Are you planning on adding save slots? It would be helpful especially with the amount of bugs.
I would recommend running randomtest on your game, it should catch any game-breaking errors like the ones people are reporting upthread.
Nice Game, really enjoyed the demo, though I couldn’t continue past the part you meet Mr. Devitt. I got an error:
we’re really out here rolling out the western games. nice.
I checked through your game files a little and yeah, what people pointed out, you are missing a lot of variables.
Best thing to do is run the game through quicktest and randomtest before uploading (you need firefox or safari for that, but dang it can get your bacon out of the fire. If you wanna use dashingdon’s safe function just remove it from the startup before running the tests and re-add it just above the *finish before uploading)
godspeed <3
This is really interesting! Will definitely keep an eye out for more! <3
btw, here are a couple of bugs and typos I found ~
capitalization of “Imagine” and I thing “will” should be “we’ll”
The pronouns, I use she/her and in some instances like the SS above, instead of “her” it ends up being “Hers”
As for this one, I cannot get past this error. Hoping to see it fixed soon as I would defo love to finish reading your demo <3
This seems like an interesting story so far, but I didn’t get far before encountering a bug. I think it would probably help to use Dashingdon’s save system so that you don’t have to restart every time you encounter one.
Not to overwhelm you with error messages, considering how many you currently have. But I got this one trying to move forward.
On the bright side, I really really enjoyed what I played! I was very quickly immersed! Great stuff!
As a preface, westerns aren’t usually my cup of tea, but this one caught my interest! My condolences for the heaps of text, but I tried to be as in-depth as I can. Hope this is helpful!
Choices:
As the MC was running from their pursuers, the ‘climb up/go through’ choice made me pause. I went back to the text to see if either option would increase a stat or personality trait, but no dice. I essentially chose an option at random. It was essentially another ‘left/right’ choice. It struck me as odd, then, as the MC began deliberating over the consequences of the choice after I had already chosen it. It didn’t feel like an informed choice, so the consequences didn’t really feel deserved.
Perhaps the choices could be enhanced by adding snippets of motivation—you climb the building because you don’t want to endanger innocent people, or you kill the student because it’s the pragmatic thing to despite conflicted feelings about it, et cetera. These choices may be insignificant to the overall plot, but they can be an effective vehicle for personality, as well.
(Also, the ‘go through’ option confused me at first—I see you’re trying to utilize snappy wordings to represent the urgency of the scene, but my confusion broke the immersion a bit, lol. Maybe ‘go through the window’ if nothing else.)
These are minor gripes, mind you. I enjoyed the dialogue choices.
Coding:
Here’s something that could optimize your code.
Additionally, there seems to be random capitalization of variables that seem like they should be lowercase, such as Wyatt calling the player character “Kid” instead of “kid”, or gender-variable characters constantly having capitalized pronouns.
On that note, the possessive pronoun for the player character is set wrong for any pronouns other than he/him. You set {his} as hers/theirs, but use it in the text in place of her/their, which creates oddities such as "I just so happen to be Theirs father." I'd recommend setting a separate true-false variable based on whether or not the possessive pronoun ends with an 's' and set {his} as her/their instead, or separate his/hers/theirs and his/her/their into two variables.
The bugs, as I’m sure you’re well aware of already, did end my gameplay early, unfortunately. But other than that, there are some spacing issues, missing line breaks, etc. Nothing else game-breaking, just cosmetic details.
(If you need any coding help, my inbox is open. )
Final thoughts:
I liked the game! I enjoyed the concept of scamming people with Wyatt and lying right to their faces, I enjoyed the writing—overall, it was a fun read. And the scene with the rings and the student? Super cool.
As for your Tumblr, turning on anonymous would get you more asks (if that’s something you’re looking for) and advertising it on the forum as your Tumblr in addition to a development blog could probably get you more clicks.
I know this is gonna sound nit picky, and I apologize for that. In the beginning you said the rain was masking MC’s scent, but water sadly doesn’t do that. In fact, the water droplets carry even more of your scent to the ground, making your scent trail stronger. But this is a world with vampires so it’s not a big deal. Like at all… Anyways, GOOD GAME!
I enjoyed it. I always have a liking for a story that begins with MC being in the middle of action instead of slow “…woke up in bed and heard birds sing…” introduction. Love the western theme, love the con artist theme, love the hunter theme.
I’m looking forward to the next update~
Hi! Could you please include character/RO description in your main post? I wanna get to know them. Also, I usually keep forgetting about RO characters that are included in games and usually go back to the thread to read about a certain RO. Or are the RO descriptions included in the stats? (Sorry I haven’t played the game yet. If everything is in the stats, then thank you in advance )
Edit: having a saving system would help a great deal as well. But it’s okay if there are no means of doing that at the moment.
Also, while I was playing I encountered an error which prevents me from proceeding further.
Here it is:
Hi! Thanks for the feedback – saves have been implemented in the adrenaline rush of posting this last night I forgot to check off the inclusion of the save plugin on dashingdon. I also fixed the *clothing variable (thanks again!)
I think the saves are broken, and I also hit that error @AMER1CANN1NJA09 posted, which makes it so I can’t read any further
I’ve never replied on the forum before, so im not sure if this is the correct spot… if not awkward I found an error while reading. Really enjoying your story so far!
chapterthree line 96: bad label smallfamily_belongings
People, I think we can leave the error reports be.
Enough people reminded beaureguard to run quick- and randomtest to find these kind of errors, so by now i can imagine the constant repeat of ‘hey, there’s a variable missing’ could get discouraging.
Hey All! Thank you for all the feedback and the replies! Like I said, I’m an absolute newbie when it comes to coding in general – so I had no idea about the run-test option I put it through and things should be running smoothly from now on–but please let me know if you find anything I didn’t catch! Saves should also be up and running, (I know I said so earlier but I fixed the error.)
Thanks again so much for all the feedback!
godspeed
If you want another good tip:
If you have branches and intext branching (like the characters will say something different/something different will happen) depending one previous choices/stats it’s a good idea to put numbers somewhere to check if the text brings up the correct path.
e.g.:
*choice
#option1
*goto path1
#option 2
*goto path2
#option 3
*set whoops true
*goto path1
#option 4
*set whoops true
*goto path2
*label path1
(Whoops? @{whoops 2| 1}
Text
*if whoops
extra text (2)
regular text
---
OR
*label 1
(Whoops? @{whoops 2| 1}
Text @{whoops bit of text for whoops(2)| regular text(1)} more text
it really helps finding continuity hiccups and formatting errors fairly quickly