Magikiras Discussion and Bug Report

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I would love to be able to afford an editor for Carebanet Girl. Maybe that’ll be a dream for another day then and while I am aware that there are professional editors on the site, their rates are too high for me (mostly due to currency exchange rather than anything else) and I haven’t gone out to look for local editors yet. Still input of any kind is something that I’d look forward to, especially the ones pointing out my flaws.

The second point is a valid one although I will also admit is that part of the problem is that I have certain character types that I enjoy more than others, which is why I will be one of the few people in this world who despise watching Game of Thrones. And yes, Carebanet is considerably shorter, about less than half the size of Magikiras although it’s having its own share of birthing pains right now as people can attest to.

As to how I’m not dead from exhaustion? Who says I’m not dead and just a zombie typing out this post? :imp:

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Have you considered having private testing instead? Usually people jump at the chance to test these games and from what I’ve seen most if not all do that testing for free. Maybe organize a team of three to four people who you know are on frequently and have them discuss the game with you in a private chat. It does help alot to have multiple eyes on a game in development.

To be honest I’ve been glad that you’ve taken this so well. I admittedly thought that when I wrote my original post that I was about to be burned at the stake by an angry author and angry fans.

Hmm what I meant wasn’t that their should be different character types but that the dialogue options shouldn’t all be the same. Pretty much all interactions during the beginning were all practically identical. What I’m suggesting is maybe have a more fluid rolling dialogue tree. Like have one question lead to a response and then you reply to that. Making smaller character building segments along with them having the ability to ask us questions then we’ll be given different dialogue options and such. That really gives characters more life when it seems they’re curious about you as well.

And well no one can really be one hundred percent certain that you aren’t. But if so I’d like to say that the people of this forum are friends not food.

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63

I’m not really aware of the private testing bit actually. So no I haven’t considered it at all. Maybe next time I’ll do it then but alas, I can’t do it for Carebanet so I’ll just have to work with what I can right now instead. Thanks for the idea though; it’s something for me to consider next time around.

Fair point on the dialogue bit. I still have time to work on this for Carebanet at least unlike Magikiras so that’s something that I can work towards once I finish messing with the Choicescript language. At this point, I’m now looking at Magikiras as more of my what to do and what not to do project and I expect Carebanet to take this position as well once I’m properly done with it.

Oh I can take things pretty well as long as discussions conducted in a civil manner and in a text based setting like this. On a face to face setting, I am much more impatient and have a decidedly shorter fuse. Forum discussions don’t have to be answered immediately and this gives me time to think about what others want to say, as well as modify my answer in mid-typing. I do my best not to fall into an explosive rage of frothing mess unless it was that minor dispute over MH370 on the forum a while back.

Edit: One of the things that I also tell myself is that haters will always hate and I don’t gain anything by arguing and trying to convert them to my side. So it doesn’t stress me out as much as it should when I see someone hating my work. In some cases, they’re also likely to hate what I hate in my work and I end up agreeing with them anyway :sweat_smile:

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Actually that’s the beautiful thing about private testing, it can be done at any phase of development. While entire script changes are out finding bugs,continuity errors and fixing grammar can be done at any time. Realistically you could have people start having your game private tested now. It’s what I did with a friend of mine and it worked out pretty well. As a matter of fact I could help with the testing if you’d like to try it.

That’s probably for the best especially with your first few attempts. Keeping an open mind is almost critical to this whole thing. Interactive fiction is not an easy beast to tame so it will sometimes take a few tries before you’re completely comfortable with the writing format,your audience and choicescript itself.

I’m the same way really.in person I’m an ass when it comes to confrontation but on a keyboard I’m the white dove haha. Honestly it’s like arguing religion, race, or God forbid politics. If both sides are dead set on one view or another then you’ll be hard pressed to change their mind. Add a keyboard and a screen and you’ve made it impossible.

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@Grapefruit Like i said i see allot of effort put in to this and i can
respect that.
Sure the writing could of used allot of polish and i wasn’t a fan of the
generic
text that was put here and there.

But i did enjoy it enough to make a few playthroughs. And a relationship
stats with the characters would have been good, since the option
to talk to them was totally optional.

Cheers and good luck on your next game

66

I have the same problem. I actually had to force myself to read this thread to see if I’m alone since a lot of people love the story. I really want to like it but a lot and I mean a lot of the sentence structure felt really weird to me. I found myself correcting and rewriting the sentences in my head taking me out of the mood. It was jarring and quite annoying at times. I usually finish a story within a day or two. It’s been a week and I’m still right after the train scene.

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Don’t worry about it. If you’ve got some problem but don’t want to talk about it in public, you can pm it to me and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.

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Bombs! Seriously why does it always have to be bombs? I failed the tower puzzle after thinking I had the sequence correct and fooled and it just blew up. Now I’m at the music gate and I can’t allow myself to be defeated again :unamused: anybody know the sequence to both puzzles? I’m too dumb to figure it out.

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Reading about these puzzles, I can’t imagine playing this without hacking.

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The answer to the tower puzzle is rainbow :sparkles: Seriously. The colors of the rainbow starting with red. For the other one pay attention to the musical notes (aka write them down somewhere) Larry mentions when looking in the bowl of water right before the mission and note the corresponding colors. For those who weren’t forced to attend music school during their childhood, musical notes go from a to g (and then start at a again). Also, the flat variety of a note corresponds to the # version of the note before it (so for example c flat equals b#) I figured out the final puzzle pretty easily during beta testing. (and then screwed up big time on my first playthrough after it was released because I didn’t take notes :sweat_smile:)

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Beware, Whilst it’s fairly easy, you had better have good memory because the notes that are associated with the colours are not listed after you select the first one.

