itch.io

I didn’t know if you were aware of it. (I only learned of it relatively recently.)

JSON Feed: https://www.jsonfeed.org/

It’s like RSS and Atom, but it uses JSON which is much easier for applications to deal with than XML or RDF, plus it supports features missing from both RSS and Atom, like support for multiple enclosures with the end-user selecting their preferred format.

As far as not being dead goes, JSON Feed is very young, having been started in 2017.

Now it makes sense why it seemed so similar. :D Good job with the name! I totally missed that MockLite was at all related to LiteBright until you said this. I totally thought it was one of those things that just independently seemed similar.

It has some legibility issues on High DPI displays. When the “game board” is magnified, can you also zoom the rest of the interface?

For perspective, right now, I could probably get 5 of the apps menu bars in the space of my title bar. In most cases you can expect them to be more-or-less the same size.

You call it an “LED Grid” but to me it looks staggeringly like a virtual Lite Bright. (Particularly with the offset rows.)

I played with a Lite Bright extensively as a child.

That “House on a Hill” example could totally be done on the toy I used as a child.

There is a much, much darker side to ducks. There are things that I would be happier never knowing about.

Just… never go on idle duck research missions because you’re bored. There are things you can’t unlearn.

(Seriously, they are things that should have content warnings associated with them.)

Yeah, it was just to remove the blue/teal backgrounds. It fits the theme nicely for screen reading, but it isn’t super friendly for printers.

Honestly, you can confuse people if you have more than one version, period. People can expect surprising things, and when they don’t find what they expect, they can get confused.

The thing about the ISO date format is that alphabetical sort ordering also sorts by the date. This means that as long as the earlier part of the filename is the same, the files will fall in a consistent order.

If someone will be confused with any choice you make, the best you can do is to have something that tries to help the user figure it out. The sort order will help both on Itch and on the local file system, plus a person doesn’t even need to know the difference between “it’s a version number” and “it’s a date” because the sort order is the same in either case.

The way to prevent confusion would probably be to go with an “Old Versions Archive.zip” of the old versions and to only have a single version of the PDF. I’ve seen some games go with that approach.

Is it possible to get a printer-friendly version of this? That cyan background is going to be a dull grey if I try to print it on my laser printer, and would needlessly burn through cyan if I still used an inkjet.

Are the numbers US-style dates (Month/Day/Yr) or version (Major.Minor.Patch)? Periods are usually used to separate version numbers for games like this, so that was my first thought.

The international standard of YYYY-MM-DD works in file names and tends to be easy for folks from any nation to understand.

Okay, 0.9.2 fixes that issue. It was a pretty stupid error, and it was part of a last-minute change that I didn’t thoroughly test.

I mentioned you in the release notes for this https://yam655.itch.io/three-days/devlog/273372/092-released-critical-bug-fix

I was going to hold off on this patch until I got the last of the finished art, but this bug is pretty critical so it went out tonight. (The visual glitch that I mentioned won’t be fixed until 0.9.3, as I just forgot to add it in my rush to get this out the door, and it isn’t a game breaker.)

Thanks again!

(And, if Mantel or Candide give you any more issues… Check to see if any of those “???” achievements have titles.)

The art was all Allèque. He did a fantastic job.

There was no way I was going to let that art be lessened by tying it to pronouns or gender. (I really wanted user-defined pronouns, but I’m going to need to write the infrastructure to make that happen. I couldn’t do it during the jam.)

I’ll double-check that I didn’t break Candide’s ending. There’s a lot of moving bits and pieces. It’s possible that it only works for the path I actually tested. :/

… Yeah. There are actually two bugs. It looks like I forgot to check that the route works as expected when the MC is allosexual, (if a very specific condition is met it works around this), and then there’s a visual bug if the MC is asexual. :/

I’ll get it fixed with the next patch. Thanks for letting me know!

The game is worth money! Totally worth the $2 that Itch puts in the field by default.

Look at what the competition charges. “An Ace in Space” has the about the same level of quality to your game and lasts about as long. It has a base price of $7. It isn’t a high price. It’s an appropriate price. You should charge more.

Plus: This isn’t a Game Jam level of quality. Free games on Itch can easily be confused for quick, lower quality games.

It’s a beautiful game with a cute story. I enjoyed playing. As a player, if I liked the game it is better for you to get paid so that you can keep making games.

Yay! This is exciting!

Ooo… I’m “welcome to use the code if I can untangle the mess”? Thank you. I may have to give that a shot.

