Hopefully this is where you want feedback on the Alpha. If not, you might want to start a thread.
Overall impression is that this is great for an Alpha.
I was able to download, install and play without any hiccups.
Got to turn 85 without any crashes.
It looks great and the gameplay is mostly intuitive.
Music and sound fx are great. Pix are high quality and a nice mix for an alpha. Text was amusing.
Thanks for the feedback, here will be fine.
Alpha suggestion:
It would be helpful to have a txt file with any features that aren't yet working.
For example, I 'looked around' in many of the areas and only got 'bupkis' type responses. I wasn't sure if I was just unlucky or if some areas had no 'look around' events.
Might be a good idea but documenting everything will take a long while, events are very few so documenting those shouldn't be very hard.
Right now you an find a beggar in the park, mage girl near the tower, two leprechauns (forest/park), randomly shown pics in the beach/beach right and randomly find money/items everywhere. Witch/leprechauns will teach spells and some NPCs can train you. Mage girl can adjust alignment. There is a minor event introducing a team near the arena.
Main menu
You should have a 'continue' button and/or 'load save' button in addition or instead of 'load QS'.
The QS is not always the most recent save.
It will load the save made with QS button. Not the latest save made. That way of saving is currently the most reliable.
Keyboard shortcuts
Are there any? I can understand if they aren't yet implemented, but having to hit the upper right hand corner 'x' repeatedly is a pain.
Yeah, something like that was already requested on another forum along with some other good ideas for gui improvements. We'll work on that.
Main Character
It seems I can only be male at start, despite having female avatars. Female armor is therefore unusable by MC.
There is one avatar but according to CW he only looks like a girl. It's not possible to start with a female MC, that would also require several versions of most texts and events, we cannot afford that at the current development team size. I warned him it will be a cause for confusion.
Battle
When choosing dogfights, having the potential opponents sorted by reputation would be useful.
Is 'bestiary' enabled yet? All I see are silhouettes with "?". Another case where I wasn't sure if it wasn't implemented or if I just wasn't high enough reputation yet.
Dogfight and Survival battles work fine.
I'll look into the sorting, it's not difficult, I just never know what to sort by, arena reputation is not the best indicator here. But it was already planed.
Bestiary is incomplete as it lacks spells, attacks and alignments and there are no description, but once you defeat a mob once in the Survival, it will be unlocked and you can see it's relative stats and name at the very least.
Meet girls
Are interactions persistent? e.g. If I give a gift or compliment that works, will it carryover to the next time I meet the same girl?
Never got the same girl twice to check. The named beggar in the Park seemed not to keep any positives from the three times I bought her food.
Yes, it will. Same girl should stick around at the same location, even if she leaves it, you will see the girls you've already talked with at highest priority as the left girl on the screen when that screen is resolved by the code. You should have no trouble finding girls you already have any positive relationship with.
Beggar is not even an NPC, just a part of generic event. She will rob you blind if you respond with WTF. We'll improve upon that event.
Starting gold
10k may be okay for when the game is balanced, but it's too low to test a wide variety of features. Which .rpy file has that?
(Yes, I know editing .rpy files with Editra or whatever may break the game.)
pyt - classes - characters.rpy or something like that but if you don't know what you're doing I suggest to find script.rpy file, open it and find the end of label start code separator.
It should state:
if config.developer:
$ hero.gold = 100000
$ hero.magic_skills ={"Windwhirl": 1, "Ice Arrow": 1, "Fire Arrow": 1, "Fire Ball Z": 1, "Divine Light": 1, "Geyser": 1, "Insatiable Spirit": 1, "Spring Thunder": 1, "Forced Dawn": 1, "Other Light": 1, "Wrath Of Nature": 1, "Clay Spikes": 1}
show screen debugTools
jump mainscreen
return
You can safely modify it to:
$ hero.gold = 100000
if config.developer:
$ hero.gold = 100000
$ hero.magic_skills ={"Windwhirl": 1, "Ice Arrow": 1, "Fire Arrow": 1, "Fire Ball Z": 1, "Divine Light": 1, "Geyser": 1, "Insatiable Spirit": 1, "Spring Thunder": 1, "Forced Dawn": 1, "Other Light": 1, "Wrath Of Nature": 1, "Clay Spikes": 1}
show screen debugTools
jump mainscreen
return
And you'll have 100000 gold at game start. Just make sure the indentation is right.
Income tax
This was my biggest gripe on balance. The jump from 0 to 10% when gross income hits 5,000 is fun-breaking.
I was grinding up income from my two girls and the MC either working or arena fighting, but when I hit 5,000/week gross, my funds started diving and I stopped playing.
Income tax should be on net income, not gross. Also, you might want to check the income calculator- I started exceeding 7,000 and have no idea how.
The two girls were averaging about 40gold per AP which meant about 1100/week gross. The MC worked at the arena for about 1,000/week gross,
yet the last weekly income (days 78-84) was >7,000. Is the income calculated actually Year-to-date?
You pay taxes off the property you own (buildings/slaves) and brothel income (only brothel income, arena/jobs are not included). I'll take a look at the formula just in case, but it passed mine last round of testing.
Since it's a very recently installed system, there might be bugs... income should be calculated over the period of day - 7 days... maybe there is a mistake somewhere.