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True. You have to note them down but the patched version has the note next to each option now, so you don’t have to remember as much.

73

How long until that patch hits the Apple store? I couldn’t buy it from the site for some reason so I had to buy the app.

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You couldn’t buy because now the site always redirect you to the store of your cellphone or to Steam if you use PC.
CoG doesn’t let you buy direct from them anymore.

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That I don’t know. I only submitted the patch yesterday since I was waiting to collect as many bugs, typos and suggestions first before handing in the corrections.

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That… I wasn’t expecting :smile:

I figured out the gate puzzle ten minutes after asking for the answer. Good thing I got into a habit of writing everything down.

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77

[Warning: Spoilers]

Just finished playing your game… finally with a happy ending! And that was after several playthroughs. 3/4 times i failed and didn’t achieve the min 4 points required. And 3 times i had to restart frustratingly because either i failed talking down Morgan in the final scene or i just have no choice but to finish off Morgan (because apparently he just happens to remember what i did to him in the forest, you know that one little option that locks you out from talking him down during the final scenes) or i stupidly didn’t take notes on what colour corresponds to which music notes and didn’t realise that this information was not repeated!

Seriously, it’s been really frustrating to restart everything because 1) it’s too long 2) you’re caught offguard by these unknown objectives. The characters are good and the story is good enough for me to restart and playthrough this to the end. Just a tip for your next project:

  1. please don’t make it this long, unless there’s an actual save/load point in between (though i doubt the game engine lets you manually save and load)

  2. please include helpful hints/tips in between; for example at the puzzles “it is advisable to take notes” etc etc even better put all your findings in the stats sheet so you can conveniently check on it. Because currently the show stats sections are not really useful.

  3. do try to reduce options that involves repetitive dialogues when questioning one person to the next. It’ll better to distribute these dialogues accordingly to each character’s timeline and when/what event that would make them open up to you. It’s tiring to choose the same “ask about this and that” to each 7+ characters at the same time.

  4. outline objectives at the start. Even if not direct, give hints that the following scene/option will be important. Or again stash this objective screen in stats section. Where you can clearly look up the mission objectives to keep you on track.

Phew that’s it i guess. The pain i go through in seeing Morgan alive and still be with him while dodging Larry’s wink and flirts here and there. :smile:

Next playthrough will be cheating Morgan with Larry.

Anyways a good job and a good effort! Enjoyed it although it took a chunk of my hours instead of focussing on my real life responsibilities. I have you to thank for that. :laughing:

All the best for your next project!

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Thanks for your advice. Not sure if I’ve managed to have done most of that in my current work though given that I’ve actually finished it before Magikiras was put on sale >_>

79

Oh lol. Really? Darn i was too late :joy:. Anyways still good to know that you’ve finished it. Will be looking forward to checking it out when it’s officially released.

80

Being totally honest, I see or felt no flaws on the game so far, but exactly the opposite…

What mostly brought up my attention to it was its size - considering the price of the final product with a converted currency, it’s really delightful to have a lengthy story and game to keep going over, specially when you like it, to add to the cost-benefit. This was perfect, and the size is appreciated, truly.

In regards to structuration of the texts, grammar and alikes, I also have absolutely no complaints, at all… I don’t recall having any of these brought to my attention, and both the way you developed the story and its pace are also perfect. Sometimes people seem to wanna find a needle in a haystack when pointing out “flaws”… The texts and writing are great and flow nicely, no complaints.

When it comes to characters, I also don’t see how can anyone find them any uninteresting - each of them is captivating and involving in their own ways… I really felt connected along the playthrough, and there’s no character I can think of that I disliked…

So, in a nutshell, I can say this was one of the best and most complete CYOA game I’ve played so far. I loved it, felt dragged into it, and to the experience it allows for, being that also as important as analyzing the product as something isolated.

I vehemently disagree with critics condemning the game’s lenght, text, and characters, and feel it’s utterly unnecessary to have people try to be overly critic, harsh or evaluate something so good in such a poor manner…

It’s already a niche genre and market, and having people go down to the most minimally unnecessary details to find something to criticize, simply because they think they’re the only ones reading it, or because they have this needy will to try giving too much of their own opinion, ‘advice’ or alikes, as if they took any part on making it, as if making less of such a great game because they decided to settle unreasonable personal standards for what they expect, is seriously annoying, and imho shouldn’t affect in any major way they way you develop your games/stories.

It was a fantastic experience… Unique CYOA game, with an amazingly blissful long lenght (the more, the better, unless for those who can buy these as if buying a drink and want short stuff), involving characters, varied and captivating plot, and a jolly read. I couldn’t find anything to criticize on it, and still think there isn’t.

Now, I just need to get to finally try avoiding the ‘better luck’ end and focus instead of wanting to talk about and do everything! (Another interesting choice, which adds reality to the point you can’t always lose too much time to do all you want.)

Thanks a lot for the game! :heart: :laughing:

PS.: On a sidenote… Is it OK for me to go through all the dialogue choices with as many characters I want, or does it makes you lose time/screw things up?

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