You will be the first to know if I succeed. :)

This reminds me that my kids – for years – have been making me buy DLC for games just so they could have death cults.

Clearly, this meant I had to buy this.

I love all the technical features you have here. The randomization, the pronouns, the quick-pick sprite options, how the family’s skin tone matches, all of it.

I want to buy “The technical secrets behind Spiral Atlas’ Pride or Prejudice.” You need to finish this game so you can write it. (Or make someone else write it for you. I don’t care. I just want it.)

The title screen looks great!

Personally, I think an example project would be a lot more interesting if it could have an MC that used the dollmaker and had everything get saved. ;) Seriously, though, that’s functionality that other sprite creators don’t support, so being able to demonstrate that would be great.

If it demonstrated one dollmaker MC, one static NPC, and one gender-flippable NPC that would be ideal. I’d love to know best practices around having gender-flippable NPCs. (But then I think it would be fun to have a dating sim where the player decides whether it is yaoi or yuri, but the story is the same regardless… and maybe it could default to “neither” and have all NPCs be agender/genderfluid/nonbinary…)

Fantastic! I’m looking forward to it!

Yay! It’s nice when they’re easy. :)

Saving works-in-progress appear to work, but loading them doesn’t? It would be a great feature if it worked, as you could make a minor tweak to a character later without re-entering everything. (I mean, there’s so many settings!)

I think the “randomize at startup” functionality (which I love!) may be conflicting with it.

If that’s the case, though, would it be possible to lock the initial randomization down to a one-time-flag so loading the file doesn’t retrigger it?

Thanks!

Itch didn’t quite know what to make of the change. It said there was an “Update” but then didn’t know what it was. I just uninstalled and reinstalled it and it was all sorted out.

I just wanted to say how much I love the “random” buttons! I especially love how easy it is to make interesting, gender-nonconforming characters using it!

That’s functionality I need for the stories I want to tell! <3

1. What’s your name? Want to introduce yourself? I’m “yam655” or “Steven”, he/they. Most of the places where I am online I go by “yam655”. This includes other time-limited contests, such as February Album Writing Month and National Novel Writing Month. I’m old (Gen-X). I’m a parent. I’m the “A” in LGBT+. I like LGBT+ games that my LGBT+ kids can play, so expect some of that from me for this jam.

2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what’s your reason for joining? No. I only recently started making games. (I’ve been thinking about making games for decades. Finishing and releasing anything? Only did that the first time yesterday.)

3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own? I was watching some anime and visual novels played a small part. I self-describe as a “mad artist” though I normally add that they’re “wordy arts.” I engage in songwriting as well as dabble in fiction writing, but I’ve been wanting to stretch my visual art skills. When I looked at it, it seemed making visual novels was a good overlap of my creative hobbies. I particularly enjoy cute LGBT+ visual novels and dating sims that are family friendly. Itch.io is a great place to look for cute LGBT+ visual novels!

4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine? When I was young, I was a fan of roguelike games. (It’s a genre that predates cursor keys on keyboards.) I dabbled with that for years, but without a challenge to push me to do something small enough to finish, I only ever really dabbled. The languages included C, Java, and Python, but either it was directly using “curses” or (for the Java) it emulated the “curses” API. Since the past week, though, I’ve made a visual novel with Ren’Py.

5. Tell us about something you’re passionate about! I engage in a type of improvised acapella that was almost shamed out of existence. Back before radio and recorded music, the air was filled with the sounds of people singing to themselves. Once “good singers” became readily available for folks to listen to, this disappeared. Back when there were only two genres of music, the sacred and the vulgar, it was vulgar. These days, I call it “folk acapella.”

6. What are your goals for this game jam? I used a Ren’Py template for the last one, because I thought it would make things easier, but I don’t know that it did, so I’m doing this one without. I’m using Ren’Py Sprite Creator for my sprites. Last time I used Mannequin, which has a bit of a cleaner style (and was easy to use), but is a lot more limited in what it can do. I want to use my music skills to make some music I’ve not released before, and I want 14 new tracks that are all used in the game.

For returning jammers:

I’ve done a jam before, but not this jam. It was The Unspeakable Jam that ended recently. I showed up with just four days left with a goal of making something both unspeakable as well as entirely lacking inappropriate language and graphics. At least in the eyes of my children, I succeeded as they want nothing to do with it at all. It’s about attending your boss’s party while trying not to poop yourself. It’s called “A Crappy Game.”

I’m happy with how it turned out. It’s my best work so far!

I love it! That’s great!

I purchased this game even though it was 100% on sale just because I love slime molds.

