After a full day I had a chance to play some more! So Feedback for the 1.11 version!!
- Roadtrip USA really needs to go by faster. It's fun the first time around but when wanting to explore the club it's the only option, and it takes like 10 minutes to get through. I'd recommend a skip option and randomly selecting a winner after the first time playing, but if you don't want that I'd *at least* recommend making the game use two dice instead of a single die.
- Never have I ever Wonder World? (I assume you meant "been to Wonder World")
- Pat's eyes are cute af. Love them in the pics!
- I'd recommend a warning before a player starts an episode that they're naked. And maybe a reminder that they can change in their room or on the phone app in an episode. I might even suggest having the game stop you from going to the club unless you're clothed.
- The "Do nothing card" in Roadtrip USA is hilarious btw.
- Thought it was funny, Georgia took part of Florida's land loool
- Male character doesn't want pants and underwear to be selected. Pants only available if you go commando. If you select undies, the pants get unselected. Turns out I've been rocking it in boxers this whole time. xD
- (Game breaking bug) In "How Old Was I" if you get Allie's question wrong, the "next" button will be unselectable and you'll have to close out of the game.
- Speaking of, there should probably be a way to quit out of the episode early and go back to the main menu.
- At one point Emmy's line at the door repeated in the beginning after finishing the first time. Only happened once. Can't seem to re-create it. Might've been the pace I clicked it or something.
Damn it! Alright I'll check all these out tomorrow morning and get them fixed up.
-I agree on Roadtrip USA taking too long, I'll figure something out for it. Double dice might be the way to go, or at least doubling each roll. There's 83 spots so max 6 a roll is brutal haha
-Hahaha I'll take a look at the pants thing, I gotta give the male character a little more attention and get all that working correctly. I'm assuming its a leftover effect from a mechanic that makes it so you can't wear certain clothing items with other clothing items, but I'll have to do some tests.
-Funny enough there's a warning if you are only wearing underwear before starting an episode, I could definitely do one if you don't have clothes on.
-A better heads up before the club should be easy, I might just modify Graces dialogue options to be more straight forward. I'll see what I can do!
-Originally I was going to put a quit out button, decided not to because it could be used to farm stats, but now realize it doesn't matter and if people exploit stuff, who cares haha that will be super easy to put in. This will also make the fatal errors less devastating. I'm doing some touchups on the M menu, and might add it in there. Additionally, I could make "esc" do the same function, since "M" can't be used during dialogue.
-What exactly happened with Emmy's line, and which line was it? I can take a look at it all tomorrow.
Thank you for reporting the errors! I gotta start doing open bug tests. The next episode will be much shorter and hopefully easier to test. This game is too damn big for my brain sometimes. A post on Patreon will be put up in the next few days on what to expect for the next update!
For Emmy's line, it was the whole introductory section before you can click on a girl, Grace's lines included. This section repeating a second time was weird, as it was a one-time error. I really have no idea how it happened lol. It was some bizarre accident.
If you don't want people to farm stats, maybe a quit out warning where progress will not be saved? Not sure how difficult that would be.
Don't be too harsh on yourself! You did a lot of great work. Making games is hard! I've wanted to make one for ages but lack the skills necessary. I know some devs make beta/alpha testing as a patreon reward, you could always use that as an incentive. If you do an open release, I recommend having multiple versions of the download available (Such as if 1.2 comes out, make it like 1.2 alpha/beta along with a 1.12 version which was already tested). There's all sorts of options!!
Also, if you want more updates and still large episodes, you could release certain paths at a time. Like hypothetically a club path, how old was I path, alt Roadtrip USA path, etc. Just more options to consider!
