don’t worry too much about the lower word count. 100,000 is still a decent amount. Besides any dropped ideas can be re threaded into the other books.
@Nocturnal_Stillness
Good point! Though I was sad to realize that I wouldn’t be breaking the record for longest CoG, taking out those transformations and the paths they entailed boosted the qaulity of the story dramatically, which is what matters most.
I like the story , but why I can’t change becks name or a nick I want put my kitty name to it he is so cute inside his bag and sleepy. let me choose his name, also could I found a girl for him?
@Samuel_H_Young Quick thing, I know that this has been brought up so many times before in the other thread, but I really do believe that you have got to space up your paragraphs way more. For example, in the opening label of your second scene, you have:
"As you solemnly follow the wreckage of the demon’s wake, your growing hatred of this demon begins to fester: if only you could have been there when it appeared. And why did it do this in the first place?! The only comforting thought that you can muster is that at least your lifelong companion is safe and by your side…A slight smile spreads across your face at the thought of your impish companion. You think of how you initially met your little friend. You remember it vividly because you had just begun your career as a demon huntress, and simultaneously met your lifelong companion. It so happens that you caught him stealing from your pantry. You were settling down after a laborious days work of moving into your new office, when you suddenly heard a peculiar shuffling noise emitted from your pantry, and this was particularly odd because you knew for a fact that you were supposed to be alone. Grabbing your staff, you quietly sneaked over to the edibles storage, swinging the door open to see a little boggart stuffing his mouth with your pies. Prepared to chase him from the premises, you raised your staff, but something about this acute thief stopped you. He stared up towards you with pleading eyes, and a second glance revealed his emaciated features; he was starving. At that moment you decided to keep him, mainly because "
I personally would have spaced up the following paragraphs as:
"As you solemnly follow the wreckage of the demon’s wake, your growing hatred of this demon begins to fester: if only you could have been there when it appeared. And why did it do this in the first place?! The only comforting thought that you can muster is that at least your lifelong companion is safe and by your side…A slight smile spreads across your face at the thought of your impish companion.
You think of how you initially met your little friend. You remember it vividly because you had just begun your career as a demon huntress, and simultaneously met your lifelong companion. It so happens that you caught him stealing from your pantry. You were settling down after a laborious days work of moving into your new office, when you suddenly heard a peculiar shuffling noise emitted from your pantry, and this was particularly odd because you knew for a fact that you were supposed to be alone.
Grabbing your staff, you quietly sneaked over to the edibles storage, swinging the door open to see a little boggart stuffing his mouth with your pies. Prepared to chase him from the premises, you raised your staff, but something about this acute thief stopped you. He stared up towards you with pleading eyes, and a second glance revealed his emaciated features; he was starving. At that moment you decided to keep him, mainly because"
It seems so much easier to read, don’t you think? Long paragraphs & long pages tend to scare away readers (like me), so I would greatly recommend this. A rule of thumb that I usually use for my own game is that a paragraph should last no more than five lines and that each page should last no longer than five paragraphs.
NOTE THAT MOST OF YOUR READERS WILL PROBABLY BE ON A PHONE. While I do understand that the Chrome Web Store version has been released, it has only been out for a while and most buyers will not know that yet/people don’t have a computer but do have phones, so it is most likely that a majority of your audience WILL be on a phone, like it or not. Keep in mind that they will have to read such a long text on a cramped screen. If a paragraph is already as long as you have made it in my example, then think about your poor readers on the phone who will have to plough through that huge wall of text.
Although, in the end, it is still your choice if you wish to do it or not. I’m going to go play it a bit more since I’ve only reached the beginning. Sorry for the long post, by the way.
Also, there seem to be repetitive descriptions here and there.
“Beckham’s main form is that of a small devilish imp; but that can change at any given time, provided that he has the necessary manna available, as he is a shape shifter. Though Beckham is relatively small, and not very powerful, he has the capability to transform into another being of his general size.”
The first sentence is saying almost exactly the same thing that the second sentence is saying, which makes it redundant. It could, at the very least, be merged together into just one sentence so that it’s shortened.
Remember, quality > quantity, and your readers will be forever grateful for it.
It is a very interesting concept & it looks good so far though, so I’ll read on.
Edit: I am also finding a lot of typos in the second scene; such as when I have determined that the warlock is a male and yet is called ‘her’, my MC is a female and yet called ‘him’, as well as missing spaces after comas although those are small things.
