Shepherds of Haven (WIP) (DEMO UPDATE: 3 Aug 2021)

I came across an issue that I replicated; it is not listed, so I am reporting it. If it is recorded elsewhere, I am sorry for the duplication.

I got to the “free time” hub and I:

  • studied magic (psyonics)
  • practiced my gun skills
  • spent time with the leader guy
  • spent time with Trouble

Once I spent time with Trouble (manually helping him remove the pig’s blood) I was then recycled to the beginning where the game determines your magic school and restarts the whole variable sets at that point once more.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would look to a misdirected goto command … but coding is not my strong suite, so don’t be surprised if it is something else as well.

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That’s super weird! Thanks @Eiwynn, no one’s reported this yet so I’m going to go bug-hunting! :scream: Sorry that happened!!

(One thing that would help me @Eiwynn: did the game say “your day off is over” before you were recycled to the beginning of the game, or did it just randomly take you there without saying that your day off was over?)

Edit: I haven’t been able to replicate this on my end, and I can’t find anything in the code that would be a stray *return, gosub, or goto… I’m wondering if you just happened to be playing when I uploaded bug fixes and forced your game to reset both times? Though it’d be weird that you could replicate it and that it stuck you not exactly at the beginning, but at the magic school part–unless you’d saved at that part before!

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I had the same problem but it was resolved after I restarted the game.

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I tried the game again and still had the same problem. Was the fix updated or not, yet?

I did upload the fix yesterday! D: I’ll have to look into it later why it’s still persisting!

Personally, when editing my own game, I had a similar problem with scenes blending.

Perhaps the mistake might lie somewhere in a misdirected goto command?

It did not say the day was over (although that is exactly what I expected to happen)

It also did not go to the very beginning but to the point in the game where you are a part of the shepard team but choosing the school of magic( psyoinics, etc) you are.

I have not had a large enough chunk of time to test again … but I will try again asap. I never save games when testing; its just a practice I’ve taken with me since I began testing games.

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:sob: Truly no idea why that’s happening… I think the most frustrating part is that everything looks fine on my end and I can’t replicate the phenomenon! I’ll keep thinking on it, though!

Here’s my code for any intrepid user who wants to brainstorm with me on this:

Code

When choosing between Trouble or Tallys in Chapter 1:

Then he storms out of the room.

After a moment of silence, Tallys also turns and leaves, her eyes downcast as she wraps her arm around to hug herself.
*choice
    #I follow Trouble.
        *set troubleequalist true
        *set trouble %+20
        *set tallys %-10
        *set troublestatus "He's grateful to you for supporting him."
        *goto followtrouble
    #I follow Tallys. 
        *set tallysequalist true 
        *set tallys %+20
        *set trouble %-30
        *set tallysstatus "She's grateful to you for supporting her."
        *goto followtallys

After the *label followtrouble, going through the Equalists’ compound and yada yada brings us to the ending sequence of choosing what to do with the children:

*choice
    #"We'll take them back with us, to the Order. Keep them away from the public until we can find a way to clear them."
        *set childrenquarantined true
        *set trouble %+5
        *set reputation +5
        Trouble nods, clearly approving of this plan. "Smart," he says, flexing his gloved hands. "We can wait until we find some Hunters to join, or a spellbook with an answer, or—or something." He glances at the kids. "And their families can come visit them under supervision."
        
        The Inquisitors look unhappy about this, but they don't fight back on your decision. "I hope not to see the Shepherds' compound in flames for this, Diminished," one of them says, looking very much like he does hope for this to happen. "If things go awry, it'll be on your head."
        
        You ignore him and turn back to the children, who smile tentatively at you. "Let's go home," you tell them as Trouble punches your shoulder approvingly. "All of us, now."
        
        You're greeted by some of the brightest smiles you've seen in a long, long time.
        *goto endchapter
    #"Let them go home. They've been away from their families long enough, and we can keep close tabs on them."
        *set trouble %+5
        *set reputation +10
        *set childrenhome true
        The children stir and gasp with hope: all of a sudden, their eyes light up with joy. The Inquisitors survey you with suspicion.
        
