Today I don't have much time, but I'll be fixing it so that followers (i,e, Valjean and occasionally Cosette) can jump straight to rooms that are selected in the map screen, instead of having to walk through all the rooms in between. And also checking that the kneeling costume doesn't go weird any more, and trying to get to the bottom of the "turn around before exiting" bug. Then if I have time, it's back to dialog.
Incidentally, some of the dialog is becoming a kind of Easter Egg. Not deliberately, but I realise that some of the characters have more dialog than others, and most of this will only be discovered by accident. For example, the girls in the convent school - I don't expect anyone will click on them, but if they do, the girls say some light hearted stuff from the book. (That isn't in the test version, I only just added it). Also there are a couple of animations that probably nobody will ever see, because they were designed for tasks that have since been dropped. Nothing amazing, but if (for example) you go to the back of the convent during the barricades, you see smoke arising from that general direction. It's not earth shattering, but I think it looks nice. :)
6 comments:
Chris,
Got a bit further last night (another 2 hours of playing). I ended up using F1 a LOT more - after your comments on how far the clues were finished, I now understand why. :)
So here goes...
-Played up to searching for Cosette in the forest (and am completely stuck here! Not sure if I'll be able to solve this one... have exhausted 'F1' and clicked everywhere for half an hour...)
-Used F1 a lot (there are several very obscure puzzles, e.g. Valjean needs to think of a random stack of books in a random tavern.)
-Valjean's escape is discontinuous - after he jumps off the mast, he magically turns up in a town (I found him by using the trusty 'R' key and having him think of a random object).
-The animations of Cosette's dog are frequently messed up or look strange
-Wow! The trial was really intense! I was truly horrified when Javert appeared!
-The splash when Valjean hits the water is not filtered, thus does not match the rest of the scene (the factory fire animation looked much better in this regard)
That's what I initially wrote down. As far as your comments, yes, I did see the hands-in-the-air, climbing-the-factory-wall, and saving-the-sailor animations. All three were great! :)
On to the bad news: I did have repeated game crashes at one point. This happened only while Valjean was imprisoned for the second time. I would enter a scene (specifically, the cafe in Paris and the tavern out in the country town - whatever it's called) and the game would immediately crash with the following (extra stuff trimmed):
ACI version 2.72.920
Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'room_b':
Error: Array index out of bounds (index: 100, bounds: 0..99)
in -------- CLUES --- (line 4768)
from -------- CLUES --- (line 4774)
from run the story (line 99)
from Global script (line 100)
from Room 38 script (line 17)
That was for the Paris cafe. For the tavern, the message was similar, only the last line was:
from Room 67 script (line 24)
It seems like it was isolated only to where Valjean was in the ship. Maybe it has to do with the game thinking that Valjean is still in 'follow-the-user mode'? Not sure, but these are definitely serious crashes - I lost about 20 minutes of progress the first time it happened.
But that's the bad news. The good news is that I've really enjoyed the game so far! I may never read Les Miserables (although after this game I just might!), but I feel I've experienced a lot of it much better than I would just by reading. And your game never felt like an 'animated storybook' - I can actually connect to the characters, and it does feel like an adventure game!
Well, I wish you a happy "Envy-those-Yanks-their-Thanksgiving Day"... :)
-Caius
(Larskemmann@aol.com)
Will any of the stories contain classic Lucas- or Sierra-styled puzzles?
> Lucas/Sierra puzzles:
Probably. I'm more interested in puzzles than story, but the story becomes boring if the puzzles are always the same. So there will have to be some variety. Plus, some stories will naturally lead to different kinds of puzzle. Any story involving keys and levers for example :)
> -Played up to searching for Cosette in the forest (and am completely stuck here! Not sure if I'll be able to solve this one... have exhausted 'F1' and clicked everywhere for half an hour...)
Wow. I'm really sorry about that. And VERY grateful that you have the patience. That's exactly why the game needs testing! Obviously my clues there weren't adequate. I'll go back and improve them.
For the record, you first need to wake the dog by making him think of food - I've since made that a bit easier, but in your version you just need to combine the dog with the plates in the tavern.
Next, you need to make the dog think about Cosette - combine the dog with the rags in the tavern (they belong to Cosette). You should then both go to the forest.
Finally, Valjean should look at the mud on the ground for footprints. I'll make all three parts a lot clearer. I hope you don't give up! We only have 18 days to find any other impossible clues - but you're nearly half way through the game now.
> Valjean's escape is discontinuous - after he jumps off the mast, he magically turns up in a town (I found him by using the trusty 'R' key and having him think of a random object).
That's a clever solution! I didn't think of that. I think I fixed that problem yesterday. In the book Valjean sneaks away to Montfermeil. I added some dialog where the men on the ship say stuff like 'I wonder what happened to him, they never found the body' and that soon changes to 'he kept talking about rescuing a child in Montfermeil' - after a few visits to the ship, the word 'Montfermeil' should be lodged in the user's mind.
