Well, waitresses wear tuxedos all the time, although without the actual jacket of the tux(just the shirt and vest), so it’s not that unconventional.
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True, I should have also thought about that! Personally, I think it looks nice when women wear tuxedos (it’s not that uncommon in japan, in the more expensive western-style restaurants for both women and men to wear tuxedos or tuxedo-like clothes, which I guess are considered to be gender neutral in those circumstances)
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A couple typos/bugs you may be interested in:
- Stat screen says “Markmanship”, I think it should say “Marksmanship”.
- Not selected powers are showing up in the stat screen. I selected Armoured Skin, Slow Regeneration, Super Strength (+30), Super Endurance (+30), Enhanced Intelligence (+20), and Enhanced Psyche (+10). On the stat screen I am seeing the following:
Armoured skin
Far more intelligent than the average human (INT +20)
[a huge blank space here]
Strong psyche (PSY +10)
Slow regeneration
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While selecting powers, if you select #I have herculean super-human stamina (END +60) [120], it will only take away 80 of the possible points instead of the 120 the selection implies.
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The second newspaper headline appears to be blank. I got the following: On your way home that night you buy a newspaper, and you obviously made it onto the headlines again: “”. If this continues you will need an album to keep all the newspaper articles, and you wonder at which point other superheroes stop collecting them.
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During the fight with the bank robber, your HP gets set to 60 - your armour. I am assuming this is not what is intended as if you have Metallic skin your HP is set to 20 after each attack, while if you didn’t have any defense, your HP is set to 60. I believe what you wanted was to subtract from your health by 20 each attack if you have metallic skin, while subtracting 60 if you have nothing.
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When fighting the henchmen at the mascarade, there is a little confusion about what is happening: “You walk over to henchman and try to punch him as strong as you can. You manage to land a few punches on the henchman’s head, which send him stumbling back a couple of steps. However, your armoured skin completely protects you from the damage.” I’m assuming the second sentence is talking about his machine gun fire? It makes it sound like my armoured skin is protecting me from being hurt from punching him in the head.
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After henchmen fight when you charge in the room you get this choice: Now that I know they are robots, and rather clumsy, I’ll quickly go into the room, dodge their bullets and knock them to the ground.
It would be cool if you had a choice that doesn’t say “dodge their bullets” if you have armoured skin. I’m bulletproof, I don’t see the need to dodge bullets.
A couple personal preference things you may want to consider if you haven’t already:
- Stat screen says “Dollars: XXX”. I think this looks weird. I think it would look better if you did something along the lines of “Money: $XXX”.
- I don’t mean to be rude, but I didn’t like how the scene with the boss was written. I’m not sure how I would improve it, but it felt unbelievable and like the boss was acting like a child or someone who doesn’t have the experience to be holding that position in the first place. I think you can write it in a way that still makes Emily a brash dramatic person, but not sound silly. Maybe its because she is commenting on an experience that happened pre-game that we had no control over. I’m not sure.
- Your co-workers name is “John”. The default name for your character is “John”. Not a huge deal, but you may not want to make the default name be the same name as any of the characters as I did get confused in one scene.
- I kind of take issue with how some of the scenes played out. For example during the bank robbery, literally all my character did was walk up to the laser and break it. The villain didn’t attack me at all, I didn’t use any of my super powers (it doesn’t appear to matter what your “strength” is). However, their is a lot of build up about this super villain who apparently is powerful but doesn’t do anything. Also after stopping the villain, everyone is praising your bravery and how you accomplished such a difficult task. Your own character reflects how that was the most difficult encounter he ever had. But as a player, I felt like the cockroach encounter was much more “difficult” and significant. Also, the way your career is written seems weird. I am kind of forced to hate my character. My boss (who is very angry) gives me a task, what do I have the option of doing? Not the task but several options where I am goofing around on the internet. Even the task with helping with the robbery, I am given no choice to do my career. I think that is fine from a story standpoint, but as a player I am not going to be able to “feel” guilty or even “feel” anything about my career if I can’t do anything about it. If you want the player to care, you have to give some form of option. Either make it so you can choose whether to go help the police or stay and work. If you help the police, your boss gets angry and the player may feel guilty, annoyed, hubris, etc. If you stay to work, you may read in the newspaper that the robbery was successful and several policeman died, or something like that. Or if it is necessary to railroad the player to go to the robbery for story reasons, make it so the player has some sort of option to work late instead of sleeping when you are done with its own pros and cons (hp damage, loss of stats, etc). I’m writing these notes as I am playing through the game, and I will note that this does get better as the game continues.
- Stat Screen’s HP can be ridiculously accurate. At one point I had 26.857142857142854 HP. Maybe consider rounding it before displaying?
- When dealing with the port official, my only option is to “grab him by the neck and threaten to punch him”. While I don’t have a problem with this since I don’t mind playing a batman type, it seems very aggressive to be the only option available for the character (even if other options would fail, it is odd that it is the ONLY thing your character could think of doing in this situation).
