wischi 2018-12-02 22:24
Almost 7GB, let's sacrifice some bandwith and give it a try ;-) Screenshots look amazing. Will give it a go tomorrow.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Wizard Malikens spell failed
By rohezal
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 536 | 3.41 | 25 | |
| Fun | 705 | 3.02 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 606 | 3.04 | 25 | |
| Theme | 791 | 3.04 | 24 | |
| Audio | 401 | 3.25 | 24 | |
| Humor | 428 | 3.02 | 21 | |
| Mood | 582 | 3.23 | 25 |
Almost 7GB, let's sacrifice some bandwith and give it a try ;-) Screenshots look amazing. Will give it a go tomorrow.
@wischi Thank you a lot. I would like to apologize for this monster download. Something is terribly broken with packing in my modified UE4 Version and I can not fix it :(.
Love the world you've created, shame it took so long to download (worth it though :smiley:).
@yetibytes Thank you so much for your kind feedback. Will have a look at your game too :).
after 8 hours of downloading, the archive was corrupted :( I'm so sad I really wanted to give this a try.
@marcellus I am very sorry to hear that. A big download like this should come with an installer which can redownload corrupted chunks. Sorry for the 8 hours, before I moved to the city I got slow internet too. I know how this feels :(.
Just downloaded for testing reasons the game archive from a different network onto my other laptop. The sha256 sum is correct and the archive is good and working.
Hmmm... I played for like 40 minutes but I could not figure out how to get into any of the locked doors. I found the diary of some boy and two things in that house and accidentally combined them, but then I got stuck. Not sure where to go next.
@jeroenpx
Spoiler (base 64 encoded, https://www.base64decode.org/):
VGFsayB0byB0aGUgYW5pbWFscywgbW9zdCBvZiB0aGUgY2FuIHRhbGsuIEJ1dCB5b3UgbmVlZCB0 byBlcXVpcCBpdGVtcyB0byB5b3VyIGhhbmQgc2xvdCB0byB1c2UgdGhlbSAoZXhjZXB0IGZvciBr ZXlzKS4=
With a lot of people like me 7gb download for a ludum dare game is way too much.. (internetwise) Hopefully you'll get enough ratings in this time :p
I read the damn UE4 manual twice, maybe there is a way to decrease the filesize dramaticly. I am working outside this week, but after it, the repacking can start this Friday. Hopefully it is not against the rules to repack a game without chaning anything.
I would love to play your game, as I have a fast bandwidth, I can afford to download it in a few minutes. However, the upload server seems to be awfully slow. Since the download link contains some kind of IP without domain, I suppose this is your own server. You should consider uploading it to a cloud file transfer system.
Do poke me whenever the file is uploaded on a faster server and I'll gladly give it a shot ;)
@fluffy-kaeloky hey it is a 100 mbit server ;). Maybe it is a bit under heavy load. I will get it to an other server, trying to get a Gigabit one.
Apsolutley amazing game!
It took me a while to figure out what to do with the first few items. Even with the hint you gave in the previous comment I had a hard time in the very beginning. Luckily, with such a small number of items and objects to interact with, the brute force approach of trying everything on everything worked. Immediately after that, though, the logic of how to progress became clear and I was able to solve the puzzles pretty nicely. Maybe an additional hint for the very first puzzle would be in order.
I really like the world you've built here. The setting has a nice mood and the characters are a bit deeper than in the usual LD games. :) However, I noticed there was a bit of a discrepancy between the diaries of Ulla, Herbert and Albert.
Overall, a solid and enjoyable entry.
@fluffy-kaeloky Try this one, this should be way faster. *invalid*
I put the carrot in my hand and clicked on the rabbit "it looks at the carrot for a long time." So sad. Ha - after running around with Gwendolyn's giant panties in my hand for a while I gave up. Consider starting out with really basic & clear instructions to set the player on the right path, and then grow puzzle difficulty over time. Cheers
@wyatt You got it right. But the panties are not for Gwen ;). Try to give it to someone else. It is part of the game to find out, what you have to do.
@arcus thank you :)
@juutis Thank you for your detailed feedback. The diaries tell one story from different perspectives. Not everybody knows everything. I hoped I implemented it correctly. If you found a bug / mistake could you report it to me? I want to thank you again for your accurate playing and reading all the character backgrounds :).
@rohezal to avoid spoilers in the comments I posted details about the dialogue/diary confusion in pastebin: https://pastebin.com/FZQabEAv.