Also, if you want to determine whether or not your paragraphs are too long, you may want to use your phone to read/borrow a phone to read through your story. I’m doing that now with yours and if I had been a customer, I would honestly put it down there and then, even if the concept sounds interesting. Long paragraphs give the illusion of tediousness, even if they’re actually not, so just be careful with those.
@Random
I’ll go through and space out the paragraphs more, and fix those redundancies. And I’ll definitely look into those typos - would you mind pointing them out directly so I know where they are?
@MaraJade
Yeah I’ll give you a choice of what to name him and I’ll probably add a girl for him but it’ll have to be when the story is less dangerous, so maybe in one of the sequels.
if you choose to talk to the assassins you get this…
You take note with a nod of your head, and incline your head towards thegorgeous assassin, nearly fumbling over your words as you inquire, “And your goal? A woman as fair as yourself need not associate with murderous villains such as these”, you say, attempting to flatter her. assassin, nearly fumbling over your words as you inquire, “And your goal? A gentleman as stunning as yourself need not associate with murderous villains such as these”, you say, attempting to flatter him.
For some reason both the male/female descriptions are showing up.
I noticed a few other mistakes but will pm you in more detail later after I finish work.
@Nocturnal_Stillness
Wow, that’s bizzare. I’ll look into it, thanks so much for pointing it out. Did the dialogue with Hestia and Venefira turn out fine, or were they skipped over?
Yeah those two were fine then the illusion assassin went like that.
@Nocturnal_Stillness
Alright, I’ll fix them.
everyone, keep in mind that besides game stopping errors, I won’t be implimentimg any of the changes and corrections into the drop box folders, so you guys won’t see the fixed typos or continuity errors. This is because I don’t want to have the edited version on a public link
I’d suggest either giving the link out privately or sharing the edited copy. No sense in having your testers report the same errors.
Good point. I’ll probably keep the link public but let you guys see the additions and corrections
Hey everyone, I’ve fixed a lot of typos, the redundancy that @Random pointed out and some continuity errors, and the “no available options” error in the castle. Plus, I spaced the paragraphs out more. Next week I’ll get to work on adding the geyser field route, a choice to name your boggart, more dialogue and interactions with Beckham and textual hints in the booby traps scene.
Oh and I forgot to mention that I’d love to see your stats so I can see if I need to balance them out better.
@Samuel_H_Young When I opened the stats screen I encountered this error Line 8: Non-existent variable ‘charisma’
- I am playing as a female character and when I sneak up to the three assassin-witches, the one that noticed me says something along the lines of “There he is and look how weak he is.”
- I was unhurt after the fight with the three, but when I sat by the fire my character still used an ointment to heal wounds.
- I chose the electric viper as Beckham’s transformation, but the stat screen says his transformation is pit viper.
- When the bandits attacked me, I burned the two running towards me with the fire accelerate explosion and the archer was the only one remaining. An arrow pierced my shoulder and he slashed my chest with a dagger. My health was still 15.
- Also, Beckham’s mana was 3 at the beginning. I just noticed it jumped to 7. I don’t know if it is a bug, but I am mentioning it anyways, just in case.
- I am fighting with lord Sarrivan. I cast the poison vial explosive at him and the bandits are briefly mentioned in the paragraph.
- Sarrivan killed me two times so far. I noticed that going back to the checkpoint does not give me back the items I used in combat with him. I don’t know if it is the same with the bandit checkpoint. (I think there is a checkpoint before the bandits, not sure anymore) I consider this a critical bug.
- I restarted because of the checkpoint bug and my suspicions were confirmed: after choosing the three tear gas grenades, it gives me only one.
I will definitely play again tomorrow and try to pass Sarrivan to see whether I can find anything else. One of the most entertaining CS games.
Also, I like the purple prose. Is it purple on purpose or is that just how you write? I am asking because I am also working on a medieval gothic horror game and one of my design goals is to make the prose a bit purple (I, for some reason, connect gothic horror with purple prose, it’s much, much less purple than yours, however). I don’t like redundant text, usually. Your game has it, but I don’t mind one bit. It fits perfectly with the amount of purple. If you ever decide to scale down the purple prose, get rid of redundancy.