Incidentally, this is an example of where a Lucas/Sierra puzzle would have been ideal: in the book, Valjean has to swim underwater then get a disguise from an inn of ill repute. (And later Thenardier goes to a master of disguise - in a very early version of this game the disguise guy played an important role). It sounds like something straight from a classic adventure game. Unfortunately, it would require a whole new set of animations (Valjean swimming, Valjean wearing prison costume, etc.) plus a whole lot of new scenes and interactions. I just couldn't justify the time because the event is such a tiny part of the book. But if I was doing it again I'd probably use it.
> The animations of Cosette's dog are frequently messed up or look strange
Fixed (I hope)
Actually, the getting up animation will always look a TINY BIT strange. The 'getting up' animation was based on my own dog, a lurcher, and she's very long and thin. But the walking animation was based on a dog who has a thick body and short legs. I tried to change the animation as much s possible, so I hope the difference isn't too obvious :)
-Wow! The trial was really intense! I was truly horrified when Javert appeared!
You make me so happy when you say stuff like that! And I hope the stuff I added since your version makes it even better. (More text from the book, emphasizing his moral dilemma.) and I've fixed some of the camera jumping (when Javert arrives) and hopefully synchronized the music better with the end (the shrieking strings should coincide with the scene fading to black - they didn't always do that.)
-The splash when Valjean hits the water is not filtered, thus does not match the rest of the scene
Fixed. That was because of the "dithered clouds behind the text" thing. When I go rid of the ugly dithered clouds then I had to make the scenes paler so you could still read the text. I forgot that the splash had been created for the darker background.
> CRASH
Thanks. This is easy to fix but I'M INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL you're finding this stuff. I wish I had money to pay you - what you're doing is vital. Please, if for whatever reason you don't think you can make it to the end of the game before December 15th, let me know, and I'll personally come over to your house and beg pathetically, on my knees.
I've promised various contributors they can have the first game free (i.e. people who have provided graphics or music) but in your case consider yourself free-games-for-life. Although after this experience you'll probably consider that a punishment more than a reward.
>
Hi Chris,
RE: punishment vs. reward... :) So far, it's been really fun.
I still plan on buying the game, though! Consider it my donation towards the next story. :)
RE: Valjean searching the mud for clues - yeah, I got that from F1 also. But I have a problem - there's no mud for him to click on. I've right-clicked-Valjean-right-clicked-every-possible-area-I-could-think-of-in-the-forest-including-the-unlabeled-ground, but to no avail... :(
RE: Finishing before Dec. 15 - maybe. I'll certainly try! It would help to know how far I have left to go - am I halfway through the events yet?
RE: Not figuring out where Valjean went. I had no idea that listening to the sailors would provide any kind of clue. Of course, this was probably because I had left 'listening' mode because I'd gotten past the point where there were dialogue clues. So with the new dialogue, I think this will be better also.
One suggestion (that I hope won't be too hard to implement): don't have a hint for the first time F1 is used in an event. This goes back to Victor being a mentor figure/commentator/praiser for Peri. Call me modest, but I enjoy going back to heaven and hearing him congratulate me. :) I found myself hitting F1 very often, but unfortunately getting a lot more hints than I wanted (which made the game easier and discouraged me from actually listening to people).
So maybe the first time he should just give his comments on the previous event, and then ask something like "You're not stuck, are you?"/"The world is counting on you, Peri! Let me know if I can help"/"(something less cheesy)".
-Caius
(Larskemmann@aol.com)
re: mud
u-oh. I must have called it something else. "ground" or "dirt" or something... I'll have to check. And I'll make sure it's much easier to do - it's not like it's the world's cleverest puzzle or anything.
re: how far through the events yet?
press Ctrl-O (O for Orange) to see the next open event. Press Ctrl-P to see all the events, which should have numbers next to them. The slider bar at the top of the page is not very accurate, the names and numbers on the middle are more accurate. From memory (I'm on a different computer) finding Cosette is something like event 55 out of 123, but the later events more more quickly. At least, that's how they feel to me. There are a lot of obvious events - like click on the person standing next to you. In my kind, finding Cosette is about the half way mark. But the next task (actually getting Cosette away from Thenardier) is potentially tricky. It's a slight change from the usual style.
re: no hints, just congratualtions for the first time. I think someone else said the oposite ("less friendly banter, more clues!") so I've been playing down the chat, but I agree with you. I like the friendly stuff best of all. I think it's what will make the game stand out and appeal. Most games don't have any real warmth between characters.
I'll be sure to start more clues with just congratulations etc. (NB The "get straight to the clues please" comment came from an early build of the game where it was almost impossible to work out what was going on :)
- Chris
I just checked, and finding Cosette is actually event 35 out of 123. Funny, I thought it was later than that. But the later events Do generally pass more quickly. I think. And remember, I'm happy to upload a more recent build of the game any time you want, to hopefully speed things up a bit - you won't be able to load saved games from an earlier build, but of course you can use Ctrl-P to jump to half way through. Though having said that, from my point of view it's very useful to know that somebody has got from one end to the other using saved games in the SAME build of the game, just to make sure there are no 'slow burning' bugs that only appear after a long time. The crash you experienced, for example, was something that only happened when a hundred different people had said something, so would never have been caught in just testing an hour at a time.
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