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XCVG4 years ago

I have a bit of a soft spot for point and click adventures and I really like the idea of this one. It's timely without being dour. The art actually became endearing after a while, though the music never did, and I struggled to read some of the text. I was surprised the first time but I think certain interactions ending the game is a really neat mechanic that forces you to think instead of blindly clicking everything.

It's incredibly buggy, though. I keep getting stuck in conversations. Sometimes interactions don't work, or only work after several clicks, or take several seconds to process. I'm also not sure if I'm supposed to be able to use items on things or not.

I was able to get the flowers and the pencils but I have no idea where to go next. Any hints?

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greyplay4 years ago

Hey ther XCVG, first of all thanks for your reply, I really appreciate it ;D  I know there still are a lot of bugs in it but I thought i fixed the text-soft block at least 0.o I was a bit late on that update, but maybe you have missed it... For the items... You are perfectly right... I wanted to do a drag and drop system with an inventory to combine stuff with one another, but I only had a few hours left and drag 'n drop would have been completely new territory for me... So i decided to trigger certain dialogues only on certain conditions... Also I still know nothing about my engine... And i didn't managed to find the right way to trigger an event when the ai reaches its destination, so i've put a delay in there to work around it ^^... This will be the first thing I update once I find out how to do it xD For the hint... Hm... How about you try to draw a picture... Leave that flowers live for a little bit longer ;) Thanks a lot, yours greyplay

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XCVG4 years ago (2 edits)

Between the hint you gave and FacemeltingSolos comments, I was able to get a lot further though I still wasn't able to finish the game.

I really like the style and humour of this game, and the art grew on me a lot as I played. I like point-and-click adventures, and this is a neat parody of both that genre and fantasy in general. Unfortunately, between game-breaking bugs and (intentional?) dead ends, I've just found it way too frustrating to keep playing. I was able to figure out what I thought was the correct path fairly quickly, but it took me six or seven tries to actually carry it out because I either did stuff in the wrong order or the game softlocked on one interaction or another.

It also puts an absolutely insane GPU load on my system to the point where my laptop started to overheat. I'm not sure if this is a performance issue with the game or just the lack of a frame limit (something I ran into when developing Shattered).

I'm curious about your choice of engine. Unreal Engine 4 seems like a very odd choice for a point-and-click adventure. What led you to that choice? Do you feel it was a good choice in the end or would have gone a different direction if you were to do it again? I'm not trying to be critical hear, I'm just curious as a fellow game developer.

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greyplay4 years ago

Haha... The choice of game engine... Yeah... I would definitely go with something completely different next time... The decision alone to make a 2d game in a 3d environment is completely absurd right? I would try godot or at least unreals paper2d the next time... But my lack of knowledge had me using the tools I already know to finnish this game... This game really showed me where I have to improve, and structuring my build is definitely part of it... What would be your tip to improve on these things? Should I rebuild this game to fit a 2d environment? ... I guess that would kill most of the bugs... There shouldn't be any dead ends, but I guess adding more different endings than just these three would make it less frustrating... That drag'n drop system I was talking about would also affect the feel of the game... 

In the end I really like to give unreal another chance on 2d, because I'm sure I did it absolutely wrong... I don't think it's the best tool for this kind of game... But I want to master this engine before I extend my knowledge in a different direction ;) 

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XCVG4 years ago

Huh, I didn't realize it was a full 3D environment. The game looks very similar to the layered 2D games I've played in the past.

I'm really the wrong person to ask about Unreal development; I'm almost exclusively a Unity developer. From talking with other people at jams I get the impression that Unreal is very powerful but also difficult to use, especially for people who are new to it. Godot seems to be very popular these days, more popular than it was in the past. It's had a lot of improvements in recent years so that's not surprising. I've seen a lot more 2D games than 3D games on Godot although the engine supports both.

It's often hard to choose between using what's probably the better tool for the job and using the one you're more familiar with. I tend toward the latter personally. It's never bit me too hard, but there are definitely times where I've looked over and figured, yeah, it would have been easier to use something else. I built a visual novel for BCGJ 2020 (unreleased, sometimes referred to as Whistler) on my homegrown Unity framework, and it was definitely more awkward to build and ended up with a less polished result than if I'd used RenPy.

The dead end I thought I ran into was picking the flowers before getting the mail or pencils, which seemed to make the drawing impossible.

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greyplay4 years ago

Oh, Unreal definitely is a powerful tool... And because i came from blender the node-based blueprints Editor already felt familiar... I also considered using JMonkeyEngine because I'm Java Native Speaker, but I decided on unreal at the end because I gotta learn C either way and the engine definitely seemed more powerful xD

My personal aim is to get to know several alternatives and be good at those that differ the most, so that i can decide which one I'm using for the game I want to make and what fits best... But one thing at a time... 

Ah... THAT dead end xD You think it would be better to let the player also use the filled vase instead? 

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