I support the production more slime mold games with my wallet.

Purchased this even though it was 100% on sale, just because I wanted to support more non-violent squid-related entertainment. (I’ve a child that loves squids as friends, not food.)

You have some great examples of the sprites. I have three suggestions there:

1. Those examples are most useful the first time you run the game. It would be great if they didn’t show automatically except for the first time it was started. Then there could be an option to see it, or to clear the “already seen” flag or something if people want to see it again.

2. The game itself doesn’t have a title screen. That would be a great place to showcase a few of the best example sprites where they can always be seen but never get in the way. It would also minimize the need to show the examples every time.

3. Could you turn those example sprite pages in to a functional demo of how to use the copy/pasted code? Like a RenPy project we could either use for research, or even paste our new characters in to and directly base new novels off of. It would lower the barrier of entry for new users.

Thanks again for such a nice program!

I found a reproducible error. The in-game “Settings” button currently throws this error. The log here is from starting the game, getting through the intro screens, then pressing the “Settings” button.

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
  File "game/spritecreator_scripts/spritecreator dollmaker.rpy", line 126, in script
    $askcolor(parent=self, title='Pick a color')
  File "game/spritecreator_scripts/spritecreator dollmaker.rpy", line 126, in <module>
    $askcolor(parent=self, title='Pick a color')
NameError: name 'askcolor' is not defined

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "game/spritecreator_scripts/spritecreator dollmaker.rpy", line 126, in script
    $askcolor(parent=self, title='Pick a color')
  File "C:\Users\New User\OneDrive\Documents\Itch Resources\renpy-sprite-creator\RenpySpriteCreator-1.12-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 912, in execute
    renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
  File "C:\Users\New User\OneDrive\Documents\Itch Resources\renpy-sprite-creator\RenpySpriteCreator-1.12-pc\renpy\python.py", line 2004, in py_exec_bytecode
    exec bytecode in globals, locals
  File "game/spritecreator_scripts/spritecreator dollmaker.rpy", line 126, in <module>
    $askcolor(parent=self, title='Pick a color')
NameError: name 'askcolor' is not defined

Windows-8-6.2.9200
Ren'Py 7.3.2.320
Renpy Sprite Creator 1.12
Sat Jun 12 11:49:51 2021

Could you please mark the executables with the correct platform? Right now, if you're using the Itch application it will default to downloading the first one -- which is the Mac version -- even though I'm running on Windows.

The smile reaction table will be super helpful! Thanks!

I can't say whether I played the current version, but it was the version posted here within minutes of my comment. (I got my game posted yesterday and celebrated by playing other people's games. I was downloading, playing, then commenting all in quick succession.) 

Did the fixed version get uploaded? There's nothing worse than thinking a bug has come back because the code hasn't been released yet. (I say as someone who has spent hours searching for a bug that didn't really come back.)

I never figured out how to play it. It kept telling me I was doing it wrong.

That mermaid has some sharp teeth! Very useful for devouring apples! Nice!

This is kind of adorable. I liked the play on words, but the imagery used is top-notch. It's thematic and appropriate for both the jam as well as the source game. Super well done.

I like the name and imagery, but this was super hard. I didn't land a hit once.

You did four games for this jam? And they were all this well designed and thematic? That's super impressive!

This is glorious! Simple, but elegant. It conveys the message without ramming it home. It may be my favorite of this jam so far!

I got in in under two minutes. I saw the secret message, but... It looks like when it saved my score, it counted the time it took to watch the secret message, so the final score was over two minutes.

Nicely done. It feels very thematic!

I liked the premise. It seemed a little bit flaky. (It wouldn't start from within the Itch app. I think it crashed on me once.) I think it's missing some way to keep score. It also feels like just pushing off the inevitable as there's no indication that they do anything but move offscreen to all return in number. (Maybe that's not what's happening, but could use some animation to be clearer?)

As you say in the description, though, "This is quite regrettable," and I think the game does a great job with the theme. I think it is good enough to get the message across. :)

That's a very effective clicker game. Like most clicker games, I just want to keep clicking it.

Are there psychedelic effects at some point? How is it unspeakable?

Oh! According to the jam, "games have a beginning and an end," but I thought clicker games, basically, never have an end.

... Though that's a stupid definition for a video game. Classic Atari-era games never had an end. It was why good players could just keep playing them forever.

That was a fun (and sometimes difficult) 13 minutes! Nice!

It's a great game.

My only problem is... Unspeakable? This is a family friendly game.

Honestly, it is probably one of the few cop games around that actually is family friendly.