Hey, I know the judges are going through rounds for each of the games. Will a list of the games that made it to each round be posted so we can get a general idea of how we're doing?
In the Judge's Roundtable stream on Friday I believe it was Touchfuzzy in the chat said that no results will be posted at all until all the judging is over. However, if you see another judge play your game (i.e. Teal played it in Round 1 and now HawkZombie is playing it) it's an indication that it's moved onto the next round. But they won't outright post the results until it's all over.
Don't worry, Drifty definitely hated my game. He even brought up some issues that was explained in the tutorials... The battle tutorial was long, so I made it optional. I had one short, but unskippable tutorial about enemies that take 0 damage. I had optional tutorials (signs) that were supposed to teach you about monster avoidance and lighting dark places and some secrets.
There were maybe two or three actual issues that he mentioned, which are things that I already knew I needed to work on, but didn't have time (based on the rules, I couldn't just important my system from another game, so I had to make new systems and doing that without plugins takes a long time. I actually disabled systems because of the limitations of the engine without plugins (One was scrapped because it looked off due to how the workaround worked).
Other issues included that I should have used plugins. Easily solvable, but kind of kills the point of a 'no plugin, no plugin-like scripts challenge'.
Honestly, I think this just proves to me that RPGMaker MZ isn't that great without serious modifications. I never did make a plugin set for MZ because of all the issues it had (and to an extent, still has). Monster did a good job at not using plugins, but also a very different type of game than mine. Mine is honestly better off in Unity or Godot because I don't have to rewrite the base engine to do what I want to do. I wanted to give RPGMaker one more chance, but I think I'll give up on it now.
You know plugins were allowed right?
"3. Games MUST be created using only RPG Maker MZ (either the one distributed for free during the contest, or one that you've purchased). Plugins are fine, but no other game engine may be used."
I know. My goal here wasn't to win, but to show what can be done without plugins or using scripts in a way that works like plugins.
I value negative feedback, but it just feels bad when the negative feedback is due to things that were ignored. I know I've been guilty of accidentally skipping stuff myself, but I made it so that if you accidentally skipped it, you could reread the tutorials.
Think of it like this: If you were a cook at a burger restaurant and a customer came in, ordered a burger, removed the patty, then complained that the burger had no meat, how would you feel? Now imagine if you offered free patty replacements and they later put up a review saying that your restaurant served burgers without patties.
That isn't to say that my game didn't have issues, mind you. Just, I would have preferred feedback about issues I could have done something about that was just to go against the challenge concept behind the game. Like I said, sure, it would have been easy for me to just write a plugin or script that fixes the issues I had, but I always try to challenge myself to use the base engine for jams and contests.
I probably won't use UE3, personally. I'd be more likely to go with Godot than UE3. I'd be more likely to make a plugin that just removes the scripts of RPGM and make my own than to use UE.
Oh they're on UE4 these days, with 5 in early access. But that's fair, use whatever works best for you.
As for the other. It's one of those things where the fault pretty much always lies with the dev. If players are missing what you added, it means you didn't present your idea in a way the player picked up. But hey don't feel too bad, one of my game's two major mechanics was actually cited as a bug versus a feature. The awkward part is, you actually need it to win so people just thought even the first area was unbeatable, and thus never played the other 10 areas, nor fought any of the 6 bosses. Oops.
//shrugs
Things happen. Though it was actually explained in the game, clearly not in a way the players caught (at least on average). So the fault is mine for not teaching them in a better way. A harsh lesson for next time, but that's okay. This isn't exactly my "magnum opus", it's a one month game jam game I tried waaaaaaay too hard to be unique with. I won't fault the players for my poor game design. I'll just do better next time.
I guess it really just comes down to how you look at it. At the end of the day, no player cares about your personal challenge, they only care about if the game is fun. And if you're exceedingly lucky, a small group will be nice enough to share how they played it, offering a valuable window into the minds of your audience. You just can't be too surprised when at the front door of your game, instead of finding a key, they bash their head into it until it opens. ;)
I mean, my tutorial pretty explicitly states the conditions where you don't do damage and does so when you first encounter enemies that use the mechanic. Your skills relating to the mechanic also mention the damage mechanic if you decide to use then before the tutorial. I could have made my stockpile skills more clear, but the name is stockpile and one tutorials explains generating items for later use or party use.
Like I said though, I'm probably just going to use a different software to work on my games from now on. RPGM is too limited and a pain to have to fight against to get my stuff working.
One mechanic of mine that was definitely a hit or miss was the lighting mechanic. This definitely needed to be made more clear. There are two separate sets of clues for this. One was too subtle and one was optional.
One of the signs mentions checking your inventory and two signs mention bringing a light. In your inventory a "Light" item and one of your characters has a skill of the same name. These mention lightening up dark places among other uses.
The other clue was during the second mandatory conversation, where it mentions stones as long lasting potions and being able to use potions instead of stones. (It seemed most/all players missed this clue). Entering the cave triggers a conversation about light stones running out. This clue was meant to be more subtle, but was too subtle as many players didn't realize what these clues meant.
I intend to fix this by having more obvious text about it instead of being subtle and making signs more obvious.
While I did try to make my game fun for players, like I said, one of the goals was to show what can be done without plugins.
Also, sounds like your game made it through the round, unlike mine. Drifty told me (and I think several others) better luck on the next one, which is generally a pretty direct: you failed. He didn't say that with yours.