        "Mark me, Diminished," one of them warns. "Should this go awry, it will be on your head. And we will come to claim it."
        
        You ignore him and turn to the children as Trouble punches your shoulder approvingly. "Let's take you home," you tell them—and you're greeted with the brightest, biggest smiles you've seen in a long, long time.
        *goto endchapter

The end of the chapter, where the skip seemingly happens:

*label endchapter

*if (tallysequalist)
    *goto tallysend
*elseif (troubleequalist)
    *goto troubleend

*label troubleend
*page_break ...
*if (troublehate = false)
    *set troublestatus "He's grateful to you and feels like you're good friends."
    *set tallysstatus "She feels a bit awkward around you and Trouble, but that will subside."
    The two of you return to the compound just as dawn begins to break, bedraggled but triumphant. Grey light touches the horizon just as you
    *if (childrenquarantined)
        herd the children inside, and for the next hour there's a great bustle and flurry of movement as Shery is roused from her bed and your new guests are examined, treated, and tucked into bed, with immediate summons going out to their parents. You're too exhausted to pay much attention to the logistics, but you do notice Tallys—owl-eyed and looking haggard—peeking her head around the corner to stare at the activities before beating a hasty retreat to her room. You look at Trouble, who shrugs and says, now in a very good mood: "I'll talk to her. It'll be fine."
        
        You glance at the sight of two siblings joyously reuniting with their parents and smile. "Yes, it will."
        *goto bladereturns
    *elseif (childrenhome)
        strip off your heavy, sodden cloaks and begin to drag yourselves to bed. Shery pokes her head out of her room, flustered and worried, and you spend some time catching her up on things while she brews the two of you some dark sweet tea. At one point you notice Tallys—owl-eyed and looking haggard—peeking her head around the corner before beating a hasty retreat to her room. You look at Trouble, who shrugs and says, now in a very good mood: "I'll talk to her. It'll be fine."
        
        You smile at the memory of bringing the children home to their families. "Yes, it will."
        *goto bladereturns

*label tallysend
[tallys route stuff, also all ends with *goto bladereturns]

*label bladereturns

It doesn’t look like any wrong *gotos, but maybe I’m being really stupid. The odd thing is that, playing through on my end, I don’t get any skips, and the Trouble route proceeds normally without having the Tallys stuff come in. Very weird!

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This thread is almost 2 years old. Wow. Also need more Tallys. Stat.

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Finally got the time to play the update (Tallys’ route only so far) but oh boy. Impressing Tallys, becoming a Captain and getting a death threat. Our MC is one busy bee.

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I don’t have a lot of experience with coding, so I’m sort of guessing here. But what about this *if (troublehate = false) statement? Is it possible to set this variable to true somehow? Because it seems like that would skip the next scene with Trouble.

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It is only possible to set (troublehate) to true if you choose to turn the children over to the Inquisitors! Here’s the relevant code:

You turn to the Inquisitors.
        *choice
            #"Take them."
                *set troublehate true
                *set childreninquisitors true
                *set trouble 0
                *set numberofhated +1
                "blah blah" text
                *goto endchapter

So I don’t think that should be affecting things, unless the people above who are running into this error chose the Inquisitors option first or at some point in some other playthrough, in which case, that would be an issue of the saving plug-in storing the variable in the web cache so that it gets tripped, even in subsequent playthroughs where it shouldn’t be! But I think the one alpha tester who also experienced this issue (and no one else did) did not pick the Inquisitor option, at least if I’m recalling properly…

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Will declining the “promotion” have (m)any adverse effects down the line?

