Heart of the OHR Contest

Isn't it obvious? J_Taylor is from the future! He gets the next engine version before us, lucky git...

...have the dolphins taken over yet?

Hey guys, has anyone had trouble with "instead" chains not working? I have an attack that has the instead chain set to roll if attacker Ctr < 3, and when this condition is fulfilled the normal attack is not running (correct behavior), but the attack that is being chained to doesn't seem to be running either. Any thoughts?

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I am Srime

Maybe related to Bug 851

If you can make me a simplified test-case I can probably figure out what is wrong.

Boy, I wish I saw that earlier. Yeah, there is definitely something wrong SOME OF THE TIME with conditional chaining. I will try to put together a test case later tonight, but in the meantime this is what I've discovered so far:

*Tags have nothing to do with it. My attack depends on checking a stat.
*Although the first attack in the instead chain doesn't happen, subsequent ones do! I'll try to expand:

A->B
instead, if stat<x>C
C->D

in the event that "stat" is, in fact, <x, it seems that attack C is skipped over, but attack D does run.

This makes a temporary workaround possible. Insert an extra 'do nothing' attack in to take the place of my atkC in the diagram above, and all seems to be flowery goodness. At least, it has fixed the problem in Tales 2.

NOTE TO JAMES: If I don't send you a test case by the end of tomorrow, you are fully within your rights to send me hatemail and things until I do so. Please use my email, not any of the messaging systems on the forums.

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I am Srime

Hero.rpg - This game has potential. The biggest flaw I see is the graphics. It's a hard truth that graphics are a huge part of any game, but thankfully there's a couple easy fixes you can use to fix up just about any graphics. First is the tone. The tone you picked for your ground is too bright. You should pick a lower shade for the floor since the player will have to stare at it alot and it shouldn't really be trying to get his/her attention since it's just the ground. Secondly, you have no battle animation, which brings up the second fix, variety. Games also seem like they have better graphics when there's a great variety of them. You should start with adding in the rest of those battle animations, and then expand further on other things, like monsters, maptiles and maybe add a battle backdrop. ( keep it low toned though ).
Also, even though i liked the idea of being mauled by a swarm of kittens, you might want to rethink your encounters and/or playtest more.

Eternity fragment - Haven't played this completely through. I spent a lot of the time I alotted to playing contest games trying to figure out how to get past the first town, only to find the npc I skipped offering a boat for 800 gold, which I had alreadt spent on supplies. I'm not sure if that was a spoiler... anyways. I then came upon an enemy that was a mess of graphics, and wondered if this was somehow not done or was perhaps a clue to the mysterious story behind this game. My game then froze ( I'm assuming this was completely unrelated to the game ) ( I'm assuming ) given the annoying nature of the beginning of the game I stopped playing. I think this might have been the meaning behind game... not sure...

Hmm, maybe I should make the shears an equitable weapon. For now, you will need at least a dagger to proceed out of town. Doing the first quest, will give you enough money for the dagger. The intro graphics were meant to be very primitive, it's suppose to emphasize the difference between the two worlds, purposely having their visual appearance completely and sporadically different. Although I did try to do a good amount of detail in them, two frames for the telephone, five frames for the written notes. Four different stop signs, one for each direction. Clouds passing by during the intro. You can also skip the intro(only after watching it at least once) for new games. However, if you delete a saved game, you will be inevitably forced to sit through the intro again(for being a jerk and deleting your save slot).

Okay, I have just uploaded a much better version of Tales 2 with a good number of bugs/balance problems fixed (mostly small things, but a couple pretty big things, including the workaround I described earlier). There is one unnecessary part of the gameworld that is not yet tested; I will get to that in the next couple of days.

I would also like to ask Pepsi Ranger - I have realized that there might be a slight loophole in the story later on in the game if I leave this demo as is. Can I add a bit of story to the end of the demo? It's practically nothing; a handful of textboxes, and maybe a small 1 minute 'scene' showing what I need. It will be at the VERY end of the demo, as in, squeezing right into where I have my "end of demo" text box currently, and pushing the end of the demo back by about a minute.

In addition, at the end of this demo the player gets a new hero, who is so far statless. Is it okay if I give him some stats/equipment/attacks, so that people who save their game here don't need to start over if they continue the game in the future? Again, it won't add any gameplay, although it'll mean people can fight battles with this character at the end of the demo if they choose to.

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I am Srime

That's a good question. I checked the site, and it says Ypsiliform+3, but I check the engine I downloaded, and it says Zenzizenzic.

???

Maybe I'll just download Ypsiliform+3 and try it with that.

I know I'm not Pepsi-Ranger but imo both of these things fit in with the bugfix release. He said significant story changes, which these are not. Plus they make the game playable.

J Taylor:
No! The game uses some things that are in the latest nightlies, but not in Ypsi+3, I'm fairly certain. Please try with the latest nightly and tell me if it still crashes. I've played this game MANY times the last few days and haven't had any crashing (again, besides the item/equip script errors that you can safely ignore).

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I am Srime

That is very strange. No downloadable version anywhere that I am aware of is labeled Zenzizenzic. The only place I can imagine where you might have seen "Zenzizienzic" is near the top of whatsnew.txt for the nightly wip version.



No, download the nightly wip build. That is what you need to use to play msw188's game.

If the nightly wip version crashes when loading his game, then it is definitely an engine bug, and I definitely want to know about it.

Hey, nope. Works perfectly on the nightly. Thanks!

Okay, new version up, fixing all bugs I could find (I think) on a self-test. I'm waiting on word from Pepsi Ranger to add those other things before the deadline. I'm also going to try to have a friend play through the game before the final bug-testing deadline, but there's some chance that this will be the final product for the HotOHR contest.

I'm gonna be pretty busy here for a bit, but I hope to at least start some of the other entries soon.

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I am Srime

Yeah, that sounds okay to me. I guess. Just to reiterate, the rule on adding new content post-deadline is to document where the new content starts and let the players decide whether to vote on it. If it's a minor bugfix, there's no need to write anything down. If it's a flat-out addition, I'd like something notifying the players just to cover the bases. If you forget to do that, I doubt I'll be too strict about it. At this point, it's all honor system.

A note to contestants: Don't wait on my answer to do something. Just do it anyway, and if you are concerned that it's crossing the line between bugfix and addition, just write the documentation for it somewhere in the readme file and let the voters know about it. I'm giving freebies to anyone whose game falls below the 30-minute mark to update as much as he can to get it to 30 minutes. For those who have exceeded 30, just use the honor system. If you insist on adding more than what constitutes a bugfix, tell the player ahead of time. And that's it. You have until the 16th to upload your fixes.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

Haha, yea I know, my graphics are sad at best. I have a story written out and I had spent more time trying to fit that into a game and making music (which I love doing), so I got very, VERY, lazy with he graphics.

Oh, and NCW are my initials, and the MSW pirates are my brother's. (msw188)

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You can't fix stupidity.