- I remember at one part, the story describes that people with armoured skin can change their form to their “hero form” ala Collosus from X-men. It would be cool if this was stated as you are entering a fight or when you are changing into a costume.
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Hi again. In the scene after the bank when we manage to “win”
Can we comment on it? I mean, say about what we think of our “victory”. Because personally I don’t really think I defeat the guy. Because I have only sneak toward him and destroy I don’t know what and he retreated. We could either boast about it or reply humbly. I find it lack something because we didn’t even say anything here and simply go home after.
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Hey, I just want to give some suggestions for the time based power.
1). Instead of only being able to rewind time , you could add more things like: speeding up, slowing down and even freezing time.
2).The ability to rewind time in a particular area, or a specific persons time.
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What about rewind a living organisms time episode for example unbirthing or rapidly aging somebody.
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This isn’t a bug report more a question/maybe request.
Are you planning on letting the Player use their engineering/intelligence stats to create a suit of powered armor? And if not how about a bat man like utility belt?
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I agree with this, the idea of using your learning ability mixed with innate ability to understand engineering and further choices to boost engineering all seem to steer me toward an Ironman like superhero.
This could work well with regards to the flying ability too, e.g. No need to spend the points on that as you can incorporate rockets into the suit of armour, and armoured skin could reflect in the durability of the suit which would help focus in more a specific skill set and specialised hero skills and abilities?
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I have been reading through this story frequently and an idea came into my head when battling the second villain for the second time, would there be anyway for a highly intelligent hero to ‘find and collect’ more shards of meteorites to further increase your own powers? This could even mix with my earlier post adding to another user’s thoughts about using Intelligence and engineering to create a powered suit, even if it’s collecting materials from work as an engineer or saving to buy different pieces on the black market, becoming more vigilante esk hero etc?
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If this is like Tokyo Wizard we should have small moments of downtime to perform certain actions like Training, Side Projects like finding shards or making the suit or Spending Time with any people that you meet.
It’ll also probably balance out Gadgeteers and Paragon Supers who can pick to improve their innate powers by either using power stones or making equipment. Psychics and Mastermind/Leader types if the ally system comes back, Which I think it should, could also use that downtime to cultivate any Minions/Allies which I’m pretty sure you can usually get 2 out of three of those major ones.
@adrao
This is a maybe but probably not section where I make requests that I’d like but understand that they might not fit and I just realized this section is probably best replied to the author but I’ve already finished it and I can’t be bothered to cut and paste.
And this is probably just because I’ve spent too much time on /qst and there’s been a resurgence of Super quests but have you considered adding quasi-magic powers?
Also this is a very very long shot but if we’re going with Thunder’s suggestion of being able to use black market contacts to get some high quality equipment can we possibly date the black market dealer and if possible can you add an option to convince both informants (The Tech Dealer and Port Official) with a high psyche to work with you peacefully.
And may I suggest putting a Melee weapon on Shadow since you seem to be building the Shadow Power Set as a jack of all trades build with a little bit of everything and the ability to upgrade all attributes in exchange for only people able to raise them 20%-30%.
3 Likes
Continued going through comments and issues from post #63 (sorry, progress will be quicker once I’m finished with Highway Wars…) to post end. Next I’ll go through comments by judges from CSComp, and start to address some issues on to do list below. That’s it for today, then I might manage to squeeze in an hour or two, and I’ll be off for Tokyo Halloween (an amazing carnival-esque celebration!)
Replies
@markamadeo, thanks for the reporting of the bugs, I hope I solved them all. However, I cannot find the “bank robber” problem. Indeed, what you say is correct, but I failed to find the bug. Can you try to confirm and send me a screenshot, if possible? (I’m not doubting you, just I cannot find the exact problem, did a control +f of all *set hp commands, but couldn’t find it. Did you by any chance get the stone and increased your constitution? (this modifies your hps also!) But, we said we are talking about the Steel Aeronaut robbing the bank, right?
@markamadeo, for the scene with the boss I was going for a Jonah Jamesson (Peter Parker’s boss) character. So yes, somehow infantile and aggressive… This is indeed exaggerated, but I agree I have to improve this scene, as many people have mentioned issues with it.
@BigSmoke, @Chaosteress (and others) I’ll probably end up adding these powers, as many people have requested them by now (will do that in the coming days, hopefully)
@MossHeart, @Thunder originally I was considering it, though in the end I didn’t do it. I’ll add it to the list of things to do
@Thunder… about your second post… 
(will say no more…)
Changes
-Fixed a bug that didn’t let the MC used distance weapons charged with energy
-Hopefully corrected the bug with the second newspaper?
