Post by Filmstars in To Ash & Ember - DemoDayEntry [60] jam comments

Tried this again since I was really intrigued last time. It seems that you changed the flow a bit–I’m not sure if for the better? I recall last time there was a bigger point in going to different places to do different things. This time I am just finding myself following the instruction in the middle of the top panel. In a game this mysterious, it feels odd that playing would be so simple as to just follow instructions. Also the events happening when investigating a location don’t always seem very related to the place. I got the same event twice, once in Forest and once in Residential.

I like the visual effect on the game quite a bit, but at certain points the text becomes too unreadable, e.g. in menu "Journal->World" the location listing on the left side, and in the "World Distortion" screen the text on the upper right. OTOH some tooltips had text that was too clearly readable, not in line with the distortion applied to everything else. There were also missing unicode glyphs at one point, not sure if it’s just due to playing via wine, but I hope you ship your font with the game and don’t rely on OS.

The writing is very well done, but it seems off that I get the main part (most text, most flavour) of the "Mystery" upfront without having to discover anything. Meanwhile most anything you do at locations has an effect, but you also have many "Rest" outcomes that just come down to "nothing" (they don’t seem all that related to resting either). It could be interesting to mix all this up more, meaning you wander around the city and parts of the encounters are the current ones, parts are the Mystery advancing, parts are just Nothing. I really don’t like this separate "Downtime" screen. The "Odd Jobs" are clearly tied to different locations in the city, too.

Well, keep on going, I am really looking forward to what you cook up!!

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Firgof33 days ago (1 edit)

For my understanding do you mean last DemoDay or last time you played? Curious to know when the schism you're seeing may have occurred so I can ponder it.

Regarding the objective tracker, just from your personal experience would you want that to be an Investigator specific feature (and/or a Gameplay setting)? I know some folks prefer to play games without arrows and such pointing where the next point of the critical path was. I could see it being a potential feature that an objective only gets 'revealed' in the Bar/Journal when you visit the objective's location for the first time, putting the 'Discovery' part of it more onto the player.

Re: Events yep! That's largely a content problem atm. There's a slim chance when you visit a location you get a 'globally scoped' event instead (partly because there's few location events atm) but there's no 'are you in or outside the city' check atm to discriminate on some of them. (e.g. you probably shouldn't encounter muggers in the deep woods).

Looking at the stream, I'm guessing it's because you were running via WINE that you were missing the quotation mark glyphs, yeah. The fonts should come bundled with the game. I don't have a linux build presently but I don't think it's too much trouble to push one out once I start getting closer to release -- it'd make sense that it's failing to load some non-alphanumerics due to the glyphs between operating systems not perfectly matching up address-wise.

I'm pondering on raising the general cost of Downtime events and making them as such easier to pass, yeah. It's meant to represent the 'time in the world which passes between Mysteries' because there isn't always something obvious going on in The City; but that was before I buffed up Homebase interactions to also include many Downtime activities. It's a good thought you've put in my head, I think: un-phasing Downtime and just making it the phase which occurs while there's no Mystery. I originally had it phased out of convention anyway (boardgame inspiration after all).

Thanks for the super-detailed feedback! Also, nobody pointed out the bug with the throwing daggers. I promise the Redqueen won't be so easy a fight next time (and also apologize for the combat music failing to stop itself and droning on forever).

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Filmstars33 days ago(+1)

For my understanding do you mean last DemoDay or last time you played?

Last time I played, which is also last time I commented on the game. I don’t know which DD that was, probably either previous or the one before that. As these things go, I probably also recall incorrectly the state of the game back then.

Regarding the objective tracker, just from your personal experience

Hmm, main thing I can say: I don’t mind it being obvious. It should be obvious where to go. It sucks getting stuck because you misunderstand some vague instruction. – Since you’re already writing so much good prose, the indicator for where to investigate could easily be baked into it. You have a journal holding the story so far of the current mystery, and the latest entry always clearly contains the name of the next location "… the urchin running off into the Forest." This also gives a reason to read the prose. ;)

And then the "how many times" requirement on investigation should be removed in favour of just chances and progress made with discoveries at the site. As in current state it’s also silly to get "Investigate Residential 4 times" -> "Investigate Residential 2 times" kind of objectives progress. Why not 6 times immediately? Why not simply until you find a lead that sends you elsewhere?

Btw. I hope/expect you add branching mysteries where some leads may also be dead ends, etc. So it’s not all linear. (But I don’t understand the greater scope yet, it seems that there is more to it than the mysteries. So maybe what I ask for is not needed.)

(and also apologize for the combat music failing to stop itself and droning on forever).

Hehe no worries, it’s a banger.

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Firgof33 days ago (4 edits)

Why not 6 times immediately? Why not simply until you find a lead that sends you elsewhere?

Oh, that's simple actually! It's a perfect reflection of what's going on 'under the hood'.

It's not "reading ahead" to the next MysteryStage to see if it is the same but for the number of times needed to Investigate and, if so, combining the result.

e: And I am considering doing that, yeah, along with other potential hint measures. Still trying to find the precise target/tone for 'how much of an investigation game is this and/or how optional are the thinking/puzzly bits'

Btw. I hope/expect you add branching mysteries where some leads may also be dead ends, etc.

Those are in presently, actually! It's just not realistically/easily achieved to get the other ending for FITM atm. (Not sure if it functions properly just yet but the structure supports it [stuff like manual flags and so on are to-be-added so I can more directly control/predict outcomes from player choices made during the mystery])

Endings can also open/close available Mysteries, too, so I can make 'divergent paths' which alter the city and so on. This'll be important as 'A New Sensation' for instance should permanently add Redqueens and Greykings to the encounters you can face inside The City unless/until you run into a mystery which allows for their removal (and also introduce the new dungeon of 'Thorne Manor' from the sequel mystery to Flowers in the Mist (would be unlocked from getting Ending A/0).

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