StegaVorto: The Game That Came To James In A Dream

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Sat Nov 22, 2008 4:08 am

I present to you <s><a href="http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewtop ... rto</a></s>. The story of this game is absolutely true.

EDIT: SlimeSalad doesn't seem to allow Windows Installers. Get the latets StegaVorto from here: http://hamsterrepublic.com/games/stegav ... avorto.exe

I am interested in feedback on how well this works, how it plays, how it makes you feel.

This first version contains the basic core of gameplay, but I don't consider it done yet. I still want to add storyboards, some visual effects, more and better sound effects, and maybe some other modes of play. I am even trying to think of a way to make some sort of keyboard-vs-mouse two-player mode.

Suggestions are welcome.

<img src="http://gilgamesh.hamsterrepublic.com/al ... avorto.png">

Pepsi Ranger · Post by **Pepsi Ranger** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:10 pm

I don't suppose there's any way to win or lose in this game yet, is there?

It's a neat concept--reminds me of a reading habit I sometimes have when I'm trying to learn something I'm not interested in.

My computer has a habit of randomly shutting off sound so I didn't get to hear any of the music or sound effects (which I assume the game had), and my sound control panel doesn't show anything turned off, so I couldn't fix it in time. I can picture some New Agey back massage music in the background, though. And maybe some chirping birds.

As of now I think it's on course to becoming a great addition to the Pop Cap library of games (those guys who made Bejeweled) if you were to flesh it out more and pitch it to a software publishing company. Not that you should, of course, but just letting you know you've got a competitive idea here that could work well as a puzzler.

I noticed quite a few notepad files in the zip. Is it purposely customizable for user content (names, stories, and images)?

So far, I think it's interesting. But it definitely needs a goal. And a way to lose. And a way to exit.

Uncommon · Post by **Uncommon** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 2:50 am

Yeah, definitely a fun little time to have, though the game definitely throws the player through a bit of a loop at the beginning, starting directly after the instructions have come on screen, before you catch your stride and are familiar with what all's going down.
I'm a little pleased that the background music is a little less muzaky than what Pepsi Ranger described, though it's still exactly the kind you'd hear in PopCap and the like, though perhaps the textscroll is a little too quickly paced for the mood the music would lead you to expect.

I get the feeling if you included a goal and a way to lose, I would do very badly at this game. As a relaxed way to kill some time, it's just fine, though. Everyone will get high scores eventually.

I'm a little disappointed that you never get much opportunity to read the flavor text below the goal word, since your eyes'll be too busy scanning the main body for the letter/combo you're after.

camdog · Post by **camdog** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 8:52 pm

Neat little game, but there's little feedback on how well you're doing. For example, I never knew if I missed earlier examples of the letter I was looking for. It'd be nice if there was some sort of indicator for that.

The first time the game sped up looking for a letter not on screen, it was a 'j', and it easily took a few minutes before it found one! I actually thought the game had sped up as a way of increasing difficulty. That said, maybe it would be nice to slowly speed up the scroll as a means of increasing difficulty over time.

I personally thought the music was really nice. What is it?

Uncommon · Post by **Uncommon** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 9:16 pm

camdog wrote:the game sped up looking for a letter not on screen

I never experienced this, though I had a few times where I had to sit there looking for a K. Maybe I didn't play long enough?

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 10:40 pm

Pepsi Ranger wrote:I don't suppose there's any way to win or lose in this game yet, is there?

I am working on a mode where you search for a set number of words, and after you have found all of them it will show you your score, your time, and your average points-per-minute.

Pepsi Ranger wrote:I noticed quite a few notepad files in the zip. Is it purposely customizable for user content (names, stories, and images)?

Yeah, all the game data is in nice simple formats, so it could be customized if one really wanted to.

camdog wrote:Neat little game, but there's little feedback on how well you're doing. For example, I never knew if I missed earlier examples of the letter I was looking for. It'd be nice if there was some sort of indicator for that.

Ah, that is a good idea. I think I could to that pretty easily.

camdog wrote:The first time the game sped up looking for a letter not on screen, it was a 'j', and it easily took a few minutes before it found one! I actually thought the game had sped up as a way of increasing difficulty. That said, maybe it would be nice to slowly speed up the scroll as a means of increasing difficulty over time.

The rare letters, especially J and Z are a problem. I'm still trying to find a nicer way of handling them. The letter Z *never* occurs even once in Pablo Nerudo's "And Because Love Battles"

camdog wrote:I personally thought the music was really nice. What is it?

It is "<a href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/3744">My Life Changed</a>" by Colin Mutchler and Cora Beth. I picked it just because it had a Creative Commons license, but I do think it sounds really pleasant and soothing.

EDIT: I have added a few things. The download is now at http://hamsterrepublic.com/games/stegav ... avorto.exe since SlimeSalad doesn't allow the upload of exe windows installers.

Only One In All · Post by **Only One In All** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:26 am

I like it! The fact that it is customizable to add our own texts is great too.

However, better quality pictures for finding the word would be nice. Maybe a bigger soundtrack choice? Expansion!

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 7:34 am

the pictures are thumbnails pulled from picsearch.com. I'm triying to keep the search engine bandwidth to a bare minimum

I'll probably do some work to make it easy to add music, but I don't know if I want to include any more since the distribution file is already bigger than I want it to be

camdog · Post by **camdog** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:14 pm

James Paige wrote:The rare letters, especially J and Z are a problem. I'm still trying to find a nicer way of handling them. The letter Z *never* occurs even once in Pablo Nerudo's "And Because Love Battles"

Perhaps you could simply select texts that have a higher frequency of these letter. It probably wouldn't be too hard to whip up a script that checked the frequency of each letter in a text, and then you could drop whatever is below a certain threshold...

Of course, you could always just eliminate words with j and z from the list of words you try to form from the texts...

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:59 am

I appended a short sonnet by Neruda that that contains a Z, so that one is no longer a blocker.

I have uploaded a new version with a modified scoring system. The penalty for a long gap is lowered, but there is now a penalty for missing letters that would have worked. I also added visualization of how many points you are getting for each click.

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 5:53 pm

I have uploaded a new version that is divided into completable levels with different difficulty ratings. Each has it's own text.

I think this is ready for another round of review.

I would really like to get some feedback on the scoring system, since I don't want to attempt to implement any kind of high-scores server until I am happy with the scoring system.

<img src="http://gilgamesh.hamsterrepublic.com/al ... to_001.png">

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 5:59 am

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I am so proud of myself that I just had to post it somewhere!

I finally endured Marathon mode all the way to the end, getting a PPM over 3000, and enjoying most of the first couple chapters of <i>The Innocents Abroad</i>

<img src="http://gilgamesh.hamsterrepublic.com/al ... _score.png">

The scary part is that I was just testing to make sure that the rounded box corners were working after upgrading my installed pygame version... that explains the first 10 seconds of gameplay... as for the remaining 45:25 I must have slipped into some kind of trance. I do vaguely remember glancing up as I hit 50/100 and thinking what a great time it would be to stop and do something else, but I didn't :P

My apologies to every project I had that didn't get worked on this evening :)