@rohezal 404 Error unfortunately on your link. For your server being fast, I'm sure it is ^^, but depending on the location and distance, it can be really slow. I'm not downloading at more than 100KB/s on your server, would literally take me days ;)
@juutis you are absolutly correct. Should have had a person proof read the diaries. But maybe they were just drunk when they wrote them. The smallis minor, but a bit strange. Thank you a lot for pointing this out. Looks like a version 1.1 after LD is over.
@fluffy-kaeloky sometimes the cloudsoftware is buggy. Sorry, I fixed the link, tried it in several browsers. The IP server is Northern America, the cloud server is in Europe. Testet this DL with 2 Browser. https://cloudstorage.tu-braunschweig.de/dl/fi9QwUSeQyZPuDcEkRLYE5M2/maliken_final_2.zip
Fixed packing issue, reduced filesize by 80% to 1.3G
This looks really nice will check it out shortly. I also did a narrative game using unreal - vampire cyberpunk game callef nourish nosferatu.
Interesting prototype, but there doesn't seem to be much direction. Maybe an in game hint or direction system to direct you? In many other games, direction will be achieved through the level design, wherein there is a linear path of action that may split into multiple paths and reconverge later. Another level design feature is making many things clearly locked off, with certain progress clearly unlocking future options. Your level design however, had me a bit lost. I tried using meat on the bear, and a new message was played, which is good design (implies progress), but it didn't seem to do anything (No progress?). I tried combining it with things and it fit into the underwear?! Then what? That still didn't help the bear, and rather I was given negative feedback as the message sent whilst using the underwear and meat gave the same message as normal, implying no progress. And the carrot said something different when used on the rabbit, but nothing seemed to actually happen. Throughout the game I found myself unfortunately lost, and the rather open area felt a bit daunting to thoroughly explore.
P.S. You've probably already had enough with all the file size B.S. but even at 1.3Gb it still feels strangely large. Still took a good part of 15 minutes to install, which is still a bit unreasonable. I can imagine compression to be a pain, but it will invite extra reviews :wink:
@justcamh Thank you for your detailed feedback :).
First: You almost got it. Here is the hint you need to progress and finish the game.
VGFsayB0byB0aGUgZm94IG5leHQgdG8gaG91c2Ugd2hlcmUgeW91IGZvdW5kIHRoZSBtZWF0LiBI ZSBpcyBuZXh0IHRvIGR3ZWxsLiBJIHNob3VsZCBoYXZlIHBsYWNlZCBoaW0gaW4gZnJvbnQgb2Yg dGhlIGhvdXNlLg==
The combination was correct, you can only combine correct items. You got a hint that the bear doesn't like the meat. The idea was to give it to someone else. And the bear does not like the meat combination too ;).
Linear level design is boring IMHO. But you are right, you are a bit lost in this game. Maybe restricted access to areas would be better. There are some restrictions since you walk from house to house and get keyword after keyword. But the start area is too big and you have to much ground to cover. Should have made the start easier.
PS: If you know how I can decrease the filesize in UE4 please tell me. I read lots of tutorials and was able to decrease it by over 80%, but I am stuck at 1.3GB (from 6.7GB). There is a lot of audio, maybe I should convert it from wav to ogg.
@justcamh may I ask if you are from Europe or the US? There seems to be a different culture. I love Gothic and hate TeS Oblivion because of the quest markers. This things lead you directly to all the clues / evindence of a murder case instead of letting yourself explore. And since there are quest markers, they did not leave any actual hints how to obtain the evindence. Just running from point A to B to C without thinking for yourself. I think this is terrible. Elex handles this quite nice, you are able to beat the game without quest markers, but you can enable them. Quite useful if you look for a certain person which wanders around a village, and you would have to search for minutes.
@rohezal I'm not from either of those cultures. Level design doesn't need to be obvious. To some degree, simply locking off areas can be considered linear. Linear doesn't need to feel restricting, but just serve as guidance. I don't need a huge flashing marker, but I do like to have some form of restriction. I searched the houses, found some stuff and tried to use it, getting nowhere. My next assumption was that I had missed something, and consequently scoured the map turning up empty handed. Then I tried combining items, and still didn't find any progress. In this way, some smart level design could have guided me in some direction. Like you say, unlocking areas is a great idea, because once a new place is unlocked, you can generally assume the old area isn't needed anymore. Another idea could be NPCs, which could give hints or useful info. Point is that as it stands, I found myself aimlessly wandering with no clue as to what to do. The items I had didn't seem to be working, so my assumption was to search, but with such a large area, this became tedious and I ultimately gave up.
