a look. Any and all feed back is welcome.

[redle]

And i am assuming since my messages are stuck in my outbox that there is a minimum post requirement (or maybe account age in days) to send messages to those that have said they would give me some feedback, so I guess i will just post the link here.

I'm not a mod here, so this is just guesswork based on past observations. My own take on how messages work on this forum is that they remain in your outbox until the recipient comes online and clicks on it to read it. Pretty sure you can even go back in and modify something still in your outbox after sent and only the edited version will be passed on. It doesn't work like most everywhere else, where clicking send actually is a finality.

[rabbie]

Glad someone else is having a go at making a game. Looks interesting so far, few things i noticed.

A lot of objects that are listed in descriptions are not view-able, not sure if that's just something to plan to do later, or maybe have made the objects without assigning a room. (I do this all the time, leaving objects in dark space.)

In aif games, especially ones without pictures i think its a good idea to allow the player character to view all the body parts of the female NPC's (ass/legs/breasts/vagina) it helps immersion, lets the player get a clearer picture of what the npc looks like and gives the player a little more input. You can throw in reactions from the other characters too it as well, hints that they notice the players perving.

Also, this is a design choice on your part but i don't really like how the rooms feel like they just pop into existence when you do certain actions. I think putting a block with a message along the lines of "I should go and talk to Anna before waking Heather." as an example to stop the player entering the rooms before you want them too.

Small bug with Heather, when you look at her in her bedroom while sleeping she is already wearing her jeans.

When waking her then later while having breakfast she refers to you as "player" instead of your chosen name. (I never worked out how to make this work correctly tbh.)

Can't really say much about the story, since at the moment it's just set up for later plots and scenes. Its written competently though, i didn't notice any spelling errors.

Only thing i picked up on that i would change is that Anna mentions heather before you have any idea who she actually is, i think after the line "don't forget to take Heather to cheerleading practice" You could add Anna said, referring to your Step-daughter. instead of talking about her before even knowing what relation she is to you, even asking Anna about her does not reveal that she is your step daughter. This is just personal opinion though.

But yeah, not a bad start, you write well and i am already interested to see what you come up with. If you need any help with Adrift just ask, Im not as good as Palmer but i do know my way around the engine.

[redle]

Yes, "Player" showed up on more than one occasion in the text.

Unfortunately I was planning on grabbing the text after going through the game and then commenting. The Adrift 4 player has an edit mode option to allow this (which is done after seeing the text). Didn't realize Adrift 5 got rid of this option and changed it to choosing to transcribe straight to a text file (which is done before doing the actions). So I don't have anything to look at while I try to make comments until I run through the game again.


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This is a project thread... expect heavy spoilers outside of spoiler tags. Be forewarned.

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1. On the forum when you introduce the game you should mention that there are no graphics. It's an important decision factor for some people.
2. I believe the correct input to display the player's name in Adrift is