Yes and no, mostly it unlocks an additional section to your day off devoted to being a captain, which is generally resource-managing and managerial tasks (kind of like… sending off Pokemon to do tasks while you’re not actively battling them to get loot? sorry that’s a horrible analogy). I think of it as: not accepting the promotion is ‘easy mode,’ accepting is ‘hard mode’ because it adds additional gameplay to your playthrough.

The biggest “con” that I foresee is that not becoming Captain means you can’t become Commander in the future. Being Commander has an impact on certain things, but they’re very specific, and I actually like both playthroughs (non-Commander and Commander) and think they’re both equally valid.

Long story short: it’s probably not a life-or-death decision that dooms you… Hope that makes sense!

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Replayed it again and maybe this will help:

Summary

After hugging Trouble, get this scene:

Trouble’s body is stiff with surprise when you pull him into the awkward embrace, but soon enough he’s laughing and patting you comfortingly on the back of the head. “Don’t worry about me,” he says. He smells of charch smoke and gunpowder. His voice is a warm, low buzz in your ear. “You just take care of yourself and these kids. I’ll see you soon. Promise.” [Sorry, this section is INCOMPLETE!]

Then this:

The two of you return to the compound just as dawn begins to break, bedraggled but triumphant. Grey light touches the horizon just as you

Then:

Days later, Blade comes home, his clothes stained and bloodied. All the Shepherds who went with him also return alive and well. He’s not back for more than an hour before you’re summoned to his office.

“I heard about what happened,” he says, sitting behind his desk. He looks tired, but his gaze is as keen and cool as ever. “From Tallys and Trouble both. Now I’d like to hear it from you.”

He listens silently as you recount their argument and what ensued afterward. When you finish your story, he says, “You were put in a difficult position.” He doesn’t apologize for it, but he does comment, “You did well with the circumstances that were given to you.”

So the blending of the scenes seems to have disappeared as of this play-through. But the rescue isn’t complete.

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Thanks so much for doing that!

Yeah, that part’s not done yet: I’m actually going to make the option not selectable to avoid confusion in the future! I’ve also rearranged the coding just a bit to see if I can get rid of that Tallys-Trouble blending once and for all. Also added an option to save Rika if you know about her when using a Word of Power against Blaphemel and other small things! I just uploaded that now–which unfortunately will reset everyone’s saves back to the beginning of Chapter 1… the one great flaw in the system!–but hopefully that improves things!

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You’re welcome. =)

Figures, played the one part that wasn’t finished…

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Hm. Well, I tried digging into the code a little more, and the only other idea I could come up with is that maybe the “tallysequalist” value was set to true somehow. Which might fit better with what was described, finishing the Equalist hideout route with Trouble, and then going to the scene with Trouble being upset that the MC didn’t go with him (going from “endchapter” to "tallysend’ instead of “troubleend”). Though I think it’d probably still be an issue of the variable being saved from a previous playthrough, since “tallysequalist” looks to be only set to true if you went with her instead of Trouble.

Though if you’re rearranging the code, instead of merging Trouble and Tallys routes into “endchapter” and then going to either the “tallysend” or “troubleend” scenes, what about going to either the “tallysend” or “troubleend” scenes first and then merging into “endchapter” after? It wouldn’t fix the problem with the variable not being reset, but then it would only affect the stats screen, I think.

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is this scene supposed to be in the current public demo?? got it while messing around with the save system when you play the game with tallys (in the taven?). just loaded a save file and it looked like the chapter restarted, didnt think too much about it, but then when i chose too hang with tallys again this scene came up

sry if it doesnt make sense english aint my 1st language

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So we won’t suddenly be lorded over by an incompetent “Lieutenant” who can barely light a candle with magic as our day to day commander and supervisor if we don’t take the captain position?

That would be a relief since my mc doesn’t plan on serving the Autarchy and its inquisitors forever, also remember what I said about my mc not lifting a finger to protect and serve the Autarchy elites when it comes to purely non-supernatural crimes, such as potentially tweedling his thumbs on the street corner when a mundane bank robbery is in progress or highwaymen are sticking up merchants and nobles.

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