And honestly, I kinda love being your unofficial game tester haha. Feels like I'm a part of the team. :)
I'll take a look and see if anything looks funny, just got the fatal error from HOWI fixed. Honestly at this point I don't really care if people farm stats, if people wanna play the game that way then they can haha
My plan going forward is with any new episodes, they will release as a smaller version, but then have the possibility in the future to be updated. But, I feel these smaller episodes will allow for better bug testing, quicker release, and less work load. If my workload remains the same with the same engagement, it will be difficult to continue D: I opened up the two smaller Patreon tiers that actually do have early testing, but even if you stay in the loiter tier I can send you early versions haha
And thank you! You've been invaluable to this project so far! I appreciate it greatly, new update coming in an hour and a half!
I managed to repeat the beginning section with Emmy again! I did a few clicks relatively quickly, like I was just skimming through the next button to continue, and it repeated once again. It wasn't *super* fast but a steady quick pace. Hard to explain the timing without recording audio and saying it out loud. xD
In addition!! It looks like on the second round of the sped-up strip Roadtrip USA, my car won't advance past the start position. Like, it will once, but not after. I did manage to lose all my clothes though, so I think my car's position kept advancing but the token on the map stayed in the same spot.
Dang it! Haha alright I'll take a look at that, I threw that all together pretty quick D: I'll take a look at the intro dialogue, and 100% will check out the round 2, that's so weird. I started implementing the new early quit system, but realized the method I was using might be too dangerous with the way Episode 1 is designed. I did one quick playthrough to make sure it's ended. This episode is kickin my ass! haha
Alright, 1.13 is out and should be stable! (Fingers crossed). A few insights into issues!
-I haven't researched the intro error yet, but I'm hoping that should be easy. The new episode end function may be a little buggy, but it should -function regardless. I gotta bug test that more haha
-I think I might have figured out the issue you were having with wearing pants! I haven't looked at the code yet, but I realized that some of the "underwear" options are actually swim shorts haha So, when shorts are equipped, you can't put on pants. It would probably make a lot more sense to just put them in the pants category, since they kinda count as shorts, but my brain thought it made sense because it was the same way the female swimwear works. So possible good news, you may have been wearing pants this whole time. Bad news, I gotta figure out how to make that more visually obvious hahaha I'll add it to the little bug fix! It would make sense to add them to pants and add more options for underwear I think, since Male is lacking in clothing options anyway.
-RTUSA Strip error should be fixed! The way the game is programmed only supported the previous non x2 dice method for going around the board, so that was a super easy fix.
Thank you again for all your help!
Yeah... that would be pretty confusing to have swimming clothes and dry clothes under the same category. I had on the long green swim shorts then? I thought they were just boxers and the shorter ones were like, boxer-briefs haha. Maybe redesign them a bit and add string? That's the only visual indicator other than text I can see working to separate them, unless they have text or are in their own category.
Alright! So I played a bit of 1.13 (though just one session, since I've been catching up on chores and errands the past two days.) And I think the beach needs a good amount of TLC. There's some dialogue with Grace but it really feels like everything ends abruptly. This may be a consequence of being too ambitious for Grace Episode 2. It's really the only location/activity that hardly has anything going on. You do get the secrets option, but it really doesn't feel worthwhile without there being any event taking place. (And so much can happen! Would love to see this expanded on a tad in a future update. You can try and help Hope spot fish, watch the ocean and chat, go seashell hunting, maybe someone gets stung by a jellyfish and you have to act, or someone decides to go skinny dipping!)
Obviously Episode 2 has a TON to tackle, and now I'm really seeing the benefit of having a more condensed episode style. Because areas of the game are unbalanced in terms of what's available to do. In particular I love the club and strip roadtrip USA as well, but even the fast food trip felt worthwhile because we got some good story elements and were introduced to a new character. So the fast food trip really shows it doesn't need to have a lot to be worthwhile, it just needs something meaningful to the player.
I'll try and play more, but I'll likely spend most time grinding stats to try and get Mindi up. She's a bit of a perplexing one, but I think I figured out how to get her friendship level consistently higher. In fact, I think I'll sneak in one more playthrough before bed. >:)