Post any bugs and issues you encounter here – I'll try to fix them ASAP!
Thanks for the feedback! I tried to replicate the issue, but couldn't. Does it happen every time you're on the Academy screen, or was it only once? (normally, you should get a brief, randomised description of people, pets etc. you see in the Main Hall in place of "$enteringacademy")
EDIT: I've finally managed to locate and fix the bug with "$enteringacademy" :)
It happened once in Queen Valarisa quest on my first visit there (I was a battle mage if that matters at all). It never happened again.
Also, I would be grateful for an easy mode someday. Those fights are fierce :D
Oh, and one more thing - I feel the need thank you once again for making Lux. I keep remembering about that game, and it has a permanent spot in both my heart and mind. Every time I see a new upload from you I hope for another text adventure like Lux or Chuck :)
Thank you so much for your kind words!
About the difficulty in this game: if you have trouble with early gameplay, you can check How to Play -> Beginner's Tips (from the opening screen or the Journal) for some detailed hints and strategies on how to survive, gain EXP and money.
I noticed 2 small bugs in Coral City and one probably unclosed tag for if you follow a wisp.
first, if you go to the Amphitheater and examine the building, you are kicked to the Split Island.
second, the second time you get to 3 arches, there is an unclosed <span> tag.
I also found about 4 or 5 minor typos. I'm not sure how best to present them.
I wouldn't have found these bugs if I weren't so interested in the game!
The wisp graphics are attached.
Thanks for reporting the issues! Another player also found the Amphitheater bug and the <span> tag at Three Arches, and I've already updated the game to fix that. Are you playing the most recent version?
I'll fix the wisp issue in the next update.
As for the typos, you can simply copy and paste the sentences in question, and I'll locate them using the search function of the Twine editor.
Also a few minor typos.
When examining Living Crossbow: "When the user's MP if full" if -> is
"Finally, the serpents gives up the chase." serpents -> serpent
"Let's move on, Splayername." when hiring Cassie -> $playername
Line break stuff: "You contemplate the view for a long time" in the snowfield, and also when Hjafnir offers to join you.
More stuff (I really should get to the other games in this comp!) -- I hope this isn't too much of a deluge, because again I've enjoyed exploring a lot in the game.
All this is seen from the latest itch.io webpage for the game as of noon central.
There's stray debug text when gambling:
"Contimie" appears instead of "Continue" in an abandoned building so you can search/replace for that (touch typing?) Similarly, Sprit of the Mist appears instead of Spirit--I forget where I saw it but you can replace it in the source.
And should "a ball lightning" be "a ball of lightning" or "a lightning ball"?
There is also an odd bug with item prices. Here a new trader should have 45, 135, etc., and a battle mage should have 50, 150, etc. But it is reversed. This doesn't happen all the time, and I suspect it is related to how , or how often, a player re-rolls to start.
Trader:
Non-trader: (this occurred even at the start of the game)
Again, the latest build was used.
And one final report for the day ... hope this isn't too much to deal with! This is more like a small feature request.
Once you've bought all the mage spells, should we have different text? Everything's functionally okay, but maybe a "we taught you all you could learn" as for when you learn a 3rd skill would be appropriate. Here's what I see after buying all spells. (Also, could/should "back" be detailed as "back to the main hall?"
Thanks for catching all these issues! Especially the one with prices. I added the option to re-roll class only at the last minute, on a suggestion from a tester, and forgot to run the code that calculates prices when you do that... It's working properly now.
I fixed the typos and the gambling test message as well.
You're right about learning spells, there should be a different message once you've learned all of them. I'll look into this in a future update (I'm out of town for the weekend now, working on a borrowed laptop, and the Twine editor lags a lot, unlike on my desktop PC, so I'm leaving bigger changes for later. Luckily, the worst bug, the one with the prices, was a quick and easy fix!)
I’m in a room in the mines with a lot of text. The description text overlaps the compass directions.
Thanks for reporting the bugs! I removed the extra "the" and reduced line breaks in mine descriptions to avoid the overlap.
Trivia with verb tense:
Is it worth putting in conditional text to say something like "The Enchanter will help you repair the compass <if renown < 5>when you reach<else><now you've reached> 5 renown." once the player that level?
More typo trivia:
The Avatar of Doom sends dozens of (crystals spikes) -> crystal spikes (3 places in source)
The Goliath (attack) with its claws -> (attacks) (2 places in source)
Thanks for letting me know about these issues! I fixed the typos in today's update and changed the Enchanter message to "The Enchanter agreed to help you repair the compass once you've reached 5 renown".
Thanks! I fixed both these issues (they were serious enough to justify an update during the Comp). With the golem cores, for a long time you only needed 2 (same as with the other items the sculptor may need). I changed it to 3 at some point, because they are easier to get than soul shards and wyvern teeth, but I missed that one line of the code...
This is a small bug related to what the player knows.
