itch.io

Giving infinite timer has good and bad sides. Score could be awarded as an inverse of time spent solving the puzzle (a formula that gives diminishing returns on used time) and it would allow for a less strict limit for reaching the solution. On the other hand, the timer is presently the only fail state in the game. If the game cannot be lost, a higher score can always be achieved by playing long enough, which would make scoring a little redundant. But this could be solved by letting the player "win the game" by solving N amount of levels instead of allowing infinite gameplay. In other words, the game would have a theoretical maximum score that cannot be passed. It's something to think about.

Yeah the clue system isn't very good but randomized selection was all I had time for before the deadline. I'll be replacing it with a system where player can ask for a clue on a specific piece instead, should be lot less irritating than receiving duplicates.

Shouldn't the search really work by tags too? Most people probably take one look at the huge tag cloud and then go back to entering tags into the search bar.  (The page also says Top Tags, heavily implying not all are present, and should be looked through the search instead.)

I've had a similar problem with the search; not all partials and tags seem to get found. Some of my jam entires appear to be difficult to find in certain ways, and I recall having trouble finding a thing or two unless I spelled it out in full. (As far as I have gathered, that will find anything you're looking for.)

If you disable downloads, I assume it is read as having no files. A game in the store, Cultist Simulator, seems to have disabled downloads until full release, and isn't coming up in search.

Ah, did it throw an error message? (Probably a GameMaker error if one popped up.) I had a nagging suspicion there were still some code precedence-based problems in the drag code that allows for 1-frame windows to bug out the system, but the deadline didn't allow for too much testing. It's probably either in dragging across falling objects or objects that are animating their explosion.

It is. Thanks! :D

A learning experience. Although ambition might be too large a word as that would imply a grand plan, when it was more about throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks. I had the impression ten world might be too much when there was code to write as well. While some things were generic and could be thrown in from other projects - that's why you write modular code - others like save/load system, inventory/equip screen and environment GFX system were mostly built from scratch.

My project is has the same problem... creating all the pixel grahics has taken a while, especially when one feels compelled to go back and redraw things again and again. I also underestimated how much time doing the maps would take (detailed 150x150 tile maps, plus dozens of environment objects, plus collisions, it can't take that long... ....right?) Ten worlds is not gonna happen, unless I make tiny maps, but pulling a stunt like that is out of the question.

On the plus side, I feel all the work has leveled up my pixel arting a little.

Hi Jupiter, thanks for having a look. :)

Thanks for having a look at the game, Jupiter. :)

Thanks for commenting, GcoMember! The screen before the title should be Game Maker's splash screen which gets attaches to every game exported from free version. It should be visible for several seconds, and the duration cannot be influenced by game creators.

Oops, somehow managed to delete my reply. But I was saying this sounds like a lot of bookkeeping. With the amount of data and all the relations, I'd almost rather do a SQL database than a bunch of arrays or similar for it.

Sounds like flags would be a good way to go about it. Each interesting action (experience) needs its own flag. It is raised when the character performs the action. Every NPC has a subset of actions flagged as interesting to them, and has a certain action attached. When the character has raised a flag, it will appear on their dialogue options. The harder question is how to add some dialogue options they are actually not interested in, you cannot add all experiences the character has had or players will quickly tire of scrolling through miles of options.

Yes, exactly. Clickers require much larger numbers than can comfortably fit into GameMaker's variables, so all numbers and maths use arrays. In fact, a substantial part of the jam's timeframe was used to code and refine that functionality, as I hadn't done anything like that before.

Nice catch, thanks for reporting this! Fixed in 1.2.1 release. (Technical details: number-to-array convertor that runs on startup added extra leading zero to numbers that had a length divisible by three, and array to array multiplications with specific numbers would preserve the zero, leading to price format the code was not prepared to handle.)

Hi, thanks for reporting this! Fixed this on V1.11 (technicals: the building's upgrades array's length is now properly recognised before array is operated on).

Haha, that was quite a show! Thanks for having a look at the game!

GameMaker Studio is another platform that's pretty easy to use for 2D games. Personally though I don't think learning a new system while working against a deadline is the best of ideas; you may want to stick to what you know - unless you want to take that as a challenge to overcome.

Hi iwanPlays, thanks for checking the game out and doing a LP. Looks like you also discovered a bug; when you kill the brigand he's trying to release the captured peasant, but he no longer exists because the wolf killed him. I'm not sure if I should publish new versions during a jam's voting period though, even if its just a patch. Also, an interesting observation about the roads. They probably should be adjusted anyway, as I've started thinking them running so close to screen edges is somewhat unfair.