Genesis Progress

I think he may be observing (and I agree) that you bear some resemblance to your game's protagonist

I can't wait for this game!
And I hope it does great in the contest!

I have a problem with the zip file that you uploaded. It won't open, as if it is corrupted.

Did you create it with 7zip? If so you might have accidentally used 7zips *horrible* special non-compatible variant of the .zip format.

If you do you should re-zip it as a normal zip file.

EDIT: nah, I guess it was just me. I downloaded again, and now it opens. Please disregard my misplaced 7zip rant ;)

what time did you download the file? i put up something wrong at first and had to replace the file, do you think it's possible you downloaded it while i was switching files and it caused it to be corrupt? i've had other people successfully download it and run it, so that's why i'm asking.

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That could explain it. I must have just had unlucky timing.

well actually i just downloaded it and it couldn't open for me? so strange, it said jzip couldnt open that file type even though i used jzip to compress it in the first place.

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Quick feedback because feedback is always nice:

Pros:

Obviously, the presentation is top notch, perfect 10 stuff. It's clear you've put hours upon hours making the game look right. I remember the original version looking nice, and this version makes that look ridiculous. I especially like the oil painted look of the battle backdrops. I think these may be the best battle backdrops I've seen on the OHR. I don't rave over backdrops much, but I can do it for these. Excellent. I'd actually like to know how you made them. And lately I've appreciated the abundance of flora in landscapes, tried to put that into my own game, and really like what you've done in that regard for this game. Again, the settings clearly got much deserved attention.

Story so far is compact, focused, and has my interest. I want to know what the rest of that letter says, who sent it, etc. That's about all I can say at the moment thanks to my reports in the next section.

Glitches:

You already know about the music problems. I found that if you adjust your volume even a hair, it'll wake up the soundtrack, so it's no big deal. Also, if you return to Yuriko's house the next morning after sleeping in front of the campfire, her windows are still dark. And finally, one of the battles in the forest caught me in an endless loop. I ran into this problem in my own game once and I'm trying to remember what caused it and how I fixed it. If I can recall it, I'll let you know. But that's why I haven't continued past the forest yet, and why this feedback is short for the time being.

Nitpicks:

It's probably just me, but every time I walk around in a game world this detailed, I want to be able to interact with the objects a bit. Like reading the clocks, examining stoves, etc. I think with the extensive graphic work you put into this game, it only makes sense for the player to want to interact with the scenery. Flavor text goes a long way, especially in a game like this.

I really don't like the blocky movement up and down the stairs. I'd much rather see diagonal movement. It feels awkward climbing stairs at the moment.

If you have time, I think this could use more sound effects. Again, it's very pretty, but it hardly sounds like anything. Immersion involves more than one sense.

Those backdrops, though; you could print them on glossy paper and sell them they're so good.

Excellent work, all in all.

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the battle backgrounds were actually done with my tablet. i just hand painted them in Gimp by first doing a rough blocking out of colors (brown for the forest floor, different shade of brown for the trees, different splotches of green shades on the ground), and then went back in with the paint brush tool on the smallest size setting and drew in each blade of grass and layered the lines using different shades of grass colors and tried to keep the darker colors at the bottom parts of the grass and the yellow highlights at the top of the blades of grass. they took me about 2 days each to complete.

and i agree with you about there needing to be more life in the graphics, i am thinking of maybe making some grass patches that blow in the wind, and i think the interiors need more movement too so i'll probably make an animated lantern and something else, not sure what yet though. i'd also like to add some items hidden inside dressers and the like to promote exploration and allow the player to interact more with their surroundings.

i'd love to see more sound effects as well, i'm going to spend some time finding perfect ones that we can have in the game for the next release. i'd like to add a monster roar sound effect to the monster in the forest, inn music for when the characters fall asleep next to the campfire, etc etc. just little touch ups here and there to really bring it to life.

i appreciate the feedback! let me know when you finish the demo what you thought.

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ALSO i am trying desperately to download your game pepsi, but my computer keeps almost finishing the download and then jumping the gun and saying its done when i can clearly see from the file size that it's like 15mb short, so it doesn't run and acts as if it's corrupted. does anyone know why this keeps happening? i tried downloading my game too and it happened.

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I have only had time to play the intro so far. Looks fantastic! :)

Pepsi mentioned the stair-walking, and that caught my eye too.

Here is the trick for doing diagonal walking in a plotscript:

This happens to me sometimes, I figured it was my connection since Slime Salad's not the only site it happens on. Mostly I just try again until it gets it right.

Same. I've had something like that happen to me downloading House Heroes here, but then I had the same thing downloading House Heroes from Gmail. I can't do much more than apologize

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I assume this wasn't supposed to happen, but after the main character falls down into darkness after being knocked out by that giant spider, the game ends and takes me back to Windows.

I was using a more recent nightly though.

maybe try playing it in the game.exe. i included in the download. otherwise, i really couldn't tell you what the problem is. everyone is having different problems with the game and i've no idea what's caused any of them.

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I used to have that problem with Internet Explorer's downloader all the time when I was on dial up. It was the reason I got GetRight (which doesn't work on this site). In short, IE was never that good of a downloader. I think it gets bored of downloading after a few minutes.

What are your download speeds? I think the more bandwidth you free up, the faster it goes (gosh, I sound like the tekkie that failed computer class).

I downloaded Genesis at about an average 250KB / second. And I just downloaded mine to see if I'd run into the problem you had, and it downloaded fine. So I don't think there's anything wrong with the site. But I have had my share of incomplete downloads because IE gives up on them. I'm not sure if other browsers have that problem or not.



I'm getting ready to play some more. I'll give feedback on that once I'm done. I figure it's easier for me to give daily feedback than to try to remember everything that happened over the course of however many days it takes me to finish it.



I think I've seen one of these tablets at Best Buy. They run for about $80, right? The one I saw tempted me, I'll have to say. And the method you describe sounds much nicer than the one I've adopted (which is to fill an area with clone brushing). I may have to look into that design process for the future.



I'm convinced that TMC will implement those extra layers some day. It's just a matter of waiting him out. But once it happens, all this stuff can become reality. And that animated lantern will be a welcome addition. All we would need then is a longer "Define Animation" outline for longer hard-coded loops. Right now, I had to script all of mine.



It's unfortunate that it became a pay site, but www.soundsnap.com is an excellent source for sound effects and where I downloaded about 95% of the ones that I didn't record myself. They do have a free membership, but it only allows you 5 downloads a month, which fortunately I've been able to stick with. If you don't mind implementing 5 sounds at a time, then that would be a great resource for you. Otherwise they charge certain packaging fees, which are reasonable if you can afford $20-$70 per membership period. In any case, you should definitely take a look. You can listen to anything for free. And most of it is high quality.

Okay, time to go play some more.

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www.freesound.org

is a good site to look for sound effects on.

downloading this game now...