"You must learn where the Queen's golden harp is, and retrieve it." is technically incorrect once the mer-folk have offered you their goods. So maybe "You know the mer-folk merchants have the Queen's golden harp for sale, but it is expensive!" (or something)
Some stuff about the devourer fight:
The text for "one slimed goblin" should have a period after it. Though an alternate solution is to take the "left." from "$enemyhealcharges slimed goblins left." and put " left." outside the if statement.
Would it also be possible to make the "burn a slimed goblin" text conditional, e.g. it disappears once they're all gone? It might be too much to check if you *can* burn a slimed goblin (functions in Twine are tricky from what I understand) but another if statement as in
<<if $enemy.name == "Spirit of the Mist" && $mistnameunlocked != true>>\
And finally, can the specialplayeraction for the devourer be conditional? When one goblin is left it'd be a neat touch to say "Burn the final slimed goblin" instead of "Burn one of the slimed goblins".
That was a bunch of good catches and suggestions! I fixed the issue with the crown - now you have to defeat the enemy before you can grab it. I added a new state to the Journal once the player has seen the Queen's Harp among the merfolks' wares. The link for burning slimed goblins now disappears after you've burned the last of them. I fixed the wording with "one goblin left" too. I didn't change the link text to "burn the last goblin", though - I agree it would sound better, but the link text is pulled straight from the enemy object, so changing this would require a lot of fiddling.
While fixing the Devourer stuff, I also realised another issue - if you escaped from that fight after burning some goblins, then re-entered combat, the number of goblins would be reset back to 5. This is now fixed - once you've burned a goblin, it's gone for good.
Verifying your other bug fixes, I found a few new ones. They're getting more abstruse, which is of course a good sign.
In this one, the Arch-Lich will keep fighting if you're poisoned and knock it to 0 HP, even if you kill it good and dead. In the screenshot below, it had 15 HP the previous round. So the volley would put it at -28 and I think the 10HP boost wouldn't get it back to zero.
This would make for an interesting puzzle to make the Arch-Lich harder to kill so you may want that. But I didn't see anything in the codex to indicate that. I suppose this could be resolved either by noting this in the codex, checking for the total net hit points, or cutting combat off and saying the arch-lich is dead if you hit 0 HP, before the check for poison regeneration.
This is a feature request for a convenience to tell the player the location of the Enchanter and Witch, if they know it, on the front page of the Journal. The Journal mentions a lot of other locations. So "The Enchanter" would become "The Enchanter of Swan Island" -- I'm pretty sure this would happen all the time. Though there may be a case where you're told the Enchanter is worth looking for before you find him.
I think I've seen something similar with the Witch--it might be worth a check, too.
Finally, one bit of syntax recurs 4 or 5 times...
attackallmessages:["The drowned one claws at you", "The drowned one hits you", "The drowned one bites you"],
attacknormalmessage:["The drowned one claws at you", "The drowned one hits you", "The drowned one bites you"],
"The drowned one hits you" results in "The drowned one hits you, and hits you for X damage" or "hits you, but misses," which sounds either redundant or contradictory. So I would suggest going through attacknormal/all messages and replacing "hits you" with "swats at" or "slashes at" or "lunges at".
Thanks! I fixed this, as well as all the typos/grammar issues from your previous post, and, most importantly, the Arch-lich bug (which affected the "normal" lich as well. Now both enemies die as soon as they've been reduced to 0 HP).
I like your suggestions about the journal and improved dungeon room descriptions - I added that to my notes for a post-comp release.
Thanks for your comment! The idea here is that you get bonus EXP for returning the statuette. You can think of it that way: the priests, who wanted it back, mostly stay in the temple and rarely talk to others, and common people weren't that interested in the artifact. But the other (probably bigger) reason is, I wanted to have some variety with quest rewards, so this one gives more EXP, while several other quests where you help the common folks can raise your Renown (I don't know if you've run into them, as sidequests are randomised and you don't see them all in a single playthrough).
Hi there!
You can find some basic hints on getting started inside the game, in Journal -> How to play -> Beginner's tips.
There's also a great (and very detailed) strategy thread on the game, with lots of information compiled by a player. Available here:https://intfiction.org/t/4x4-archipelago-strategy-etc-warning-spoilers/53190 (it contains a lot of spoilers, but they're all tagged. Also, it's based on an older version of the game and doesn't mention things from the 1.2 update, like perks, but what it does mention is still accurate).
Hope that helps!
Yes, the strategy thread goes into a lot of detail about all the individual quests etc., so it can be confusing if you haven't encountered them in the game yet! To simplify, the safest early game strategy would be to avoid combat (you should always carry a couple of Bottled Mists to be able to escape from strong monsters without rolling) unless with really weak enemies, check rumours on various islands to start quests (some will be too hard at first, but many require no combat/skills at all and give significant rewards) and visit markets (you can earn a lot of money by buying and selling trade goods). If your character has Charisma, listening to stories at inns and later "selling" them to the lady at the Academy also gives you a nice silver/exp boost.