Code: Select all

%player%

3. 'e' is auto-completing to 'examine' instead of 'east'. This is very bad. e/east is way too frequent a command to not work right (plus e for examine isn't even helpful, as most people type 'x' for examine). Not sure how to fix this, but it isn't good how it is.
4a. I feel like directions are underrepresented in the text. The game started with us in a bedroom and the description mentioned, among other things, that there was a bathroom door and a closet door. I spent quite a long time trying to examine, look, open... something with the doors, all to no avail. I could see from the map that there was an exit to the west, but all bedrooms have an exit. Had the game said that there was a bathroom door to the west, I would have been much more inclined to travel that way (rather than mentally thinking of west as an open pathway and some other direction as a closed door to the bathroom). Instead I spent quite some time not being able to figure out how to get past/look through the door.
4b. This is a continuation on the bathroom door. If you, as a game creator, make mention of an object, that object really needs to exist. if there isn't a door that we can interact with, don't mention a door at all. Simply say there is a bathroom to the west. If you choose to mention a door, then there needs to be a door that can be looked at/examined. Functional or not, 'x door' could simply result in, 'A door on the west wall. It leads to the bathroom. You could venture that way if you desired.'
5. In the bedroom with Anna, the text describes her walking out of the bedroom, says she leaves through the kitchen, then proceeds to say she gets naked and starts to collect clothes to wear. The order is completely jumbled.
6. Making breakfast was a bit arduous. No good way to know which sets of commands are going to work at all. The worst for me was trying to get the oj into the cup. Among other problems with this task is the fact that you change which words work. 'take juice' does not work, only 'take orange juice' does. Yet 'pour orange juice' does not work, only 'pour juice'. Consistency in word choices is very important. (not to mention always helpful if other methods work... like 'put juice in glass') It's up to you how difficult you want to make the game. But so you know, doing non-standard tasks such as making a meal are going to create a lot of guess-the-verb type problems for many people if you don't suggest terms used in game to the player.
7. It's still early, so I ignore a lot of unfinished things. That said, the description says that the player is walking around naked. Don't forget to give him clothes at some point. Apparently his step-daughter is used to it and doesn't comment, but I doubt his co-workers feel quite the same
8. Back to the bathroom, when I jumped in the shower, I first tried to kiss anna. Apparently that isn't a valid option at that point, but kissing her tits is (meaning the second yields results, the first doesn't). Might want to add in more commands that work at this location.
9. Some of the story seems like it might be turn-driven. This almost always causes some oddities. As an example, Anna didn't seem to be doing anything or talking much in the bathroom no matter what I did, yet leaving the bathroom and walking back in resulted in her saying more to me. It isn't a gamebreaker, but it creates some confusion as to what a player should be doing.
10. I'm curious where Heather takes her shower. There only seems to be 1 bathroom and she doesn't seem to be in that.
11. I'm assuming that the computers in Heather's room will be usable, but aren't yet. That said, the computer's description claims that "we" mostly do work on it. I question any storyline that claims a parent routinely sits in a teenager's room and uses a computer, let alone that such activity is needed for work.
12. As for rabbie's comment about mentioning Heather before we knew who she was... I had less problem with this than the fact that the intro said our wife was going on a trip and we would be left "all alone". Um, that's completely false. There is someone else actually living in the house with us the whole time. That's not alone. I would change that intro to address both my concern and rabbie's by saying that the wife is going on a business trip and we will be left to care for out step-daughter, Heather, all by ourself. This way, when Anna mentions Heather, we already know from the intro who she is.

Anyway, that's what I remember off the top of my head. I was trying to pick it apart more so than be gentle, just so you can see some possible issues. All in all the game was quite playable.

[Goldnut1137]

I really appreciate the feedback i've gotten so far =) already making some changes based on what i have heard and trying to correct a few issues that have been pointed out. much appreciated! Keep the feedback coming please!

@redle No need to worry about picking it apart too much, I enjoy honest feedback and want to build it right. If something isn't working then I want to fix it, not just weed my way past it and say "deal with it". I believe after several people having issues with the anna scenerio and the walking (when i played it on my player it all went in order) i need to look at something other than the walk programming to handle it. I've gotta dig down in the adrift faq and look at some other options. that was part of the early programming before i found variables, so i may re-write that with variables to make it flow a bit smoother.

Again, thanks for all of the feedback so far.

[palmer_aif]

Feel free to email me at palmer_aif@hotmail.com with your questions or go ahead and ask here.

The correct way to reference the name is to use the proper of the character, eg %CharacterProper[Player]%

To disable e/east auto complete, disable simple mode (settings) and change the auto fill priority on the tasks your're having problems with.

If you want to use global triggers for tasks, e.g. if %var%=1, create an event that resets every turn, have that event trigger a system task (meaning the action will run every turn to check if the restriction passes). This allows for a much more dynamic game.

[Goldnut1137]

Thanks for all of the feedback. I removed the original link because it is already pretty outdated with the changes that I've made. Those of you that sent me feedback I will PM a link to the updated version for you to test out if you would like.

Thanks again!

Mike