Level design doesn't need to be a huge funnel saying "You do this then this", but can instead act as a general guide. With all of the different mechanics in your game, I think this is essential. As it stands, the player doesn't know if they need to combine items, find new items, discover new puzzles or simply explore. To some degree, that is O.K. but on the scale of your game, I just felt lost. Maybe simply limiting the scope of the available area initially. With your extra hint, I'll see how much further I get :wink:
P.S. To decrease file size, I would imagine it would be a case of deleting some assets. I would imagine that you used a large asset pack, and probably a lot of those assets are unused. Find the big unused culprits (Maybe big castle assets or whatever) and delete them.
EDIT: Even with your new tip, I quickly became lost (again). The fox seemed to give a key, but none of the doors were able to be opened. It seems a door on a balcony opened, but I'm lost as to how to get up. I spent quite a while looking (not willing to admit defeat), but here I am. I imagine it's got something to do with the rabbit and its love of carrots, but that isn't helping...
@justcamh I am so sorry that you are my "beta tester" and tell me about poor design decisions. Thank you so much for your feedback. One house has 2 seperated doors on the ground, it is the house right next to Rufus house. Use Rufus key there. Maybe it was a poor choice to have 2 doors with 2 keys for one house.
May I ask where you are from? Just curious.
@rohezal 'Stralia mate! (Australia)
Got further, to the point where an ice vortex was summoned, was warned not to go in but touched it anyway and was forced to restart. By that point I had had enough and quit. You probably shouldn't have put an insta-death so late into the game, as it felt very frustrating. Another thing, you do all of this naming stuff, telling me to 'go to Rufus's house, but I don't know which one is Rufus's! Also, I'm not here to 'beta-test'. I'm here to give feedback to be used for future games. The point isn't to improve this one but rather your upcoming ones. This was a particularly ambitious project, and in future projects, I'm just suggesting that you spend some more time on the level-design. In general if you are told 'not to do something', then you should expect the default reaction to be the player doing that thing. These are just some of the general design flaws that I warn about, that I believe you should consider. Good luck with your future development, just don't rush the level design. Remember that the player doesn't know as much about the game as you, and you can never assume any knowledge!
@justcamh thank you for your feedback, ideas and very constructive critics. It helps me a lot. And I will think about it at the next ludum dare.
So I sat down and played this for 30 minutes and couldn't figure out any of the puzzles. I found the panties and gave them to the fox. I dropped them in front of the fox, I talked to the fox while wearing them, but nothing came of it. The rabbit was hopping between the house and the garden, so I searched the entire garden for a key, but found nothing. I climbed on roofs to look for chimney entrances. I tried every door and every animal, but just couldn't find a way to progress forward.
For future, I would advise against using hiding as a game mechanic. It's very tricky to balance scavenger hunt games, because as the maker, you know where everything is, but as a player who has never seen the game, it may be infinitely more difficult to find the item. We ran into this problem during another LD entry ourselves, where we had keys and locked doors. Lots of strange things came out in play-testing. For instance, if you have a level with two locked doors and two hidden keys, a player may find one key, and instead of assuming the existence of a second hidden key in the same area for the other door, the think that they have to make a choice between one of the two doors. Then they get to the end of that area, and they're totally confused where to go, so they restart, find the key again, and choose the other door. It takes a long time for them to realize that both doors need to be opened and that they just haven't found the second key.
A better approach is to place 'hidden' items in easy-to-find places that are out of reach, like a key that's hanging from a chain on a ledge somewhere high up. That allows the player to realize that the key exists and that it's an important item. In your game I'm still not sure if I was supposed to be looking for keys, or if I needed to turn the animals back into humans and then they'd open the doors to their houses themselves, or if I was supposed to find a clever way to break in through the roof, etc., because I never saw so much as a single key or witnessed an animal transforming back into a human. So I didn't know which approach I was even supposed to be taking to get into one of the houses.
@linear thank you for your feed back and your examples with the two doors. It seems like the game has too much possibilities and confuses the player. Maybe it would be better to trap the player the area in the start area and just let her go, when she solved the first riddle. I thought the tutorial made it clear that you have to have an item equipped in your hand slot and you have to combine items. There is a single "hidden" item later in this game and it is mentioned two times, where it is. So I think the problem is the start. Thank you again for your feedback, it helps me a lot. The idea of showing the player what she needs, like a key haning from a chain above her, sounds like a very good idea.
If you want to try it again, you don't have to search any key in this game. And most items are in plain sight. You have to combine some of them. Added a big hint to the description. And will add more hints in game in the post LD version.
Your game was played on my stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on the sixth day of Ludum Dare streams. Thank you for sharing your game with us! You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://goo.gl/N2rkr8
@ursagames Thank you for playing it. It is always something different to see someone struggling to finish your own game. And congratulations for beating it, you showed me some design flaws from which I can learn in the future. And remember kids: If something says: "It is dangerous, don't touch it.", do not fxxxxxxxx touch it!