That's what I've been doing ^^ I've been trying to find non-combat exp and it's worked so far. I'd say I'm on my way to a pretty good game. I have one further question; every time the game says savespot I assume it'll save, but I just died with a thousand plus silver on me (I seem to die a lot lol) and the last save it did had only 2 silver on my character... I assumed the islands were savespots, so that would be completely my fault if it wasn't just curious ^^
But all the help means a lot to me :D Thank you so much :) It really means a lot
The game autosaves after you've sailed to a new island, not every time you visit the island's "main screen". You can still save manually in each "Savespot". (This is because the size of the game - as you've probably noticed, saving takes a lot of time, and I didn't want to introduce this long pause every time a player goes back to the island's main screen). Basically, whenever an autosave gets recorded, you get a "Game saved automatically!" message at the top of the page, and Savespot means you can save manually. Sometimes both happen at once.
Glad I could help, and good luck with the rest of your run!
Ahhh yes I see I see that makes a lot of sense ^^ I was just confused since I thought it meant I saved those sweet 2000 silver and then I lost them xD. It just said 'approaching' and I was like 'eh????'
BUT I got the silver back. Turns out I still had the map to it lol. Anyways I shall try my best to finish all the stories ^^ The first one I did was the pirate one, but I never got to finish that one cuz I lost the game and I finally found it back. And then I was like 'wait where are the pirates? huh? Tragic queen? Tower? What?' and then I noticed there were multiple story lines so I'm trying to finish them all :)
All that's left is to figure out how to swap weapons xD cuz I read that you can do that in battle in the game but I had no idea EDIT: Figured that out too :') How did I never notice the inventory button still sitting there LOL. All this time I had acess to my character's precious stuff... (I'm uh... not so good at gaming XD but I'm having fun and that's all that matters if you ask me ^^)
I hope you have a wonderful day and thank you so much for your time and patience, it really means a lot ^^
Hello! Thanks for your kind comment. I'm really glad you're having a good time with "Archipelago"!
As for your request: other people have also asked about this, so I decided to add it in an update, alongside another small feature I had planned. Combined, the new "Advanced start" option lets you select your class, give the character a custom name and optionally start the game with more EXP and/or silver.
I did not add the option to select the objective, because the objective influences many aspects of the world generation, so it has to be set as the first thing after running/restarting the game. Changing this would be really complicated. However, since there are only 3 objectives, I hope it won't be too bothersome to restart until you get the one you want, then change everything else in the Advenced start menu.
Cheers!
Thank you for the feedback!
Right now, I'm not planning any updates to the game, and I'm not quite sure if I'll ever update it at all (other than bugfixing), but if I ever do, I'll consider your suggestion! I think backstories could be nice - your particular example, +1 level of a main skill, seems too powerful, but something like a minor skill, extra cash or a special "heritage" item would certainly be possible.
Absolutely! I also think certain backstories could have quests associated with them. Sticking with my earlier example of nobility, the related quest might entail defending your family’s honor or engaging in political affairs. Also, if you do decide to update the game again, it might be nice to start off on whichever island you were raised on. As it stands, the player is left to wonder, “Where am I sailing from when I first open the travel map?”
Oh, sorry!! I didn't see that, forget i said something!! I need to wear my glasses more :') Thank you so much!! EDIT: Ok now I'm trying to find the advanced start menu I feel so stupid haha
EDIT 2: You can scroll down??? SINCE WHEEEEEEEN okay well uh... I'm going to be having lots of fun with this, thank you so much again, so sorry for the bother!!
Hello! You're not the first player to ask this question. I created a new thread for strategy, and posted some hints about the ancient dragons in it: https://itch.io/t/2655166/hints-and-strategy-thread-ask-questions-share-your-str...
Hope this helps!
Thank you for your kind comment and feedback!
I'm sorry to say that, but right now I have no plans for further updating the game. This is partially because I feel it's complete (previous updates were all things I had planned for the original release, which didn't make it in back then because of time constraints of IfComp), and partially because the game grew so big Twine editor cannot handle it any more. You noticed how long the code is - this is also because it's poorly optimised (I learned many functions as I worked on the game, and didn't learn some useful stuff until later, which would help clean and optimise the code). Right now, adding more stuff to the game would basically require rewriting and improving everything, and I rather make new games based on what I learned from this one. I don't categoricallty exclude the posibility of making a "remaster" of Archipelago one day, and then I'll certainly add new content, but this is all preliminary ideas now.
As for Coral City: it is intended to be difficult, as it's an optional dungeon, and the only puzzle-like one. That's why there is an autosave before you enter and no autosaves in the dungeon - so that you can easily reload if you get stuck. A hint for exploring the City, if you want to return there: pay attention to how long the current carries you each time. It helps figure out where you end up. For full solution, there is this excellent map a player made a while back, which explains everything: https://intfiction.org/t/trizbort-or-other-maps-for-ifcomp-2021/53008/10
Cheers,
Agat
Thank you for your comment!
Just a heads-up, I made 4x4 Galaxy before Archipelago and it's a much, much simpler game.
Finally got around to 4x4 Galaxy and loved it! The fact that it is much simpler and shorter, makes the early game feel less drawn out (it is easy to quickly earn renown) and makes each playthrough more contained and therefore easier to replay multiple times in quick succession. In their own, distinct way both 4x4 games are great!