When it comes to long paragraphs people are complaining about: I don’t mind them personally because I play on PC. However, another design goal of mine is to limit text between each *page_break so that people playing on PC don’t have to scroll to click on “Next” even if “Next” is a 10-pixel-tall gray line at the bottom of the screen. (every page of the game roughly translates to the maximum of 5 paragraphs with the maximum of 4-5 lines of text in each)
I did this for two reasons: 1) I purposefuly made my game slow-paced so breaking it up into small chunks that seamlessly connect, at least for me, feels like speeding it up a bit, but not too much, and not having to scroll down for “Next” when playing on PC helps further. 2) I didn’t and can’t yet test this, but I think that is not too much text for people who play on their phones.
Having said that, I think breaking a fast-paced game like Trial of the Demon Hunter in this way would damage it a lot. On PC. But consider this: Publish two versions. The version for PC would stay like this. In the version for the phones, each page would be broken into smaller pieces. I think one of your paragraphs per page on the phone version would be great. I don’t actually know if it is possible to publish two versions, but this is the best advice I can give you.
Sorry if the post is too long, but I hope it helps in some way. I don’t know if my design ideas are accurate in any way (we will see when I reach beta stage) and how much you should listen to them. That’s just the way I see things.
Edit: I just tried to check the game again to see the new changes and dropbox gives me 404.
@12lexy12
You must have been playing while I was de-bugging:P it should be fixed now.
@MaraJade
You can choose your boggart’s name, now:)
@Dseg
Great feedback! I need more people like you to help me improve my game - it wasn’t too long at all, just very thorough which is what I like.
1.) Must have been a ${} error:P I’ll fix it.
2.) I hadn’t thought of that! I’ll put an *if statements for people who haven’t gotten hurt.
3.) That was an old transformation, I must not have changed it, but I’ll fix it now.
4.) Your health was fifteen because the healing ointment and a night of rest boosts your health by 5. So it was 20, but reduced to 15 after the archer attacked you.
5.) A night’s rest will boost Beckham’s mana by 3, and then if you allow him to nap while you journey to the castle, it’s boosted by one more point, making it 7.
6.) Oops, I’ll fix it.
7.) That’s bizarre…all I did to make the checkpoints was use *goto and *label codes, so it shouldn’t be doing that. By the way, there isn’t a bandit checkpoint (there’s a checkpoint before the assassins, traps, and vampire.
8.) Hold on…you chose the tear gas grenade option, but it only put one rather than 3 in your inventory?
I really appreciate that you enjoy my writing:) however, I’m a noob and don’t know what you’re referring to when you say “purple prose”; could you enlighten me? By the way, it should be working now. The 404 error was likely caused because I was de-bugging while you were playing, like when @12lexy12 got an error about the Charisma stat.
“Purple prose” is using lots of emotive and lurid words, piling on adjectives and adverbs. It’s the opposite of the spare, less is more, show-don’t-tell style favored by most modern writers in English. But it was common for most of the history of the language, and it definitely has its place…
@Havenstone
Oh okay. Well I definitely agree that my style is purple…it’s partially to fit with the time period, but also because that’s just how I write.
Do you guys think it’s too excessive?
@Samuel_H_Young Basically, purple prose is when things are overdescriptive and there are more adjectives and descriptors than there should be.
For #4, I checked my health right on the page where my character used the ointment and slept, checked it once afterwards (don’t remember how many pages later) and checked it right after the bandit hurt me. It was 15 in all cases. If it was ever 20, it was 20 on one of the pages I didn’t check.
For #7 That is exactly the problem. You should add a *temp that tracks what we used before we died. Depending on that *temp, when we return to the checkpoint, you should restore the used weapon back into our inventory. There should also be a *temp for restoring health etc. When you use *goto to reach a previous page in the book, it does not restore the stats (in this case weapons) you had at that point. It just goes to that page and that’s it.
For #8 Either it put 3 and the checkpoint bug messed it up or it put only 1. Pretty sure it put only 1, however.
Edit: It’s not excessive. It’s quite entertaining. In a good way.
@DSeg
Your health goes up when you wake up in the morning, instead of right after you use the healing ointment.
I thought since stats were global, it wouldn’t affect them. I’ll work on fixing the check point system.
I think it may be the check point bug because the code says
*set Tear +3
I didn’t anticipate my check point system messing everything up so bad xD
And great! I write descriptively because I’m always afraid of it being too bland.