I played again after reading your reply and I think I've figured out the error. When I entered the storeroom, I originally went for the book on top of the cabinet FIRST. Might seem strange since there are others that are easier to get, but it jumped out at me for whatever reason. If you do the other ones first, it works fine. I apologize for not being able to figure that out on my own.
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From what I can tell, the events still work even if you pick up the book on the cabinet first. (They were made to go in any order, and even two at time though I neglected to mention that so I don't think anyone noticed.)
But I can understand the confusion why nothing happened having gone for that one first, and I can imagine that having so many games to play and judge, there wouldn't really be a reason to keep trying if you thought the game was broken. So if you'll agree with me I do think the disqualification was an unlucky mistake as I'm quite confident the game runs through to the end, (though I'm sure it does have it's fair share of bugs, none should be gameplay ending.) I am sad to have missed out but I don't think I'd have come near the top marks anyway, so just knowing that I managed to make something that plays in a month is good enough for me!
Thank you very much for your time and for trying it again. :D
Hi, I followed the order of your events and was still able to leave the room and interact with all of the books. (And recorded it if you'd like to see that.) There's no starting condition for either of these, and they end in an else branch so there shouldn't be a time when they do nothing at all... UNLESS you've viewed the key from your menu sometime during doing the books. So, I have found a game ending bug, and I have to assume that this is what's caused the error since I just can't seem to find another reason for it. I've used the event searcher and only the key, house (comes later), and storeroom events use this "books carrying" variable that can break the interaction. The actual chair and cheat sheet don't reference it at all. I'm sure I followed everything you mentioned on the thread, and Judge DOOM didn't seem to interact with any of the optional events to cause this error so it's really weird and frustrating. I don't know how it's only happening sometimes and that I'm unable to trigger it (I play from the deployed version on here, it's the only file I ever had up for download and I haven't updated it from the contest.) I am about ready to tear my hair out, but I'll keep trying to see if there was some other cause. At the very least, I want to be sure that everyone who'd like to play the game was able to.
Thank you for your time.
I'm having trouble understanding it too. I wouldn't expect/ask you to do a thorough analysis, this is my problem to sort out and I feel quite bad that I've been bothering people with it. (Though I still can't trigger the issue, ugh!) The books, door and bookshelf all have basically the same conditional branches, if books carrying is 0, 1 or 2. The items each have their own common events when you view them, and the key one ends up overwriting the variable. If it makes that variable 3 or more it breaks the storeroom and the events in there only + or - variables rather than setting them so it is game over from there. Picking up the cheat sheet though, it's "show text" "show gab window" "play SE" "add item" and then a self switch. I think it's unlikely that Yanfly's Gab Window is messing with the variables, but there's really nothing in that which should cause issue. I did a run through on my editor version whilst checking the variables via the debug menu. The bookshelf works exactly as I want so I don't think it's a mistake in that, and yet the variable is never mentioned outside of that key issue. At this point, I'm feeling very defeated. I know there's a game ending bug in there, and even if it's not the one Judge DOOM encountered, I think it's fair enough to be disqualified. This bug that I can't find or understand, well, it's beaten me. This game wasn't good enough, and as I keep wasting my time searching and failing, it's really making me feel like I'm not good enough either, so I'd like to just nip it in the bud here. Maybe I'll come back to it later, but for now I'd like to forget that I ever tried. I really appreciate that you put the effort in for me though. I'm sorry I wasted your time, but thanks for trying to help anyway. :)
If you can't fix it, here is an alternative: Remake it from scratch using the assets you have. It will probably take you less time to remake it than to fix it since you already know what events there will be and can plan ahead. Also, as a hint, make it so that the key and door only change the variable if used on the proper map (add in a conditional branch). Basically, any item that should only be used in one map, make sure it only has an effect on that one map. There is another way to do it as well, but it is more complicated so easier to make mistakes.