-Added option to solve final scene based on MC having strong armour (only available for armour >29, otherwise the armour protects you from the bullets, but not entirely, and you have to go through dodging option, or others)
-Changed stats screen to Marksmanship and Money
-Changed first pre-made name to “Adam Smith”
-Added extra options when encountering port official (mind control, non-threatening option)
-Added extra comments after bank option, to say what MC thinks of “victory”
-Added melee weapons to shadow powers (request from @MossHeart)
-Added ice powers (armours, ice blast)
-Added option to choose costume and appearance (let me know if you have any other suggestions)
Outstanding issues
-Place all powers chosen in the power choosing page
-Add extra fight component to first encounter with Steel Aeronaut, if MC can teleport or fly
-Re-write some of the dialogues for co-workers, to add flavour (a frequent complaint, so I need to work on this!)
-More things to do before confronting the Steel Aeronaut (this is what I’m currently working on…)
-Add extra time manipulation powers (suggested by many: speed up, slow down, freeze time. Ability to inflict and cure wounds)
-Look at possibility of influencing boss with mind powers
-Change the description of why the MC is being shouted at (if high charisma/intelligence they should refer to frequent absence, little work done, etc)
-Suggestion for powers: ability to mess around with Richard as payback (splash the coffee in his face or if you control fire you can boil his coffee to burn him, if you have appropriate power)
-Option to pin down aeronaut in ending scene if you have control over gravity.
-Suggestions for powers from @Chaosteress (Message #45)
-Reconsider writing scene with boss
-Post #63, issues with scenes: 1. First encounter too easy to win with Steel Aeronaut. Increase amount of fighting. 2. Possibility to stay at work for second encounter or allow MC to stay late at work? (rethink some scenes) Recheck post and think about this
-Fix the decimal points with HP (this is a recurrent problem in my games, I’m trying to find a solution to it…)
-Check costume changing descriptions (post #63)
-Add possibility of building a powered armour or improving gadget (in spare time, maybe through use of mechanic points… this could also be how the MC wastes his time at the office… mmmmm)
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@adrao Sorry I was unclear about the “bank robber” thing. It is actually during the fight with the bank robber at the museum that I was talking about. I looked at the code and I think I see the problem. It is in the “4_An_Afternoon_at_the_Museum.txt” file.
When you attack the villain, you have the code do:
*set enemy_hp - (ray_damage - enemy_armour)
I’m not sure, but I believe this is doing what you want correctly.
However, when the enemy attacks you, you have the code do:
*set hp (enemy_strength - armour_strength)
Since its missing the “-” sign before the parenthesis it is literally setting your HP to enemy_strength (in this case 60) minus your armour_strength (which is 40 with armoured skin), so in this case 20, instead of subtracting 20 from your current HP which you likely intend. That is why each time I was struck by the enemy I had HP 20, so the first attack did over 100 damage while the second attack did nothing.
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Wish we could figure out what our superhero costume looks like?
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@markamadeo, well spotted! I was checking the code over and over, but couldn’t find anything (was missing the - sign). Actually, all the fights had this problem, so I guess that now I’ve corrected it the game should be A LOT more difficult! (especially for those without armour…)
@lokidemon007, the latest update this morning allows you to choose your costume and appearance (after choosing the powers). There aren’t so many options there yet, but if you want something more specific let me know and I’ll add it on!
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Hey! Popping in to say I really like what you’ve got so far. It needs some polish here and there, but I think it’s pretty good! I was definitely surprised to see so many different options for powers, but I do like the variety. Having armored skin is definitely handy…
I also like the new customization options, but there seems to be an issue:
Error/Bug
When you choose to specify what your costume looks like, once you get to the “Are there any other important parts of your superhero costume? (you can choose two options)” part, the player is forced to choose three options (rather than just one or two). After choosing a third option, an error pops up saying “line 1781: No selectable options.” This happens regardless of what masks/capes are chosen.
Aside from that error, I quite like this WIP. Looking forward to more! (Very small suggestion for customization: in the shoes selection, you say “black motorbike shoes.” You can probably take out “black” and just let players assume they’re whatever color they like. This is really just a bit of nitpicking though, so no biggie.)
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Can’t you set the HP to “round to the nearest whole number” with “round()” after every line of code that reduces or increases hp?
Or is that not the problem? 
– edit –
Ah I realised what you were talking about, that’ll teach me to rush ahead without reading all of the posts… aheh 
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Teleporting and invisibility could use the option to use them to sneak up on steel aeronaut.
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Listen, I really like what you have here. Seriously, this has the potential to be a great game. But, as always, there are a bit of mishaps here and there.
One thing I advise you to do is show, not tell. Rather than shove a shit ton of exposition to the reader, have it be shown to them through actions in the story.
For example, you said that not everyone is willing to accept powered individuals and simply want to experiment on them. Rather than telling the player that, show them. Have the reader encounter a group of people who are vocal about their distaste for superheroes. As the MC walk through an electronic store, have a segment show up on a TV on how scientists believe that these powered people should be “examined” to further understand them, sugarfrosting their speech to hide their shady intentions.
You don’t have to follow these by word, but you get my idea. Show, not tell.
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No. Don’t remove the claws from the earth powers. I just pictured them as the claws of a mole.
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I picture them as gauntlets of rock with nasty pointy bits included.
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